Insomniac Games, the Sony-owned studio behind the acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man series, is releasing Marvel’s Wolverine, marking the character’s first video game-starring role since film tie-ins in the 2000s. The game takes a similar narrative approach to Spider-Man, remixing inspirations into a new continuity. Players first meet Wolverine as he is discovered, wild-eyed and practically nude, before hearing a voice (provided by Troy Baker) promising a safe place “for people like us.”
Story and Setting
The voice belongs to Nathaniel Essex, also known as Mister Sinister, who serves as a father figure to Wolverine and operator of the mutant-liberating Team X. There are no X-Men in this universe; instead, the concept’s components are split between Sinister’s Team X and the Mariposa School for mutants, run by Jean Grey. Wolverine’s teammates include traditional baddies Sabretooth and Mystique, with signs pointing toward a Wolverine-Grey romance. The narrative is foregrounded, but it’s not what will most occupy players.
Combat and Gameplay
In the Spider-Man games, time was divided between fighting crooks and web-slinging through New York. In Wolverine, it’s almost entirely the former. The combat system, at least in the early hours, hasn’t evolved far from Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, which were inspired by Rocksteady and Warner Bros’ Batman: Arkham series. Enemies swarm from all sides, with attacks flashing a bright-blue for parry or red for dodge. Players bounce from one target to the next, dealing retribution. The main difference is that Wolverine doesn’t share Spidey and Batman’s no-kill ethos, and Insomniac delights in running with that. Each claw stab sends gobbets of blood flying, occasionally severing a limb. When Wolverine is attacked, flesh strips from his metallic bones.
Violence and Technical Execution
This dynamic gore is technically impressive, underscored by the DualSense controller’s haptics, which send each hit thudding into the palm. Yet it all feels rather weightless. Audio-visual effects aside, Wolverine’s adamantium claws are functionally the same as Spidey or Batman’s fists, interrupting attacks only when the combat systems deem it appropriate. This becomes apparent in a boss fight against a Sentinel, a colossal robot that cannot bleed and barely reacts to the hundred slashes required to bring it down. The fight reveals the game’s combat systems involve tapping the square button and studying on-screen gauges. Wolverine’s healing factor is represented by a rage meter that fills with each hit, allowing resurrection as long as it’s passed a certain threshold, while cooldowns limit more powerful attacks.
Conclusion and Release Date
Wolverine is in some ways the perfect video game hero, being a walking excuse for violence. But to capture his abilities—claws that slice through anything, a healing factor making him long-term immortal but short-term vulnerable—would require a greater rethink of standard action mechanics than Insomniac seems willing to risk. The first couple of hours leave the player feeling not like they’ve embodied the hero but rather that they’ve played another perfectly solid Insomniac superhero game. Unless the story has more continuity-bending tricks, it seems unlikely to drive the direction of any future films. Marvel’s Wolverine comes to PlayStation 5 on 15 September.
