Wolverine game targets modest ambitions, matching its stocky hero

A few hours into Wolverine, I caught myself wondering, "Why did Insomniac Games make this?" The obvious answers are there: the studio has three excellent Spider-Man games under its belt, it's a chance to grow its Marvel Universe, and Wolverine offers plenty of room for a brutal, bloody action game. But none of that explains why Insomniac Games specifically took on Wolverine.

Spider-Man is a natural fit for the studio: an energetic, dynamic hero handled by a team famous for open worlds that play like sprawling jungle gyms, where players are let loose with thrilling traversal and varied combat for crime-fighting fun. Insomniac also shines at crafting stories that are as sincere as they are dramatic—ideal for the turbulent lives of Peter Parker and Miles Morales.

Wolverine is a far less natural pairing, as became clear throughout my time with the game. Insomniac doesn't make bad games, and Wolverine certainly isn't one. It's a solid, cinematic, occasionally thrilling experience that checks every box a decent action game needs. But it does so in a workmanlike way and never aims for much beyond the basics. Wolverine is an action game that serves the character well enough, but it doesn't play to Insomniac's strengths or tap into its creativity, and the game feels unremarkable because of it.

Straying too far from who Wolverine is and how he operates would surely raise questions about the authenticity of the adaptation, but staying strictly inside the well-defined lines means never offering anything new or exciting. It turns out that the most authentic version of Wolverine, in this case, is also the plainest embodiment of the character action genre.

There are very few distinguishing elements in Wolverine's combat system. The closest it gets is a leaping attack that lets players launch him across distances to close the gap and start an assault on unaware enemies. It's an undeniably satisfying tool for keeping up the intensity of each skirmish and ensuring you're always applying pressure, but it loses its shine after a couple of hours when it becomes clear it can be used pretty mindlessly.

The other unique element—a mechanic representing an escalation of power and brutality as Wolverine's rage boils over—has more staying power because of how drastically it shifts combat and boosts the satisfaction. As players take down enemies, an on-screen rage meter fills until Wolverine goes berserk, putting him in a state where you can chain executions and tear enemies apart in quick succession. In just a few seconds, Wolverine can leave piles of brutally mauled bad guys, and there's a feral savagery to the whole thing that works very well.

It's a consistently exhilarating moment because, along with shifting to desaturated visuals to emphasize how unstable and rage-blinded Logan is, these sequences are strong examples of synchronicity between character and player. As Wolverine's rage builds, the player needs to be more efficient at dispatching enemies to keep the meter climbing, and when Wolverine finally hits breaking point, the input demands simplify to just pressing two buttons together to eviscerate anything in your path. It is catharsis that comes from Wolverine giving in to the monster within and the player embracing that monster in tandem.

If the appeal of Wolverine for you lies in how visceral its violence is, your virtual bloodlust will be well and truly satiated. Insomniac has spared no expense in lavishing Wolverine's finishes with copious amounts of blood and guts—his executions are exactly that in every sense of the word. The violence never strives for shock value by being grotesque in the way something like Mortal Kombat does, so it never feels gratuitous. Even when he erupts into a berserker rage, the coldness of his violence reinforces the idea that he is an efficient killing machine. Wolverine never revels in it; he just gets it done and moves on.

The main issues with Wolverine's combat are that it often feels like it lacks weight, is missing lethality up until he goes berserk, and never finds rhythm. As a result, I often felt frustrated that the game was undermining the sense of power and ferocity that I wanted to feel as Wolverine. At the same time, the individual components of the combat don't have the connective tissue to create a natural flow that made me feel like I developed a mastery of Wolverine's skills.

The adamantium claws that serve as Wolverine's dealers of death and destruction often felt more like needles than blades. The feedback on each attack always felt just a little lacking, and enemies never responded to being struck in a way that made me feel empowered. Quite the opposite, in fact. I can't count the number of times that I would be mid-combo, clawing away at an enemy, and they'd suddenly ignore incoming damage to clobber me over the head with a rifle or slice me with their own blade. It came off as the game deciding it was the enemy's turn to attack because it needed to put an end to my barrage. It made me feel like an angry cat being bonked on the head to calm down.

Fortunately, the various abilities Wolverine has at his disposal feel like they pack more punch and can swing momentum in your favor. These range from a spinning claw attack that can control space and a leaping knee that interrupts enemies, to a grapple that slams enemies down so that Wolverine can mount and pummel them. There's also a spinning Psycho Crusher-like maneuver that can be chained multiple times, an all-out barrage of powerful strikes, and a recovery ability that focuses Wolverine's rage and uses it to heal, among others. All of these introduce new considerations into the combat, making it feel a little more involved and dynamic. However, since there's no real depth or connectivity to the combo system, their execution feels very rigid and disjointed.

Everything is on a cooldown, which suggests that timing and strategy is important in how they're used, but in practice, they can be employed thoughtlessly without much consequence. Many of Spider-Man's abilities served as ways to bridge one attack sequence into another; after smacking an enemy around, he could launch them into the air, chase up, smash them back down, zip to another enemy, swing them around to hit others in the vicinity, launch them into the distance, use a web to close that distance, and continue to string physical abilities together or use gadgets to manipulate enemies to his advantage. The point being, there was an if-this-then-that flow to it that, admittedly, is made possible by the character's agility and dynamism.

Wolverine, meanwhile, feels awkward and brutish by comparison—and not in a good, character-appropriate way. Instead, using his various skills is akin to how you'd approach battles in an MMO, where you just let basic attacks fill the time in between cooldowns and then sequentially work through everything on the ability bar. Sure, you can use those abilities in a way that complements each other, but there's no real requirement or incentive to do so beyond your own initiative.

Defensively, Wolverine suffers similar issues. Tapping the L1 button at the right moment will parry an attack, but the window—even before you use an adaptation to make it more forgiving—is pretty lenient, so it doesn't really take much skill to parry. In fact, I had a few occasions where I was surrounded by enemies all attacking me, sometimes overlapping, and I was able to survive their onslaught and take no damage by spamming the parry button with my eyes closed. That's not hyperbolic—I tested it. Parrying is another part of Wolverine's combat that is functional but unrewarding.

It may be hard to believe but all of that doesn't mean the combat is bad. It is perfectly functional, and I suspect that many people won't think too hard about how it all fits together. The cinematic brutality of it provides enough of a spectacle that everything else may not even register or matter. But as someone who wants to feel engaged and challenged, the vast majority of my time playing Wolverine felt rote. In a couple of stretches, I opted to reduce enemy health to make them easier to kill. Not because they provided any sort of challenge, but because I wasn't engaged enough to care and wanted to hit the next story beat. Being a fan of the character, experienced with intricate combat systems, and knowing how good Insomniac can do combat, this was disappointing.

However, through it all, the care and attention given to visual presentation remained one of the game's strengths. Unlike its open-world Spider-Man games, Wolverine is linear, corralling players from one combat arena to the next by way of streets, up and down elevators, through buildings, onto rooftops, and into the thick of a remote forest or two. Any deviations off the main path are slight and usually to pick up resources used for unlocking new outfits or bottles of whiskey that expand how many adaptations you can equip.

The most evident benefit of this narrowing in scope is in the fidelity of the visuals. Wolverine is a beautiful game, both artistically and technically. I really appreciate how Insomniac is able to bring together the vibrancy of comic books and a grittier aesthetic that allows the game to feature superheroes wearing bright costumes, while also giving the game a grounded, more realistic vibe befitting of Wolverine. There's an impressive amount of detail in the character models, with Wolverine's stout and muscular physique giving him an imposing presence. When the camera gets up close, you can really see just how hairy he is (can relate), but also the gradation in his skin color, his pores, and the grime that builds up during brawls.

Environments also have a high degree of destructability, so while I may not have always felt powerful as Wolverine when attacking enemies, watching the world around me crack, crumble, and collapse picked up some of that slack. This high level of visual fidelity pays dividends most in the larger-scale set-pieces, of which there are only a handful, but they're a lot of fun. There are battles against towering enemies (surprise, there are Sentinels) or knockdown-dragout battles against other superpowered characters.

Wolverine serves the character well enough, but doesn’t lean into Insomniac’s strengths or leverage its creativity

There are other parts of the gameplay experience that never outright excel. Everything in between the combat fits into the Uncharted-esque guided platforming mold, so you'll spend a lot of time jumping from handhold to handhold, swinging from branches and poles, or hopping across rooftops. But because Wolverine has very limited mobility and no interesting traversal mechanic to speak of beyond a big jump, the running, jumping, and climbing portions of the game often feel equally uneventful. Similarly, stealth feels like more of an afterthought than a key pillar of gameplay. Again, I know that's not Wolverine's thing. He doesn't swing from buildings like Spidey or barrel across skylines like Hulk, or sneak like Mystique, but the truth of the matter is I didn't find much to get excited about when moving around the world. The only real exceptions come in the rare high-octane escape or desperate climb for survival, in which the circumstances bring the thrills instead of anything I'm actually doing.

Ultimately, it is what it is because it's all Wolverine really has. And that point is driven home in the numerous times that Jean Grey, the ultra-powerful mutant with telepathic and telekinetic abilities, offers to simply fly herself and Logan to the top of a building or across a city, and Wolverine declines repeatedly. Even when the fate of his friends or of

Source: GameSpot