Insomniac has been the torchbearer for Marvel’s push into video games with their Spider-Man triptych, including the Miles Morales standalone, regularly considered leagues above other contemporary attempts to adapt comic book arcs to the medium. Their Wolverine, which is one of the year’s most anticipated games, marks their chance to broaden their Marvel universe beyond the Big Apple, showing us a world beyond Peter Parker’s purview.
In the end, Marvel’s Wolverine feels like the sum of colliding ambitions. It offers a gameplay experience that feels markedly lesser when compared to Spider-Man, or even other PlayStation tentpoles, while scaling up its setting considerably to deliver a raucous globetrotting adventure. On the surface, this might still be sellable, but its story felt safe and predictable, which led to its action feeling even longer in the tooth by the end.
This isn’t to say I disliked Marvel’s Wolverine; I found it to be a fine action game. It just isn’t what I have come to expect from Insomniac, one of the generation’s most productive and polished studios. I still spent over twenty hours unlocking the game’s Platinum trophy, though that moreishness comes with a fair few caveats.
After noting concern in my hands-on preview of the game, Marvel’s Wolverine’s story did prove to be quite predictable—an impressive feat considering it wasn’t necessarily based on an existing run, though it pulls bits and pieces from certain arcs, like ‘The Twelve’, to great effect. Absolutely integral to the story’s heart, though, is the relationship between Jean Grey (Krizia Bajos) and Logan (Liam McIntyre), which is handled thoughtfully throughout by both actors, though it’s the latter’s turn as Wolverine, in particular, that acts as an anchor for the whole thing—he has a spirited reclusiveness that makes his gruff act quite likeable.
The story’s willingness to jet around, taking us from Canada’s wilderness to the shanty villages of Madripoor, right through to Japan and back again, is bold, and the set pieces that gum the levels together are fun, but it’s so relentlessly paint-by-numbers right up until the climax that it’s hard not to be disappointed. There are more than a few nods to please those praying for more from this burgeoning video game equivalent of the MCU, including a throwaway mention of a certain Hell’s Kitchen lawyer. While I admire the game’s decision not to pack a larger team dynamic into an already busy story, the absence of the X-Men is felt, and the mutants’ reserves bench didn’t seem to run deep at all.
If nothing else, Wolverine is known for his claws, and it’s an understatement to say this game’s Logan is beyond lethal with his. It’s a game that starts quite fun because tearing enemies to shreds in a rageful flurry of blue, yellow, and red is naturally thrilling—especially after spending years playing Spider-Man and Batman games that exercise restraint against the bad guys. It’s unfortunate that the experience of the first five hours simply doesn’t evolve enough over the course of the next fifteen to last the journey—clever claw power-ups, like “hot claws”, are gradually unlocked, which only amounts to the same slashing, dodging, and parrying from go to woe. There’s still a gratifying flow to the combat, and it’s totally serviceable if all you’re looking to do is switch off and mindlessly tear things to bits, but there isn’t an enormous amount of engagement beyond that.
It isn’t necessarily helped by the limited enemy variety, where it feels like you’re fighting the same battles time and again and the enemies are being sent on a conveyor belt through a Faction Filter™ and reskinned as either Reavers, The Hand, or Sentinels—whose presence was spoiled by marketing materials. There are subtle differences with regard to aggression, precision, and what heavy units might cause you grief, but I’d argue it’s not enough for any of them to emerge as distinct. Though there are cinematic flashes to the boss encounters, functionally they’re also drawn-out slogs where you’re smacking claws against damage sponges. Despite this, they remain a highlight due to how spectacular they can be—and because seeing Logan beat to shit before hulking out against insurmountable odds doesn’t get old.
I do think the preview beat was ultimately a bit of a bait and switch in terms of setting expectations for Wolverine’s level design. Though there’s an urgency to the narrative throughout, the game does definitely freewheel between guided, linear levels and wider open areas, which is completely fine, although it’s inconsistent enough that I’d find myself trying to explore the incredibly realised alleys of Japan only to find that, in this particular level, all avenues were barricaded by cars, blocked by foot traffic, or rendered inaccessible due to immersion-shattering invisible walls.
The game also does an irritating thing where it’ll neuter your jumping and mobility when near a level’s boundaries, so that’d often be the telltale sign I’d exhausted what the level had to offer. I’ve no issue with linearity, but to then reemerge into an open, more explorable version of that same level later made it all the more baffling.
It’s impossible to fault Insomniac’s effort in delivering extra content for players to sink their claws into, and I did have a great time working through the Nightmare Doors. For the uninitiated, these are the combat and traversal trials that function almost identically to Taskmaster’s challenges in the Spider-Man games. I was particularly fond of the traversal ones as I felt they made better use of Logan’s feral, explosive mobility than the general level layouts and set pieces did. Along with the other standard rewards and leaderboard bragging rights, there are some excellent lore drops tucked behind each challenge’s completion, delivered with the force of an emotional wrecking ball by McIntyre.
Though people have been vocal about Insomniac’s character design, even dating back to Spider-Man, I bought into their vision wholesale here. All of the suits, including the studio originals, are incredible; it’s hard not to appreciate all of the nods in there. I’ve been a vocal supporter of the Weapon X look, although I did gravitate towards the Age of Apocalypse suit, and all its one-handed glory, as I neared the endgame. I know from my chat with the team that hair is difficult and expensive to render, but whatever is happening in Marvel’s Wolverine to Sabretooth’s mane and Jean Grey’s bangs needs to be toned down several magnitudes; it might be the world’s first documented case of restless hair syndrome, and it took me out of scenes frequently.
I do think Marvel’s Wolverine, on the whole, is a fine-looking game. It does tend to look much nicer during the night-set levels, especially in Japan where the neon signs are pretty, and things aren’t so bright and plastic-looking—which can tend to happen when light is abundant. Many of the environments are designed well, and I enjoyed the verticality of certain levels, like anything set in Canada’s wilds. Wolverine boasts rock-solid performance at 60FPS, sacrificing little to deliver a smooth experience. The more cinematic 30FPS, on the other hand, didn’t feel like a comfortable or viable way to play, and any uptick in fidelity, which was imperceptible to me, simply isn’t worth the drop.
It’s perhaps Insomniac’s pedigree and the expectation their name carries that has left me as disappointed as I am with Marvel’s Wolverine. It’s not an enormous mechanical departure from their Spider-Man games; it’s just that their take on Logan doesn’t have the same confidence, struggling to evolve into anything more than a competent action game across its twenty-plus hours.
Much like the cast of mutants, Marvel’s Wolverine is missing just a dash of X-factor.