Insomniac and Marvel has been quite a positive combo for the last decade, with the success of the Spider-Man games, albeit it being one of the most recognizable comic book characters of all time. So they then ask the question: what if we try with the other most popular comic book character of all time,who’s part of a certain team of gifted people and is played by a guy who’s played on Broadway or something.
Marvel’s Wolverine is perhaps an interesting take on Logan and his misadventures as the man with the claws, who also has the bloodlust to take over everyone in his way, while also being the kindest soul out there. And it’s very apparent when you play-through this one.
How does it compare to its more open-worldy compatriots back in the City of New York? The no-so huge man has its ups and downs, I can say.
Presentation![]()
The game looks incredible on the PS5, with how it smoothly transitions from scene to scene, or even scene to gameplay without any sort of transition needed is still a marvel (pun intended) thanks to its SSD. And not to mention how the colors pop within its graphical fidelity. From Wolverine’s yellow suits popping within the lights, the purple glow of Jean Grey’s powers, to the many shades of blood red that the enemies spew out, as the consequences of their action to stop Wolverine, is quite amazing.
Performance-wise on the PlayStation 5, you’ll be looking at solid 60fps for the duration of the game if you play it on Performance Mode all the way, while the Fidelity Mode does lend it with better fidelity and even Ray Tracing reflections but capped at 30fps, and along with VRR support, it’s a good selection that gives the players choices in how they want to play, graphically.
I will say that I do love how the world-building from the previous series continues with Wolverine. Like you can get glimpse of stuff like seeing a snippet of the Daily Bugle newspaper, or seeing some callbacks of other mutants that we don’t see in-game (like Gambit in one of the interactables within the Madripoor Bar), it helps to see the world being more lived in now, much like how the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is introducing them in.
The cast is also just as incredible, Liam McIntyre is an incredible Wolverine who’s both a grumpy old-man and yet, sounds like he could still shred mountains of men like nothing like a youngin, which we do. All in all, it’s quite a sensible casting choice, along with Troy Baker being the Team X leader Essex, another role where he just melts into it and you could tell he’s enjoying it. Plus, the side cast consisting of the evergreen Debra Wilson as Callisto, and Krizia Bajos (who was in Spider-Man) as Jean Grey, lends itself to the heart and soul of the story as a whole.
Gameplay
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Wolverine’s combat is part visceral hack and slashing, part dance with how it flows during a combat encounter, be it fighting the Reavers or even The Hand, the combat is something different yet familiar with how the ebb and flow of a fight goes. With the ability to parry and dodge attacks, it just plays well as you jump from one enemy to another, parrying attacks as you build the Rage meter, where you could stun the foes and enable a Finisher, which is a truly bloody spectacle with how it goes..
It’s quite a messy affair, when you consider that Logan’s finishers could see you chopping an arm and a leg at times, just like his previous solo Movie game tie-in outing a decade ago, but if these sort of messiness aren’t your thing, the Accessibilities options are your friend, as most of the blood and gore can be turned off amongst the options menu. 
The traversal of the many locales you visit isn’t as spectacular as the webcrawler, as you might expect but Logan does get around places with his claws, by climbing certain spots highlighted and even scale buildings to reach his objective or get some collectables, which are now more in-line with the Wolverine’s aesthetics, getting Whiskey and trinkets from his past (which we’ll cover more in the next segments), and it’s doesn’t break the flow of the game that much, even if it’s a more linear game this time.
And you do earn Experience as you go hacking and slashing your foes, which can be used to upgrade your Wolverine with better moves and better improvement to health regeneration, but mostly to get your arsenal of moves that could see you taking down even Bosses rather quickly as the game progresses.
Content
So, from start to finish, we’ll be looking at a game that you could finish at the 12 to 15 hour mark, even with doing the collectables and the game’s version of side-questing that is the Nightmare Cabin, where trials would await players, and the reward is getting more insight into Logan’s troubled past, along with gaining more abilities to be more powerful, while also getting to doing that meme pose of looking at a picture frame on a bed as a mission selector. 
These Nightmare Trials essentially are challenges where one instance sees you platforming as fast as possible, while others could see Logan surviving wave after wave of enemies in a sort of a roguelite mode, with your best girl Jean Grey as a selectable power-up, of course. It’s a rather interesting distraction that sometimes thematically matches the level you’re at, as well.
And that’s not all, you do also collect suits over the course of the game that fans of our man Logan would have seen on the big or small screen over the past decade. From the likes of the X-Men ‘97 version, with the brash 90s aesthetic, to the 2000s fit that’s all leather black and even my personal favourite, the Old Man Logan suit that’s inspired from both the 2008 comic run and the incredible 2017 movie. It’s a great call back to this character’s history as we delve into this game.
But, the main course of the game is of course the story. The one where we get to see Logan returning to Essex’s Team X after a hiatus and it’s pretty much straight to the action, with some breathing space at the intervals. It’s frantic and very much played like a Marvel Television limited series, with longer stakes and even longer payouts too. It’s interesting and definitely helps expand Earth-1048, the number distinction for this universe, more than ever.
Personal Enjoyment![]()
To me, Marvel’s Wolverine is the same love letter to the 20th Century Fox era of X-Men as the one we saw in the movies recently. It’s story-beat, to which I won’t spoil, is moving how I expected a new version of a Wolverine movie would have taken, all because we already know who our boy is, his motivations and so on, and it doesn’t take much for me and perhaps many others who are fans of Wolverine, to go: “Yeah, I like where this is going,”
It’s a game that knows what the audience wants in return as well, and while there are detractors of how the game looks (which I find weird personally), the mechanics and core gameplay loop is solid, perhaps even more improved that the tech-heavy stuff we saw in the Spider-Man game, all because Logan him is basically a one-man regenerating battle tank in human form. And he can take and give punches (or claws) like nothing else, while also fumbling ladies countless times because of how direct he is.
That’s all I want in a Wolverine game, really, and Insomniac totally nails it. Would it be fun for non-fans of the series? Perhaps so if they don’t mind the carnage and bloody violence, but who knows this could be a turning point for them to be fans of the series as well..
Verdict ![]()
Marvel’s Wolverine is a great addition to the Insomniac lineup, another incredible game that’s built upon the greatness of the Spider-Man Trilogy, while also getting their own identity within the chaos. Have they topped the highs of the Web-Crawlers? Only time will tell.
Just let them claws out and enjoy it.
Played on a PlayStation 5 Slim, Review copy provided by the Publisher.
Marvel’s Wolverine
A great addition to the Insomniac lineup, another incredible game that’s built upon the greatness of the Spider-Man Trilogy, while also getting their own identity within the chaos.
- Presentation 9.5
- Gameplay 9
- Content 8
- Personal Enjoyment 9.5