Videogames conceived as major motion picture tie-ins are usually bad. This is a tenet of the game industry proven year after year by the shocking number of terrible movie-based games, whose only merit may be that they get released on-time to coincide with the film's opening weekend. Regardless of their quality, the power of marketing synergy ensures that these games sell well enough to even top sales charts sometimes. Therefore, it is usually with scepticism and much bitterness that I pick up a movie tie-in game. Sceptical that the game's worth anyone's time at all, and bitter as I know that the hype machine is loud enough to drown out the voice of any negative review. Imagine my surprise then, when I picked up X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and had one of the most fun weekends of gaming in recent memory!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine had no business being so good. Raven Software had all the odds stacked against them, if just some of the horror stories about working with movie studios were true. My appreciation for the game developer's efforts only deepened after I saw Wolverine's big-screen counterpart, as the film itself certainly wasn't too concerned with quality. Raven has taken the muddled plot of a film that rested just on a handful of action sequences, and turned it into an exciting action adventure reminiscent of God of War that also manages to explore the rich history of the X-Men series.

The game's story follows the major plot points of the movie and sheds light on Logan's life leading up to his memory loss as shown in the X-Men films. Had the game stopped there, it would've been a rather short and entirely unforgettable trip down memory lane where Wolverine's origin boiled down to a few fights in between some cringe-worthy one-liners and passionate skyward howls. Fortunately, Raven came at this with a lot more respect for the audience and source material. The developers are obviously keenly aware of what astonished and thrilled fans of the X-Men universe and they prop up the weak plot with interesting back stories and ancillary adventures that elevate the material well above the movie. This is most evident in the fact that none of the memorable moments in the game, such as discovery of one of X-Men's biggest threats, had any ties to the film at all.

That Raven was able to retool the movie's plot as much as they did was plenty remarkable, but they've also managed to finagle their way into making an "uncaged” Wolverine game somehow. Origins turns a very tame and virtually gore-less Wolverine film into one of the most visceral and violent games ever based on a Marvel superhero. Beginning with the introductory cinematic, the tone is set for a brutal and bloody onslaught as Wolverine claws his way through this action-packed adventure. Enemies come at Logan with great vigour and he's only too happy to reciprocate with equal enthusiasm, and fights often result in severed extremities, decapitations and ample impalements. While certainly gratuitous, the violence never feels out of place, and only serves to make the player feel more powerful – and that's never a bad thing.

It'd be a mistake to dismiss Origins as a one-trick pony that gets by with over-the-top violence alone. The game features a robust combat system that serves its two camps of audience perfectly. For movie fans that aren't hardened gamers who just want to press buttons at enemies until they die, the game offers simple controls that lets you button-mash your way through much of the adventure while sacrificing little of the bad-assery of being Wolverine. Thanks to a wide range of contextual moves, pressing the same attack button can yield wildly different but equally satisfying results that depend on your timing and proximity to, say, an exposed electrical outlet. For those that want to delve a little deeper, Raven channels their experience from developing the acclaimed Marvel Ultimate Alliance and imbues Origins with plenty of unlockable powers and moves, linked to an experience and levelling system.

As you progress through the game, you earn experience points by killing enemies and collecting orbs they leave behind. Once levelled up, Wolverine gains extra health and skill points that allow you to invest in combat moves or improve Logan's abilities. While the game never demands you to gain full command of his combat moves in the Easy and Normal difficulty levels, it deftly encourages you to switch up your techniques by giving you extra experience points for doing so, as well as Xbox Live Achievements. Plus, watching Wolverine leap from one enemy to enemy, dispatching them with an array of spectacular moves is rewarding in and of itself. Adding even more options to suit different play styles, you can equip Wolverine with mutagens to bestow him with a variety of perks from damage resistance to increased experience gain. A lot of thought has clearly gone into this to ensure that the combat is beginner-friendly as well as being satisfying and rewarding for veteran gamers.

As fun as it is to actively demolish waves of enemies, some of the most impressive moments in X-Men Origins actually occur when you relinquish control to the game. Building on the strength of Quick Time Events, the game fluidly takes over control of Wolverine mid-action and subtly prompts you to attack instinctively during some of the most breathtakingly staged action sequences that at once recall the excess of a Michael Bay film, and the majesty of iconic comic book frames. Outside of the spectacle of combat all together, the game still manages to engage with some light platforming sequences and puzzle solving that are wholly competent if not groundbreaking in any way. Exploration yields its own rewards in the form of audio clips that inform the plot as well as provide nods and winks to events in the X-Men universe. Even the act of progressing through the level received some obvious attention from the developer, and one of my most memorable moments in the game simply had Wolverine crawling through some vents while eavesdropping on the reaction of enemy soldiers to my intrusion.

In a climate where game sales live or die by the amount of perceived value on offer, usually measured in number of hours, it's no surprise that developers are increasingly shoehorning multiplayer modes into their games. It's simple mathematics really: as a single-player game may offer 8 hours of entertainment, but a single-player game with an online deathmatch mode gives 8 + α hours of "value”. While Raven hasn't tried to make you battle 7 other player-controlled Wolverines onscreen, they did do the game a slight disservice by making this 8-10 hour adventure longer than it needed to be. This results in some stages that seem overly long, such as a stage that takes away Wolverine's powers and asks the player to recover them one by one, by one. The repetition extends to the combat too unfortunately, specifically the encounter with giant enemies that were fun the first few times, but becomes tedious by the 15th time you have to take them down in exactly the same way.

Not all of the additional content detracts from the game though, as X-Men Origins also features a plethora of hidden items to find, from Easter eggs that are too good to spoil, to power-ups and even additional costumes from the different Wolverine designs throughout the ages. With the latter, once you have unlocked a costume, you will be tasked with beating that incarnation of Wolverine in a small danger room before being able to use the costume in-game. While it doesn't change any of your combat moves, it's a very nice fan service to be able to don the iconic yellow Wolverine costume. The game also offers a harder difficulty level in addition to normal and easy that can be unlocked by completing the game. With a skill points system, hidden items, as well as the generally satisfying combat, it's easy to find reason to go back and replay the game on a tougher setting.

It certainly doesn't hurt that the game's presentation is superb all-round. The environments that Wolverine drops into throughout the game are uniformly impressive, ranging from dense South American jungles to the distinctive interior of underground research facilities. The gorgeous visuals are brought to life with top-notch animation that fully conveys the raw strength and agility of Wolverine's every move, and imbues enemies with a lot of character. I never seem to get tired of watching the machete-wielding jungle warriors leap into battle, or the cowardly soldiers that fumble and back away from battle in panic. The game's soundtrack is also worthy of a mention as it dynamically switch between more ambient and foreboding tracks and exhilarating battle scores that compliments the outrageous action.