Here comes a review of Deadpool, a relatively new game based on one of the greatest comic book heroes of all time. Deadpool himself in true fourth wall breaking brilliance explains at length just how brilliant the game is going to be while you play it. But is he just talking a load of mad bollocks?
Deadpool’s character history has him created as part of the same program that adamantised Wolverine, this ultimately drove him crazy. How crazy you ask? Miley Cyrus + Amanda Bynes + Olsen Twins dipped in liquid Michael Jackson blood and rolled around in some Fundamentalist Christian sprinkles and served on a plate of Elizabeth Bathory rice.
Pretty crazy right? This manifests as multiple personality disorder and awareness that he is a comic book character. This means he references and parodies comics (and now video games) by breaking the fourth wall frequently and to much hilarity. There’s a moment in the game where he climbs over a river of sewage on the back of his own thought bubbles for example. He is fantastically entertaining and one of the most original ideas in comic book land. So it’s a shame that the game is about as fulfilling as trying to initiate sex with your wife only to find out you aren’t married and you’re performing cunnilingus on a mannequin in a shop window while suffocating a sales assistant with a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.
The game opens with the opportunity to run around Deadpool’s flat as he considers making a video game, he mocks the artwork of his bookshelf blaming it on a ‘junior artist’ as well as phoning Nolan North to ask him to be the voice actor for him in this game (which he is). This is so much fun and has so much promise that you would be forgiven for disregarding my ramblings about its tedium. Alas once I stepped outside his front door it becomes so repetitive and disappointing that I felt like someone had ordered me an Xbox One instead of a PS4 by mistake. With a big shit on the controller in lieu of a Christmas card.
The control system and gameplay shallow. It didn't really involve more than holding forwards and alternating hits of square and R1 over and over again until I wished that I were dead. Deadpool has a way of mocking me for some reason whenever I can’t find my way or for successfully killing people in the game sometimes. It makes me wish for a Kinect version where I can tell him that it’s his fucking fault and he could apologise to me for being such a boring bastard version of himself. He also kept repeating the same handful of lines at me like a trainee fucking pickup. Instead of feeling that I was playing as Deadool I felt like I was playing as one of the poor fuckers that has to put up with him for some reason. Maybe out of guilt from spending £35 quid on a plastic circle of mild despair.
Randomly throughout the game offered little pockets of joy as fun little apologies. For example the game transformed into an 8-bit version of itself, offered me Final Fantasy VII style dialogue boxes and a Little Big Planet style side-scroller to play with. These bits were actually fun but they seemed like they were afterthoughts as a way to coerce me into playing on with the promise of fun later on. Not very different to when my parents used to tell me to go to church and I realised it was a pointless waste of my energy… until they would bring out Ribena, sandwiches and chocolate as a small indicator of what heaven would be like. But after it would always go back to the singing and I would start scrawling my obituary into the back of the chair in front of me before killing everyone in the room and turning the gun on myself.
I’m being slightly unfair because though Deadpool isn’t the best game in the world (The Last Of Us in case you were wondering) it also isn’t the worst game ever (because that’s Ride to Hell: Retribution). It’s an easy enough game to relax with, Wolverine and Rogue are in it, and some crude but funny jokes and loads of super-villains you haven’t heard of. Here’s what I suggest you do: go for a walk with a loved one and maybe a puppy, and as you are watching the carefree abandon of children playing in the park, the careful plotting eyes of pedophiles and pick-pockets, try and keep an eye on the ground. If you happen to come across a Love Film envelope with a copy of Deadpool in it take it home and give it an hour or so before politely returning it to a letterbox.
David Roberts, CeX Ann Street, Belfast
Deadpool at CeX
