I’ve finished Marvel’s Wolverine, and Insomniac Games’ latest leaves an odd aftertaste. For the first few hours it gives you exactly what you came for: you’re Logan, you cut, you take punishment, you get back up. Then the campaign rolls on, the limits surface one after another, and nothing really arrives to renew the interest. It’s a good game that never quite becomes the great one we were hoping for.
At a glance
Combat is brutal, weighty and enormously satisfying, and the fantasy of being Wolverine lands perfectly.
System depth, character progression and boss design do not hold up across the length of the campaign.
Expect roughly 15 hours for the story, up to 20 if you push the side content.
Marvel’s Wolverine hits hard, and that was the whole promise
First, what works, because it’s the heart of Marvel’s Wolverine and it’s a success. Blows land with real violence, impacts register, and Logan genuinely feels powerful in your hands. You’re Wolverine in every fight, and you feel it. The violence is there to serve the character, and it suits him.
The best idea in the system is the parry. It’s sharp, precise, and it delivers that very particular satisfaction of a move landed at exactly the right moment. The dodge, by comparison, disappoints: it lacks precision, it’s less pleasant to use, and you end up building your whole defence around the parry.
The rage meter does its job properly and then some. It opens genuine carnage sequences and gives the power fantasy the release valve it demands. These are the moments where Marvel’s Wolverine comes closest to what it set out to be.
There’s one reservation to raise about how readable the fights are. Some encounters get extremely busy, with a lot of enemies and simultaneous attacks, and you end up taking the chaos instead of reading the fight.
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Marvel’s Wolverine review: good but not the game we hoped for
A combat system that runs out of depth well before the credits
The problem arrives quickly, and it goes to the core of the game. Marvel’s Wolverine offers plenty of moves and abilities, but you work through the genuine possibilities fairly fast. After that, fights lean on visual impact more than on depth, and the comparison with Spider-Man, the studio’s other big series, does it no favours: there are fewer ways to vary your approach here.
And Logan’s progression does nothing to help that impression. Abilities unlock at a steady rate, the curve is clean, and yet he doesn’t feel much stronger at the end than he did at the start. You unlock a huge amount, and you barely ever feel the difference. That’s the most frustrating letdown in Marvel’s Wolverine, because it drains the meaning out of hours of supposed escalation.
The bosses could have made up for it, except there are few of them and several encounters lack genuinely interesting mechanics. You pass through without retaining much, where an action game of this calibre is usually remembered for its one-on-ones.
Marvel’s Wolverine since launch: three patches, a denial and a split reception
Insomniac Games has kept a close eye on the launch. On release day, update 1.001.004 fixed a first batch of issues, including English voices that stayed silent on consoles set to another language. On 19 September, patch 1.001.005 toned down the scent trails, the blue effect players had nicknamed the fart gas. On 25 September, version 1.001.006 added three toggles under Settings, Gameplay, Senses, so these aids can be switched off one by one, as the official Insomniac Games account announced. Story-critical trails stay on screen.
In the meantime, a TikTok clip of a bathroom sign with overlapping figures had sparked an accusation of generative AI. James Stevenson, the studio’s community and marketing director, replied on X that it was a UV map bug and that nothing in the game came from AI, a reply picked up by Kotaku, which had traced the clip back to its source. The sign was fixed in version 1.001.006.
As for the reception, critics and players remain split. As of 19 September, Metacritic showed 77 out of 100 from critics and 6.8 out of 10 from its users, while PlayStation Store buyers rated it 4.84 stars out of 5, according to games.gg. Analytics firm Alinea Analytics puts sales at 1.9 million copies in three days, a figure still unconfirmed by Sony.
Level design that never lets go of your hand
This is the central complaint, and it weighs heavily: Marvel’s Wolverine holds your hand from start to finish. You’re guided constantly, and the real freedom you’re given is very thin.
Exploration is the part that suffers most directly from it. Some spaces give the impression of opening up, then invisible walls and unclimbable surfaces shut the door again. Seeing a route you can’t take is far more annoying than never seeing it at all.
Stealth, meanwhile, is barely there: few dedicated mechanics, limited enemy intelligence, reduced options, and an almost identical conclusion every time, since it all funnels into combat. Treat it as a set-up phase and expect no real alternative.
To be clear, a linear adventure can work perfectly well, and linearity in itself stands up fine. What grates here is being led by the hand the whole way. The repetition in objectives and situations also starts to tell as the campaign goes on. Expect about fifteen hours to finish it, twenty with more completion, which is short for a game that promised this much, and the side content doesn’t close the gap.
Production values doing the heavy lifting
Visually and technically, though, Insomniac Games impresses. Direction is carefully handled, environments are richly built, and characters carry a level of detail that makes the dialogue scenes convincing. This is the area where the studio clearly held the line.
The voice work in Marvel’s Wolverine deserves credit, which isn’t always a given. Performances hold up across the whole campaign, even if a handful of lines land less convincingly than others.
The story, for its part, falls short. The lore and the characters are interesting, and the fan service is generous for anyone who knows the source material. But certain stretches are predictable, and the moments reaching for emotion don’t always connect.
Side content in Marvel’s Wolverine, finally, stays thin: costumes, collectibles and the Nightmare Doors extend things a little, without amounting to real secondary activities. If you were hoping to linger in Madripoor after the credits, you’ll find few reasons to.
Verdict: a good game living off its instant thrill
Marvel’s Wolverine bets almost everything on the immediate pleasure of being Wolverine. Slicing, parrying, healing, letting the rage out and enjoying a big-budget presentation: the promise is kept there, and the opening hours are excellent. The closer you look at the structure and the depth of the systems, the more the limits show.
I might be wrong on one count, and that’s the matter of expectation. A game carrying a different name might well have been judged more generously. This one arrives after Spider-Man, with the most anticipated character in the catalogue, and that’s the bar it gets measured against.
| What we like | What we like a lot less |
|---|---|
| Brutal, weighty combat that genuinely makes you feel like Logan | A combat system you have seen everything of long before the end |
| A sharp, satisfying parry, and a rage meter that opens real carnage sequences | Level design on rails, locking exploration behind invisible walls |
| Spectacular production values, with richly detailed environments and characters | Few and forgettable bosses, and progression you never actually feel |
| Generous fan service for anyone who knows the character, carried by solid voice work | Around fifteen hours and no side content worth the detour to extend them |
| What might make you buy itThe immediate thrill of being Wolverine: slicing, parrying, healing, letting the rage out | What might put you offThe constant hand-holding, which turns the adventure into a signposted corridor |
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