Marvel's Wolverine | Critical consensus

Insomniac Games' take on Wolverine has had an eventful route to market.

Announced in 2021, Marvel's Wolverine was among several Insomniac titles affected by a 2023 data breach involving 1.67 TB of internal information. The leak revealed early development details, including gameplay footage, level design, plot elements, and character information.

Three years later, it launches as a first-party Playstation exclusive following a run of controversial decisions by the company, including the discontinuation of physical disc production in 2018 and the company's separation from Hideo Kojima and the Physint project.

Marvel's Wolverine is unlikely to improve the company's mood, as the reception has been mixed. While the game holds a Metacritic score of 78, criticism has focused on dated gameplay mechanics, repetitive combat, and frequent comparisons to Insomniac's Spider-Man titles.

Combat

In his 3/5 review, The Guardian's Keith Stuart described Marvel's Wolverine as "like its hero, an unreconstructed brawler." A highlight for Stuart was the rage-meter, which boosts Wolverine's attack and defence stats. "At the final stage you become an almost indestructible machine of carnage, which is immensely liberating."

However, he noted that while the fights feel smooth and empowering, they rarely require creativity or experimentation.

Stuart compared it unfavourably to Insomniac's Spider-Man games, noting that "the character's grace, his web-throwing, the three-dimensional nature of his movement, all encourage you to fight beautifully; here I was reminded of 80s beat-'em-ups, or PS3 brawlers – a bludgeoning production line of identical fights against increasingly over-familiar enemy types."

Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell, who also rated the game 3/5, said the overall gameplay had "little to no invention throughout," but it was most noticeable in the combat, "which really has to be the backbone of a linear action game like this, let alone a Wolverine one."

"There's all the inherent satisfaction of a good parry-counter, of leaping around fully in character as this unleashed beast, of enacting righteous vengeance on your foes. It's just there's also a sense – that only builds over time – it's all slightly too one-note and one-pace."

"Meanwhile, after the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh wave of jump-and-parryable-attack guys comes at you with the exact same cadence of parry timing and bullet-dodging you just start to glaze over a little."

Writing for VGC, Jordan Middler was even more critical, describing the gameplay as highly repetitive and monotonous.

"The issue is that I never felt all that more powerful at the end of the game than I did at the start," Middler wrote in his 3/5 review. "You're limited to four abilities out of the six, but I'd have happily only taken two, considering how ineffective they felt compared to my standard moveset."

"Enemies are repetitive, and even though their outfits may change, they fall into the same small group of archetypes, making every fight feel or maybe monotonous. There are large enemies that are so spongy that fighting them is only ever a chore."

"I don't feel like Wolverine is using claws, it feels like he's got blunt kitchen knives on the ends of his fists"

Jordan Middler, VGC

Middler continued: "By the end of the game, I was legitimately sighing when more enemies would appear because I just wanted to see how the story would progress. Boss fights are similar slogs, relying on parrying sequences that you'll master long before you actually wear down their health. The combat is never bad, but it's never truly engaging, and barely evolves.

"The biggest issue with Marvel's Wolverine is that it's just rather boring to fight as Wolverine, which should be the absolute top priority. I don't feel like Wolverine is using claws, it feels like he's got blunt kitchen knives on the ends of his fists."

Simon Cardy at IGN held similar sentiments to Middler in his 6/10 review. "There's no denying that wielding those claws is slick, punchy, and wonderfully bloody. It's just a shame, then, that halfway through Wolverine's 15-hour string of missions, I felt like I'd had my fill."

"The fundamentals are solid, but combat needed a stronger sense of progression to sustain that sensation over a game of this length – especially when you're asked to cut down hundreds of enemies at a near-relentless pace. Yes, there are unlockable skills and special abilities to build into your repertoire, but only a handful, and you'll gain access to them relatively early on."

"This lack of evolution in Logan's toolset puts the pressure on two other factors in order for the action to remain exciting: enemy variation and encounter design. Only one of those is executed somewhat successfully."

Linear limitations

Unlike the open world of Insomniac's Spider-Man games, Marvel's Wolverine offers a linear experience that reviewers found monotonous. Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell described it as "a repetitive, overlong, and overfamiliar slog."

"Moving to a linear format versus an open world makes total sense, and there's absolutely space for this kind of game," he noted. "But with so little invention Wolverine feels like less of a throwback than it does a relic."

The Guardian's Stuart felt this most clearly as Wolverine travelled the world: visiting "big, inviting cities such as Madripoor or Tokyo, we find roads closed off and invisible walls directing us back to the action."

"The whole world feels like a theatrical backdrop, untouchable and aloof, and many miles from the bustling metropolis we got to live in and explore as Spidey," he wrote. "Presenting us with a Tokyo so richly detailed and visually seductive, only to lock most of it off, feels almost cruel."

For IGN's Cardy, the linearity leads to missions "taking the form of a series of corridors opening up into arenas where getting ambushed is a predictable probability."

"The whole world feels like a theatrical backdrop, untouchable and aloof, and many miles from the bustling metropolis we got to live in and explore as Spidey"

Keith Stuart, The Guardian

"Leaping from enemy to enemy and dodging out of the way of projectiles when a red flash appears takes up most of your time, so the locations these battles take place in quickly start to blend together. For the most part, Wolverine wants you to lunge headfirst into the action and bloody those claws, but it makes for a rather one-note dance."

In contrast, VGC's Middler praised Marvel's Wolverine for its linearity. "The tech that underpins the Spider-Man games has been distilled here, allowing Insomniac to achieve far more in a linear environment than they could when forced to accommodate an open world."

"While not open-world by any stretch, there is a surprising amount of freedom afforded when exploring in certain zones. It almost feels like the game was supposed to allow Logan to travel around these hubs, picking up missions organically before a more linear approach was introduced."

Characters & story

Critics agreed that the characters are Marvel's Wolverine's "strongest asset," as noted by Middler.

"It would be daunting for any game to introduce so many huge personalities while still attempting to tell a cohesive story, and the game achieves that. Logan and Jean Grey's relationship throughout the game is a particular highlight, as is Troy Baker's portrayal of Nathanial Essex."

However, IGN's Cardy found that most characters outside of Logan and Jean weren't given enough room for development. "They have little to do outside of briefly crossing Wolverine to hinder him, or offering him a few words of wisdom from the other side of a bar. Though it is a credit to the writing team that these more tender moments don't end up sounding completely out of key, especially when contrasted with the heavy-metal violence occurring on screen whenever the claws come out."

While critics like Eurogamer's Tapsell and The Guardian's Stuart praised Logan's writing and performance, both were critical of how much of his character-building happens off-screen.

Wolverine is "something of a passenger in his own story," Tapsell wrote. "There's a way to [...] make the lack of direction the point, an existential quest to find purpose and meaning, but that's not it either. It's all pretty disappointing, given how central things like a quest for identity or the overcoming of inner demons are to this character by default. The story's right there for the taking."

Stuart was critical of the lack of interactivity with Logan's character arc. "We're told that Wolverine's past trauma will be explored, but for much of the game this comes via snippets of lore that you unlock by competing in mini-challenges such as timed parkour runs and horde battles against waves of baddies. It feels like a rather insensitive way to portray and process PTSD."

IGN's Cardy also wanted more input in exploring Wolverine's backstory. "When the story is told through handsomely sculpted cutscenes, it holds my attention completely, but the smaller areas that glue all those bigger moments together are reduced to meandering through spaces at a walking pace to inspect photo frames and audio logs. They're largely ponderous sequences that just feel like needless bloat in a not overly long adventure. I can't help but feel more could've been done here in terms of interactivity."

Overall consensus

Critics emphasised that while Marvel's Wolverine isn't a bad game, its shortcomings outweigh its strengths.

"It takes a character that should be tailor-made for video game fun and muzzles him with repetitive, basic combat and a game that feels like it's from a decade ago," VGC's Middler wrote. "While playing the game, I was having fun, but the second I stopped, I felt absolutely nothing."

The game is held together by the performance of its main character and the supporting mutants.

"Were it not for the lovability of Logan himself, the animalistic warmth that Insomniac summons through its cast – and the sheer and genuine humanity that can be accessed through that – or the basic pleasure and occasional spectacle its action can offer when spread out into smaller doses, it could've been a bloodbath. Instead, it's just fine," Eurogamer's Tapsell concluded.