Deadpool Review
Ah Deadpool! Had someone a year ago told me Deadpool would get his own game, I would have laughed at them and said that a game company would never take that risk. Game development is expensive and to put millions of dollars behind a C list comic anti-hero just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Not only did that exact thing happen, but it was published by Activision, literally the least likely candidate for this type of release. So, what does all this mean? Chaos, effin’ chaos.
For those of you that are not familiar with Deadpool (and there are alot of you) he’s a mercenary who has been a bad guy, and been a good guy, but most importantly he’s been a highly mentally unstable killing machine. Equipped with guns, swords, and a healing factor a-kin to that of Wolverine, he drips of a Comic character created in the 90s. Oh, and he’s crazy, literally. He breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience, he has little to no moral compass and is often played as the idiot in whatever scenarios he’s in. Deadpool is truly unlike any other character in the Marvel Universe.
Deadpool the game, understands the character fully and uses all of his quirks and backstories to build a world that only he can live in. Throughout the game there are multiple voices are running through Deadpool’s head and many times he goes into full on comedic sketches. He wisecracks the entire game and the situations he finds himself in are laugh at loud funny. I’ve always been a casual fan of Deadpool so this game is scratching that itch really hard. 
Unfortunately, the character is really the only bright spot in the Deadpool game. Everything around him, feels dated, repetitive, uninspired and derivative. The controls are good ENOUGH, the graphics and art are good ENOUGH, the level structure is good ENOUGH, etc. At times Deadpool feels like a really pretty PS2 game. Many aspects of the game feel like something from a bygone era. Jumping back and forth from guns to sword is clumsy and sometimes hard to manage. Despite this being a 3rd person shooter there’s no cover mechanic and Deadpool only having a light and heavy attack leaves the hand to hand combat very lackluster.
I don’t know, asking High Moon Studios to do something truly innovative with a Deadpool game may be asking too much. Other that the Batman Arkham games, licensed properties are typically nothing short of digital garbage. High Moon’s Transformers games have reviewed well, outside of Josh Alcaraz’s (breakout star of Reality Breached) opinion, but I wouldn’t say any of them were groundbreaking. The most you can really ask for from this game is to be fun, functional and worth the money. I can say definitively that it meets those first two criteria.
Deadpool is fun! The first day I had it, I played it for a total of 4 hrs. I typically don’t do that. The familiarity of the combat made it easy to jump into and the adventures of Deadpool kept me playing. Technically I didn’t find anything broken, the mechanics are straightforward and perform as expected. Outside of a few clumsy control quirks Deadpool is completely functional and will not get in your way while playing it. 
Is Deadpool worth the $50 stores are asking for it? I don’t know. Its not very long, and unlike highly polished Japanese-style hack and slash games like Devil May Cry, Deadpool doesn’t hold too much replay value. There’s always the quest to get all achievements and unlockables, but that just comes down to playing the game over and over again. Yes, the game is funny, but a lot of the jokes are only going to play well once. Deadpool’s snarky quips do repeat during a single play-through, just not to an annoying amount, add a second and/or third play-through and that’s probably out the window.
Playing it on PC with an Xbox 360 controller was a great way to experience the game. The controls work perfectly and the Steam availability and achievements are strong features too. Being on Steam, I see alot of people loving this game a few years from now after picking it up on a Steam super sale and playing through it.
Deadpool is a weirdly middlesized game (an increasingly shrinking portion of the games market) that may or may not even have an audience. Its super violent, perverse, and based on a third tier Comic character, but most of all its fun.
It would be really easy to write this Deadpool game off as a joke and let it get swallowed in the cluster that is the final games coming for the current gen systems. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, but If you appreciate anything about the Deadpool character and want to see him interact with other X-men in fun ways, this game will be a lots of fun for you.
Verdict: I’m not going to say don’t play it.
