In the past decade, we’ve gotten a variety of comic book-based games. Despite a few of them attempting the live service model that caused their inevitable failures, we have had the pleasure of some genuinely amazing video games. If you happen to be a Marvel fan, you’ve been treated enough this year with the continuous updates from Marvel Rivals and Marvel Cosmic Invasion and the release of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. If you’re a fan of what Insomniac Games have been creating with their shared universe of Marvel characters, then it’s likely safe to assume you’ve been excited for Marvel’s Wolverine just like myself.

Originally announced alongside Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 back in 2021, it has been a long 5-year wait to finally get this game in our hands. A price tag of £70 combined with a 5-year wait should come with the strong expectations of a high-quality product being released. Unfortunately, that’s not what is entirely on display, and Marvel’s Wolverine comes off more as a disappointment than anything else. 

When Insomniac chose to make a game for Marvel, they picked Spider-Man. A character that screams Insomniac and felt like the perfect fit for them. While everyone loves the idea of Insomniac making every Marvel game ever and having a shared universe as big as the MCU, Marvel’s Wolverine highlights why that isn’t a wise idea. There are certain characters and teams that fit well with specific game studios; Wolverine didn’t seem like one for Insomniac, yet, that’s who they chose to introduce next. In no way is Wolverine a bad game, as it’s hard for Insomniac to create something that’s truly sucks, but it doesn’t lean into the character as much as you’d hope in an inventive and creative way with either its gameplay or story, with the latter being a major issue.

There are many aspects of Marvel’s Wolverine that I think Insomniac excelled with especially when it came to feeling in tone with Logan’s character. If it wasn’t obvious, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was kind of a testing ground for the mechanics they would be bringing over to Marvel’s Wolverine. The obvious one being the parry system. A mechanic that truthfully didn’t feel right in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, as, well, I don’t recall Spider-Man parrying enemies with his symbiote or spider-arms in the comics. This was a system that felt right at home in Marvel’s Wolverine. It was satisfying when you’d parry a flurry of the Hand’s attacks, then following it with a tornado spin to take them out. It also feels like there’s risk when you miss it and end up getting attacked from all directions.

With Marvel’s Wolverine, the combat always allows you to keep close to the action, and you’ll never want to be far from your enemies, as that puts you at a disadvantage, unlike the Marvel Spider-Man games. Slashing at an enemy, kicking them off high ground and then pressing triangle to leap at them while they’re falling and finish them off, is quite literally exactly how you make me feel like I’m playing Logan. While a game like Marvel’s Spider-Man has a focus meter which would be used for healing or takedowns on enemies.

Marvel’s Wolverine replaces that with a rage meter. Logan is a character who finds himself being filled with rage quite easily, and there’s no better way to incorporate that into the game than through a mechanic that makes you a complete beast when you fill that rage meter to level 3, allowing you to takedown every enemy around you within literal seconds. As you enter that viscous state, the visuals grey out, and it feels like all you can see is red. You’re given that rush to fight against the meter draining, chaining your attacks together and taking down every enemy to keep the bar filled, decapitating heads from bodies and ripping limbs from torsos. For any fan of Wolverine, this will easily satiate your hunger for playing as the character and will be the push for you to continue playing this game. If you ever wanted to feel like a complete savage just like Wolverine, then this rage meter will do it for you.

A neat feature that’s also included is that if you manage to lose all your health but have a bar of your meter filled, you’ll go into what’s called Last Stand mode, where you’ll heal all your injuries and be brought back with a full health bar. Wolverine’s a character that has an insanely strong healing factor, and they managed to make that a crucial part of the gameplay without making it feel like you’re completely overpowered.

There are a lot of complaints when it comes to the overall combat of the game. You’ll be able to find abilities that you can hotkey, similarly to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and despite it not working in that game, it was brought over to Marvel’s Wolverine, where, funnily enough, it also doesn’t work. Annoyingly, there are no upgrades made to the system that allow for it to flow better within the combat, and instead it can feel like a drag waiting for a cooldown so that you could use your ability again. 

The closest genre that Marvel’s Wolverine falls into is an arcade brawler. This game may not be Marvel Cosmic Invasion, but hell, it would’ve been great if I could input combos instead to pull off moves that would have me barging into an enemy or throwing a claw barrage attack into their chest. It would’ve allowed for the combat to feel a lot more weighty and would bring a challenge to the system while keeping it fresh and familiar. While the combat can get repetitive, it’s one of the game’s strongest highlights personally. 

Marvel’s Wolverine also introduces adaptations which are “changes” to Wolverine’s DNA that just provide buffs/benefits as you’re playing the game. They’re not as significant, and I didn’t think too much into it when equipping them. Usually I had ones that helped with collectibles equipped and adaptations that would assist with my rage meter. A little more development into this feature with a revamped combat system could make the idea of making builds for your Logan interesting, with every player having a very different way of how they play him.

The weakest part of the combat in this game is when it comes to the bosses that are included. Admittedly, the first boss fight against Omega Red is easily one of the best opening boss fights they’ve created alongside Kingpin. It’s difficult, a challenge for the player to use everything they’ve learnt up until that point, and brings the first real stakes of the game. After that, the boss fights refuse to challenge the player, and instead, all just feel repetitive and the same. The Sentinel Prototype fight is a complete slog that is only visually pretty thanks to the level design and explosive set pieces that Marvel’s Wolverine is filled with. There’s a boss fight in the game that includes an extremely cool mechanic that makes me wish Insomniac would finally make a Daredevil game. It isn’t until the final boss fight where it feels like Insomniac remembers they can make these fights engaging, cool, and difficult.

Yet another weak aspect is the stealth. It was already clear from the Marvel Spider-Man games that stealth wasn’t Insomniac’s strong suit, but with Marvel’s Wolverine, it begs the question why they keep including stealth if they’re not going to improve the system. Personally, I wouldn’t want to play a stealthy Wolverine, but the option to have it would be great if it actually worked well. Despite starting off stealthy, you’ll always end up going into a battle noticed, which makes the option to start off stealthy feel pointless. There are techniques that you can acquire to improve the stealth, but I left those for the very end, as they served absolutely no purpose and just felt like dead weight.

Outside of the combat, where the fights can get gruesome, I was truly shocked by how far Insomniac went to hold that promise to gamers. There’s a scene early on where Logan stabs himself in the head to free himself from Omega Red’s grasp. It’s brutal and intense, and that visceral violence never lets down at any point in the game. You’ll find yourself seeing Logan’s skin completely torn apart, all the way down to his adamantium skeleton. It can get grotesque at times, but Insomniac always ensured that every moment was carried with some weight in the story and wasn’t just added for shock value so that we could “ooh and ahh” at it.

There are three types of collectibles in the game, with one of them being the nightmare doors that you can find throughout missions. They’re randomly thrown around without any thought to how it may interrupt the flow of the story. These nightmare doors allow you to complete traversal or combat trials. The traversal trials are completely pointless and unengaging, as Insomniac didn’t implement a traversal system into Marvel’s Wolverine, considering Logan is not a character famous enough for getting around places fast like Spider-Man is. The talking point of these Nightmare Doors is the gauntlets that you can complete every now and again. These gauntlets allow you to face endless waves of enemies while attributing buffs and debuffs to the gauntlet. There are only 4, which includes a hidden one post-game, but they should’ve included more instead of adding several traversal trials that felt pointless, as you mastered what this game considers traversal in its first mission.

A way for Insomniac to rectify this is to include a separate gauntlet mode you can access from the cabin. It would be endless, featuring the boss fights from the game’s story mode. With the inclusion of new attacks for the enemies and bosses and also exclusive new abilities for Logan to use. A gauntlet mode could bring more life and replayability into Marvel’s Wolverine. I’ve managed to replay Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PS4 countless times, but after finishing Marvel’s Wolverine, I couldn’t see myself wanting to play the game on New Game+. It even became a problem as I was trying to clean up the rest of my trophies and attain the 100%, but I had immediately grown tired of the game once those credits rolled. A lot of this has to do with how Insomniac chose to write this story and also how it engages with you as a player.

Marvel’s Wolverine also includes Material Crates, which you can easily find across missions, as they have a large radar sense and annoying pinging sound that they play. These provide materials for you to unlock various suits for Wolverine throughout the game, similar to Marvel’s Spider-Man. The only difference is that it was more fun hunting for these collectibles in those games, as the world was so large that it felt rewarding when you found something. Special shoutout to the Spider-Verse bots from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 that were a pain to find. You then have whisky bottles which provide backstory between Logan and the other members of Team X as he reminisces on what occurred when he drank the respective whisky bottle.

Here comes the talk of the scent trail. This trail appears either when Logan has homed in on a smell and is searching for something vital in the story or when he comes close to a whisky bottle as he can smell the whisky. This is not constantly on throughout the game and doesn’t hold your hand through every single mission. It’s barely an issue and makes sense contextually for why it’s a feature. Where the game does annoyingly hold your hand is when Wolverine decides to quickly tell you what to do, like there isn’t an obvious direction to head in. One instance was when I had two crates to search, and after searching the first crate, he in quick succession told me twice to search the other crate. Thanks, Logan. I was going to check under the crate next and not the second other crate.

Unlike Marvel’s Spider-Man, this game follows a more linear structure compared to the Uncharted games and doesn’t take place in an open-world environment. This partially works but also ends up being their downfall. If you look at a game such as Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, it isn’t entirely open-world like Marvel’s Spider-Man, but it still has opened-up sections you can explore when doing levels. This is what was expected when it came to Marvel’s Wolverine. A good portion of the game takes place in Japan and Madripoor. If Insomniac had opted to make these spaces feel more open with everything accessible as you complete these missions, the pacing and structure of the game would’ve flown better. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Instead, I find myself completing one fight and then immediately being forced out of the area I was fighting in, with the game refusing to let me go back as it’s officially out of bounds. A decision that’s baffling and restrictive, which is the complete opposite of what any video game should be.

Insomniac in the past has done an outstanding job from taking from different eras of Marvel to create their own original stories and takes on characters. With Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, what that game suffered from was pacing issues which affected the third act. What Marvel’s Wolverine suffers with is pacing issues but for completely different reasons, and that’s because the third act throws everything at a wall, hoping that some of it will stick. Out of all the X-Men characters they could’ve used to introduce mutants, Logan was a fantastic pick. His story of trying to find himself and figure out his past is an emotional, touching, and down-to-earth human story that fits with the overarching story of trying to protect Mutantkind and the world’s increased fear of their existence.

Within the first two acts, we’re introduced to this world of mutants with Team X, which consists of Logan, Nathaniel Essex, Mystique, Sabretooth, and Walter. They’re fighting against the threat of Bolivar Trask, who wants to see the extinction of mutantkind and has gone through the extensive research to achieve this. For a very small portion of the game, he’s the biggest threat we’re dealing with, but slowly the game opens up to bigger threats and plots that’ll have Wolverine discovering who he is, just not how we would hope. At times, the writing for his character will be some of the best you’ve seen, but with the changes that Insomniac has opted for with its new origin for him, it makes you question the decisions of changing such major aspects of the character.

Originally, a massive change that was introduced was something that I didn’t mind at first. It was new and actually made the story engaging. It’s how they continue to develop the origin change that ends up making it fall apart. While the interest in Wolverine’s story begins to wane as the game goes on, Liam McIntyre does an insanely phenomenal job voicing Logan, to the point where I can’t unhear his voice as the character. He brings so much heart to the character, bringing his vulnerable side to life while also highlighting the rage that Wolverine holds within himself. If Insomniac had only delivered better writing, we would’ve had an all-timer Wolverine story.

As we move along the story, we come across Jean Grey, who has been spending her own time rescuing mutants in need. Her path crosses Logan in more ways than one in this story. It’s not the first time we’ve had a focus on Jean Grey as the love interest, but what makes their relationship so captivating in the comics barely exists in Insomniac’s take on the characters. Instead of keeping it basic, they decide to experiment and take it to another level, which ends up backfiring as it convolutes the story of the game and ends up making it something that it shouldn’t be. Krizia Bajos’ performance as Jean Grey saves the decisions they make with the character, as she’s able to provide such range that dives deep into the emotional depth of the character.

A comparison I’ve been making with Marvel’s Wolverine main villain reveal is with Marvel’s Spider-Man. A game that featured Otto Octavius and somehow managed to keep the reveal of him as Doc Ock in the game a reveal despite everyone knowing exactly who that character is in the game. In Marvel’s Wolverine, it’s obvious from the start where Nathanial Essex’s story is leading. At times, it feels like the Nathanial Essex we know from countless X-Men media feels strayed off his path, but ultimately, his character feels familiar. It’s just unfortunate that the ultimate reveal doesn’t serve any sort of impact to the player. 

While he feels like a replacement for Charles Xavier at the start of the game, he’s very much not that at all, and Troy Baker’s standout performance as the character is what’s able to make that switch from mentor to genocidal sociopath. Every scene with Essex is as good as the last and is what kept me wanting to push on with the story despite the third act reveals that make this one of the worst Marvel stories that Insomniac has ultimately crafted. When thinking back, Essex’s presence in the game affects every single dynamic that’s made, and I do think it helps to set up the future world of the X-Men. If Insomniac had just kept the story focused on Trask and Essex while also diving into Logan’s past and not involving any other major characters that only served the purpose of sequel bait, this story would’ve been excellent. 

Without a doubt, Nathaniel Essex is one of the best-written villains from an Insomniac game alongside Doc Ock; it’s just unfortunate that it’s wasted from them making a complete mess towards the end with how overcomplicated everything is. The Marvel Spider-Man games worked because they took their time setting up Miles. He didn’t just become Spider-Man in one game. He got bitten in the third act of the first game, was trained during the DLC, earned his own game, and worked together with Peter in the second game. All of this felt rewarding. The same can’t be said for Marvel’s Wolverine, which felt like Insomniac were scared they weren’t going to get the opportunity to make another X-Men-based game with the odd additions they included. Instead of just being a Wolverine-focused game that provides a little setup for the X-Men, it just turns into a game that heavily focuses on the setup for the X-Men, with Wolverine coincidentally as the central character.

Not even with Marvel’s Avengers did I find myself having conflicted feelings about a game, as it was obvious where that game went wrong. The issue is that Marvel’s Wolverine has all the potential and deep down is a good game. It’s just unfortunate that despite it being fun, for what they achieve with the eventual lacklustre story, and the lack of replayability in the game, it ends up not being worth the price they’re selling it for. It’s an overall forgettable experience that I’d rather not relive. It’s clear that Marvel’s Wolverine shouldn’t have been the game that Insomniac decided to make next.

Instead, they should’ve adapted a character that was similar to Spider-Man, such as Daredevil or fully experimented and made a game that no one would’ve expected. Despite not being completely happy with Marvel’s Wolverine, I’d still love to see Insomniac’s Marvel Universe expand, but I’d only like to see this if the right characters were chosen, if Insomniac took more calculated risks with their games, and if they took their precious time developing it without it feeling rushed as their last two games felt.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5.