Marvel's Wolverine Preview: Is this the best Wolverine game to date?

So, the Wolverine game. Insomniac's title has been at the centre of a heated online debate for the last few days, since new previews and gameplay were released ahead of its launch on PS5 on September 15. Many are criticising the game for looking rather conventional and outdated, although a question should be asked: are we assessing video games fairly on their own merits, or is the context conditioning our opinions?

In Marvel's Wolverine's case, the recent debacle over the discontinuation of physical discs in PlayStation has created a wave of negativity and animosity towards Sony that has spread to the game undeservedly (and will likely affect Sony's next big first party game, God of War: Laufey, and every title that comes after it until the feared 2028 date).

But there is another factor that is negatively affecting the perception of the game: the current state of the industry and the self-imposed expectations created by Sony. When AAA games (or simply big budget games, without tags) take longer and longer to make, fewer of those games release every year (Sony seems to have settled into two big first-party releases per year for the PS5 generation), so every title is held to a higher standard.

And Sony's standards have been the highest in the industry for a while, with games like Uncharted 4, God of War, and The Last of Us: Part II being the benchmark for action-adventure single-player narrative games with an excruciating level of polish and detail that push technology further than ever before and target 90+ on Metacritic every time.

But sometimes that isn't necessary.

Not every game needs to be a masterpiece in its genre; a well-designed, engaging, and fun game is enough, even if it doesn't reinvent the genre. And for a Wolverine game, the list of requirements is relatively simple: it needs to have a lot of entertaining action sections, you need to feel like a powerful killing machine, and it should have a hefty dose of fan service to honour the vast background of the character.

Marvel's Wolverine, from the creators of Marvel's Spider-Man, looks confident enough that it will fill all those aspects. Will it be better than the Spider-Man games, or will it be good enough to get an immediate slot representing Sony at The Game Awards? Maybe yes, maybe not... most likely not, as it also seems it still has some issues and creativity is also limited by what the character can and cannot do. However, if you are a Wolverine fan and have been dreaming of a good, proper, and original Wolverine game, this should be more than enough.

That said, the criticisms you have probably seen online, while exaggerated by the circumstances, are not completely baseless either. After playing Marvel's Wolverine for two hours, there were some things I wasn't fully convinced by. As I went further into the demo, some doubts were cleared, while others remained, waiting for the final game before being solved.

The story, of course, will have a major importance in the definitive appeal of the game. In the demo, I played through several key story moments of the first act of the game, and in between all the slashing, there were also the typical slower, narrative moments, when you slowly walk around a closed location, speaking to characters and overhearing interesting conversations and details from background characters if you take your time to fully explore and see everything.

The lack of the X-Men, who don't yet exist in the "Insomniac Marvel universe", and more popular mutant characters (except for Mystique and Jean Grey), may give Wolverine a slight disadvantage over the Spider-Man games and their huge roster of iconic characters and villains; although this is also a good chance for Insomniac to make other less popular characters like Callisto, Leech, Nature Girl, or Tyger Tiger shine, and with Nathaniel Essex (Mister Sinister) acting as a strong and tragic antagonist (who will also seemingly be the main villain in Marvel Studios' X-Men film in 2028, played by Adam Driver).

How sharp are Wolverine's claws?

Of course, the main concern of anyone interested in a Wolverine game is how the combat feels. And since I picked up the controller, the first thing I wondered was why the attacks are assigned to the face buttons (Square and Triangle) instead of the triggers, which are used to bring out the claws when standing still (just for a cool "snikt!" moment) and in some quick time events.

God of War successfully used the triggers to make you feel the weight of Kratos' axe, and I thought Wolverine's claws could have had a similar haptic feel if you used them to slash with a variety of attacks, maybe even using both in cool combos. That said, it's evident pretty quickly that the combat is more fast-paced, this being a true hack-n-slash, so it's not necessarily a bad thing that the controls are less innovative but more conventional and comfortable.

I did find, at least at the start, a lack of signature Wolverine moves and more complex combos. While more attacks and actions are unlocked as you level up, the real sauce of the combat system isn't necessarily on button combinations but how you move from enemy to enemy to increase the "rage" system: as you chain more kills, a bar fills up, and when you increase your rage, your attacks become more powerful, until it gets to level three and you can use special finishing moves. The key to make the combat entertaining is to fight as efficiently as possible to keep your rage meter as high as possible all the time (which also lets you regenerate if you are defeated).

Combat is entertaining, but not revolutionary, and the most fun I had in the demo was in the special challenges (that are hidden in doors/portals) that ask the player to reach the goal or kill a certain number of enemies in a limited time to get medals.

In these games, when you are naturally more powerful than anyone you face (because you are Wolverine, after all), the fun lies, like in those Batman Arkham games, in challenging yourself to be as efficient as possible, wisely moving from enemy to enemy to cause the greatest amount of damage and waiting to use the special moves so that they deliver the best effect on one or several enemies. In short, not just making sure you survive the combat, but that you go through it as quickly and stylishly as possible.

Sadly, the main boss I encountered in the demo did not allow for any of that. It was a Sentinel, a giant robot, and you have to patiently wait for it to lower its arms, spam the attack buttons on the arms (huge and unresponsive damage sponges), avoid some obviously telegraphed missiles, and then repeat for a very long time. It was... not very fun. At all.

The Sentinel certainly has a very archaic boss design (some people on the Internet found it to be exactly the same as a 2007 Ben-10 game). And that fight, alongside the linear design of levels and predictable mechanics (like following a scent displayed on screen as a continuous line) have people worried about Marvel's Wolverine not exactly being the boldest and smartest game of the year.

I played Marvel's Wolverine with an open mind and enjoyed most of it. I don't think a game about Wolverine needs to have an open-world, complex RPG-like mechanics, or innovative combat systems, so that's fine. At the same time, I don't think there's anything remotely spectacular or amazing here to wow somebody who doesn't really care about Wolverine or Marvel and hopes to be won over by the mechanics and game design.

Insomniac's game may be a very good, likely the best Wolverine game ever made, but that may translate to "just" being an okay or above average action game. Which is what the Spider-Man games were... except that, in those games, the individual idiosyncrasy of the character (the web-swinging) made movement and exploration incredibly satisfying and unique; a unique trait exclusive to Spider-Man that Wolverine simply doesn't have.

Insomniac cannot make miracles, but they certainly know how to make very good video games, so we should have total confidence that Marvel's Wolverine will be another one of those, even if not their most memorable and innovative creation.