As a huge fan of Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, and an admirer of their other titles like Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, it was with some excitement that I went along to Sony’s London office this week to play Marvel’s Wolverine.
Due to drop in less than a month, Wolverine is a PS5 exclusive that looks to be taking the lessons learned from Insomniac’s three Spidey games and applying them aggressively to a new central hero.
What’s interesting is that Wolverine feels similar as a game in some respects to Insomniac’s previous work, while also having some aspects that seem totally different.
Order Marvel's Wolverine from Curry's (£62.99)Wolvie, for example, doesn’t have a wide open world to explore like ol’ web-head, but he does have lively combat that really makes you feel like a superhero.
At the preview event, I played Marvel's Wolverine for a couple of hours, and it did find it to be something of a mixed bag. While some elements felt really great in the moment, others erred towards cloying annoyance, which is the last thing you want.
Firstly, the combat feels super satisfying, and I got to experience a few different slash-happy scenarios from different points in the game.
We started off at the very beginning of the tutorial, the ideal place to learn the basics of hammering Square and Triangle to shred your enemies to bits (the gore levels in the game, if you were wondering, can be turned down in the settings menu).
When you fill up Logan’s rage meter, things get even more gruesome, to the point that you're literally just tearing people apart. It feels darkly great, and you really feel like you're living as the character, which is definitely a win.
The combat also involves dodging and countering, which will feel fairly natural to Spidey alumni, and special attacks that take time to charge up (think of the slimy Venom-tainted moves from Spider-Man 2).
This all felt pretty solid, with tougher enemies and ones with shields offering a bit more of a challenge as the goon gangs you’re fighting get more varied. Again, there’s shades of Spidey in this, and the Arkham games that came before them.
Aside from your bog standard goons, we also got to fight some ninjas, who are much trickier to outwit, and a giant Sentinel robot in a boss battle.
This boss battle took me a couple of attempts to clear, providing that the game does have some difficultly spikes in store, despite its lead character’s immortality and overpowered nature. The Sentintel mainly stayed in one place, leaving us to learn its attack timings and wait for the right moments to strike its weak points.
As boss battles go, it wasn’t anything truly special, but it will scratch a certain itch for X-Men fans who grew up seeing Sentinel fights in the classic animated series (which is, of course, now revived on Disney Plus).
One interesting thing to note is that Logan’s healing factor does not fully protect you from dying. It functions more similarly to the mechanic in God of War that lets you recover from certain death once. If you fall a second time, you’ll be reloading your previous checkpoint.
Also, in the moment-to-moment combat, you have to take certain actions to trigger Logan to heal himself - it doesn’t just happen all the time, automatically, like you might expect. Instead, there are specific attacks that will trigger it, forcing you to pick between replenishing your health or topping up your rage meter.
View Green Video on the source websiteOne thing that felt hugely positive to me is that the story seems really fresh and unguessable.
They've surrounded Wolverine with a lot of characters who are normally his enemies, like Sabretooth, Mystique and Mr Sinister, and they're presented as a team of allies. It feels like a question of, ‘Who's gonna turn on him first? Who's gonna be the main baddie of this thing?’
As someone who's seen all the X-Men movies (and has just started rewatching them in preparation for Avengers Doomsday), I feel like I don't know what's gonna happen, which is great.
The performances, from what I’ve seen so far, feel very top-tier as well, which has also been a strength of the Spidey games.
If Insomniac can land this story’s twists and turns in a satisfying way, with these stellar actors playing the key roles, this could be something special for players that never skip the cut-scenes.
Liam McIntyre just feels right for the lead role, which seems to be a version of Logan who hasn’t fully embraced the dark, loner tendencies that he has in the films yet (perhaps that is where his story will end up, though).
It’s also worth noting that Troy Baker stole a number of scenes as Nathaniel Essex (known to comic book fans as Mr Sinister). He could yet give Adam Driver, who’s just been cast in the same role for the next X-Men film, a run for his money.
He was bringing all sorts of energy to the role, at times being an Xavier-like mentor and at others being relentlessly evil. It’ll be cool to see that duality play out.
And finally, there is one negative thing that I feel I have to flag, although it is hard to describe. Marvel’s Wolverine feels… and I'm struggling to think of a better way to say it than this… a bit too “gamey”.
I don't mind the fact they've given Wolverine a skill tree, and that he's sniffing an evidence trail to follow around. Both of those choices make sense to me, especially the latter one, given that his superhuman sense of smell is well established in the comics and movies.
What really got on my nerves was the amount of times the game asks you to do a really gamey task. Like, properly cliched stuff that feels a bit outdated for a modern AAA game.
For example, at one point between missions, I was given the old, "Oh, Logan, you better go talk to three people." Dutifully, but begrudgingly, I went and spoke to the three people.
One of them wanted me to look through their record collection and find the tune they were thinking of. Of course, it was the third and final one that I picked up, forcing me to spend as long as possible in this ‘wandering about’ phase of the game.
And what happened when I’d ticked off the three people I was told to talk to? Well, of course, it could only be this: "Well, you'd better go talk to one more person."
It felt like I was on rails, that I was ticking things off a list, all to pad out some time before the next main mission.
And I don’t think that Wolverine, as I understand the character, would have the patience for that. He'd just grumble, "Okay, bub, whatever," and then wander off and do his own thing. But, this being a game, you have to do what you’re told to unlock the next chapter.
Hopefully, this is an isolated incident. I knew not to expect a full open world with complete freedom to do whatever I want, but Wolverine is a free spirit, and I hope the full game gives him some time to strike out on his own and do things his way.
That’s part of the fantasy of being him, after all, along with all the bloody dismemberment.
Marvel’s Wolverine launches 15 September 2026 on PS5. You can order your copy now.
Read more on upcoming games:
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