By Gwendolyn L. Spelvin

Deadpool just won’t die.  Sadly, it’s been on life support for so long players are accepting the loss of oxygen and lowering their standards to accept the coma like state this title puts them in.

After a lackluster premiere and an abrupt removal from the Steam store after Activition’s licensing expired in 2014 it seemed that it was right where it was supposed to be, dead and buried.  However, with the film development and comic spin-offs, a year later it was quietly back on Steam with premium price tags on a curiously created bull market.

And something is terribly wrong with the entire circle of events thereafter.

A hack and slash combination with the self-proclaimed Merc With A Mouth should have been great, especially when Marvel contemporary entries have had less than stellar titles of late.  Instead, Deadpool is piecemealed together so badly that if it were a hip hop song it would be a four bar sampled instrumental that just wore its own loop out.

That’s not to take away from Wade himself.  Players unanimously agree that the repetitive way he fights is nothing more than a hack, slash, fight, run, or escape that turns into wash, rinse, and repeat after the third random battle.  While Wade’s M.O. is to act as if he is going to be stealth-like and then satirically flip into hot head madness is true to character, it doesn’t translate well into the limited stealth-mechanisms options offered both with the protagonist and the enemies.

Seriously Activision?  Repetitive henchmen may be one thing, but fighting clones of the level bosses is another.  You really want players to believe you’re hurting on the budget that badly that you couldn’t come up with anything more original for the budget than having your protagonist fight the same boss at least forty times for game completion?

That’s could be great considering that Wade Wilson is a brawler, but it is uninspiring in the way Deadpool handles every enemy, especially in boss fights.  Who really wants to duel it out with Sinister and at least a couple dozen variations of him and other villains at his disposal with the same haphazard control schematics to fight with no special moves?

Seriously, how hard is this to do in 2016?  If creating a dynamic combo list akin to the one that was available in Tekken is just that damn hard to do for a Triple A title studio, then they should do everybody a favor and declare bankruptcy and go the way of Volition, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and wait for a buyout.

For a title that disappointed even the most die-hard fans of the comic for its uninspired, mediocre hack and slash repetitive fare, you’re not getting any sympathy points here.  I don’t care how many positive reviews show up on Steam; there is no accounting for Stockholm Syndrome, fans that know they will probably never see another entry in the franchise for a long time, nor your public relations team that probably generated a fair amount of positive criticism.

A lemon is a lemon, and is sour all the same.  No one told you to dump funding you obviously don’t have on a Marvel license when obviously you’re lacking in the labor department for qualified programmers and writers that can create fresh content.

Especially when the flaming bag of dog shit is sitting on Steam for forty bucks.

Good job Activision.  It’s nice to know you’re raping the PC platform on purpose, because this mess is not even barely cracking twenty bucks on consoles and sales show it.  We all know it’s a craptastic shitfest not even worthy of potential pirating.  So why lay the burden of making your money back on us and on a three year old title?

Considering that titles depreciate in value as they age, and even faster if they are horribly received, Activision putting a high price on Deadpool will not miraculously give it value.  Instead, it’s right on the shit list of gifts you just can’t give away, sitting between Afro-Samurai and Kane & Lynch.  Now thanks to Activision’s price gouging, it’s going to hold the number one spot for a long time.

Steam, Marvel, and Activision can just kiss every player on the PC platform’s ass on this one.

Toilet humor written by a random kindergarten class, repetitive dialogue, enemies, and action on top of a total run time of ten hours didn’t work for the Family Guy franchise and it isn’t working for Deadpool.  Being barely a step up from Tekken Force is not worthy of bragging rights, either.

Oh, Deadpool, I know it’s not your fault directly.  Being pimped to the highest licensing johns on every street corner buying your wares tends to do that to even the most faithful of prostitutes holding out for a way out of the life.