Marvel's Wolverine Review

Insomniac Games has already established itself as one of the strongest superhero game developers around. Its Spider-Man games showed that the studio understands how to turn a famous Marvel character into a game that feels exciting without losing what makes the hero special. With Marvel's Wolverine, however, Insomniac steps away from the open-world structure and lighter superhero tone of Spider-Man to build something much more focused.

That change suits Wolverine surprisingly well. Instead of giving you another huge city packed with activities, collectibles, and side missions, Marvel's Wolverine keeps you moving through a largely linear adventure that shifts between different parts of the world. The pacing is quicker, the violence is considerably harsher, and the story spends more time dealing with Logan's past, relationships, and emotional baggage.

If you've played Insomniac's previous superhero games, you'll still recognize some familiar ideas.

You earn experience, unlock abilities, find new suits, and gradually make Wolverine stronger. But the way everything is presented feels different enough that you shouldn't expect this to be Spider-Man with claws, simply. This is a more concentrated experience built around Wolverine's personality, his brutal fighting style, and a story that understands why the character has remained so popular for decades.

At the heart of Marvel's Wolverine is a story about Logan trying to escape the person he has spent so much of his life becoming. After years of attempting to leave that part of himself behind, he is dragged back into the world he wanted to escape when a dangerous new threat begins targeting mutants on a massive scale.

His return to Team X puts him directly in the middle of a conflict driven by Bolivar Trask and his campaign against mutantkind. What begins as a larger conflict gradually becomes more personal for Logan, forcing him to reconnect with old allies and confront parts of his past he would rather leave buried.

With several locations in the story, such as Canada, Japan, and Madripoor, the adventure never feels stuck in one place.

Each setting has its own atmosphere and gameplay style, but they remain centered on Logan and the people caught up in the conflict. The constantly shifting locations also keep the campaign moving: instead of spending hours on one giant map, you are always thrust into a new environment or situation.

On paper, the story could easily sound like a familiar superhero setup. Still, Insomniac does a good job making the characters feel like more than pieces being moved around a plot. The performances play a major role here, particularly Liam McIntyre as Wolverine. He captures Logan's anger, frustration, grunts, screams, quieter moments, and emotional lows, and yet the character doesn't feel like a one-note angry man.

Hugh Jackman will probably always be the definitive Wolverine for many people, but McIntyre comes surprisingly close to capturing the character's presence. You get a sense of the anger underneath Logan's personality, but you also see the sadness and vulnerability that make him more interesting.

His relationship with Victor is another big part of the story. Characters like Essex and Mystique are also given strong performances. But the relationship that really shines is Jean Grey and Wolverine. Insomniac does their dynamic very well, giving the two characters enough room to grow instead of just using their relationship as background material.

That balance of action and character development is what makes the story work.

Marvel's Wolverine is brutal and full of big moments, but it is also surprisingly heartfelt when it slows down. Betrayal, old relationships, Logan's history, and his struggle with who he's become all fit naturally into the adventure.

One of the biggest differences between Marvel's Wolverine and Insomniac's Spider-Man games is the structure. This is not an open-world game, and that decision works in its favor. Instead of constantly distracting you with side activities, Insomniac keeps the campaign moving from one mission to another.

You still get opportunities to explore, but exploration is designed around the mission you're currently playing. One section might give you a larger part of Madripoor to move through while you use Wolverine's senses to track enemies and investigate your surroundings. Another section might emphasize climbing, platforming, or stealth.

Traversal itself feels appropriately physical.

Wolverine is not as acrobatic as Spider-Man, but he is surprisingly quick and agile. You can slide along zip lines, clear large gaps, climb obstacles, and move through environments with the kind of exaggerated mobility you would expect from a superhero. The movement also feeds directly into the action, letting you close distances quickly and launch yourself toward enemies.

The game makes particularly good use of its mission structure for set pieces. You might move through a tense story sequence, fight a massive Sentinel, and then find yourself speeding through encounters on a bike. The game rarely leaves you in the same place for too long, which helps maintain the fast pace.

There are no traditional side missions, but Nightmare Doors give you optional activities to tackle when you want something outside the main campaign. These challenges can involve surviving waves of enemies, completing traversal sections, or reaching a specific destination through a parkour-focused challenge.

Nightmare Doors are more useful than simple optional distractions because they connect directly to progression.

Completing them can unlock adaptations and reveal additional fragments of Logan's past. They largely build on combat and traversal systems you already use during the campaign, but they give you a reason to spend more time mastering those mechanics.

The campaign also includes a collection of Wolverine suits and claws to unlock. Some require materials to craft, while others become available naturally as you progress through the story. Certain designs are connected to Nightmare Door challenges, giving you another reason to explore the optional content.

Seeing Wolverine's different designs pulled from his long history is one of the more enjoyable parts of the progression system. Crafting additional suits can also provide extra health upgrades, so collecting them is not purely cosmetic.

If there is one part of Marvel's Wolverine that absolutely needed to work, it was the combat. Thankfully, this is where Insomniac's superhero-game experience shows. Wolverine's combat is built around his claws, but the system goes beyond simply pressing attack buttons until enemies fall over. Every slash, parry, slice, and takedown has a noticeable sense of impact.

The DualSense features also make the hits feel more physical, particularly when you are tearing through groups of enemies.

You can lunge toward opponents, leap over obstacles, close gaps quickly, and use environmental objects to make encounters more dynamic. There are launch points that let you throw Wolverine into enemies, opportunities to set his claws on fire for additional damage, and environmental takedowns that can get extremely brutal.

You can kick enemies into furnaces, smash them against objects, and use the environment to finish fights in ways that make Logan feel genuinely dangerous. It fits the character much better than a clean, overly restrained combat system would.

Wolverine also has a rage meter that fills as you deal damage. Once it reaches Tier 3, you can unleash much more powerful attacks that allow Logan to tear through enemies spectacularly. These attacks look brutal without becoming repetitive too quickly, and they give you another reason to stay aggressive during combat.

As you progress, you also unlock area-of-effect attacks that can hit several enemies at once.

This becomes particularly useful when fights become chaotic, and you find yourself surrounded. The progression system itself is fairly straightforward. You earn XP throughout the campaign and use it to gain technique points, which can then be spent on roughly two dozen skills. These include multi-target attacks, health restoration, drop kicks, stealth takedowns, and special moves such as Tornado Spin.

Adaptations further support the technique system. These work more like passive bonuses, allowing you to reduce incoming melee damage, recover health after successful parries, or increase the timing window for certain defensive actions.

This creates some useful combinations. Tornado Spin, for example, can hit multiple enemies and build rage quickly. At the same time, the right adaptation can make that approach even more effective by helping you take advantage of the rage meter and survive longer during drawn-out encounters.

Wolverine's healing factor is also tied into the rage system.

If Logan's health reaches zero while rage is available, that rage is consumed, and he regenerates. If there is no rage left, however, Wolverine dies. It is an interesting way to translate his famous healing ability into a game mechanic, though it can feel slightly strange given the character's established powers.

The lowest difficulty setting removes that restriction and allows Wolverine to regenerate automatically when his health is depleted. It's a fair compromise, giving players an option that better reflects Wolverine's healing factor while still keeping the game balanced.

Combat is one of the game's strongest elements, though the enemy variety is less impressive.

The standard enemies are mostly cyborgs and Sentinels, with different versions appearing over the course of the campaign. They can still be dangerous, especially when several attack at once, but the limited variety might get repetitive for some players.

Fortunately, the boss encounters help make up for it. The boss roster is one of the game's strongest aspects, with battles designed as large cinematic showcases. Encounters with Omega Red and the Sentinel are particularly memorable, even though the occasional quick-time event appears during some sequences.

The biggest gameplay weakness is stealth. The game doesn't force you to approach every situation stealthily, but certain sections clearly encourage it. Hiding in tall grass and silently taking down enemies works well enough, but the mechanics feel basic compared to the rest of the game. For a character like Wolverine, stealth makes sense when the situation calls for it, but these sections could have used more depth.

The rest of the combat feels so developed that the simpler stealth mechanics stand out.

Marvel's Wolverine looks exactly like the kind of major PlayStation production you would expect from Insomniac. Character models are detailed, environments are packed with visual information, and the effects during combat help sell the force behind Wolverine's attacks.

The different locations also give the game plenty of visual variety. Moving between Canada, Japan, and Madripoor keeps the scenery from getting repetitive, while the focused level design lets Insomniac pay more attention to individual environments rather than filling a gigantic open world.

The presentation is particularly strong during the larger set pieces. The game's visual effects and animation really shine in massive Sentinels, large-scale battles, and fast-moving sequences. PS5 Pro performance is also solid in Performance Pro mode with enhanced ray tracing enabled. Overall, it's a smooth experience with a few minor drops now and then, and the loading times are extremely quick.

There are some technical issues. Wolverine's animations can behave weirdly sometimes, like when he's stuck in a corner. There are rare occasions when the game will just stop progressing and force you to reload from a checkpoint. These issues are minor enough that they never seriously interfere with the experience and would likely be straightforward fixes for a patch.

The sound design does a lot of work alongside the combat. Every slash, parry, impact, and environmental takedown is given enough weight to make the action feel physical. Combined with the DualSense feedback, the audio reinforces the sensation that Wolverine hits things with considerably more force than an ordinary superhero.

The performances are arguably even more important.

Liam McIntyre's voice work gives Logan the right balance of anger, exhaustion, pain, and vulnerability. The supporting cast also delivers strong performances, helping the relationships feel believable rather than simply serving the next part of the plot. That attention to character performance matters most in the quieter moments. Marvel's Wolverine is at its best when the sound and acting step back from the explosions and allow Logan's personality to come through.

Marvel's Wolverine is a strong example of Insomniac understanding when not to repeat its own formula. After building its reputation around the Spider-Man games, the studio could have easily made another large open-world superhero game and simply replaced web-swinging with claws. Instead, Wolverine takes a more focused approach, and that decision makes the campaign feel more purposeful.

The roughly 20-hour campaign rarely feels like it is wasting your time. You move between locations, encounter new situations, fight increasingly dangerous enemies, and gradually learn more about Logan and his past. The lack of traditional side missions might disappoint players who enjoyed filling out the huge maps in Spider-Man, but it also keeps the story moving at a much better pace.

Combat is the real star. Wolverine feels appropriately brutal, and the combination of claws, environmental attacks, rage abilities, adaptations, and progression gives you plenty of ways to make him stronger. The enemy variety could be better, and the stealth sections are noticeably weaker than the rest of the game, but the boss encounters and larger set pieces compensate for many of those shortcomings.

Most importantly, the game understands that Wolverine is not simply a character defined by violence.

The story gives you plenty of action, but it also spends time with Logan's relationships, regrets, anger, and emotional struggles. Liam McIntyre's performance sells that side of the character, while Wolverine and Jean Grey's relationship becomes one of the narrative highlights.

The result is a Wolverine experience that feels both familiar and fresh. It draws on the character's long history through its suits, relationships, and story elements while giving him a modern gameplay system built specifically around his abilities.

Insomniac could have pushed further in a few areas, particularly enemy variety and stealth, but neither issue is enough to undermine the overall experience. What you get instead is a tightly paced superhero adventure that knows exactly what it wants to be.

After years without a truly great Wolverine game, Insomniac's take may very well become the new benchmark for the character. It is violent, emotional, focused, and surprisingly heartfelt, while still delivering the kind of blockbuster action you would expect from the studio. Marvel's Wolverine does not try to be Spider-Man with claws. It gives Logan his own space to breathe, and that may be the smartest decision Insomniac could have made.