Marvel’s Wolverine game review: Logan deserved better

Plenty of rage, but not enough depth

Combat is where Marvel’s Wolverine makes its strongest first impression. Logan can dodge, parry, leap towards enemies and chain together claw attacks, while special techniques offer a quick way out when he is surrounded. His Rage meter builds as he attacks and successfully defends himself, gradually making him more powerful and eventually allowing him to go full rage mode for a while.

It feels fast and suitably forceful, particularly during the opening hours. Unlike Spider-Man, who can retreat into the air or use webs and gadgets to control a crowd, Wolverine works better when he stays close to his opponents. His healing ability also encourages an aggressive style of play because taking damage also adds to his rage meter.

Unfortunately, the combat does not develop as much as I expected. There are new techniques, upgrades and DNA-based bonuses to unlock, but many encounters can still be cleared using the same small selection of attacks. Once I found a combination of parries, leaps and special moves that worked, there was little reason to abandon it.

The increasingly familiar enemy groups do not help. Some require slightly different timing or attacks, but battles soon settle into a routine, while several boss encounters rely more on patience than any meaningful change in strategy. Wolverine may not fight with Spider-Man’s acrobatic style, but a simpler combat system still needs enemies that force the player to rethink how it works. Marvel’s Wolverine rarely does that.

Logan deserves a stronger story

That said, Insomniac has done a pretty good job crafting Logan’s character on-screen. Voice actor Liam McIntyre also gives him the necessary roughness without reducing him to an angry man who occasionally speaks between fights. His relationships with Sabretooth and Jean Grey reveal more vulnerable parts of the character, and some of the quieter scenes work because the game allows him to be uncomfortable rather than constantly heroic. All of these made it very difficult to not want to root and feel for Logan throughout my time playing the game.

Yet the wider story struggles to support that portrayal. It jumps between personal trauma, mutant persecution, Team X’s history and the expected comic-book conspiracy, but not all of these threads are given enough space. Some revelations will also be familiar to anyone with even just a passing knowledge of Wolverine and the X-Men.

I just felt there is an odd mismatch between the story’s interest in Logan’s troubled past and the way the game delivers parts of it through optional lore and combat challenges. These memories should make him easier to understand. Instead, they sometimes feel like another category of content waiting to be unlocked.

Final thoughts

Marvel’s Wolverine is not a bad game. It is polished, visually impressive and mercifully free from the sort of open-world padding that can turn a straightforward adventure into a slog. But the best moments of the game are when its combat, performances and spectacle come together exactly as intended – giving players a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

However, those moments have to carry a campaign that becomes repetitive much earlier than it should. The combat looks brutal without possessing much depth, the attractive locations offer little freedom and the story does not make enough of its conflicted lead.

Wolverine himself survives the experience. He is angry, damaged and far more interesting than the game surrounding him. After what Insomniac achieved with Spider-Man, however, I expected more than a polished action game that too often relies on Logan’s claws to do all the work, and frankly, not much else.

Marvel’s Wolverine releases on 15 September on the PlayStation 5.