At first glance, Wolverine is the ideal protagonist for a video game. He can bounce back from injuries quicker than a Call of Duty protagonist; he has decades of history to draw from, and he’s the best there is at what he does–which is gratuitous violence. After establishing itself as the crown jewel in PlayStation’s development crown with its Spider-Man adventures and a successful revival of Ratchet & Clank, Marvel’s Wolverine sees Insomniac Games venture into a darker side of the Marvel universe to puts its own spin on Canada’s finest export since Bryan Adams.
The end result? A game that boasts the high level of polish you’d expect from a PlayStation exclusive, but also fails to deliver anything meaningful to the Wolverine mythos, and quickly becomes stale. It’s not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s hardly an outstanding one either.
Following in the wake of Marvel’s Spider-Man games was always going to be a tall order, but Marvel’s Wolverine does get points for attempting to establish a darker continuity for Wolverine and mutants at large. Known as Logan to his friends, Insomniac’s take on the nigh-unkillable mutant riffs on the decades he spent as an amnesiac walking weapon, following him as he rejoins his Homo Superior comrades-in-arms as part of Team X.
In Insomniac’s universe, mutants aren’t only few in number, but on the verge of extinction thanks to billionaire Bolivar Trask’s continued mission to eradicate them from the face of the planet. Opposing the genocidal madman is Nathaniel Essex and Team X, and if you’re a fan of the comic books, then yes, things do get sinister toward the end. Brought to life by Australian actor Liam McIntyre, Logan is a loner with a heart of gold, a reluctant hero who is surprisingly compassionate and ready to throw his fast-healing body into the fire if it means that he can save lives.
Logan’s relationships with mutants like Sabretooth, Mystique, and Jean Grey are all put under the microscope here, leading to fascinating interactions between the cast. If Hugh Jackman ever decides he doesn’t want to play Wolverine until he’s 90, I’m hoping McIntyre is considered for the role because he already looks the part and has the acting chops to pull it off.
It’s a good thing that Wolverine is harder to kill than a dodgy politician’s career, as Logan gets put through the meat grinder on his interactive journey. It’s a massive change of pace to embark on a linear single-player adventure in Marvel’s Wolverine, as Insomniac’s Spider-Man games all took place in an open-world recreation of New York City. Wolverine’s approach should feel like a breath of fresh air in an era of bloated sandboxes full of checklists to keep you busy.
At its best, these levels feature set-piece moments that rival the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood when it comes to pure spectacle, but you’ll also find yourself running into invisible walls constantly as the game attempts to keep you going from Point A to Point B. Insomniac has done some incredible worldbuilding with locations spread across the globe–including Tokyo, Madripoor, and the Canadian wilderness–but it’s maddening how much of it is locked off. It’s a missed opportunity to create a few compact sandboxes to wander around in and paint the town red in.
Speaking of treating a Japanese metropolis like a canvas on which to paint with adamantium brushstrokes, Marvel’s Wolverine features a pretty great combat system built around Logan’s feral rage. It’s also unfortunately hamstrung by several design decisions, as you’re rarely challenged to use every tool in your box or you’re never given an adequate opportunity to do so. Combat revolves around dodging, slashing, and parrying attacks to build up rage, allowing you to brutally eviscerate enemies once Logan starts to see red. Meanwhile, special abilities give you the opportunity to shred through enemies with moves that would be right at home in a fighting game like Street Fighter.
There’s even a pounce attack right out of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine tie-in game, but you rarely get a chance to flex your combat muscles beyond basic combos. As an action-RPG, you’re given the choice to spend experience points on unlockable skills and deeper combos, but the relentless barrage of enemies who’ll cheese attacks while you’re trying to focus on the task at hand makes it challenging or almost impossible to successfully pull off these advanced moves.
The system that Insomniac has created should allow you to be beautifully brutal, but deeply layered combat systems are absolutely wasted because the game forces you to rely on the fundamentals while soaking up damage. The lack of weight and impact behind each attack also makes everything feel a little too floaty in action, and coming off of Capcom’s superb Onimusha: Way of the Sword, this sensation is amplified. Onimusha makes you feel every movement with the blade and measure every attack you make, whereas Marvel’s Wolverine comes across like I’m throwing an adamantium blender at enemies.
It’s also a combat system that gets old very quickly; a few hours into this 15-hour game, you feel like Insomniac played all its cards very early on. Marvel’s Wolverine operates along a fairly predictable trajectory, as you shuffle from fight to fight in levels that feel like corridors, keep an eye out for the occasional collectible bottle of whiskey, and finish a stage with a boss fight that is more of the same but with an antagonist who has a bigger health bar than the cannon fodder goons around them.
Nightmare Trials are also a missed opportunity, as these consist of only a handful of missions to test your skills, traversal challenges, wave-based gauntlets, and a race to take down a certain type of enemy within a limited amount of time. Again, this is another example of Marvel’s Wolverine failing to reach the same highs as Marvel’s Spider-Man, as those games kept things interesting with an impressive variety of side content.
Sandwiched between the stages are moments of introspective calm, but instead of being a well-deserved chance to catch your breath, these are instances where the game pads out its running time. Essex’s Manor or Tyger Tiger’s bar provide some downtime, but bombarding a player with several fetch quests that add nothing of substance to the story does not make a good impression.
And that’s a pity, because when the game shines, it’s something to behold. Insomniac Games knows how to make a good-looking experience, and Marvel’s Wolverine boasts some of the studio’s best visual work to date. Wolverine’s collection of costumes are full of an absurd amount of detail, Easter eggs dotted around the world will put a smile on your face when you recognise them, and the game’s final boss fight is a full-throttle blast of fun with enough spectacle to make Michael Bay jealous. Sadly, though, these bright points, are overwhelmed by the gameplay slog and staleness.
Marvel’s Wolverine is out now as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. The game launched on 15 September.
| Marvel’s Wolverine review | |
Marvel’s Wolverine isn’t the worst PS5-exclusive, but it is an easily forgettable entry in an otherwise stellar portfolio of titles developed by Insomniac Games. It’s perfectly fine at best; it looks gorgeous in action, and Liam McIntyre’s Logan is a well-realised version of the character, feeling refreshingly distinct from his other incarnations. But at the same time, the bread-and-butter gameplay quickly becomes stale, the story is predictable despite taking a few wild narrative swings, and it starts to feel like a chore the closer you get to the finishing line. |
6.5 |
| Marvel’s Wolverine was reviewed on PS5 | |