Marvel's Wolverine is shaping up to be a great way to unleash havoc as the comic book world's foremost mutant, bottling his rage and passion into a cathartic third-person action game that promises a surprisingly emotional story.
The first thing you get to do in Marvel's Wolverine on PS5 is 'SNIKT!' out the character's claws by pressing the L2 and R2 buttons simultaneously. This was the only evidence needed to suggest that Insomniac has once again perfectly understood what it means to place you in the spandex of one of Marvel's most famous superheroes.
This feeling only deepened further into the two-hour preview. You're not just playing Wolverine, you are Wolverine. By mixing in other iconic aspects such as the character's rage, brutality, and empathy for his fellow mutants, this is clearly the studio's main goal. So far it's making for an unabashedly epic cinematic character action game that may very well serve the definitive origin story for the mutant.
Linear Structure and Rage Mechanic
Marvel's Wolverine isn't an open-world game. With Wolverine's fighting style and motivation being a lot more direct than Marvel's Spider-Man in approach, locking you within a relatively confined series of locations to dispatch mobs of foes works well to make you feel the true power of Logan's rage.
This was evident from the start of the demo, where Wolverine, alongside fellow Team X members Sabertooth and Mystique, find themselves on an off-the-book mission to rescue their kidnapped mentor, Nathaniel Essex. The game wastes no time in letting you dig your claws in deep to anyone brave to come in close. You're able to leap a pretty impressive distance directly into enemies with just a tap of the triangle button, closing the gap in an instant to keep up Wolverine's kill count at an extremely disturbing pace.
Rage is treated in-game as a literal mechanic. Operating as a meter, Rage has different tiers that you build up the more you kill and the quicker you're able to do it. Tier 1 gives you access to Wolverine's standard mix of combat options, while Tier 2 lets you finish every combo ender with a brutal cinematic finisher. Tier 2 also grants access to Logan's Last Stand ability, which ensures that having your health bar depleted isn't the end and allows him to regenerate it back. Rage's Tier 3 sees the screen wash out to let Logan target enemies using his inherent animalistic sense and dispatch foes with a single button press. Tier 3 is immensely overpowered, but that's the idea. This last Tier is incredibly hard to maintain, only letting you continue the berserker barrage for as long as you're able to maintain the combo.
Combat and Narrative Depth
Even outside this Rage system, playing as Wolverine is ferocious fun. Swiping away with your metal claws has a great sense of feedback. Whenever button mashing the Square button feels repetitive, you can shake up his moveset by deploying cooldown manoeuvres like the Spiral Strike or Tornado Spin. In between sections where Wolverine is forced to fight through the pain due to surrounding mutant dampeners and the odd stealth sequence, the handful of missions were full of variety.
Equally as brilliant as the intense action moments are the brief instances of slow, narrative moments, specifically in the second section of the preview that took place in Madripoor. Here, conversations with Mystique, Sabertooth, Tyger, and others reveal more about Logan's relationship with each as part of Essex's ragtag Team X mutant outfit, years before the term 'X-Men' would be uttered. Knowing that one day Logan will see these people as his mortal enemies is actually heartbreaking. Insomniac is clearly having fun playing with expectations, asking you to fight alongside Mystique and Sabertooth as partners, all the while knowing where Logan's story is ultimately headed.
Liam McIntyre's central performance as Logan himself contributes to this. He can do gruff, but in these slower moments, there's plenty of sombre nuance and the character's internal conflict hinted at.
Scale and Boss Fights
Despite being a mostly linear affair, Marvel's Wolverine isn't skimping on scale. The second part of the preview kicked off with a giant boss fight against a prototype Sentinel. It was impressive to look at, but as an actual boss, it was a bit of a letdown since the bulk of it just had Wolverine dodging lasers and then waiting for the right moment to slash away at its two arms. The direction of the fight felt epic, especially when it moved outside and team partners got in on the action, but the evolution of what it required wasn't particularly inventive.
What Insomniac is crafting is a Logan origin story for the ages. One that pays tribute to certain silver age comic book arcs long-time X-Men fans will notice, while still aiming to subvert these expectations by giving you a glimpse into Wolverine's life before he meets the mutant team he's destined to be a part of. Combat is fast, ferocious and true to the character even if it isn't the most revolutionary, and while not open-world, the linear structure is giving Marvel's Wolverine the thrust and cinematic quality hoped for. Insomniac is yet to miss with any of its Marvel games, and despite the sharp change of structure and approach here, Marvel's Wolverine looks to be continuing this trend. Marvel's Wolverine is scheduled to launch exclusively on PS5 this September 15, 2026.
