Wulverblade

Genre: Arcade Brawler

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Wulverblade is an Arcade Brawler released in 2017 on Nintendo Switch and ported in 2018 to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. This game follows a group of Northerners from Britannia (in other word, Scots, or as they were known at the time, Caledonians) repelling an invasion of Roman troops, which if I understand this correctly would place this around 82AD-83AD. While the game includes many historical notes and details, it’s clear that this is only very loosely based on actual historical events, as I don’t think the real-life Caledonians ever summoned wolves to munch on enemies or suddenly became temporarily invincible after being struck by lightning.

The presentation here uses somewhat cartoony 2D backgrounds and characters with a fair amount of detail joined by cinematic music and some mostly good voice acting, though the accents vary in their degree of cartoonishness (both Mike Meyers’ Shrek/Fat Bastard accent and Gerard Butler’s Stoic character would be right at home here).

When it comes to the gameplay, this is mostly a pretty solid Arcade-style Brawler that doesn’t do too much to shake up the genre. You have a life-draining special move, a metered ultimate move and a once per stage ultimate move (the aforementioned lightning and wolves).

However, there are issues that keep this from being a game I’d consider to be among the upper echelons of Arcade Brawlers. Your movement is sluggish, the button inputs to pick things up are the same as the attack button, which can make things difficult if you’re surrounded by a pile of weapons and enemies and need to fight your attackers off. oh, and those weapons you pick up are mostly used for throwing, and almost invariably do little damage and don’t even really stun enemies, making them not very helpful. I also found hit stun was unreliable – sometimes my attacks would stun enemies, and sometimes they wouldn’t. And mostly this game’s difficulty seems to come from situations where enemies flank you from either side, or when a melee attacker engages you while a ranged attacker takes potshots at you, which gets old quickly.

Are these major issues that ruin the game? No. But they all add up to an experience that’s less-satisfying than the better Arcade Brawlers on the Nintendo Switch. Still, I suppose if you’re a fan of medieval Scottish warriors, or have a fondness for historically-inspired settings, Wulverblade does set itself apart from most other games in its genre with this setting. But otherwise, I do think you have better options.

tl;dr – Wulverblade is an Arcade-style Brawler that casts players as Scottish warriors fighting off an invasion of Roman legionnaires. The core gameplay is decent, and the setting does set this game apart from other games in this genre, but numerous flaws and frustrations keep this game from truly excelling, and I would argue that it can’t compare to numerous other entries in the genre on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C+

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