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At one point, Wolverine was running around in daisy dukes. It wasn't intentional, this sartorial mockery of Marvel's most badass mutant. Rather, it was a somewhat ironic function of his mutant healing powers or, more specifically, how those powers were implemented by developer Raven Software in the upcoming movie-licensed video game, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

You see, there are several layers to the Wolverine character (portrayed both in the film and the game by Hugh Jackman), starting underneath with a skeletal system, a layer of muscle, skin, and finally clothing. Any damage inflicted on Wolverine causes damage to one or more of those layers; for example, if he takes a ton of damage, you'll be able to see his adamantium-fortified rib cage. Of course, even grievous injury means little to Wolverine, whose mutant healing power lets him recover from bodily harm. The implementation of those healing powers means that you can watch Wolverine's body literally repair itself automatically, growing new skin and muscle over previously ruined areas. Wolverine's clothes can also be torn apart and, once his shirt or jacket is ripped off by bullets, it stays off (you're welcome, ladies). For a while during the development of the game, the same could be said for Wolvie's jeans--taking damage to his legs would result in increasingly shredded pants, until eventually the Marvel icon would end up running around in shorts that would make an exotic dancer blush.

Needless to say, the sight of Wolverine sprinting around in booty shorts would do little for his reputation, so it wasn't too long before the developers decided to make Wolverine's pants not subject to the wear and tear of the rest of his body. Thus, now Wolverine wears pants that are nearly as unstoppable as the man himself.

Nevertheless, indestructible knickers or not, you can expect Wolverine's mutant healing powers to be tested to their fullest in the game. In a plot line that parallels and expands on the origin story from the upcoming summer blockbuster, you'll follow Logan as he hops around timelines, from the pre-adamantium days to his time doing black-ops missions for Weapon X and dealing with his relationship with Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth). Along the way, you'll fight tons of enemies bent on taking down Wolverine with extreme prejudice.

Raven producers are quick to point out that the Wolverine from this game is authentic and true to character. If by "authentic," they mean "incredibly violent," then consider this Wolverine the most authentic ever seen outside of his comic-book origins. Enemies are dispatched in myriad bloody ways in this game: stabbings, whirlwind attacks, dismemberments, decapitations, and even slicing bodies in half.

It's gleefully gory stuff and, especially in the game's early goings that find Wolverine in a jungle setting working for Weapon X, there's more than a few "I can't believe that just happened" moments. Like when Wolverine leaps onto a helicopter in midair, smashes the cockpit glass, grabs the pilot, and holds his head up to the spinning blades. Or, when crossing a rickety bridge while bad guys hack the support ropes, Wolverine barrels through a mess of enemies in the style of a running back. Or when duking it out with a redneck version of the Blob in an Iowa grocery store. And let's not forget the Sentinel fight.

Logan's wearing the latest in wilderness survival fashion: a wife-beater, dog tags, and a big honkin' belt buckle.

Although we didn't get a chance to fight the Sentinel, we did get a good idea of how this multistage boss battle will unfold. When you first start the battle, you're given a clue as to the Sentinel's weak spot, a massive malfunctioning foot that is Wolvie's first area of attack. Running up and clawing away at the foot with the face buttons will cause some basic damage, and eventually the massive Sentinel will pick up Wolverine with its hands. Escaping is, as you might imagine, simply a matter of clawing your way free, at which point Wolverine will continue his assault on the Sentinel's feet.

If you cause enough damage, the boss battle will enter its second stage, with the Sentinel blasting into the air with Wolvie in tow. Clever sound design is on display in this stage; when the camera is up close, you can hear the roar of the Sentinel's thrusters with deafening clarity. At one point, though, the camera moves to a point further away and the thrusters have a distinctive staticlike sound, reminiscent of a Space Shuttle launch. As the Sentinel makes its way skyward, you'll be maneuvering Wolverine around the bot's body and causing as much damage as possible. Eventually, you'll do enough damage to send the Sentinel careening back toward the earth and you'll guide a free-falling Wolverine to finish the Sentinel in midair by diving toward it (avoiding the random debris as well), clinging to the robot's chest and looking to tear it apart just a bit more. Eventually you'll both crash to the earth, and it's probably not spoiling things to note that Wolverine's killing blow is a satisfying one.

At one point, Wolverine was running around in daisy dukes. It wasn't intentional, this sartorial mockery of Marvel's most badass mutant. Rather, it was a somewhat ironic function of his mutant healing powers or, more specifically, how those powers were implemented by developer Raven Software in the upcoming movie-licensed video game, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

You see, there are several layers to the Wolverine character (portrayed both in the film and the game by Hugh Jackman), starting underneath with a skeletal system, a layer of muscle, skin, and finally clothing. Any damage inflicted on Wolverine causes damage to one or more of those layers; for example, if he takes a ton of damage, you'll be able to see his adamantium-fortified rib cage. Of course, even grievous injury means little to Wolverine, whose mutant healing power lets him recover from bodily harm. The implementation of those healing powers means that you can watch Wolverine's body literally repair itself automatically, growing new skin and muscle over previously ruined areas. Wolverine's clothes can also be torn apart and, once his shirt or jacket is ripped off by bullets, it stays off (you're welcome, ladies). For a while during the development of the game, the same could be said for Wolvie's jeans--taking damage to his legs would result in increasingly shredded pants, until eventually the Marvel icon would end up running around in shorts that would make an exotic dancer blush.

Needless to say, the sight of Wolverine sprinting around in booty shorts would do little for his reputation, so it wasn't too long before the developers decided to make Wolverine's pants not subject to the wear and tear of the rest of his body. Thus, now Wolverine wears pants that are nearly as unstoppable as the man himself.

Nevertheless, indestructible knickers or not, you can expect Wolverine's mutant healing powers to be tested to their fullest in the game. In a plot line that parallels and expands on the origin story from the upcoming summer blockbuster, you'll follow Logan as he hops around timelines, from the pre-adamantium days to his time doing black-ops missions for Weapon X and dealing with his relationship with Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth). Along the way, you'll fight tons of enemies bent on taking down Wolverine with extreme prejudice.

Raven producers are quick to point out that the Wolverine from this game is authentic and true to character. If by "authentic," they mean "incredibly violent," then consider this Wolverine the most authentic ever seen outside of his comic-book origins. Enemies are dispatched in myriad bloody ways in this game: stabbings, whirlwind attacks, dismemberments, decapitations, and even slicing bodies in half.

It's gleefully gory stuff and, especially in the game's early goings that find Wolverine in a jungle setting working for Weapon X, there's more than a few "I can't believe that just happened" moments. Like when Wolverine leaps onto a helicopter in midair, smashes the cockpit glass, grabs the pilot, and holds his head up to the spinning blades. Or, when crossing a rickety bridge while bad guys hack the support ropes, Wolverine barrels through a mess of enemies in the style of a running back. Or when duking it out with a redneck version of the Blob in an Iowa grocery store. And let's not forget the Sentinel fight.

Logan's wearing the latest in wilderness survival fashion: a wife-beater, dog tags, and a big honkin' belt buckle.

Although we didn't get a chance to fight the Sentinel, we did get a good idea of how this multistage boss battle will unfold. When you first start the battle, you're given a clue as to the Sentinel's weak spot, a massive malfunctioning foot that is Wolvie's first area of attack. Running up and clawing away at the foot with the face buttons will cause some basic damage, and eventually the massive Sentinel will pick up Wolverine with its hands. Escaping is, as you might imagine, simply a matter of clawing your way free, at which point Wolverine will continue his assault on the Sentinel's feet.

If you cause enough damage, the boss battle will enter its second stage, with the Sentinel blasting into the air with Wolvie in tow. Clever sound design is on display in this stage; when the camera is up close, you can hear the roar of the Sentinel's thrusters with deafening clarity. At one point, though, the camera moves to a point further away and the thrusters have a distinctive staticlike sound, reminiscent of a Space Shuttle launch. As the Sentinel makes its way skyward, you'll be maneuvering Wolverine around the bot's body and causing as much damage as possible. Eventually, you'll do enough damage to send the Sentinel careening back toward the earth and you'll guide a free-falling Wolverine to finish the Sentinel in midair by diving toward it (avoiding the random debris as well), clinging to the robot's chest and looking to tear it apart just a bit more. Eventually you'll both crash to the earth, and it's probably not spoiling things to note that Wolverine's killing blow is a satisfying one.

Stand-alone expansion Tales of Valor coasts on the Company of Heroes name. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, given that the 2006 original is still the gold standard of World War II real-time strategy gaming. But this latest addition to the family is pretty paltry, featuring just a trio of miniature campaigns comprising nine abbreviated missions, three new multiplayer modes, and a few game tweaks that you could probably do without.

Squad-level combat is the main focus of the three Tales of Valor solo campaigns.

None of the three new campaigns feel much like those in either the original game or 2007's Opposing Fronts expansion. Most of the missions have been scaled down to focus on handfuls of units battling for chunks of the French countryside in the weeks after the D-Day landings. This enhances combat intimacy nicely, giving you a reason to care about individual troops. The tradeoff comes in depth, though; you don't have to worry about wide-ranging tactical issues that affect an entire map when you're looking after just a few units. Here, you're pretty much always going it solo, especially in Tiger Ace, in which you lead a single German tank crew during a seesaw battle for control of the French village of Villers-Bocage, and Causeway, which deals with 82nd Airborne infantry squads assaulting the heavily defended La Fiere Causeway. All you generally do in these campaigns is fight, which leaves you with few decisions to make aside from ordering flanking maneuvers, moving units in and out of cover, and selecting special abilities. Only the Falaise Pocket campaign expands the scope of the add-on, forcing you to capture territories, build defenses, and order reinforcements while helping a German army escape an Allied pincer movement.

But it's still over way too soon. Even Company of Heroes newcomers should be able to blitz through the three minicampaigns in Tales of Valor on Normal difficulty in no more than a couple of hours of playing time. Both Tiger Ace and Causeway involve little more than straightforward attacks, defenses, and counterattacks. It's frenetic and exciting, especially during the second mission of Tiger Ace, wherein you have to sneak an on-foot tank crew out of a French village swarming with British patrols and machine-gun nests. Nevertheless, even this isn't particularly challenging. Quick button-clicking is more important than strategizing. And the new "direct fire" shooting option with which you can manually guide weapons is completely superfluous. Falaise Pocket is much more elaborate, although poor enemy AI ruins a lot of the fun. For example, in the first mission in this campaign, you begin with a small German force under siege by attacking Allies. Your goal is to withstand this onslaught by running around and alerting garrisons of the attack and building 88 antitank guns to defend hiding Panzers until nightfall. But what starts off as a tense scramble against overwhelming opposition soon turns into a joke, considering that Allied tanks refuse to press advantages. One moment they're blasting down the road toward your main base, forcing you to run for cover; in the next, they've pulled out for points unknown, leaving the way clear for you to wake up more garrisons and build those 88s.

Just like in Kelly's Heroes, one Panzer tank can do a lot of damage in a little French village.

Multiplayer is just as disappointing. Tales of Valor includes three new game modes, Assault, Panzerkrieg, and Stonewall, all of which just inflate minor aspects of combat into major concerns. Assault focuses on heroes assaulting enemy lines, Panzerkrieg on an armor mash-up deathmatch, and Stonewall on defending a town with buddies from an all-out attack. It's hard to really get into any of these games, mostly because they vary so little from the core Company of Heroes gameplay already seen in both the solo missions and the earlier multiplayer modes. Panzerkrieg seems to be the only one of the new three to be developing something of a following online, probably due to its fast-flowing action. Regardless, there is no comparison between the numbers of players playing it and the crowds taking part in Classic Match and Skirmish games.

Even middling Company of Heroes action is typically better than what most other RTS franchises can offer, but the slim content in Tales of Valor is really pushing it. Although the core gameplay is still spectacular, both the single-player campaigns and the multiplayer modes of play on offer here aren't exactly inspired. You can safely skip the whole thing and not miss much unless you're determined to complete your Company of Heroes collection.

Demigod is the latest hybrid of the role-playing and real-time strategy genres. First made popular by the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, Demigod looks to flesh out this formula as you take control of giant hero characters. The assassins, the first hero class, are larger-than-life warriors, meant to inflict maximum damage at close range. Assassins gameplay is akin to traditional action role-playing games in which you right-click your way to victory.

Demigod blends together action-RPGs and RTS games.

Developer Gas Powered Games stopped by to give us our first look at the second hero class, generals. Generals are weaker when in close combat and prefer to inflict damage from a distance. To do so, they summon and command minions that can be ordered about the battlefield to do your bidding. Generals gameplay is similar to that of an RTS game in which you click on multiple units and send them to perform different tasks. Though the gameplay of assassins and generals isn't as deep as you would see in a dedicated action RPG like Diablo III or a true RTS game like Command & Conquer, Gas Powered Games is hoping that blending these two elements will make for a unique and addictive multiplayer experience.

Each general can summon minions to his cause. No matter which character you play as, the minions are all the same and come in three basic classes. The minotaur captain acts as a standard infantry class, charging enemies as a foot soldier. The siege archers are a standard ranged class, and high priests act as a wizard or mage class, firing spells and debuffs from a distance. It's a shame that each minion is not specific to each general, considering how different the generals are in style and appearance. Instead, every general will control the same minotaur captains, siege archers, and priests. Thankfully, the generals have very unique characteristics.

Achievement points can be used to purchase persistent upgrades.

Oak is a giant warrior, a fallen paladin that died defending his kingdom. He has the ability to capture the souls of dead enemies on the battlefield and summon them to his cause. Lord Erebus, on the other hand, is a creepy vampire capable of transforming into mist or even a swarm of bats to escape danger. When the king, Erebus' father, died, Erebus turned down the crown, raised his father from the dead, took control of his undead father, and now rules the kingdom by proxy. Erebus is now free to unleash his nefarious plans upon the kingdom. In battle, some of his attacks will transform enemies into his personal guard of vampires. Finally, there's Sepna, a beautiful witch who rides a giant cat into battle. She summons yetis as personal protectors and is complementary with assassins since she can heal from a distance. One of her best attacks is a silence spell that prevents enemies from using items or spells for a time.

Demigod will also feature a persistent upgrade system in which you will be able to purchase skills and items that are not limited to one battle, which is one of the major limitations of Defense of the Ancients. Click on the images for fresh screens of Demigod, which is currently slated for release in February.