Marvel’s Wolverine (PS5) Review – GameRevolution

Sony’s first-party productions have earned high praise for their quality. Title after title pushed the limits of what PlayStation consoles could do. Insomniac Games has been a big part of that effort, with its Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, and Spider-Man series, and most fans assumed that its next game would be a tour de force. Unfortunately, just when Sony needs a PR boost, Marvel’s Wolverine is decent at best, which just isn’t enough for one of the few PlayStation exclusives the company has released this generation. Insomniac desperately tried to beat Wolverine into Spider-Man’s formula and hoped for a best seller, but what works for web-slinging just doesn’t translate to Weapon X.

Not so X-Men

Wolverine takes place in an alternate universe (the same one as Insomniac’s Spider-Man games) where the X-Men were never formed. Instead, Dr. Nathaniel Essex created Team X to help persecuted mutants to safety. Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Mystique make up the organization’s action element. The game begins in media res as Wolverine and co. are fighting through a facility to rescue their leader. Essex has been captured by his nemesis, Bolivar Trask, a tech mogul who wants to wipe out all mutants.

The writing is largely uninspired and immediately dismisses an idea that could have made this plot much more interesting. Namely, what if Trask is right, and humanity does have every right to fear mutants? Imagine being a little helpless bag of meat watching a bunch of beings commit Olympian acts as they fight to the death in your lawn. From that perspective, Trask’s ideas might seem understandable at a basic level, though his conclusion about how to solve the issue is still abhorrent. Unfortunately, the plot sidesteps any thread that could be even slightly controversial or philosophical, opting for a more generic story that was serviceable but refused to leave its comfort zone.

We have Wolverine at home

Many similarities exist between the cast of Marvel’s Wolverine and its past incarnations, so X-Men fans will already know the basics even if the details differ. Logan still has memory issues and ostensibly combats intense internal demons. However, when he’s enraged, he looks more like he’s going to cry than tear someone apart. He comes off more like a sad boy with puppy-dog eyes than someone fighting a beast within.

There’s enough that’s just a little off compared to the comics for this Logan to feel weird. Instead of being sardonic, he’s self-deprecating; he’s depressed instead of angry. That vibe comes through in the rest of the cast as well. Jean Grey is a powerful psychic, but also gets nudged into playing a doting mother figure and awkward romantic. Even Sabretooth, one of the cruelest characters in the X-Men franchise, has moments where he’s a little tenderhearted, like a scene where he’s fighting alongside Logan and says, “missed this.”

Pretty much the whole cast gives a very “but we have Wolverine at home” vibe. There’s also a lack of consistency. Some characters, like Debra Wilson Callisto, have been given a major redesign from their comic origins, while others stick closer to the source material. Everyone also has exaggerated skin textures, which makes them look older (and damper) than they’re probably meant to be. This, along with the somewhat dodgy ray tracing, makes the character models come off as uncanny valley. 

Unfortunately, Marvel’s Wolverine falls victim to the same safe, milquetoast characterization that plagues AAA titles. The protagonists can’t be too mean or violent because they have to be preeminently marketable. But I don’t want a generic, easily digestible, puppy-dog-eyed Wolverine or an early-40s mom Jean Grey. I want that bombastic, over-the-top comic aesthetic X-Men is famous for. 

A shallow puddle (of blood)

At first glance, the gameplay looks like the over-the-top hack-and-slash you’d expect when playing a character like Wolverine. He dances all over the screen stabbing and ripping, but once you have the controller in your hand, you realize how shallow it all is. For one, combat has that magnetic feeling I thought we had left in the past. If an enemy is nearby, you lazily point the stick at them, press an attack button, and Wolverine zooms right in. That extends to all manner of combat. You’ve got all the classics. You have special moves where you hold R2 and hit a face button. There’s a rage mode where you fill a bar, then pull the triggers to instantly kill regular enemies. There’s a guard and a parry (with the largest window I’ve ever seen in a game). The simplistic controls make the game accessible, but at the cost of almost completely detaching the player from the action on screen. 

Of course you’re not going to get the power fantasy you probably hoped for. Despite being nigh invulnerable and having adamantium claws which can shred through pretty much anything, every enemy is an obstacle for Wolverine. Even the most basic soldier takes a few hits before finally keeling over. I was hoping the PS5’s power would let us summon massive armies of goons that (accurately) fall in one hit to Logan’s claws, but still threaten to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. But no, it’s pretty much the same polite AI that will only let one or two foes attack at a time while their pals respectfully wait their turn. 

Unfortunately, trying to jam Wolverine into Spider-Man’s formula feels incredibly forced. There’s an ability tree, augments, etc., that all make you feel like there’s some sort of RPG element, when they really just limit your combat options to give you a sense of progression (and because they’re in Spider-Man). There’s no “builds” in a traditional sense either, and the unlock system is so half-hearted you’ll rack up points and have nothing to spend them on until you get far enough in the game to unlock another character level.

Of course, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. It’s definitely entertaining to see Logan slashing across the screen, and there are some impressive set-piece moments scattered throughout the game. The animations are doing most of the work here, though. It takes around 16 hours to beat Marvel’s Wolverine, which is too long not to notice how shallow the gameplay is.

A fix for the monotony of playing as Wolverine would have been adding a second playable character, which would make sense given how Jean Grey sticks with you for much of the game. Switching between two characters would have added much-needed complexity to the combat system, and their powers are different enough to make for an interesting dynamic. That was allegedly the original plan, and Insomniac scrapping it makes the game weaker overall.