I am not sure what’s in the water over at PlayStation, but there seems to be a lot of rage simmering at Sony’s first-party studios. Look through the last 13 years or so of in-house PlayStation games, and you’ll find a lot of games about angry guys reckoning with their unregulated emotions. It’s what drives Joel to slaughter innocent people in The Last of Us. It leads Kratos on a bloody therapy journey in God of War. It’s a poisonous force fueling the troubled Arjun Devraj in Marvel’s Wolverine.
Much of the story sees Insomniac picking up puzzle pieces from comic history and finding new ways to slot them together. Sometimes, it finds success in that experimentation. Sabertooth, for instance, is a great fit for the character-driven story Insomniac tells here. He’s Wolverine taken to the extreme Logan is trying to avoid, a hot-headed killer who’s more animal than man. Jean Grey, the telekinetic mutant who partners up with Logan early on, sits on Wolverine’s other shoulder. She anchors him back to Earth when he’s slipping into his fight-or-flight instincts, creating some genuinely tender moments in an otherwise raucous story.
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive EntertainmentEven with those problems, Insomniac at least excels when bringing comic pages to life. Expressive character animation combines with a vibrant color palette to create a game that doesn’t throw out the illustrative joy of comics in pursuit of cinematic realism. Robotic Sentinels still get to sport their striking blue-and-purple armor. Wolverine’s primary suit is a shade of bright yellow that pops even when he’s dramatically sulking. You can see just about everything Insomniac learned from Spider-Man repeated here in a visually spectacular blockbuster that hardly misses a technical beat amid all its explosions and severed limbs.
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive EntertainmentThe interchangeable video game hero
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
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Other levels flirt with the idea that he can get the jump on enemies from any angle, thanks to his claws. When I found myself in a construction site filled with Trask henchmen, I discovered a few different routes that I could take through the level based on the powers I have. Did I want to scramble up a telephone pole and hop from roof to roof like an agile mammal? Or did I want to tear through a wooden blockade and get right to the killing? The linear levels can’t play with those dynamics too much, but you can see a more original game built around Logan’s animal nature when you’re not stabbing guys in a round arena.
Rip and tear
The disconnect between the hero and the gameplay comes to a head in the combat, which is Wolverine’s primary focus. On a surface level, it’s a slickly (and sickly) satisfying hack-and-slash game that revels in its ultra-violence. You mostly just spam the square button to slice enemies into pieces, occasionally ripping into their chest with a barrage of stabs or lopping off an arm. Sure, you can parry, dodge, or work in the triangle button to leap towards enemies, but you can mostly get by just by smashing one button and watching the carnage. It’s the same flavor of action that fueledThe entire emotional crux of the story falls apart because the action has to feel fun, fluid, and tantalizingly violent at all times.
The action is fun enough, even if it's too thin to support a full game, but it’s also completely at odds with the story Insomniac struggles to tell. Between all the incomprehensible ninja and robot battles, Wolverine tries to deliver a nuanced character study on Logan himself. Actor Liam McIntyre goes for a multifaceted version of the hero that’s sensitive and vulnerable under his wild exterior. It’s a
What’s confounding, though, is that so much of the story is centered around the idea that Logan is a ticking time bomb who is trying desperately to contain his anger. Insomniac tries to play that up in a few key moments where Logan loses his cool during a key story moment and flies into a murderous rage. Great — except he’s always in a murderous rage. The absolutely brutal combat, complete with gooey head-impaling animations, is always cranked up to 10. The moments where Logan supposedly goes berserk aren’t all that different; he’s just killing his foes a little faster. The entire emotional crux of the story falls apart because the action has to feel fun, fluid, and tantalizingly violent at all times. I never believe that Logan is holding something back, because I as a player never butt up against any friction that encourages me to hold back. What are the consequences of going into a blind rage? It seems like a pretty efficient way to save the day! Details like that build towards an emotionally shallow game that never earns its tears. At times, the overeager attempts to create a serious drama are eye-rolling. Whenever I clear a Nightmare Door, I’m treated to a morose monologue from Logan where he recalls memories from his past. It’s always a melodramatic sob story that uses vague trauma as a stand-in for character depth. I’m left feeling like Marvel’s Wolverine was born from a directive to make a game like God of War, rather than to make a Wolverine game. Logan was just angry enough to pass the Kratos audition. 
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Computer Entertainment
Marvel's Wolverine will be released Sept. 15 on PlayStation 5. The game was reviewed on PS5 Pro using a prerelease download code provided by Sony. You can find