Marvel’s Wolverine is Shockingly Bad (Review)
Marvel’s Wolverine on PS5 is a game I was wary of, but given the pedigree of Insomniac and their success with the Spider-Man games, I was willing to hear them out. In this critical review/analysis of Marvel’s Wolverine on PS5, let’s talk about the game’s combat, narrative and structural issues, to see how the game instead ended up as a fascinating disaster.
This review contains no spoilers, and review code was provided by PlayStation. All footage is captured on a base PS5 on Performance Mode.
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Insomniac have proven themselves to be really good at making superhero games. Spider-Man 2018 is a hallmark of the genre in my opinion. Despite my reservations then about their upcoming release Marvel’s Wolverine on PS5, and how it seemed to be leaning into the kind of AAA design I don’t care for, I was willing to go along with them as they told their original story of Logan’s origins.
What I found, however, ended up as a kind of fascinating failure—trying to apply the structure of Spider-Man to a character where that structure didn’t make any sense, and falling foul of the absolute worst of AAA fare in the process. Endless walk and talks and scenarios where you do little more than hold up on the analogue stick turn what should have been a 4-5 hour brawler into a 10-15 hour slog. What’s more, the action is far jankier than a AAA game of this calibre should be, featuring repetitive combat and one of the worst cameras I’ve come across. The story it’s all in service of isn’t up to much either—leaving us with little more than an identity crisis of a video game.
In this critical review/analysis of Marvel’s Wolverine on PS5 then, let’s dig into the combat, design and story of the game to break down exactly why the game ended up as the kind of empty calorie experience it is.
0:00 – Intro
1:26 – Wolverine is a fascinating failure
3:51 – Wolverine’s intro problem
5:22 – Insomniac doesn’t want you to play their games
6:28 – Wolverine’s janky combat
9:56 – The big action set pieces
10:49 – The problem with collectables and exploration
12:19 – A lacklustre tale
13:46 – The empty calories should at least taste good
15:12 – Outro
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