The spandex-sporting shooty, slicy, shouty scamp

The superhero barrel gets another scraping for yet another video game tie-in. This time, for Marvel’s Merc With a Mouth, Deadpool. The dude hasn’t even had a movie yet. But hey, that might work in his favour.

Newcomers to Deadpool’s universe should know that he’s known as a character that frequently breaks the fourth wall in comics. Essentially, he knows he’s a comic book character even though everyone else in the Marvel Universe has no idea. This allows him to constantly talk to the readers and share jokes with them, often at the bewilderment of the likes of Wolverine who can’t fathom why he’s so laid-back all the time (he’s already skimmed through the script of this game for example).

So yes, Deadpool knows he’s in a video game this time. At several points, we hear him give High Moon Studios (the game’s developers) a phone call to mock the script, complain about level design, ask for more explosions or bemoan the amount of stages based in sewers. And like most gaming efforts at satire and in-jokes, it mostly falls flat on its face. Generic stages (like sewers) are abundant in Deadpool’s game and no amount of admittance of this from High Moon is enough to make trawling through them any less of a bore.

The script did make me laugh on a few occasions. I hated myself for it. But hey, throw 100 gags at me about boobs, farts and boners and I’m probably going to find a couple amusing. Ah, so much shame. I’ll play Journey afterwards to convince myself I’m better than this. To be fair, it’s nowhere near as embarrassing to be caught playing as Lollipop Chainsaw, which would require an immediate muting as soon as another human entered the room.

Click here to read the rest of my review at NewGameNetwork.com.