Marvel’s Wolverine Review A Brutal, Beautiful Action Game That Doesn’t Quite Reach Its Potential

It has been a long wait for Marvel’s Wolverine.

Insomniac first revealed the game years ago, and throughout that wait, I never really questioned whether I wanted to play it. After all, this is the studio behind some of PlayStation’s best superhero games, and what made Insomniac’s Spider-Man titles work so well wasn’t simply that they captured the fantasy of being Spider-Man they were just incredibly fun to play.

So handing Wolverine to the same studio, while giving them permission to make something considerably more violent, sounded like an almost perfect combination.

Perhaps that is also why my expectations became a little too high.

I had a great time with Marvel’s Wolverine, and there is a genuinely excellent action game buried inside its cinematic presentation. But after finishing it, I was left with the feeling that Insomniac had come remarkably close to delivering something special without quite producing the new PlayStation classic I had secretly hoped for.

A Wolverine Story Worth Telling

Before getting into the gameplay, it is worth talking about the story although I won’t be explaining its major twists or spending half the review walking through the plot. Wolverine is a game that benefits from discovering much of its story for yourself.

Logan has already been Wolverine for years when the game begins. He has left Team X behind, but his attempt to stay away from trouble doesn’t last long. When Bolivar Trask begins kidnapping mutants, Logan is pulled into a much larger conflict that eventually takes him across locations including Canada, Japan and Madripoor.

There are plenty of familiar faces along the way, but what impressed me most was Insomniac’s interpretation of Logan himself.

This isn’t simply a video-game version of Wolverine built around his claws. There is a genuine attempt to explore the character underneath the violence his history, his relationships and the burden that comes with being someone who has spent decades fighting, killing and trying to find some sense of purpose.

The writing isn’t perfect. There are conversations that feel strangely written, and a few lines of dialogue didn’t land for me at all. But for the majority of the campaign, I was invested in what was happening.

A lot of that comes down to the performances. The character animation and voice acting are excellent, giving Logan considerably more personality than the usual gruff superhero stereotype.

At its best, Wolverine genuinely feels like one of the better Marvel films. Except this particular Marvel film is perfectly happy to let you cut someone’s arm off.

Just Let Me Be Wolverine

The cinematic presentation is one of the game’s biggest strengths at least initially.

Insomniac constantly moves between cutscenes, combat and enormous scripted sequences, often throwing Quick Time Events into the biggest moments. During the opening hours, I absolutely loved it.

There is something satisfying about playing a big-budget action game that knows exactly what spectacle it wants to deliver next. The production values are exceptional, Logan is constantly doing something ridiculous, and Insomniac clearly understands how to make a superhero moment feel like a superhero moment.

After spending years playing open-world games that immediately throw a gigantic map at you and cover it with icons, I actually appreciated Wolverine’s more traditional approach. The problem is that the same structure I enjoyed early on eventually became one of my biggest frustrations.

Unlike Spider-Man, Wolverine doesn’t give you a huge sandbox to disappear into between missions. The game is considerably more linear, moving Logan from one location to another with relatively little reason to stray from the path Insomniac has laid out.

And I don’t think Wolverine needed an open world. In fact, I think the more traditional action-game structure suits the character extremely well. What it needed was more variation within that structure.

There aren’t many substantial puzzles or extended exploration sections, meaning that when Logan isn’t fighting someone or watching a cutscene, you’re often just moving towards the next place where one of those things will happen. That becomes particularly noticeable because the game is constantly telling you where to go.

There are accessibility options that allow you to reduce some of the guidance, which I appreciate, but I never felt like the game was completely willing to let me figure things out for myself. Waypoints and visual indicators regularly pointed me towards objectives I would have been perfectly happy to discover independently.

Eventually, that guidance started taking some of the enjoyment out of exploration because there was very little left to figure out. The same issue applies to the Quick Time Events.

I didn’t dislike them initially. Some of the larger sequences actually use them effectively, and they can help sell the feeling of being involved in a huge cinematic set piece.

But after fifteen or so hours, I had pressed enough buttons during cinematics. I wanted control of Logan back.

You can adjust how QTE prompts behave through the accessibility settings, but that doesn’t change the larger design decision behind them. The game simply spends a lot of time taking control away from the player.

And that’s where Wolverine began to lose me.

I liked the story. I liked the spectacle. I understood exactly what Insomniac was trying to achieve. But as the credits approached, I increasingly found myself thinking: Just let me play.

Give me a puzzle that takes more than thirty seconds. Let me get lost somewhere. Give me an environment where the game doesn’t immediately point towards the exit. Let me experiment with the world rather than constantly being guided through it.

Wolverine never needed to become Spider-Man with another enormous open world. It simply needed to give its excellent combat and exploration a little more room to breathe.

The Claws Are the Star

Thankfully, whenever someone decides to stand between Logan and wherever he’s going, Wolverine becomes considerably more interesting.

Combat is easily my favourite part of the game. This is not Spider-Man’s relatively clean approach to superhero combat, where you beat up criminals and politely stick them to a wall for the police.

Logan is aggressive, bloody and brutal. His claws tear through enemies, limbs go flying and encounters can become wonderfully chaotic. More importantly, the violence isn’t simply there for shock value. The combat system is built around making Logan feel like Wolverine.

You can build Rage during combat, unlock new Techniques with the points you earn and gradually expand Logan’s arsenal of attacks and abilities. Dodging becomes important, while parrying becomes increasingly essential as the game introduces tougher enemies and more dangerous attacks.

Once everything starts coming together, Logan feels fantastic to control.

I particularly enjoyed reaching the point where I could stop playing defensively and start embracing Wolverine’s aggression. Combining parries, Rage abilities and different attacks gives the combat a satisfying rhythm, and there is enough depth to prevent every encounter from becoming a simple case of repeatedly pressing the attack button until everyone falls over.

The skill tree also gives you a reason to experiment.

My biggest complaint here is that some of the abilities I enjoyed most arrive surprisingly late. There were several moments where I found myself wishing the game had introduced certain mechanics much earlier, because they added considerably more variety to combat once they finally became available.

Still, the fundamentals are strong. When Wolverine gives you a group of enemies and simply says, go nuts, it is very difficult not to have fun.

Give Me Another Boss

The boss fights are where the game arguably comes closest to reaching its full potential.

I won’t spoil who Logan encounters, because discovering some of these fights is part of the experience, but there are several encounters here that rank among the coolest I’ve played in recent months.

This is also where the game’s cinematic ambitions work best.

Insomniac can create enormous, ridiculous set pieces while still allowing you to actually participate in the action. The spectacle doesn’t completely overwhelm the gameplay, and the fights often feel like the perfect combination of everything the game does well.

You get the production values, You get the violence,You get the superhero spectacle. And, most importantly, you get to play Wolverine.

Some of these encounters delivered exactly what I had hoped for when the game was first announced. Ironically, that also made the weaker sections stand out more.

Every time the game gave me a fantastic boss fight or an extended combat sequence, I was reminded of how much fun Wolverine could be. That made the slower, more heavily scripted sections feel even more noticeable.

Combat is doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to the actual gameplay, and while that combat is very good, the systems surrounding it don’t always reach the same standard.

A Little More Variety Would Have Gone a Long Way

I finished Marvel’s Wolverine in roughly 15–18 hours, which is actually a length I appreciate.

Not every game needs to be 50 or 100 hours long, and Wolverine certainly doesn’t need a gigantic open world packed with meaningless side activities simply to justify its price.

The problem isn’t the length. It’s the distribution of gameplay within that length.

By the final hours, I had started to feel fatigue despite the campaign being relatively short. That’s not because the game overstays its welcome in terms of total runtime, but because the experience doesn’t always provide enough variation between its strongest moments.

There is a fantastic action game here. But when the game repeatedly moves between combat, heavily guided traversal, scripted sequences, cutscenes and QTEs, the formula can begin to feel predictable.

And once you understand the rhythm, you start anticipating the next section rather than being surprised by it. That’s especially unfortunate because the game doesn’t need a dramatic overhaul to fix the problem.

More substantial puzzles, More opportunities to explore, Less hand-holding, A few longer combat encounters, More abilities introduced earlier. And perhaps simply a few moments where Insomniac gets out of the way and lets you experiment with Logan’s abilities.

Those relatively small changes could have made a significant difference.

Conclusion

Marvel’s Wolverine isn’t the masterpiece I secretly hoped it would be, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a great time playing it.

Insomniac has created an excellent interpretation of Logan, supported by strong performances, impressive character animation and a story that kept me invested throughout most of the campaign. The cinematic presentation is spectacular, and when everything comes together particularly during the game’s best boss fights Wolverine can feel like exactly the game I had been waiting years to play.

The combat is the highlight.

It is violent, aggressive and satisfying, and once Logan’s abilities begin opening up, there are some genuinely fantastic encounters hidden within the campaign. Where the game falls short is everything surrounding that combat.

The constant guidance, limited exploration, repetitive structure and abundance of Quick Time Events gradually wore me down. I didn’t need Wolverine to become another open-world superhero game. I simply wanted more opportunities to actually be Wolverine rather than being guided from one cinematic moment to the next. Even with those frustrations, I never regretted playing it.

There is a lot to like here, and Insomniac has clearly delivered a Wolverine game with plenty of personality, spectacle and brutality. But considering the talent behind it and the amount of time we spent waiting for Logan’s solo adventure, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just one step away from being something truly exceptional.

Marvel’s Wolverine is a very good action game. I just wish it trusted its claws a little more.