PLATFORM: PS5 | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Since its inception in the mid-90s, Insomniac Games has been responsible for some undeniably classic titles. With well-received games like Spyro, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance and Sunset Overdrive under their belt, as well as the acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man / Miles Morales games, expectations were certainly high when it was announced in 2021 that Insomniac were starting work on a Wolverine game, putting the hairy hero in the starring role for the first time since 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Rejoining Team X a few years after his departure, Logan teams up with Jean Grey a cast of familiar characters to uncover the truth behind a series of mutant disappearances attributed to Bolivar Trask and his band of Reavers. This quest follows his journey from Trask’s facility to multiple locations across the world as the discovery of a powerful device known as the Helix Engine threatens to change not only the lives of mutants but also the rest of humanity.
Moving away from the type of massive open world seen in Marvel’s Spider-Man, Wolverine‘s 30 chapters play out as very linear 30-60 minute sections in which there’s very little scope for deviating from the main path. This allows for the narrative and action to be much more tightly directed, resulting in a game filled with genuinely exhilarating set pieces but at the expense of exploration and discovery. There’s still room for the odd bit of collectible-hunting thanks to the inclusion of some not-very-well-hidden chests, and there are a few light RPG mechanics as Wolverine gains experience points and uses them to unlock stat buffs and combat perks, but aside from entering occasional Nightmare Doors – brief challenge rooms that reward you with cosmetics and upgrade tokens – for the most part you’ll be travelling from A to B, shredding hordes of enemies into bloody dismembered chunks of meat.
The main weapon at your disposal is, of course, Wolverine’s claws. By using two-button combos and a variety of Combo Enders and special attacks, you’re able to leap across the screen to take enemies down and unleash a flurry of slashes into their face, kick them into walls and other objects to stun them before taking them down, and occasionally use objects to impale your foes. A Rage meter builds up during each fight, eventually allowing for some brutal execution kills, while your special attacks give a handful of fancy moves to throw in here and there, albeit with a far too lengthy cooldown period before they can be used again. There’s also a fairly rudimentary stealth mechanic enables you to sneak around for Assassin’s Creed-style takedowns in certain sections of the game. While the limited variety of combat techniques available to you in the early going doesn’t feel very interesting, things absolutely do pick up after you’ve acquired a few upgrades, and around a third of the way into the game combat really becomes very enjoyable indeed, although your attacks do feel like they would benefit from a bit more weight behind them to allow you to really feel the impact of your claws carving their way through enemies’ bones.
Locations and environments are similarly a bit underwhelming during the opening hours. It all looks absolutely stunning, but the shipyards and snow-covered forests seen in the first few missions are far from the most interesting areas of the game. It isn’t until you arrive in the fictional island of Madripoor, and later Tokyo, that your surroundings become truly interesting, and the narrative that wraps around this entire adventure follows the same pattern, starting off slowly and not really picking up until much later in the game. A few other peculiar design choices feel at odds with the game’s bloody, gory and sweary adults-only rating, too – there’s a lot of superfluous handholding and signposting, and unfailable (and un-turn-offable) QTEs and motorbike-riding sections feel more aligned with the needs of younger players than the game’s intended 18+ audience.
When things click into place though, Marvel’s Wolverine shows that it can be a really fantastic game. Its beautiful scenery, high-octane fights and thrilling action-heavy setpieces might take a while to make themselves known, but the second half of the game is genuinely gripping and exciting. There’s definitely still work to be done, especially in squashing some pesky bugs and glitches, but if you can look past the odd bit of clunky jank and push through the less than stellar opening hours, the game evolves into something much more engaging than first impressions suggest. Having said that, it’s a tricky game to score. There are definite issues that many will find difficult to ignore, while others (potentially those who maybe only pick up two or three games a year) will absolutely have the time of their life. If you’re in the former camp, let’s go for 3 stars and a recommendation to manage your expectations, but there’s definitely an argument for bumping it up to 4 stars for the latter audience who are only here for some frantic combat and over the top superhero action.
