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Playing through Deadpool feels about as schizophrenic as its main character. On the one hand, it’s zany, wacky, goofy, silly, sophomoric, and many more adjectives that Thesaurus.com suggests. This is a funny game – that is, if you’re into dick jokes and casual sexism. If not, then Deadpool – the character and the game – will grate on you like a buzzsaw on hard cheese.
On the other hand, much of the Deadpool gameplay experience is formulaic and safe…so safe you might think developer High Moon Studios is playing some sort of self-referential “hey, isn’t it ironic how normal this is?” meta-gag on you. But it’s not. No, Deadpool talks a big game but delivers a standard action experience that is the turducken of videogame parody: It is what it parodies what it is.
For those not familiar with the glory of the one and only “Merc with a Mouth,” the spandex-clad Deadpool is himself a parody of an anti-hero. A mainstay of Marvel Comics, he was given a healing factor by the Weapon X boys (the same ones who adamantium-ized Wolverine) in an experimental procedure that left him certifiably insane – and self-aware that he is in fact a comic book character. For that reason, Deadpool also knows he’s a videogame character. In fact, he starts the story – what little there is – by forcing High Moon to make a game about him and then throws out the script it sends over to him for approval. It’s a fittingly insane approach that’s true to Deadpool’s character, even if it doesn’t make for a strong story.
Armed with guns, katanas, and an unhealthy love for chimichangas, Deadpool pokes fun at videogame clichés and tropes almost as much as he pokes bad guys with sharp objects. It’s pretty obvious that Deadpool’s writers had a blast bringing this character into interactive 3D; he regularly has arguments with the voices in his head, and at one point can hop on word bubbles emanating from his diseased mind to cross a toxic river. At one point, you can even instigate a creepy stalker situation between a dialogue tree option and yourself. It’s pretty inventive, clever stuff that’s made even more enjoyable by Nolan North’s very enthusiastic delivery as the voice of Deadpool.
But then there’s the little matter of the repetitive gameplay. In pseudo Batman-style, you can chain together combos with a mix of melee and shooting combat that, while not exactly bad, starts off uninteresting and grows more stale the longer you play. It can be fun slicing into a henchman one second before finishing him off with a shotgun blast to the head, but there’s not enough variety in attacks and tougher enemies can seem unreasonably resistant to your relentless hacking.
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