I love cooking.  Ever since my mom started to go blind I've been taking over as the primary cook in the house and while I'm not the best at it and I definitely let my depression get in the way of doing it a lot, cooking is a hobby I've really enjoyed.  I've made a lot of friends with it, been exposed to a whole bunch of new foods and, by extension, cultures.  One of those friends actually recommended this game to me!  Shoutouts to my dear friend Sab, one of my favorite people, an amazing musician, check out her stuff.  Cooking means a lot to me and I have been drawn to games about cooking for as long as I can remember.  I was the token "Cooking Mama" person in my friend group growing up and to this day I keep an eye out for interesting games about food.  So an entire puzzle/visual novel ABOUT food?  Sign me up!

Venba - A Cute Game About Food and Culture

What Is Venba?

Released in 2023, Venba is a narrative cooking game set in a roughly 30 year period from the late 1980s to the recent past, around the late 2010s/early 2020s.  You play as the eponymous Venba who, along with her husband, Paavalan, have recently immigrated to Toronto from their home of Tamil Nadu to seek out new opportunities.  Life is hard for them in Toronto, however.  Despite Paavalan's degrees, he struggles to find a job in his field due to it being more competitive and a not insignificant amount of racism.  Venba, similarly, is having trouble gaining momentum in her career.  Back in India, she was an accomplished teacher whose students loved her but in Toronto she's having far more trouble.  Her English isn't great and she can't relate to her students in the way she could back home.  And she keeps getting passed over for a more substantial position because of it (and also probably racism let's be honest).  The two of them are struggling so much that they consider packing up and moving back to India.  And then Venba discovers she's pregnant.

The game then proceeds to tell the story of the family through a series of vignettes, glimpses into specific days of the family's growth as they struggle to raise their son, Kavin, to have an appreciation for their native culture when he's surrounded by Canadian culture. In almost every instance, these vignettes also center around cooking.  The central gameplay of Venba is actually very similar to something like Cooking Mama, you are tasked with cooking a traditional South Indian dish step by step completing little minigames to simulate the various cooking steps.  Stuff like moving your mouse up and down to simulate chopping vegetables or moving it in a circular motion to rub paste into a fish.  The recipes in Venba, however, also have a puzzle aspect to them.  Venba is working off of her mother's cookbook, a precious family heirloom that she brought over from India, and being an old family cookbook it's covered in stains.  It's up to the player, therefore, to "solve" the stain covered text and figure out the missing instructions.  Food is so central to this game that it even comes with a cookbook (and I definitely need to print out and try some of these recipes.)

Spoiler-Free Review:

Venba is an incredibly charming game.  With an adorable art style and a true love of Tamil Culture, Venba oozes personality throughout its short run time.  You can tell this story was very personal to the devs, they are Indian of course and I imagine they must be Tamil and they talked about wanting to do an immigrant story from the perspective of the parents for once instead of basing it in the second generation as so many do.  The themes explored in this game are handled incredibly well, I am not an immigrant to my country nor am I the child of immigrants, my family has been in America for several generations, but I could so easily put myself into the mindset of both Venba and Kavin throughout.  The writer(s) did an excellent job at making a story that I'm sure most resonates with people who are either immigrants or second generation but also can be connected with even if you don't have these lived experiences.  The puzzles are incredibly well designed too, just, they're very clever and really make you think about the art of cooking in such a unique way.  There's a particular one later on in the game I REALLY love, I'll talk about it in the spoiler section of this post.  The only things I'm not super sold on are, a, the length, I wish it was longer and had more to it, but b some of the recipes don't get the full attention I wish they would.  I just want to solve these puzzles, I wish there was more game to this game.  But overall I really enjoyed it.  8.5/10

A More Thorough Look:

Just as a heads up for people, from this point on I will be talking about spoilers for this game.  If you intend to play it yourself, which I recommend you do because it's really fun, and you care about that sort of thing, don't read on.  Also just going to put up a content warning here as well, while Venba doesn't get too intense with its depictions of racism, focusing instead on systemic issues rather than direct crimes, there is a depiction of a hate crime in Venba and I will be talking about it.  If this kind of subject matter is potentially triggering to you, be careful reading forward.  I think it's an important moment in the game and I think that it handles it well enough to not be that triggering but I want to be sensitive to these things.  Let's go!

A Game About Cooking:

One of the things I really enjoy about Venba is its depiction of cooking.  Depictions of cooking in media, be it film, television, video games or just little TikToks are something I feel very passionate about.  If you know me you know I've gotten up on my soapbox more than a few times about how I dislike media that makes cooking feel impossible because cooking is intimidating to a lot of people, it is a massive hurdle for them and cooking content that makes it seem complicated reaffirms these beliefs for people and ends up with them being turned off from cooking.  Venba, I think, does a good job of both voicing these concerns, this hesitancy to cook, while also making cooking seem fun and accessible.  I know the developers talked about the difficulty they had translating Tamil cuisine into puzzles because, like a lot of South Asian cuisine, they can get pretty complicated.  But I think they nailed it, I think it gives people a good space who may be intimidated by cooking to learn that cooking is fun, cooking isn't something difficult that you have to overcome but an artform you can create in.

I'm also a massive fan about how each puzzle is not only a fun little brain teaser but also does help you conceptualize how to most effectively make the dish.  They make for very good tutorials on the order of operations of the dish, the best way to ensure the dish is done well and what it should look like roughly when the dish is complete.  I really do want to commend the artists for managing to so accurately depict what the final dish looks like in its stylized art style, like, it can be really helpful.  And I understand, like, the recipes are VERY detailed, I haven't made any of them but I checked the recipe for Biryani and it is thorough.  But it's also just nice to also have a visual indicator of what the dish roughly should look like when it's done, especially when it also comes with some practical instructions like "what order ingredients should go in".  I know there's like a whole thing of "games simulating stuff don't always teach you how to do the thing in question" but I think Venba does give such practical instructions that for visual and hands on learners you can kind of get an idea on how to make the dish(es) in question.

But Venba is not just a cookbook.  While it does give you the recipes and some knowledge on how to make these dishes, Venba is a game about culture.  And, moreover, how integral food is to culture.  Full disclosure, while I hope that I am able to communicate the thoughts and ideas in Venba well, as I have mentioned previously I am American and moreover a white American.  My family has been in the country for several generations and, even if we were in touch with our original cultures, on my mom's side I'm German and Irish and on my dad's side I think I'm Danish?  While these are cultures that have their own rich food history, their cultural identity is not as strongly tied to the food they make as, say, Indian culture tends to be, food is not as central a component to my ancestors.  So if I say something wrong going forward or seem out of depth I apologize, thank you for being patient with me, lol.  I try my best but this is definitely something much harder for me to connect with due to my own lived experiences.

Venba does an excellent job of showing cooking as not only important culturally but also the why of it.  Why these little rituals, these quirks and ticks you engage in while creating this edible art, are significant.  I'll touch on it later on, because I want to talk about the cookbook in more detail by itself, but Venba feels isolated, divorced from her home.  She is pretty literally on the other side of the world and cooking is her way of touching base with that part of her she has left behind.  So there's kind of a ritual to it.  She turns on the radio to the only station she can find that plays Indian music (which by the way, soundtrack is great, it's sung entirely in Tamil and from what I understand evokes so many eras of Tamil music, again, I'm not an expert but it seems like those that are really vibe with it) and does things very traditionally in a way she might not have previously.  She even points out in the first Chapter of the game that her recipe for Idli and the way she prepares is different from her mothers' but she wants to do it that way, she wants to engage with her traditions.  It's her way of feeling at home while away from home.

You then grow to relate to her frustrations when Kavin, who grew up in Canada and is more connected to Canadian culture, seems to reject his native culture.  It starts off in little ways at first, Kavin wants pizza over what his mom cooks as most children would.  But it grows into a familiar story, he feels like his culture is stopping him from fitting in and he grows to resent it.  There's a particular scene where Venba prepares her son a ton of Biryani to bring with him to college and he is not pleased about it, clearly worried about how he will be perceived if he's "the Indian kid".  And like, I get it, but you also feel the heartbreak, feel how sad it makes Venba to keep trying to reach out to her son, keep trying to throw him a rope to his own culture, only for him to reject it.  To Venba this food, this life, is everything and to Kavin it is smothering.

This cultural divide comes to a head in one of the last stages of the game.  It is Kavin's birthday, one of the first after Paavalan died, and Venba asks him if he's coming home for it.  Kavin tells his mom he wants to (probably a lie) and that he'll see what he can do.  Venba, excited to have her son home, excited to be a family if only for one night, makes an absolute feast.  Every dish she can imagine, all laid out for her son's arrival.  It's an attempt, an attempt to get Kavin to embrace his heritage, to see the beauty, the vibrance in the culture he's always been hesitant to embrace.  And he doesn't show.  Venba is clearly heartbroken, silently waiting all night for her son before going inside, defeated, the food left out, the dishes still in the sink.  You kind of get a glimpse into how much the relationship between the two has broken down, with Venba sending her son messages he did not reply to, trying to keep touch with him even as he grows.  This food is not only an attempt for an Indian parent to try and get her son to embrace his culture but a mom trying to bridge a gap to her son.  Tragic stuff man.

We then take control of Kavin.  It's a few years later and Kavin now works as a television writer.  He's on one of those Western kid shows that is designed to show the diversity of the nation in question and the person in charge asks him to pitch a dish for a scene where all the kids bring food from their native culture.  And he is uncomfortable about this fact.  He sees a group of kids hanging out in a cafeteria and talking about their culture and their food as being not even close to his lived experiences.  That he was uncomfortable and embarrassed by his culture growing up, that he was so desperate to fit in he rejected everything Indian about himself, and that having a character show pride in that when he didn't feels like a betrayal.  But he relents.  He decides to make a dish from his mother's cookbook, which she left with him as she has moved back to India, for the show.  He's clumsy with it, unsure of the process, but along the way he realizes what he has done.  He falls in love with Tamil culture, wants to be a part of it and, most importantly, wants to do right by his Amma.  Cooking this dish, immersing himself in his culture, has caused him to have a revelation.  He quits his job and flies back home to India, where the game ends with him learning to cook directly from Venba.

Systemic Racism and the Language Barrier:

Unsurprisingly, a game that deals with immigrants a cultural preservation in the face of said immigration does have some themes of racism in it as well.  Venba doesn't touch on this theme in depth by any means as, first off, that's not what the game is about.  It's not a game about racism, why would they touch on it in depth.  But also I think it's more accurate to the lived experiences of a lot of immigrants in the big cities of the west to not really depict racism in any super present way.  Like, a lot of Western cities, both in the past and still today bill themselves as cultural melting pots and so explicit racism isn't usually present.  But you still see it in the very subtle ways that our society works, how these places may put walls up for people who have trouble speaking English, people who are poor because of moving to the west, etc.  Venba touches lightly but poignantly on elements of systemic racism, and I think it does so very well.

I want to first touch upon typography in Venba, as I think it's a good scene setter for this section.  Venba does something very clever with its typography.  We are, obviously, playing as Venba, an Indian immigrant whose native language is not English but Tamil, Tamil is the language that we are seeing most of the time.  English is, in this case, the foreign language, a second language that Venba and Paavalan are both "fluent" in, Pavalaan moreso, enough to get by in Canada but not enough to where speaking the language is natural.  This presents an interesting problem, we are always seeing Tamil so Tamil is the language that we should be "understanding" and, like a lot of fiction, we see that as the language that is native to the localization, in my case English.  But English is also a language meant to be understood and it's difficult when you're already using English to then find a way to treat English as a foreign language.  So what Venba is color the font.  When characters are speaking Tamil, they have white text and when they are speaking English they have Yellow text.  Simple, easy to understand, genius.

Due to this very easy to understand dichotomy, you also get a good grasp on the specific nuances of the conversations they have with other English speakers.  One of the early parts of the game sees Pavalaan trying to get a job in his field.  He has a couple degrees from Indian universities and, back home, was a pretty notable writer, writing is his passion.  And you have him trying to get jobs over the phone, trying to show his enthusiasm for the work, point to his degrees, point to his experience.  But, it doesn't seem to matter.  He may very well be a good fit for the job, the best fit even.  But the people on the other line only seem to take one thing into account: his English.  Pavalaan speaks English pretty well but his words are slow and can be disjointed, the way a lot of immigrants' words can be.  And you know he probably has a thick accent.  He is being kept from this job that he is very qualified for because of where he comes from.

This systemic issue also hangs over Venba.  Like I said, we don't see Venba in the work environment at all but it still casts a shadow.  Almost every level ends with a letter from the school Venba works at part time.  Venba was a teacher back in India and back home she was very good at her job.  She was the young, cool teacher who could relate to the kids and pull them out of their shells to learn.  In Canada though, this is a much more difficult issue for her.  The cultural barrier is a big part of it, she has a much more difficult time connecting to the kids here.  But she's still very good at her job and she is gunning for a full time position, a proper teaching job that will not only be fulfilling for her but help make ends meet.  The duo are struggling and have had to make compromises just to make their bills and Venba having a full time position would help immensely.  But, throughout the entire game, Venba is repeatedly rejected for this job, a job she loves and is good at.  We don't know a lot about the other teachers that have taken this position but we can assume things about them given the other context clues present in this game.  In a bit of dramatic irony, she is finally approved for the job after Pavalaan dies, after she can no longer afford to stay in Canada and chooses to move back to India, her last reason for trying to make it work (Kavin) no longer answering her texts.

I have to also imagine that the racism really shaped Kavin.  Kavin is very interesting with the text thing, while Tamil is his first language, like a lot of second generations, Kavin quickly adapts to the native language of the country he's in over his own native language just from osmosis.  It is very early in the game where Kavin is also majority speaking in English and his mother has to remind him to speak Tamil.  This problem only gets exacerbated as the game goes on, with there eventually being such a language barrier that not only is Kavin speaking faster than his parents can understand but the words don't even make sense.  Words become smudged and blurry as his parents struggle to communicate with their son who now exclusively speaks in English.  Put in a pin in the blurry text, by the way, it'll come up later in a very cool way.

Anyways, Kavin is doing what a lot of second generation kids do in a culture that not only surrounds him but is prejudiced against them, even in smaller systemic ways: he assimilates.  He embraces the local culture, tries to fit in(even going so far as letting people call him "Kevin"), even at the cost of his culture and his relationship with his family.  To bring you back to him going off to college, Venba has made her son a lot of meals to take with him, to remind him of home.  Not only that, but his parents want to go with him, want to see his college, see his dorm, meet his friends.  He fully rejects this.  Kavin worries about being the "Indian kid in Canada", of being othered in that way.  He just wants to fit in, wants to be a part of this world he was born into.  And doing that means being "the Canadian kid who happens to have Indian parents", because at the time he grew up (and probably still now), it was an easier life to live, an easier way to fit in.

But the biggest thing that happens with regards to depictions of racism in this game is Chapter 3.  Chapter 3 is rather unusual for this game in that it's the only chapter that does not have a cooking section.  Instead it's full Visual Novel, you're just progressing the plot and maybe selecting some dialog options here and there.  By Chapter 3, Paavalan has swallowed his pride and now works as a salesman for a relative.  He does not like this turn of events even remotely, something he makes abundantly clear, but it's paying the bills.  One night, Paavalan is late coming home, nobody has seen him since he left work and he was meant to be home hours ago.  Worried and confused, Venba and Kavin set off into the night to look for him.  While they try to keep their spirits up, with Venba choosing to practice Tamil with Kavin, they eventually find Paavalan at the bus stop.  He's beaten and bloodied, his paperwork flying everywhere and his glasses shattered on the ground.  He was the victim of a seemingly racially motivated attack, the game letting very little be confirmed but allowing the implication to cast a massive shadow over this scene.  When I first got to this sequence I actually was really worried Pavalaan had taken his own life because they show his glasses on the ground without him there first THEN show him beaten at the bus stop.

A Story About A Cookbook

Let's talk about the cookbook, the most important element of Venba.  Not the one the game includes so that players can learn to make the recipes in question, the in-game one, the one Venba had passed down to her from her mother and the one she inevitably passes down to Kavin.  The in-game cookbook is the central gameplay element of the game.  It contains within it the puzzles that need to be solved, the recipes missing text due to stains and smudges that the player must figure out to complete the stages.  This is not only a fun little gameplay element, a fun and creative way to build a game around cooking puzzles.  While it does certainly accomplish that, the Cookbook holds incredible narrative significance as well.  In a game about connecting and reconnecting with your culture, this cookbook with its stains and blemishes is paramount.

Flash back, if you will, to the first chapter of the game, the chapter where Venba makes Idli.  As mentioned previously, she forgoes the way she would usually make it to opt for her mother's recipe, a more complicated one but one that feels like home to her.  This is when she discovers that the cookbook is missing pieces, text is being obscured by stains, it's hidden or blurry.  These stains are not just stains, as I'm sure you could probably piece together.  The stained pages are meant to represent Venba's disconnect from her culture, the divide that forms between her and her home now that she is in Toronto.  And these half complete recipes are her trying to bridge that divide, she wants to feel at home, feel her culture, feel her family with her, but she doesn't know how.  Something is holding her back, something is stopping her from being able to form a complete bridge.  So she works with incomplete recipes.  Until she has mastered them herself, as her own mother did.

This incredibly unique and creative puzzle element adds so much depth, so much nuance to the narrative.  It kind of blew me away when I realized that's what was happening, how much this cookbook represents to Venba and her own story.  How well it contextualizes the events of the game.  How significant it is that we don't see her ever bring the recipes together herself.  The recipe book she gives Kavin is a "fixed" version of her mother's book, all the stains gone, all the recipes rewritten, a master passing on her craft to the next generation.  To Venba, that bridge is no longer shaky, it has been built.  This is who she is, Tamil culture is her culture, and she not only can see through the stains, she doesn't need the book at all.  It's second nature to her.

But you know what's not second nature to her?  English.  We're bringing it back, the realization I had when I made this connection.  So, we've established, through the cookbook, that blurry or missing text = a disconnect.  That is the metaphor we are working with here.  Where else have we seen blurry or missing text outside of the cookbook?  Kavin.  When Kavin leaves for college, he has one final meal with his parents and talks about his upcoming move.  And every so often, words are missing from his speech, words that his parents have trouble understanding because their English is still limited.  This is also the conversation where Kavin tells his parents that he is not bringing the food they've packed for him to college and he does not want them to come with him on move in day.  This is a gap that has formed between him and his family.  And just like with the cookbook, this divide, this disconnect, is represented through missing text.

When Kavin inherits the book himself, his mother has done a lot of work to make it pristine.  The pages are clean with no stains, no blemishes, the recipes are precise and well written, all of them by hand.  But, the disconnect still exists, and in Kavin's case, it's much worse.  His mother wrote the recipes in Tamil, in their native language.  She's actually always writing in and reading Tamil throughout the game, we just perceive as English because of the perspective we are seeing it from having Tamil as the "normal" language in her brain.  The thing about it is, Kavin's Tamil is very rusty.  He hasn't read in Tamil in ages, probably since he was living at home, and his translations are really poor.  He mixes up a lot of words and just fully mistranslates some of them.  It's a very neat puzzle in the game, probably my favorite, having to use context clues to figure out what words Kavin is messing up.

But it's also an interesting layer to the theme of this cookbook in the storytelling.  While Venba saw the cookbook as incomplete, she understood it.  The bridge to her home was shaky but it was there, she just needed to find the way.  Kavin, meanwhile, has been running away from his culture his entire life, trying to fit in with another world entirely.  So rather than the cookbook manifesting to him as an incomplete but recognizable text, he sees it in a language he has forgotten.  He doesn't feel connected to this culture at all, it's literally a distant memory to him, and so he views the book at first like an outsider would.  He is having to rebuild his relationship with both his culture and his mother from the ground up, this is not a bridge that exists that he needs to learn how to cross, it is a bridge he needs to build.  And he can only build it by choosing to stop running away, by confronting his guilt.  By learning his mother's recipes.

Final Thoughts:

Venba is marvelous.  It manages to pack so much into its very short length.  I spent an hour and a half on it and I think if you had a good grasp on the puzzles you would spend less.  It's a very good single sitting game.  But there's so much to it, you can tell that this was a very personal story to the developers.  As you can tell from the pieces I wrote, it covers so much about the experiences in trying to keep your culture alive while living away from it.  It's fun, it's creative, it's the kind of experience you can only get from a video game.  I really enjoyed it.  I wish it were longer, I wish there was more Venba to experience.  This is a game that's going to stay with me long term, I don't think it's one of the best games I've played all year but I will be thinking about Venba for a long time.  It's something very special, I hope everyone gets a chance to play it.  

Does Deadpool still hold up in a post Deadpool world?

 It's hard to believe at this point, but there was a time in the fairly recent past where Deadpool wasn't one of the biggest comic book characters of all time.  Before Ryan Reynolds' incredible adaptation of the character hit theaters in 2016 and completely reshaped both the character's presence in pop culture, as well as the state of superhero movies as a whole; the character was rather obscure.  Like I wouldn't say he was a "deep cut", Deadpool had made a number of appearances in various comic book media before the film.  He appeared in an episode of the show "Ultimate Spider-Man", he was a minor character in numerous X-Men and Wolverine media (including in the first Wolverine solo film, which would be his first time being played by Reynolds), he appeared in several Marvel games including the Ultimate Alliance games and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  And, of course, in 2013, three years before the character would be launched into the throes of pop culture stardom, he was in today's subject, his self-titled video game.

 But he was a character where you had to have some knowledge of comics to know who exactly he is.  And even if you did know who he is without prior comic knowledge, you probably got the wrong impression of what his character was like, as, if you were like me, you knew him through how other people described him and you were told some variant of "Deadpool is a comic book character who knows he's in a comic book".  Full disclosure, this interpretation may have been accurate to the comics at one point, comics are never consistent with characterization or tone and that is especially true of characters who tend to be comedic.  It was not however entirely accurate by the time most people would've gotten on board with the character; as seen in media like the Ryan Reynolds movies where, while Deadpool does break the fourth wall, he doesn't come across especially like a character who is fully aware he's fictional.  Like he's still very invested in his own world and exists as a part of it, he's not spending the entire time being hyper aware that he's a fictional character. 

The point is that Deadpool was not a big name.  For a long time he existed in this sort of low B/high c-lister territory, a character you may have heard of, may even know a couple things about, but you probably don't know more than the very very VERY basics.  Which is what made the 2013 Deadpool game so special.  At the time, Deadpool was kind of an unknown, a character who would show up as comic relief in other things and maybe say a few jokes to make you go "I like this guy, I want to see more of him".  The idea that the guy who people probably mostly knew from grabbing the camera and making fun of the Wolverine movie in MvC3 was going to get his own dedicated video game by major publisher Activision and future Call of Duty support studio High Moon was a big deal to fans of the character.  And then the Ryan-ing happened.

So the question on my mind is this: does Deadpool 2013 still hold up in a world where Deadpool 2016 came out.  I think we underestimate how much public perception of Deadpool changed because of Deadpool 2016, as on the surface the version of Deadpool that now exists post-Ryan Reynolds isn't going to sound that different from the Deadpool in this game.  He's snarky and narcissistic and doesn't seem to care much for others and winks at the audience.  But honestly, these two characters are worlds apart and I don't think anybody would play this game and say "this is who Deadpool is now".  But is there still a place for this Deadpool in our world?  Does the game version of Deadpool maybe do some things better than the 2016-on incarnation; make adaptational decisions that either give a more accurate view of the source material or create a great adaptation in its own right?  Or is it just an outdated interpretation of the character, based in a vision that is too niche and an interpretation that may even be a very shallow view of the character?  I can't answer any of these questions for everyone but the following will be my views on it.  So without further ado...

Does Deadpool(2013) Still Hold Up in a Post-Deadpool(2016) World?

The Game Itself:

Before we get in deep on the stuff that people care about, I would like to touch upon the gamier aspects of Deadpool.  It doesn't matter, mind, nobody who is choosing to play a Deadpool game particularly cares about the gameplay.  As long as its serviceable, the people who are here for Deadpool will stick with it.  I remember watching Ironmouse react to... Gamescom I think, might've been SGF, honestly might've been both of them, anyways they announced a new Deadpool VR game and I remember her saying how much she wants to find the original Deadpool game and play it on stream.  And the reason is that she loves this game, and I feel like that's a pretty common thread.  A lot of Deadpool fans, especially contemporary ones, would love this game to death so long as it was playable.  But, you know, I still think we should talk about Deadpool's game-y elements because at the end of the day, it is a video game.

Deadpool is a member of the "hack-and-slash" genre, a genre that rose to prominence across the sixth and seventh generations of video game consoles due largely to the popularity of the God of War and Devil May Cry series'.  Played from a third person perspective, Deadpool sees you primarily fighting through rooms of enemies utilizing Deadpool's dual-wielded katanas.  The primary combat in the game is made up of combos that string together both light and heavy hits to both deal considerably more damage and, as the game progresses, to break through enemy defenses as many enemies have super armor, a mechanic that makes them resistant to things like knockback from standard hits, that needs to be broken through usually be a combo finisher.  As well, Deadpool can dodge in the middle of battle, having access to his teleporter which can be used to dodge enemy hits or retreat rapidly when swarmed.  Retreating is an effective strategy as, much like the numerous Wolverine games that have been released over the years, Deadpool's healing factor only takes effect when he goes a considerable period of time without receiving damage.  However, if you time your dodges effectively, Deadpool will be able to counter attack, dealing massive damage to an enemy as well as breaking through any super armor they may have all in one go.

This combat system is supplemented by gunplay.  Deadpool carries a variety of firearms, many of which have to be unlocked as you progress the game, and said firearms aid Deadpool in combat.  They allow Deadpool to attack ranged enemies, wherein the gameplay shifts from a hack-and-slash to a third person shooter, and as you progress you can unlock combos that incorporate the gunplay into his melee combos and, even instant kill moves where you can immediately headshot an enemy that has been knocked down.  In theory, this provides a wide variety of combat options and a wide variety of ways you could approach combat.  

These options are enhanced by the upgrade system, a level up system where you spend cash to unlock new weapons, new combos, and new skills for Deadpool.  The game, in one of its many fourth wall breaking moments, even advertises this fact, with the two voices inside Deadpool's head amusingly discussing their builds with the player.  Most of these upgrades are optional, you could in theory play the entire game with your starter kit, though at numerous points the game does lead you in the direction of upgrades you should strongly consider purchasing in order to have a better time.  And I do think the Shotgun is actually necessary, as certain enemies are susceptible to its strong blast.

Finally, the combat centric gameplay is supplemented by the inclusion of numerous platforming sections, wherein Deadpool uses both his teleporter and a double jump to progress.  These sections are typically intermissions, moments for the player to breathe, heal up and spend some money on skills.  As well, the game, being a jokey fourth wall breaking video game about an irreverent character, also includes many segments that reference other video games and just other types of games.  Very early on, there's a section that references classic Legend of Zelda, having a sewer crawl that takes the form of an 8-bit Zelda dungeon.  There are also side scrolling segments referencing both classic platformers and classic beat 'em ups/hack-and-slashes and an extended sequence referencing classic carnival games like shooting galleries.

Describing Deadpool's gameplay in such depth may give you the impression that there is a lot to Deadpool but, make no mistake, Deadpool's gameplay is mindless.  This is not a Deadpool specific criticism, the seventh generation of video game consoles was full of games inspired by God of War and Devil May Cry that were similarly mindless, it was such a ubiquitous thing that even Sonic the Hedgehog took a swing at making a mindless God of War like.  While, in theory, you have a complex web of weapons and abilities for Deadpool to access, it takes so long to gain the ability to unlock new combos that by the time you do your muscle memory is already trained towards the standard combos that incorporating any of the new stuff into your gameplay is more annoyance.  Especially since your basic combo is just too effective, it's fast, it does everything you need it to do, and as the game progresses you'll be relying less and less on combo chains and more and more on quick kills anyways so it very quickly becomes a game of "light hit, light hit, heavy hit" for the entire runtime, switching to your guns when needed.  While I didn't mind it, there's almost a nostalgic quality to how mindless it is given how prevalent this genre using to be 15 years ago and how much it only exists now through its best entries, but it's still a very "no thoughts, head empty" button masher.

These problems are exasperated by how Deadpool handles its difficulty.  It could be said, looking at it as a holistic property, that Deadpool has a very natural difficulty curve.  Starts out pretty easy and continues to build until the end game where it's at its most difficult.  But on a more level by level basis, it's more shakey than that.  Deadpool is a game of spikes and plateaus, rather than naturally progressing as it goes along, it will instead have a massive spike in difficulty where it will introduce a bunch of new enemy types out of nowhere, followed by a plateau where it will kind of exist in that area for about an hour before once again introducing a bunch of different enemy types.  It doesn't feel like it's naturally progressing at all, it feels like it's making you hit a wall and then going "well since you hit the wall we'll let you faceplant for a while until we're ready for you."  It's a bizarre way to handle difficulty, in my opinion.

And I know what you're probably thinking, doesn't this contradict what I was saying previously.  How can the game be constantly spiking in difficulty and, in theory, complexity if it is also mindless and one note.  Well, the thing about is that the game clearly wants you to evolve your combat over the course of the game but, the longer the game goes on and the more complex they try to make enemy types, the more simplistic Deadpool's own combat tends to become.  The key issue here is super armor, super armor is a thing you have to deal with from shielded enemies pretty early on but as the game goes on it more and more becomes a feature of enemies.  Loads of enemies just have super armor and to break said super armor, you need to be able to combo finish them fast.  The larger combos and more in-depth combat you can unlock, thus, becomes a liability.  I could string together a long combo to really up my score, but the longer I go without doing a armor-breaking finisher, the more danger I'm in.  This all comes to a head when you gain the ability to easy kill enemies by knocking them down and then headshotting them.  This is extremely effective and will very rapidly become your main tool for dealing with enemies, especially as the game starts loading you with enemies that can tear through your health in a single combo AND who have crazy super armor.  You are practically encouraged to combat the game's increasing complexity with simplicity, which includes during the final boss fight, wherein you face an army of seemingly unlimited Mister Sinister clones who have basically the entire powerset of all the enemies you've faced thus far but are still VERY susceptible to the headshot finisher.

All this being said, I think Deadpool is fun.  I think it's actually aged rather well gameplay wise.  In the era it came out in it was a Devil May Cry ripoff in a sea of Devil May Cry ripoffs but now, with the gift of hindsight, there's an almost nostalgic quality to it as I mentioned previously.  This style of game doesn't really exist at the same volume it did that now, genuinely, the only reason you would go back to this is if it's a game like Deadpool, a game that has other things to offer.  And because of this different context I find myself enjoying this style of game more than I probably would've back in 2013.  Pretty literally, actually, back in 2013 I was so Nintendo-pilled that I probably some said dumb thing like "gory hack-and-slashes are low art" only to flip when Bayonetta became more or less a Nintendo franchise.  I should write about the dumb things I believed as a Nintendo fanboy sometime.  I digress.  The point is that while Deadpool certainly has its problems, I still think as a game it's rather fun as kind of a mindless 360/PS3 era throwback.

But you know, none of this matters.  While I am of the opinion that games should be taken as a unified product and judged on how all these elements work together to create a singular piece of art like.  Who am I kidding, right?  Deadpool isn't exactly a video game with a deep well of artistic merit.  People are playing this game for the character, they will love it or hate it based on how much they love or hate Deadpool and, more importantly, this version of Deadpool.  So, time to actually get into what this post is supposed to talk about: how well does this interpretation of Deadpool and his mythology stack up compared to the now beloved and/or despised film version and the versions of Deadpool it inspired?

The Good:

There are several things about the game's version of Deadpool that I not only love but kind of think it might do better than the later adaptations.  A huge one being Deadpool's relationship with other heroes and, specifically, the X-Men.  This is a dynamic that goes in and out of prominence in the comics based on the writer but the basic structure of it is that Deadpool is obsessed with other superheroes.  He's always attempting to become close friends with them, namely Spider-Man and Wolverine, and is often putting in his application for either an Avengers slot or an X-Men slot (despite not being a mutant).  However, it all usually comes crashing down because Deadpool is a hyperactive psychopath who is completely out of touch with reality.  He doesn't get along well with others, ignores orders, and ends up just kind of doing whatever he wants, often at the detriment of the heroes he's trying to befriend.  It's an incredibly fun dynamic and it's pretty central to how Deadpool interacts with other heroes, even in books that are trying hard to present a Deadpool who is more three dimensional and less cartoonish.

It's also a dynamic that I feel like the films don't capture well in the grand scheme of things.  This is an adaptational change I understand, mind.  Ryan Reynolds' incarnation of Deadpool benefits from his more antagonistic relationship with the X-Men.  A lot of comedy has been mined from the fact that he has a tumultuous relationship with other heroes, having this hard sense of morality to ground Deadpool benefits the character a lot in a cinematic context and it makes the moments where Deadpool tries, where he does put aside his differences with the X-Men and work for the greater good mean that much more.  And it's not like this dynamic is entirely absent either, the third Deadpool film is literally about Deadpool being a fanboy for other superheroes and wanting to be besties with Wolverine.  However, while I do enjoy the film's version of Deadpool and his own dynamics with other heroes, I think overall I prefer the comic's.

The game perfectly captures this dynamic.  A little bit into the story, Deadpool finds himself meeting up with a handful of X-Men (Psylocke, Rogue, Domino, and Wolverine) who reluctantly take him along with them to help undo Mister Sinister's plot.  They'd like to not bring Deadpool along at all, of course, but he's too involved and also needs to collect a bounty, so they're kind of forced to.  And they capture like all the notes.  Deadpool's enthusiasm and obsessive tendencies towards these heroes.  His complete inability to be a team player, with him almost immediately abandoning the X-Men when they arrive on Genosha because he thinks the best course of action is to go ahead on his own.  His constant getting in the way when the heroes try to do anything.  Him managing to Bugs Bunny his way into saving the day anyways.  It's a very classic comic book Deadpool.  There's even an extended sequence where Deadpool has to try to wake up Wolverine and he slaps him relentlessly while saying everything he hates and loves about the hero.  It's the funniest sequence in the game and a good encapsulation of what Deadpool's relationship to other heroes is.

This is especially true of the game's depiction of Cable.  They nail Deadpool's exact relationship with Cable in this one, Cable shows up about 1/3 of the way into the game and Deadpool is so excited.  His bestie is finally here.  But Cable then goes on this extended rant about the future and saving the world and Deadpool checks out.  He is fully bored, he is not even remotely paying attention to ANYTHING Cable says in this game.  I love Fred Tatasciore's performance for Cable too, like, he gives Cable such a generic superhero voice in this because that's how Deadpool perceives Cable but it also adds to how boring everything he says is.  Cable is another high point of the game.

Another thing I like that the Deadpool game does is the incorporation of the narration boxes.  Now, if you're more familiar with modern interpretations of the character, you've probably never seen these things before.  Even at the time the game was new, they were an element that had started to be fazed out of the comics.  Essentially Deadpool used to have this gimmick where the narration boxes in the comic would interact with actively interact with Deadpool on his adventures.  At first they kind of were just his internal monologue but as the character evolved they became distinctive personalities separate from Deadpool.  Think of it kind of like Deadpool's version of having an angel and devil on his shoulder, though because it's Deadpool the angel and devil are also hyperactive and prone to violence inherently.  The key thing about the narration boxes though is that the yellow box is Deadpool's id and the white box is Deadpool's superego, the former usually being loud, impulsive, and childish, even moreso than Deadpool himself, and the latter being calmer, measured, and kind of classy, calmly explaining to the others why all the stupid shenanigans they get up to are good ideas, actually.

The narration boxes are definitely something that people are very touch and go on generally.  Like I said, by the time this game came out, they had been or had started to be fazed out as a key point of the character and to many people it's kind of too far into the memey fourth wall breaking nature of the character.  Especially as the character was evolving into more of a person, at least relatively.  But I've always liked them from a character perspective because in my opinion it effectively added some ambiguity to the character.  To me the narration boxes are one of those elements that makes you question a lot about Deadpool, it makes you think "well, is he truly able to see outside of the page, is he aware of his status as a fictional character, or is he just, you know.  Schizophrenic."  And I know that ambiguity is probably why they've been fazed out, it's an arguably very poor representation of schizophrenia that could be very harmful.  But it's also something that I've felt added a lot of nuance to how you're meant to interpret the character, and I liked that.

Also it gives Deadpool a voice to play off of, even if it's his own, which I think works especially well in the context of a video game.  Because Deadpool spends so much time on his own in this game, it's nice to have these other entities to play off of.  It feels like it wouldn't be very effective since they are all the same guy and have many of the same personality quirks.  The fact that these three voices have such different, well, voices really makes it come together though.  Like, even if the trio is, usually, in agreement about their goals, the way they communicate with one another is so distinct that it really makes it pop still.  It's a very good dynamic, they have fun back and forths.

I really like the depiction of Deadpool's origin story as well.  The game admittedly doesn't explicitly fill you in on the origin story for Wade, you get a little optional recap at the start of the game and then that's it, you're very much expected to know what's going on ahead of time.  But at about the 2/3 point, you enter a dungeon underneath Genosha and go through what appear to be carnival rides, and one of the carnival rides is a shooting gallery covering Wade's past.  You see a lot of scenes of doctors and nurses and the experiments that Wade underwent to become Deadpool all represented through wooden targets.  It's one of the best sections of the game, honestly, feels very Psychonauts in a lot of ways.  I have thoughts about the way Deadpool handles its numerous different gameplay styles and references to other games which I'll get into later, but the shooting gallery was good.

The biggest thing the Deadpool game does right, though, is its depiction of Deadpool's one true love: Lady Death.  First of all, I just want to say that the design for Lady Death?  Brilliant.  Instead of just going for the "skeleton woman" look, they opt for kind of a Day of the Dead inspired design.  She's gorgeous first off, they definitely were trying to make a Death that people other than Deadpool would find sexy and, honestly, I think they succeeded.  She's a babe.  But also her design has this really cool element of having a boob window that's shaped kind of like a rib cage.  That's super cool.  If nothing else, that is an inspired design element, I love it.  It's also shaped like a heart kind of which makes sense because you know.  Deadpool.  Death.

For those who may not know, Deadpool and Death share a very romantic relationship in the comics.  It's a classic instance of both parties wanting what they cannot have.  Deadpool is surrounded by death, he is an assassin who kills indiscriminately.  But he also cannot die, he will never get the release, because his "dying factor" will always regenerate him in the end.  Because of this, Death will never claim Deadpool, she will never truly belong to him in the way all other beings in the universe inevitably will.  The two only get fleeting moments together, moments where Deadpool has taken enough damage to be able to pierce the veil for just a fleeting moment.  And it's kind of surprising how cute they are together.  Like, despite Deadpool's, y'know.  Being Deadpool, the two of them actually have a very healthy relationship built on mutual love and respect.  To me, this dynamic is very central to the character of Deadpool and it's unambiguously the only thing the game ultimately has over the films.

That's not to say I blame the films for not doing this.  First of all, it's probably a right's issue anyways.  Marvel's film and televisions rights are, infamously, complicated, having been sectioned off and sold to many studios long ago to generate income at a low point for comic sales.  I imagine that Lady Death, not being directly tied to a character that a studio would seek out either individually or in a massive catalog, probably never ended up at Fox and by the time Fox could conceivably option for the rights, Thanos was already introduced and there was no shot Marvel was ever selling Lady Death to them even if they ultimately didn't intend on using her.  And also there's definitely an argument to be made that the way Deadpool does the love interest is better for starting the character fresh off, as Ryan Reynolds and crew were doing.  I just kind of think that the films inherently miss something about Deadpool by lacking his relationship with Lady Death, a relationship that Marvel seemed to instead give to the MCU interpretation of Agatha Harkness in the series "Agatha All Along".

The Bad:

With all of the good listed, you may think that "hey, this Deadpool video game adaptation seems to be pretty good".  Well, here's the thing.  For as much good as there is with this adaptation of Deadpool, I think there is moreso bad and annoying.  I'm doing a "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" thing but with annoying as the third category.  Full disclosure, I will be talking a lot about Deadpool's sense of humor going forward.  The thing about comedy is that a, saying it doesn't age well is cliche.  Comedy is, typically, very dependent on existing in the moment where it was written and thus tends to be difficult to get invested in if you aren't in the moment.  This is not a Deadpool specific problem, and I do not fault the game for it.  But 2, comedy is subjective.  People have different senses of humor and they get a lot of different things out of different types of comedy.  This game might do a lot for you and that's cool!  I just feel like I need to be critical of the sense of humor in order to explain some of the reasons it may not have aged well or be particularly worthwhile as an adaptation.

I'm going to get the worst of Deadpool's crimes out of the way first and foremost: Deadpool arguably does a transphobia.  The first like "boss" in the game is the mutant Arclight, a member of the villain faction of the game "The Marauders".  Arclight is a mutant with superhuman strength, durability, and the ability to make sound waves, and is usually depicted as being a rather buff woman with short, messy hair.  She was frankly ahead of her time, the internet would go wild for her now, very muscle mommy, very lesbiancore.  Deadpool sees this and starts to make jokes referencing her physique, positing that she either wants to be a man or was assigned male and birth and deriding her chest for looking more like pecs than boobs.  It's a weird train to have the character follow, and it falls apart for two key reasons.

Reason a is that it doesn't even stick.  Like, Deadpool makes a couple weird and possibly transphobic jokes about her and then like flips.  Deadpool before the fight is like "ew, a woman who looks like a man, that's weird, what's going on there" and then spends the entire fight talking about how hot Arclight is.  This is another problem I will get to with this game, but it's like.  If you are going to make Deadpool go on about how hot Arclight is, why would you include the part where he thinks it's weird that a woman would be so masculine-coded!  Like you probably had to record these scenes several times, Nolan North is a great VA but I don't think he can necessarily nail it in one.  And surely the script went through edits, assuming they didn't have two scripts, one for the cutscenes and one for the gameplay, I guess that's possible.  How did this really obvious inconsistency get by them!

The bigger issue, though, is that like, it just doesn't make sense for Deadpool to make transphobic jokes?  Maybe I'm looking at this too much from a modern lens, and I know, given everything else about this game it seems weird to call out transphobia as being odd.  Admittedly, this game has a very sophomoric, dudebro sense of humor and when this game would've been being worked on, that sense of humor meant transphobia.  But the thing about Deadpool is, and Deadpool brings this up later on in the game: Deadpool is canonically pansexual.  Deadpool does not care what your gender identity is, he wants to have sex with you regardless.  It's so weird to have Deadpool ever be like "ew, gross, women who look like men", he should be into that!  That's who he is!  The game confirms it!  It's legitimately the only joke in this entire game that I feel is 100% out of character for Wade to be making.  The worst part about this game.

This also shouldn't surprise people based on the information I've given but the Deadpool game is not particularly great with regards to its depiction of women.  Again, this game's sense of humor is very sophomoric and a consequence of that is that the game trends towards being misogynistic.  A majority of the cast of this game is female and there are a lot of jokes about their bodies and their breasts and what have you.  Like that's how Deadpool and the game approach most of their women and like.  We're clearly supposed to think of Wade as a creep for all this, especially since he keeps imaging rooms of dozens of scantily clad women who exist only for his pleasure. But also I don't think we are supposed to see Wade as a creep for this because the game is clearly meant for 15-22 year old men, hence it's sense of humor.

Like it is genuinely excessive.  And it's in a way that I don't like when it comes to Deadpool.  Like Deadpool's weird relationship with women and some men too is an unavoidable part of the character.  He's very bad with boundaries, he's impulsive, he has this sense of entitlement to other people's time and, by extension, their bodies.  These are all elements that even make it into the Ryan Reynolds adaptation.  But the game's version of Deadpool is so uncomfortably grabby and uncomfortably horny that it becomes a genuine problem.  The majority of X-Men in this game are female, right, you got Rogue, Psylocke, and Domino and it is just an ongoing uncomfortable element of Deadpool's characterization in this game that he wants to bed one or all of these women.  An entire chapter is basically devoted to saving Rogue's life after she gets kidnapped specifically so Deadpool can try and convince her to sleep with him.  It's like too much even for Deadpool.

And if THAT'S too much, hoo boy, the dream girls.  So, another issue in this game's depiction of Deadpool, at least in my opinion, is how out of touch he is with his own reality.  He is constantly fantasizing in this game, and one of his most common fantasies is, as mentioned previously, for dozens of beautiful women wearing basically nothing to throw themselves at him.  He has this weird obsession with having legions of scantily clad fangirls awaiting him, potentially around every corner.  It's such a problem that even Deadpool's own subconscious calls him out on how much of a dog he is, with his own dream girls getting mad at one point that all the women in this game are just bodies for Deadpool to ogle who, if they do talk, say shallow, stereotypical things.  Which would be a fun bit, if it wasn't for the fact that they keep going after that!  Even ignoring how uncomfortable the misogyny of this all is, objectively speaking, it would've been way funnier if the dream girls just stopped showing up after that point at all because they were mad about Wade treating them like meat.

The fact that Deadpool is SO out of touch with reality is another thing that I think this adaptation does poorly.  Like, Wade is never in touch with reality, he always one foot outside of his reality due to the nature of the character but like.  This game overdoes it, absolutely.  I'll get more into it when I discuss the fourth wall breaking in the next section.  But in particular I want to note just how often Deadpool will walk into a situation and just totally imagine an entirely different thing going on.  Is it amusing from time to time?  Yes.  Does it grate eventually?  Also yes.  I think I was done with both the reality breaking, outside of the (Psychonauts-esque shooting gallery) AND the sexism at around the same time, when Deadpool imagines that his confrontation with the supervillain Blockbuster, who has kidnapped Rogue and is holding her hostage, is a pool party where Blockbuster is a bouncer guarding the VIP section where Rogue is.  Like it's just so much and it kind of feels like it feeds back into that idea of "getting the wrong impression about who Deadpool is".  Like there's an expectation to go off the rails in this adaptation because the way people perceive Deadpool is as "the fictional character who knows he's a fictional character".

One of the biggest things about this adaptation though is that, despite everything, despite the transphobia, despite the sexism, despite the absurdism, the game still feels toothless.  I know, it's insane to be making a statement that bold about a game that goes so far with its humor that it either is accidentally or purposefully transphobic.  Here's what the problem seems like, every so often there will be a joke that really goes there.  Like it pushes everything just a little too far, Deadpool says something or does something that feels like it just went that extra step it didn't need to.  And then the writers get cold feet about it because, hey, this is a very uncomfortable place to be taking the character, we shouldn't be doing this.  But instead of just dropping or rewriting the material, they go in and make the next dozen jokes just have NO punch to them, just middling material, and then they work up the confidence to do another really bad one.

This leads to situations like what happens with Arclight, Deadpool just turning on a dime from "look at how manly and unattractive she is" to "look how hot she is".  Or the way they try to laugh off the gross oversexualization of every woman in the cast by paying lip service to the idea that this is gross and Deadpool is weird for doing it.  It's a very frustrating back and forth that leaves both the character and the game feeling kind of directionless.  Like it's even difficult to get a grasp on what the version of Deadpool the game puts forward thinks, what he believes, how we're supposed to interpret him at all, because every time he goes somewhere that feels too far, he gets reigned in too much.  I think that this is the most frustrating thing to me.  Like I would hate if this version of Deadpool was actually transphobic and actually this much of a misogynist, etc., it's not a characterization I like but it's one I could understand given the era this game is made in and who it was targeting.  But the fact that he keeps Tetherballing like this makes it that much worse.

I think the biggest instance of this toothlessness is the Roguepool scene.  The Roguepool scene is probably the most infamous sequence in this game, save for maybe the Wolverine slapping sequence.  Rogue is dying and needs to absorb Deadpool's healing factor to survive and Deadpool passes out from it, leading to a small portion of game where you play as a Rogue that has not only absorbed Deadpool's powers but also part of his personality.  The part being, the narration boxes, though she does not seem to be able to hear them.  They acknowledge that they're in her head now but she doesn't really interact with them in any way and other than now wearing the mask, the only other thing she's gotten from Deadpool is seemingly that she's too touchy feely with her own body now.  It's kind of uncomfortable, to be honest.

Anyways, you'd think, you'd THINK that because Deadpool's other personalities are now in a feminine body, they'd be saying some real wrong stuff.  Like just the maximum amount of horny you'd imagine this game gets to.  But like, they don't?  The two voices make a couple of remarks about how awesome it is to have boobs and how cool it is to be Rogue and then that's kind of it.  It's so weird, Deadpool spends the entire game objectifying women and then when he literally is inside of a woman to objectify, there's like no heat whatsoever.  Not that I'm saying I wanted heat there, but it speaks to the problem that this incarnation of Deadpool has: he's a wildly inconsistent character and seemingly not in any intended way.  Sometimes he's super raunchy and sometimes he's not and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it at all.

The Annoying:

Alright, it's time to talk about the fourth wall breaking.  So, I've mentioned a couple times in this post this idea of the Deadpool that only exists to people who have had Deadpool described to them poorly.  If you are, like me, someone who has been on the internet for way longer than you probably should've been allowed to be AND who got into superhero culture through the MCU; you probably had Deadpool introduced to you through some manner of the line "Deadpool is a fictional character who knows he is a fictional character".  This is just like... not entirely true.  It changes writer to writer but in general, Deadpool, in spite of his fourth wall breaking and inability to touch base with reality, does not fully know he is a fictional character.  He has some awareness of this fact but the writers made the wise decision to make sure Deadpool is, you know.  Invested.  In his own world.  There is literally an entire (not very good) comic mini series trilogy about what happens when he becomes fully self aware and it's not fun!

However, the game has the interesting problem here.  While a good chunk of their sales are likely to come from people who know more about Deadpool than just the surface level "he breaks the fourth wall" stuff; the majority of their audience are the people who only know Deadpool from the things other people have told them about him.  So, there is an expectation that Deadpool is going to be this very tongue-in-cheek character who is constantly breaking the fourth wall.  Moreover, this is a COMEDY video game and, I'm just gonna level with you, every comedy video game has the same idea: make a whole bunch of jokes about being a video game.  Looking at you "The Simpson's Game".  So the Deadpool game manages to do something that most Deadpool writers avoid with the character: it turns him into a Looney Tune.  He is exactly what the audience of people who knew of Deadpool but had never read a comic in 2013 assumed Deadpool was.  All of his jokes are directly pointed at an invisible audience, he does a lot of slapstick, his schemes are literally Looney Tune schemes sometimes.  He's like Daffy Duck if Daffy Duck swore and was super horny.

...oh god that's the Nostalgia Critic.  The Deadpool game's incarnation of Deadpool is the Nostalgia Critic.  I can't deal with that right now, that's a cursed thought, hate that.

The Deadpool game literally tells you what you're in for on rip.  Deadpool opens the game by checking the messages on his phone to find multiple from the CEO of High Moon Studios, the people making his game.  The first message is about how they liked his pitch but they're going to pass, followed by a message where they agree to greenlight his game, while the camera pans over boxes of bombs that were sent to High Moon.  Kind of an amusing joke.  Hope you're ready for a thousand just like it.  Deadpool has so much material about how he's in a video game and it gets less and less funny each time he pulls out, which is frankly kind of crazy to me, it wasn't that funny to begin with.  As an aside, he also has a missed call from Ryan Reynolds and it's stated Deadpool has been ghosting Ryan because, after X-Men Origins, he really wants the comedian to leave him alone.  That joke didn't age well!

Deadpool spends much of the remainder of the game occasionally touching base with High Moon.  They joke about how his numerous displays of excessive violence have drained down the game's budget, causing them to constantly cut corners and reduce the scope of the game.  The budget is actually an omnipresent problem, it's practically the real main villain of the game over Mister Sinister.  They just do not shut up about this budget.  The first couple times it happens it's kind of funny but it's just relentless with it.  And many of the other jokes in the game are connected to the throughline of Deadpool running down the budget too,.  They really wanted you on board for this joke and, in my opinion, it does not land.

Along side this are other jokes about being in a video game.  When Wade first "spends the entire budget" 15 minutes into the game, the team contacts him by saying that "we're out of money so to finish the rest of the game we have to go retro".  What follows a brief sequence where Deadpool shifts into a top down 8 bit video game in reference to the Legend of Zelda.  Later on there's a sequence where the game becomes a side scrolling platformer/hack and slash a la Ninja Gaiden.  Deadpool makes a lot of jokes about nerfing his abilities to make for a more fun gameplay experience, namely how his teleporter now has limitations on how it works.  Like, it is just relentless with these jokes about being in a video game and a, I don't like that Deadpool is this self aware, I think the character is worse off for it by far, but also 2, it wears out its welcome like an hour into the game.  And the thing is like, you can't keep mining the same material constantly, you need to change it up.  A lot of these jokes are funny once but this is most of the jokes for an 8 hour game.

But even when it's not joking about being a video game, it's probably joking about adaptational decisions it's making.  The game really wears you down with fourth wall breaking, y'all.  Deadpool constantly is filling people in on character backstories by effectively reading their comics.  There's a point where Deadpool gets very defensive about the fact that Rogue has her Ms. Marvel powerset when she didn't have it in the comics at the time.  Just full on going "yeah, we know this isn't what she's like currently but also, shut up".  There's a point where you have to fight as an optional boss a guy who won a contest to be in the game but had his role scrapped so he is just shoved in wherever and they roast him for not having the right role.  It's obnoxious, frankly.

I know you're probably reading all this and going "well, it's Deadpool, he breaks the fourth wall, hating on him for doing that is like hating on a falcon for eating pigeons".  And, yes, Deadpool will inevitably break the fourth wall, it's why so many people find him interesting.  That he does have this very fluid understanding of reality, that he does have this level of awareness.  My problem with this adaptation though is, ultimately breaking the fourth wall is its only real trick.  Deadpool being out of touch with reality is the only joke it has.  Every single comedic bit in this game originates from the central idea of "Deadpool is a fictional character who knows he's a fictional character", an assessment of Deadpool that I do not think was ever accurate.  Which brings us back to our main question:

Does Deadpool (2013) Still Hold Up in a Deadpool (2016) World?

Despite complaining about Deadpool for paragraphs now, I do enjoy this game.  I don't think it's amazing or anything, I think it's a perfectly average hack and slash that has some very funny bits.  It was a nice bit of fluff before I moved into The Walking Dead.  But, frankly, I don't know if the person this game is for exists anymore.  Deadpool (2013) is a game for the kind of person who knows of Deadpool primarily from pop culture osmosis and material that represents him as a clown.  I think that, possibly, if it wasn't for how the game handles Deadpool, an argument could be made that this version of Deadpool is a refreshing change from the Ryan Reynolds version.  In many ways he's more comic accurate and, especially, accurate to an era of Deadpool that does not exist anymore, really.  When the game is doing well with its adaptational decisions, I find myself kind of pulled to it.

But I just don't think there is a place for this interpretation of Deadpool anymore because I kind of don't think there ever was one.  This isn't Deadpool, it's a series of things about Deadpool taken wildly out of context.  This is the Deadpool that you would see at conventions a hundred times that people were just using to be a nuisance.  And I especially don't think this specific niche, this Deadpool for people who have heard of Deadpool but don't know a lot about him other than what other people have briefly told them definitely doesn't exist anymore.  Deadpool is a household name.  He's probably one of the top 50 most recognizable comic book characters now, he's had three amazingly successful films and has basically defined a movie star's entire career.  Ryan Reynolds' persona in other films and advertisements and in interviews is now basically just Deadpool.  It's just not a version of the character that needs to exist anymore and, honestly, even if it does I imagine the upcoming NPH adaptation will cover a lot of the same notes while still being more like a Deadpool that exists.