Those Middling Reviews for Marvel’s Wolverine Game

Game reviews for Marvel’s Wolverine game are starting to come in. I watched a few of them last night and read some more this morning. Here are a few for your consideration. Consensus is this is a just-ok, good-but-not-great game.

Let’s start with the most critical of the reviews I’ve seen. The Kinda Funny Games team is tough but fair, focused mostly on the expectations for Wolverine being high given Insomniac’s streak with their Spider-Man games. No one at Kinda Funny thought the game held up to that standard, especially around combat. As the Kinda Funny guys note, Insomniac takes a lot of chances with the way they tell comic-inspired stories, and if the combat doesn’t work, you’re left with strange story choices to carry a game.

The IGN review was likewise critical of the game’s combat and its simple and repetitive nature.

Then, there’s Giovanni Colantonio’s Polygon review, Marvel’s Wolverine is the biggest disappointment of the PS5 era:

The disjointed story suffers from balancing so many elements; a second-act war with The Hand, Marvel’s ever-present ninja gang, comes off feeling like a five-hour DLC digression in the middle of Logan’s personal reckoning.

One man’s failing is another’s success. This same Hand diversion was praised as a nice respite from the otherwise lackluster gameplay in the Kinda Funny review above. It sounds like that’s part of the problem with this game, though. Insomniac took a something-for-everyone approach with this game, and again as Kinda Funny notes, when you make a game for everyone, you make a game for no one.

I will definitely still play this game when it comes out on Tuesday. My plans are to play every night after work and post my own review as soon as I complete the game. I imagine I will have similar reactions, but also, I’m such a sucker for any comics-based game, especially Marvel ones. I can’t wait to spend a few hours wandering around the Marvel Universe, even if this isn't the best from Insomniac.