Deadpool: The Game Review

Posted by : Unknown Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Let me just say this upfront: Deadpool is, hands down, my favorite comic book character ever. I absolutely eat up anything he is in. I’ve bought every single comic that he was in for as long as I can remember. So, you can only imagine how excited I was when they announced (a really long time ago) that a video game was in the cards. My brother pre-ordered the game for me for Christmas last year (thanks again, Nick!) and so the countdown began. Thankfully, the game came last week, and I got my Deadpool fix for the week. And boy was it good.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Deadpool (shame on you!) let me give you a bit of an overview. Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson) is a mercenary/gun for hire. Also known as The Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool goes out and completes hits on some baddies (even though he was originally introduced as a villain, he has since become a (semi) good guy. He is the epitome of an anti-hero in this way. The key to Deadpool’s awesomeness (in my opinion, at least) is the meta-ness of the character. Deadpool is completely aware that he is in a comic, so he breaks the fourth wall constantly. In fact, if you can find me a Deadpool comic where he doesn’t break the fourth wall, I will give you a number of dollars. That number will probably be zero, but there is a chance that it won’t! I also love that, unlike a lot of fiction, Deadpool is completely aware of everything that exists in our world, which makes him able to make silly references to movies/tv shows/general pop culture that always make me giggle.

Alright, now that I’ve ranted about how much I love Deadpool, let me tell you why I loved Deadpool (the video game) so damn much.

I have always said that, to properly execute anything Deadpool, whether it be a movie, video game, tv show, or even comic, a strong writer is needed to capture all of the things that make Deadpool awesome. For example, if you turn Deadpool into some stupid, silent, retarded mutant, you fail the character, thus fail at life (I’m looking at you, Benioff and Woods!) So, I was really interested in who would be writing the story for this game. If I wasn’t already sold on the concept of a Deadpool game, I sure was when I saw that Daniel Way was writing the story for the game! Those of you who aren’t shitting your pants right now should know that Daniel Way wrote the most recent run of Deadpool comics that ran from 08-12 for 63 issues. He wrote some of my favorite Deadpool arcs (how can anyone hate Hit Monkey) and just gets how to write the character.

And that didn’t change with the transfer over the video games. Way’s story and dialogue are just oozing with the same meta material that was in his run in the comics. From the first moment, Deadpool feels like the same character that I came to love in the comics. Everything is absolutely over the top. Whether it be ridiculous amounts of violence (of which there is plenty,) hilarious references to the amount of boobs in the game (also plenty,) or just breaking the fourth wall, Way knows his way (stupid pun, I know) around this character.

I feel like this game didn’t need much more than a good story, but it still brought a lot of goodies to the table.

The controls for the game were pretty simple, but that’s not always a bad thing for a game like this. You end up using X and Y a whole lot (I played this on Xbox, so bear with me on the button referencing) and you’ll throw a few B’s in if you feel like countering, but you don’t really need to.

As a devout Deadpool fan, I thought it would be silly to use anything other than his classic combination of katanas and pistols for weapons through the game. So, I literally played one full playthrough with just those items. While that was a whole lot of fun, I did miss out on some awesome items (which I ended up getting and using on my second playthrough.) I won’t spoil anything here, but the array of items in this game, while not vast, is very fun to play around with.

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Overall, I thought this game did an excellent job of capturing the character of Deadpool and the essence of the comics. There was a whole lot of breaking of the fourth wall, and the entire plot was meta to the max. I should also mention that Nolan North is absolutely perfect as Deadpool, and I never want him to stop. So, do yourself a huge favor and go play this game right now.

Writing: 8.5/10

Gameplay: 8/10

Graphics: 7/10

Acting: 8.5/10

Total: 8.0/10