Marvel's Wolverine Review: Insomniac's Superhero Slasher Comes With Dull Edges

After years of false starts and failed flights, the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally took form in 2008 with a movie about a man in a metal suit. The MCU—an initialism now as ubiquitous as the UN or ESPN—burst out of its chrysalis and spread its wings relatively quietly at the time. Perhaps even Marvel didn't anticipate its planned universe of superhero films to eat the film industry itself. Eighteen years and 38 bland and boring and sexless movies later, the butterfly effect of the MCU's ascendance has not only altered the grammar of the summer blockbuster, but also flattened tastes beyond films.

That Marvel sensibility is conspicuously visible in Sony's next tentpole video game. Marvel's Wolverine, which releases on PS5 on September 15, falls into the pit dug by superhero movies and does little to pick itself up. The action-adventure title is preoccupied with showing its flawed hero as complex without making him interesting; it tells a predictable, risk-averse story that underwhelms at important junctures; and the game's cast of characters fail to leave an impression during the course of its 20-hour campaign. When operating at its best, Marvel's Wolverine is a fun and frantic action romp that comes with great technical polish. Most of the time, though, the game struggles to live up to its cinematic aspirations.

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Perhaps even more egregiously, the gameplay in Marvel's Wolverine lacks depth and creativity. The combat is pacy and flashy, but rarely adds any complexity beyond mashing two buttons on the controller. There's a satisfying mechanical crunch to all the moves, and the action is highly responsive and refined, but there's very little room for player expression. And even though Wolverine can move at a quick pace and jump long distances, traversal in the game is shallow and mostly cuts a straight line through linear levels. There are a few thrilling action set pieces and some moments of narrative flair, but Marvel's Wolverine never quite claws its way to the highs Insomniac Games reached with its Spider-Man games.

That does not mean that the game is all bad. Its linear structure helps it avoid the pitfalls of open world design and continuously pushes you forward, even when the pacing of the story falters early on. It looks and plays at a standard that sets a high bar for the games industry but is impressively now the default expectation from Insomniac. And there's an old-school, video-gamey feel present throughout the Wolverine's systems that helps it stand out amidst titles that follow increasingly homogenous game design ideas. You can rip through the main story in 15 to 20 hours, have fun while doing it, and move on to other things in your life. Games that respect your time are few and far between, and Marvel's Wolverine certainly does that.

Marvel's Wolverine is let down by its shallow combat and predictable story
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

Part of the reason why Insomniac's new game underwhelms is also the studio's stellar record on the PS5. The California-based developer has been Sony's most prolific first-party game maker this decade without letting the quality dip. Insomniac delivered three new games on the PS5 between 2020 and 2023, and Marvel's Wolverine will be the fourth in six years. Naughty Dog, meanwhile, is yet to ship a new game this console generation. And when compared to Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, two games that are vastly more ambitious in scope, Marvel's Wolverine can't help but feel like a step back for the studio. The game makes perfect sense as a linear, story-driven adventure, but Insomniac does little to expand the underlying gameplay systems within that singular approach.

And that would have been fine if Marvel's Wolverine managed to tell a compelling story with convincing characters. Naughty Dog's games are mechanically shallow, too, but they reach for the stars with their cinematic storytelling. Characters from The Last of Us and Uncharted are complex and well-written. You care for their motives and fret about their fates. You are caught up in their stories. But Wolverine doesn not pull you in despite its suite of readymade heroes. Logan, Jean Grey, Mystique are interesting and iconic comic book characters with decades of lore behind them, so it's hard to stray too far from popular and established archetypes. But Insomniac could have still pushed to find an edge that cuts deeper than the game's conventional claws. Afterall, IO Interactive did the same with James Bond in 007 First Light this year.

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Characters fail to leave an impression in Marvel's Wolverine
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

Marvel's Wolverine draws from years' worth of comic book narratives surrounding Logan and the X-Men, but it tells a new story about its titular protagonist. The game follows the fates of James “Logan” Howlett—also known as Wolverine—and Team X, a mutant black operations unit running clandestine missions around the globe. Set in present times, Marvel's Wolverine takes place in a world largely unaware of mutants, who live in secrecy, hiding from ever-present threats. It's established that it has been three years since Logan left Team X, but he returns to help when the group's founder and his mentor, Nathaniel Essex, is abducted by Bolivar Trask, a billionaire scientist who sees mutants as a threat to humanity.

Logan, with the help of his former Team X comrades Mystique and Sabretooth, saves Essex and reluctantly agrees to rejoin the task force when he learns of Trask's plans for a mysterious and powerful artefact that could put the lives of all mutants at risk. His mission to take down Trask and his cybernetically enhanced mercenary group, Reavers, puts Logan in the path of Jean Grey and a group of young mutants fighting for their survival. Jean and Wolverine quickly form a rapport and work together to protect the mutants from Trask's forces, but an inciting incident leaves the two and the rest of the Team X on the trail of the dangerous device tied to both Trask and Essex.

Jean and Logan work together in Marvel's Wolverine
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

The linear story takes Team X on a globe-trotting and gritty adventure across Canada, Madripoor, and Tokyo, where Wolverine comes up against the Hand, an ancient order of Ninjas also after the artifact. As Logan and Jean delve deeper into the origins of the mysterious object, they find they might have been misled right from the start. As the story progresses, allegiances shift and motives that tie Trask, Essex, and The Hand together are revealed. The final act frantically pushes you forward into the heart of an explosive truth and an escalating conflict that threatens every mutant on Earth.

The climax is a thrilling whirlwind of betrayals and revelations that makes Wolverine question the very truths of his own being. Along the way, the reluctant hero also dives into the recesses of his memory and sifts through forgotten parts of his centuries-long life. The final few hours of Marvel's Wolverine serve up intriguing twists and intense confrontations, but it arrives hours after the game's sluggish opening act and its predictable and boring middle section. By then, Marvel's Wolverine has already lost a bit of wind in its sails. The fiery finale mostly stands in contrast with the lukewarm story that precedes it.

Logan takes on Trask's forces hunting down mutants
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

I found myself mostly not caring for the events unfolding in the game. At one point, the story becomes preoccupied with the McGuffin artifact and seems to abandon its characters. Early on, missions are followed by prolonged cutscenes that set the stage for the story to come, but these sections fail to make you care about Logan and his journey. Extended cutscenes aren't necessarily bad, but in the absence of a compelling plot and interesting characters, the storytelling in Marvel's Wolverine sputters at every crucial juncture.

The MCU influence on the writing hurts the game, too. Cinematic story moments often play out as a series of expository dialogue, dry character moments, and corny quips—all delivered without urgency or intensity you'd expect from a violent, globe-trotting thriller starring Wolverine. The game's story is lacking an edge that would elevate it from the safe and sanitised approach Insomniac took in Spider-Man 2. A Wolverine game needs to be mature and disturbing—not just through amped-up violence and gore, but also in its commitment to a darker, bolder narrative. And while the brutality is present in the combat, it is not matched by the game's clean-cut story.

Marvel's Wolverine fails to tell a darker, more mature story
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

Characters, too, feel a little too nice to be inhabiting such a violent world. Even Logan feels like he is missing his ferocity outside of combat. He is portrayed admirably well by Australian actor Liam McIntyre, but he feels shackled by Insomniac's approach. To McIntyre's credit, he attempts to inject a bit of tenderness into a character largely defined by his gruff demeanor. You see Wolverine reach within himself and find a humanity often hidden from the outside world. His human side surfaces in his scenes with Jean, played by Krizia Bajos, as the two first develop a friendship and then feelings for each other. Logan's chemistry with Jean feels easy and natural, and stands out as one of the highlights of the game.

Wolverine's most compelling character, however, is Essex, played with disarming wit and alarming menace by Troy Baker. The Team X founder wants to save all mutants, but his well-intentioned demeanor gives way to something more sinister later in the game. Essex and Logan's motives largely align until their complicated relationship is put under further strain. Their dynamic reminded me of the relationship between Arthur Morgan and his charismatic mentor, Dutch van der Linde, in Red Dead Redemption 2. The two are never quite on the same page, but are bound by a flawed sense of loyalty. Baker's portrayal, which walks the line between light and dark, is measured and assured, and his presence elevates every cutscene in the game.

Troy Baker excels as Essex
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games

Insomniac tries to take off the restraints—ever-present in Wolverine's story—in the game's combat. Marvel's Wolverine is visceral and gory. Its blood-soaked combat system is weighty and violent. Logan's adamantium claws shred through enemies, both human and cybernetic, in a fountain of blood and guts and dismembered limbs. The feel of the combat in Marvel's Wolverine isn't too far from Insomniac's Spider-Man games, but the presentation stands in shocking contrast to the bloodless acrobatics seen in those titles. As Wolverine, you rip off heads and slice through limbs as you cut down hordes of soldiers sent first by Trask and then by the Hand to stop you.

As you'd expect from Insomniac, the combat is fun, responsive, and satisfying, but it is also severely shallow. Two-button combos carry you for most of the game. Wolverine gets a suite of special techniques that add a bit of variety to his moves, but regular combat remains largely one-note. You can leap at enemies and unleash a barrage of attacks that end with a violent finisher, but the game has a very limited roster of combos to let you truly express yourself in an encounter. Technique points gained as you level up allow you to unlock a few new moves, but very few of them add a new dimension to the combat system.

Combat in Marvel's Wolverine is visceral but shallow
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games

You can parry and dodge incoming attacks, stagger foes to open them up for more damage, and use the environment to impale enemies rushing at you. As you fight hordes of mercenaries, you also slowly fill up a rage meter across three tiers that progressively increase the damage of your attacks. In the final tier of rage, the screen turns black and white, and Wolverine flies into a feral state, executing staggered or low-health enemies in a single devastating critical strike. The problem is that it takes too long for the rage tiers to fill up, leaving you largely dependent on a limited list of standard combos for most combat encounters.

Logan's moves feel particularly one-note in earlier sections of the game when you don't have the expanded set of moves and techniques unlocked. Consequently, it takes a while before you feel empowered as Wolverine to shred a room full of enemies to pieces within seconds. Only towards the end of the game, with all special techniques and abilities unlocked, does the combat system begin to show its claws. By then, you've also unlocked a bunch of adaptations; these are handy passive buffs that let you tailor the combat style a bit to your liking.

The combat system in Marvel's Wolverine features a Rage mode
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

The same lack of depth is also seen in game's stealth sections and side activities. Stealth is limited to specific encounters, where you can silently take out an enemy from behind or from a point of vantage. The stealth state breaks if you're spotted by a foe, and you're forced to face enemies head on—which anyway is the more fun way to go about killing people in the game. In fact, stealth feels out of place in Marvel's Wolverine. Insomniac perhaps intended it to add a bit of variety to gameplay systems, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

Marvel's Wolverine is a linear, story-driven game that jumps from level to level, but each stage also features a list of side activities. As you move forward in a level, you can find collectibles in the form of whiskey bottles and materials that unlock new Wolverine suits. But these aren't difficult to find. They rarely require you to go outside of your main path and explore. Marvel's Wolverine instead draws a clear marker pointing at these optional pickups, so that you don't miss out on them. It's an especially egregious bit of hand-holding in a game that bombards you with hints and instructions as you play. The most interesting side activity appears in the form of Nightmare Doors, that offer a brief glimpse into Logan's troubled past. But oddly, these doors are designed as gameplay trials that test your combat and traversal skills. Once completed, they unlock a piece of Logan's memory—essentially an audio log narrated by Logan himself. But the Nightmare Doors could have easily been playable flashbacks where you could actively explore the hidden memory yourself. That would have added a necessary bit of narrative depth to side activities, as well.

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Nightmare Doors offer a glimpse into Wolverine's past
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

The levels themselves are fairly linear and there aren't any branching paths that reward exploration. There's one particular section in Tokyo that feels a bit more open than any other mission in the game. Here, you're allowed to explore the neon-drenched rooftops of the city as Logan, utilising his enhanced movement abilities. It's only a brief section, but it feels like it could have been explored further as a gameplay idea to incorporate traversal mechanics in a meaningful way. A Wolverine game may not have space for a movement system that is as fluid and fleshed-out as Spider-Man, but Insomniac could have surely done better to connect the linear game world with some form of non-linear traversal and exploration.

The levels, however, do feature a good amount of visual variety. Exterior locations in Tokyo, Madripoor, and Canada feature distinct lighting, weather, and environments. Marvel's Wolverine also features ray traced lighting in both Performance and Fidelity graphics modes, that target 60fps and 30fps, respectively. As a technical package, the game is near-flawless, but the visual detail in character models drops significantly when you move from major members of the cast to nameless NPCs.

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The Tokyo level offers avenues of exploration
Photo Credit: Sony/ Insomniac Games (Screenshot – Manas Mitul)

The technical polish and sophistication, however, is expected from Insomniac Games. Over the last decade, the studio has proved its credentials over a run of stellar games on PS4 and PS5. The developer set a new bar for superhero video games with Marvel's Spider-Man. But with Wolverine, it has a different beast altogether in its hands, one that cannot be tamed by conventional methods. Insomniac has a reputation for telling safe and sanitised stories in its games, but it needed to find a darker edge for a character like Logan. Marvel's Wolverine fails to do that.

It feels as if Insomniac Games refused to dive below the surface on every aspect of its newest game. Its shallow gameplay systems and straitjacketed story only highlight the shortcomings of its linear design. And the game falls convincingly short of doing justice to a complex comic book character immortalised in films and animated shows. The uninspired combat, the unpersuasive story, the unconvincing characters are all just a thin veneer. But when you peel that off, there's little inside Marvel's Wolverine that feels visceral.