Logline: In a world largely unaware of their existence, Wolverine/Logan (Liam McIntyre) fights to protect mutants from being kidnapped and experimented on by Trask Industries, as part of Nathaniel Essex (Troy Baker)’s Team X with Sabretooth/Victor Creed (Brett Gipson) and Mystique/Raven Darkholme (Nicole Pacent). After befriending the heroic Jean Grey (Krizia Bajos), Wolverine embarks on a mission that sees him begin to unravel a past he cannot remember.
Insomniac’s PlayStation 5 exclusive Wolverine game was released on Tuesday, September 15, and while a Metacritic score of 77/100 is nothing to be sniffed at, its reviews have proven underwhelming compared to the glowing reception of the developer’s Spider-Man series (widely considered the best superhero games since the Batman: Arkham saga), and its other titles.
Though there are always bad faith opponents looking for attention (the viral accusations you don’t have to do anything during the motorcycle sections are simply false), outlets generally agree the game’s combat gets repetitive, and that PlayStation Studios’ house style of accessible, cinematic third-person action games with light platforming, quicktime events, and other similar gameplay has grown stale.
As an intensely casual gamer, who still found Wolverine punishing on the second easiest difficulty, I have no issues with the latter: I don’t mind a game being “handholdy” when I frequently forget what I can do until it reminds me, am prone to still getting lost, and fail chases. However, the combat definitely gets old, even when you unlock neat tricks like activating Wolverine’s hot claws by parrying lasers towards the end.
The first major problem with the combat is how overwhelmingly focused it is on melee fights. Yes, Wolverine is the hero famous for slashing and stabbing with his claws, so while Insomniac didn’t have to give him firearms (in spite of his military training), he could’ve been at least able to fling objects to provide some variety. He even tosses something he was impaled with back at some goons in one cutscene, compounding the disappointment over the lack of ranged gameplay.
The second major issue is that Logan’s the only playable character, in stark contrast to how Insomniac’s Spider-Man changed things up with stealth sections for Mary Jane and (a pre-arachnid) Miles Morales, and even let you play as Venom in one unforgettable section. Yes, some people hate the former, but no one except the most sexist players would’ve complained about switching to controlling Jean Grey and her awesome psychic powers now and again.
It feels like Insomniac decided to make a solo Wolverine game instead of a full-blown X-Men one because the disappointing reception of Avengers, Gotham Knights, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as well as the acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy, have made publishers wary of superhero team games, yet they still wanted to tell an X-Men story, with Jean, Sentinels, and more in play, instead of concentrating on classic solo Wolverine elements like the Weapon X program and Clan Yashida.
We are now going to be entering spoiler territory, because reviewing games are closer to recapping TV shows than unpacking movies, so if you’re unaware of what transpires in the game, and would like to stay that way, please come back later. If you want one word for my overall reaction to the game though, it would be: ambivalent.
Why does Wolverine have Essex as the overarching villain, and not Sabretooth? Why is he portrayed as a Professor X analogue, complete with his own institute, when Xavier himself never enters the story to make the parallels amount to anything? Why does the plot culminate in an end-of-the-world scenario, and set up the return of Apocalypse and Jean becoming Phoenix, instead of the formation of the X-Men? Like Game of Thrones resolving the Long Night before the battle for the Iron Throne, it’s putting the horse before the cart.
It comes across as a really cynical ’80s movie version of Marvel’s mutants, where the X-Men are totally tossed out in favor of Wolverine as the hero, and Jean as his love interest for commercial reasons. I’m not naive, I know for Insomniac this is likely a stepping stone to a full-blown X-Men project, but it’s hard to imagine this violent iteration of the leads becoming enamored with Professor X’s dream, an organization so similar to Essex’s, or forming a love triangle with Cyclops.
By the time I reached the climax, where Logan, Jean, and Sunfire/Shiro Yoshida (Jonathan Tanigaki) are battling Essex and a Sentinel on the streets of Tokyo, I felt almost as dejected as I did at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the movie that squandered its opportunity to tell a smaller, intimate, and more emotional story in favor of destroying Three Mile Island. The game’s nowhere as bad as that film, but it resembles it more than Logan or The Wolverine.
Admittedly, this is only an issue if you’re familiar with the source material, but Essex is a poor choice for a twist villain, because he is so unsympathetic. Baker is dependably solid in the part, but the character comes across insincerely from the start, and winds up a pale (no pun intended) follow-up to Insomniac’s successfully tragic reimaginings of Doctor Octopus, Mister Negative, and Norman Osborn. Its take on Sasquatch/Walter Langkowski (Jeffrey Nordling) generates some poignancy, but he’s not the main antagonist.
Speaking of Sasquatch, the storyline about dormant mutants about having their powers get activated by the Helix Engines feels like Insomniac got their wires crossed with the Inhumans. It’s amusing, given how much 2020’s Inhuman-centric Avengers game felt like an X-Men story, but comes across an unnecessary explanation for an increased mutant population in a follow-up, on top of rehashing Magneto’s plot from the first film for the bog standard finale.
It’s not all weird: having Lady Deathstrike (Jolene Kim) lead the Hand is a natural way to bring in both, and Jean possessing the power of reincarnation makes much more sense than when the comics revealed it was Moira MacTaggert’s mutation. But all in all, Wolverine doesn’t ring true to the X-Men’s world: it’s less of a new take on how the team began, more one where they might as well not exist — and if a game that took this much time and money to produce could only muster one playable mutant, then that may unfortunately continue to be the case.
