High Moon Studios, developers of the acclaimed Transformers reboot, take on Marvel’s Merc With a Mouth in their video game, Deadpool. Will it cleverly break the fourth wall or beat it like a dead horse? Read below to find out! Major spoilers for the first level or so of the game to follow!
Humor can be very difficult, especially when done in a video game. In some games, all the jokes are told in cutscenes and are separate from the gameplay. Other games subtly insert visual gags into the game world for players to find and make dessert related memes out of. Really it all comes down to the developers; but in general comedic video games have to be extremely careful as their entire medium is built on the player’s input which can make timing, the key to comedy, extremely difficult. Deadpool set out to resolve this issue by having Deadpool scream about dicks and chimichangas for six hours.
In order to fully explain what this game is about, we’ll go in-depth on the first level of the game. Don’t worry about this spoiling the story, there’s next to no plot to actually give away. Deadpool sits in his grody apartment and calls up High Moon Studios to threaten them into making video game about him. They oblige, and Deadpool goes off to act in the first level of the game. Right before you leave though, you’re given the opportunity to interact with some visual gags in the apartment. It’s mostly basic stuff like Deadpool eating a pizza or doing air gutiar but there are some fairly clever mechanics, like calling up Nolan North, voice actor for Deadpool and roughly every other video game character ever, to tell him he’s hired to do the voice acting for the game. Going up to Deadpool’s dog allows you to pet him with a prompt saying “Press X for Doggy Style.” which is a joke that sounds like it took approximately a half second to come up with. Here it becomes apparent exactly what the M-Rating for the game means, since we’re no longer in a T+ rated comic, the writers are allowed to put in as much cursing and poop references as possible. Deadpool is uncut in the laziest way, it doesn’t allow for anything new to be explored with the character, the only difference between the game and the comic is that Deadpool can now drop the f-bombs without any censoring, which is a shame since bleeped out cussing is one of the funniest things in the world.
After leaving the apartment, Deadpool starts the first level of the most generic game ever made. If you have ever owned or played a Playstation 2, you have already played this game. It’s a beat-em-up/shooter where you gain points in order to upgrade your skills and get weapons that don’t really makme a difference. There are only two real modern-gaming sensibilities to be found and one of these is the “stealth kills.” Enemies come in two varieties: a thousand enemies you have to explode your way through and one dude walking around alone that you can do the stealth kill on. The stealth kills are made only to be used on that one person and even if you just cut them up or blow them away as you normally would, there’s no difference. No alarms raised, no enemies alerted, you just get a kind of cool animation. The other trace of modern gaming is found in the health system. Deadpool has a mutant healing factor which means that he can just wait for his health to grow back. This leads to a lot of running around and finding an area where enemies can’t shoot at you until you can regenerate. Because if there’s one thing you expect from a Deadpool video game, it’s a lot of waiting around and twiddling your thumbs. Flowing non-stop action is for dweebs. The one unique thing about the gameplay would be Deadpool’s teleport technique which at first seems pretty handy but then just ends up being unwieldy in other moments. Overall, the gameplay is stuff you’ve seen before mixed with some alright twists.
So for the first level, Deadpool has to kidnap a media mogul who no one cares about. Both of Deadpool’s inner voices, talk about how the mogul is just there as an excuse to cause explosions and bloodshed, and has no real significance to the plot. Deadpool’s inner voices also talk about everything under the sun and do not shut up during the game. Maybe they work well in print when you’re not listening to their voices or all the time, or don’t have to listen to them repeat themselves every time you die, but here in the game they’re just annoying. As a result of the dismissal of the mogul character, it’s hard to tell what exactly is significant to the plot or if there is one at all. The first level is played off as a parody of video games but there’s never a moment when they turn that parody switch off. When more X-Men characters show up and the stakes get higher it’s hard to tell whether or not we’re supposed to take any of this seriously, not just because of that one line about the mogul not mattering, but because nothing in this game seems to matter. Characters come in and out with almost no reason and it’s hard to determine if this is the game’s actual plot or still a parody of what a lazily written Deadpool video game would be.
After Deadpool explodes a couple hundred mooks, he kidnaps the mogul and calls High Moon to talk about how awesome the level was. While they talk about how overbudget the explosions were, the freaking Marauders of all people kidnap the mogul guy. Deadpool tries to run after them but, due to the fight with High Moon, has his budget slashed and has a segment where he can only use his swords and the camera goes to a bird’s-eye-view, turning the game into faux Legend of Zelda. It’s a genuinely creative moment that actually plays around with the fourth wall in a really fun way, but it only lasts for about thirty seconds. Yes it could have been overdone if it lasted any longer, but one of the view good parts of this game is not very long at all. There are a few moments like this that make the game worth seeing, or at least make it worth watching a play-through on YouTube,
While chasing the Marauders through the tunnel, Deadpool meets Arclight who Deadpool constantly reminds you is the lamest character they could afford. See? Even the writers acknowledges this game is crap! And yes it is just a joke, but joke about how lame your game is and it’ll strengthen people’s opinions of it from mediocre to awful. If you’re going to make a parody of bad video games, you can’t just make a lazy game and talk about how awful it is, that’s hardly trying. Anyway, Deadpool defeats Arclight the way he defeats every enemy in this game, by hitting her with swords and guns long enough until the fight is over. Then, the cutscene right after the fight offers one of the most uncomfortable moments in a video game.
Skipping to around 4:10 in the video, Deadpool sees Arclight dead, impaled on a pole, boops her boobs, and says the following out loud “HEY! HOT TITS! THE PIPE I WAS OFFERING GIVES WAY MORE PLEASURE!”
That’s the not the weirdest line ever in a video game, but it’s one of the many instances in Deadpool where I feel like the writers really just use women as standing boob statues. Check out each character’s intro. Some of them are pretty funny! Cable’s has a rocking theme song! It’s almost like effort was put into some of these! Then you get to any female character’s bio and the sequence for introduction is 1) her name, 2) how hot she is, and 3) either her powers or how much Deadpool wants to have sex with her. The embodiment of Death itself is objectified here. Death. The absence of life gets a bio and the word “hot” is used to describe it. Female characters drop in and out of the game and only really serve as objects for Deadpool to talk about his junk at. Somehow, it takes a character who’s all about chimichangas and violence, and makes him more juvenile.
Continued belowDeadpool is a really bad game. If I had to give it any praise, it’d be that the game costs $50 US Dollars instead of $60. It’s not fun, the voice acting gets really grating, the plot is inconsequential, and the “humor” is about 90% references. Yes, there are some genuinely cool and somewhat innovative moments, but their cumulative ten minutes don’t justify playing through another five hours and fifty minutes of mindlessness.
Final Verdict: 2.9 – Pass unless you really like middle school levels of gross humor and Devil May Cry retreads.
