Marvel’s Wolverine Review – Solid as Adamantium

Marvel’s Wolverine is certainly a different beast than the other Insomniac Marvel games, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one. The progression is far more linear, and the gameplay is a bit less complex, but these qualities work for a game based around the titular mutant. The creative take on mutants and the no-holds-barred violence make for an overall great Wolverine game that respects the character whilst trying some new things to mostly strong results.

As far as interests go, I’m probably one of the biggest X-Men fans around, and when you love the X-Men, you inherently love Wolverine, too. I played every X-Men and Wolverine game growing up, but it’s been over a decade since a game was centered around either. Finally, Marvel’s Wolverine has arrived, and based on the previous Spider-Man games from Insomniac, I had high hopes. For the most part, these were all met, as I couldn’t stop playing the game while prepping this review.

As I noted in my hands-on preview of the game, Marvel’s Wolverine never shies away from the violence that the character is so known for. Given that one of his main abilities is using the blades on his hands to fight people, plenty of previous adaptations have had to awkwardly dance around the pretty intense violence and gore that would realistically come from that. This is no such adaptation, as the game shows just how messy and intense Logan’s life would be through its exciting, if a little straightforward, combat.

You primarily use two attack buttons to craft different combos with Wolverine’s claws, though various new combo types and combat improvements are unlocked as you level up. Though it never gets quite as layered as the Marvel’s Spider-Man titles, this more basic and simplistic style suits Wolverine and never gets old throughout the game’s runtime. I think this partially comes down to the wild variety of finishers and kill animations that Wolverine has for his combos, as well as the smoothness of slashing at and parrying groups of enemies.

I enjoyed that your foes don’t wait their turn to attack you when they’re grouped up, as that makes the fighting more grounded and challenging in a satisfying manner. Insomniac clearly understands what aspects of fighting are key to the character of Wolverine – just as they did with Spider-Man – which truly puts you in the role of the feisty canucklehead as you take down horde upon horde of Reavers and the like.

Most of the boss fights are a bit basic, coming down to parrying a couple of attack patterns. It feels great to get the parry timing down, and the scale of some of the fights is incredibly impressive, but only a few of them truly stood out as especially memorable 1v1 experiences. The battles with squads of enemies, whether you want to be stealthy or go in claws blazing, are the most memorable experiences, so I’m glad that they’re such a blast.

Beyond combat, there are a couple of collectible types to find and challenges, which you take part in through Nightmare Doors. These are typically quick little platforming and combat stages that test your mettle, though the occasional roguelike gauntlet stage is thrown in for variety. All of these trials are enjoyable enough and never too challenging, though the gauntlets run just a bit too long for my taste. Getting solid ranks in these challenges gives you little bits of Logan’s backstory in this universe, too, which are certainly worth hearing/reading for the sake of his development.

The more linear structure of Marvel’s Wolverine works well, allowing for an intentionally paced narrative that lets the titular character and his supporting cast shine. Logan’s most famous characteristics, from his gruff kindness to his tired persistence, are on full display throughout, and it’s intriguing to see him go from doing what’s necessary with the ragtag group of Team X to doing what’s right for mutants everywhere. Similar journeys of progression for Wolverine typically involve his time with the X-Men, so seeing him have to grow whilst surrounded primarily by morally grey individuals, as well as Jean Grey as the only familiar ally, provides an interesting new spin on his growth.

Marvel’s Wolverine offers some unique takes on classic Marvel characters.

We also get to focus on some characters who aren’t typically at the forefront of X-Men and X-Men-adjacent story adaptations, like Wolverine’s fellow Alpha Flight member Walter Langkowski and several of the less-marketable mutated Morlocks. Without spoiling things, some deeper characteristics of prominent characters are explored in ways I hadn’t seen before, as well, which took me by surprise but left me satisfied with how the writers went about it.

The abundance of suits and claws to find and equip in Marvel’s Wolverine is a comic fan’s dream come true, as almost every single costume that I could imagine appearing in the game did. They’re not too hard to unlock, and you get a good number of them with each drop; if that weren’t enough, they all have their own looks when taking heavy damage, which must have been a lot of effort to get working. I always love seeing how some of the more outlandish suits in these games are adapted to the more grounded universe, and I wasn’t disappointed with any of the costumes here.

The title looks ridiculously good with no performance dips whatsoever, even on my launch PS5. When I spoke with the Senior Art Director for Marvel’s Wolverine, we discussed how in-depth the developers got with small visual details on the characters’ faces, and it certainly shows in the full game. The characters are expressive but never uncanny, the environments are vivid and often surprisingly lush, and the gore effects are as visceral as it gets. I stumbled into some small visual bugs throughout the game, but they were never significant enough to distract me much, and also didn’t cause any major issues.

The voice acting is excellent in Marvel’s Wolverine, with the entire cast working well with their characters. Liam McIntyre absolutely kills it as Logan himself, bringing all the years of experience and pain to the character that make him so unique. That being said, there are no real weak points to speak of in the character roster, so I came away impressed with just how passionate a lot of the line deliveries were.