I am very much late to the party when it comes to Marvel’s Wolverine , but my excuse is that I was putting 40+ hours into Control Resonant for the review embargo , with that game out tomorrow. But I’ve been working my way through Wolverine and having reached the end, I suppose it’s time to review.

I hate reading other reviews before I write my own, but in this case, the time gap is wide, and I saw a number of takes. A quote that stuck with me is that Wolverine is the “okayest game ever made,” and as I played, that seemed more and more true.

Unlike Control Resonant, a game that I believe starts a bit rough but gets rather fantastic by the end, Wolverine starts strong and trails off from there, both in story and in gameplay. It’s almost hard to believe a game like this exists anymore, a AAA, extremely linear, story-driven superhero game, which seems pulled from another time. In some ways, that’s refreshing, as it’s just a break from the usual. In others, the concept is innately claustrophobic, forever marching forward into same-y combat encounters with just the barest amount of exploration, most levels being about 100 feet wide at any given time as you progress down hallways and streets.

Where Wolverine starts strong is in its combat, a bloodbath of gutting and eye-stabbing, with Logan himself cut down to his adamantium in every other fight. I’d argue it’s one of the most brutally violent games in recent AAA history, more so than zombie/demon fighting, given that these enemies being humans make more of an impact. And that’s exactly how a Wolverine game should be. It feels great, and continues to throughout the game, but it just does not evolve in any meaningful ways.

This is not Spider-Man or Batman where he will throw out gadgets to diversify combat. It’s just various sorts of spin-y claw moves and executions, and combat 15 hours in feels very similar to 1 hour in, even if at baseline, it’s good. It’s the game’s biggest strength but has its limits as time marches on.

Then there’s the difficulty, the all-encompassing conversation that took over social media. Yes, Wolverine holds your hand far too much with half a dozen different indicators of where you’re supposed to go at any given time in a linear level. There are quick time events that autocomplete or progress even if you flat-out hit the wrong button. And combat on normal is far easier than most other games on the same baseline difficulty, I’d say. Added together and even with some toggles, it’s all too much and should have been scaled back to avoid reading like a parody of bumper-bowling AAA games.

I’ll take back what I said about the game’s faces looking bad in screenshots and trailers. In motion, I had few complaints about any of them, especially Logan and Jean. The weirdest thing is Essex looking exactly like Troy Baker with sunscreen on his face to the point of distraction. Liam McIntyre’s performance as Logan is fantastic, full commitment to the role even when the script sometimes fails him. Hugh Jackman has had the part so long, you forget that other people might actually be good at playing him too.

The relationship between Logan and Team X, then Logan and Jean, is well done. I actually like the idea of this story diverting drastically from almost any other comic or movie storyline we’ve seen. No Cyclops love-triangle, just Jean and Logan figuring things out. I like how Sabertooth and Mystique were handled. Villains like Omega Red and Lady Deathstrike were well-chosen.

I think it was fairly dumb, however, to have Essex, aka Mr. Sinister, be the allegedly benevolent leader of Team X. I mean, he’s obviously a bad guy from moment one, and it’s a story that gives the player all the information ahead of time when the characters won’t figure things out until 10 hours later. I hate stories like that.

The end of the game gets exceedingly weird, diving deep, too deep, into Logan’s memories with big reveals that take big swings but don’t land particularly well. Logan and Jean’s relationship is given a bizarre history, as is Wolverine’s origin. While I did say I like changes to existing storylines, by the end, I think things go too far.

I did enjoy Wolverine , but it started to lose a lot of steam near the end. The story gets more intense, but I got less interested in playing as combat got repetitive and traversal remained fixed on rails. If Insomniac is doing more superhero games, I don’t think I’d like them to follow this format, even if some positives are embedded throughout the journey.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .