Marvel's Wolverine PS5 Review: Insomniac Delivers a Fierce and Visceral Blockbuster — With a Few Too Many Cages.

After weeks of controversy and preemptive criticism, probably more related to Sony's decisions about its hardware than to what was shown of the game, we were finally able to play Marvel's Wolverine in its entirety, the new game from California's Insomniac, who continue their hitherto triumphant relationship with Marvel superheroes after the Spider-Man trilogy. This time, however, the undertaking appears more complicated. And not just because the long honeymoon between Sony and its audience seems to have suddenly soured. 

Wolverine is a very different character from Spidey, both in terms of atmosphere and adaptability to video games. He's a bit like Superman's paradox: what threats can you invent for such a powerful protagonist? A question that Insomniac must have asked themselves, and from whose answer emerged the game structure that characterizes the entire Marvel's Wolverine experience, tailored by the developers around the management of the famous regenerating factor of the clawed Canadian mutant. Before delving into this aspect, however, it's worth taking a step back and introducing Insomniac's Wolverine, a slightly different version (at least in its premises) from the James Logan Howlett you might already know from comics or movies. 

The Story of Marvel's Wolverine: Team X, Gene X, and the Mutant Dream Reinterpreted for 2026

The concept of the multiverse has now become familiar and transversal across the entire entertainment industry. Marvel heroes all live at least three lives: on paper, in cinema, and in video games. The Marvel Games universe has already presented us with alternative origin stories for both the Avengers and Spider-Man, and this time it's time to reveal how the mutants are doing: in this version of reality, people who possess the X-Gene are very few, but that doesn't stop public opinion, fueled by Bolivar Trask's extremist positions, from considering them a threat.

In the shadows, however, a team of mutants, called Team X, moves to oppose Trask's vision and machinations by all means, dreaming of a future where mutants can live free and in the open. Every dream, however, has a price, and Team X has paid it by leaving numerous members on the field. A series of losses that pushed Wolverine to abandon the group, and whose weight will make itself felt again when our protagonist's path once again crosses that of former companions Sabretooth and Mystique in the initial stages of the game.

To tell other plot details would mean spoiling the numerous surprises and references woven by the screenwriters of Marvel's Wolverine into the narrative structure of the title, which undoubtedly represents the backbone of the entire experience and one of its main strengths. Wolverine's plot draws from decades of stories of the gruff mutant, preserving its cornerstones and working on the context. Lee & Kirby's mutant dream is updated to our times and necessarily takes on darker tones. No Xavier's X-Men then, but a decidedly more violent and extreme Team X, at whose head we find a perfect figure for the role who will make passionate readers jump in their seats. 

With that wink to fan fiction that often characterizes alternative realities, the world of Marvel's Wolverine works on the character's mythology and reinterprets it, with all the merits and flaws that such a comic-indebted writing brings with it. There are plenty of twists, unexpected deaths, shocking returns, over-the-top clashes, and characters with an incredible aura: on the narrative side, it can be recognized that courageous choices have also been made, from the fate of some of the co-protagonists to the decision to use almost exclusively characters who had previously received little attention, giving them a good dose of three-dimensionality (although recent films and MCU castings show how synergy is always at work beneath the surface). In addition to a good dose of fan service, which can be inferred from what Insomniac has already shown so far. 

Logan's confused memories, however, are a multiversal constant: even in the Marvel Games universe, Wolverine's origins are shrouded in mystery, or perhaps it would be better to say in a fog from which flashes of an unreliable past emerge. Someone has tampered with Wolverine's mind, and Jean Grey's presence by his side naturally leads to sections exploring the clawed mutant's unconscious from which fragments emerge that will most likely fuel sequels and additional content (or perhaps an entire mutant video game universe; who knows, given the probable developments of the MCU, it doesn't seem such a remote hypothesis). 

The Combat System: Health and Fury Bars, Claws, Special Moves, and the Superman Paradox

And since we have slowly slipped from the plot to mechanics with Jean's incursions into Logan's mind, it's time to pick up the thread left hanging with Wolverine's healing factor to tell how Insomniac translated this comic book adventure (without any negative connotation, quite the opposite!) into a video game. The problem, mentioned at the beginning, is that Wolverine is essentially an immortal being, whose mutant power allows him to heal from any wound, including fatal ones. 

To adapt this characteristic without excessively unbalancing the game, Insomniac built a system based on two bars: Health and Fury. The first is obviously consumed by enemy blows, but slowly recharges on its own; the second, however, is fueled by striking enemies. If the Health bar is completely depleted but the Fury bar has at least one of its three segments fully charged, Logan can be revived by furiously pressing the Square button. The revived Logan, however, must pay maximum attention, because his Health in that moment recharges slowly and is susceptible to enemy attacks. In short, Logan is not exactly immortal, but he can take a real barrage of hits by genre standards. 

This is just the basis of a more complex system, as we will see shortly, but it does its job admirably. Wolverine is predominantly composed of instinct, and the way the character must be used in Insomniac's game reflects this approach because the more you give, the more you can afford to take. And the loop works, the fights in Marvel's Wolverine are fierce and wild, dripping with blood, with pieces of enemy bodies flying across the screen; as soon as the moment comes, you launch into the fray without hesitation, in control of what is already, in this first phase, a ruthless purveyor of death. 

With the introduction of new, more lethal enemies, however, parrying ceases to be optional (indeed, it proves fundamental) and Wolverine must resort to the various enhancements that greater experience makes available. There are Abilities that expand and deepen Wolverine's move set, six chargeable Special Moves assignable up to four at a time, and DNA Strands, which unlock additional alternative abilities for the protagonist. In particular, among the Moves, there is one that, if upgraded, allows for instant resurrection, adding another layer to the basic mechanic, which in turn is made even deeper by any modifiers applied to Health and Fury collection. 

The clashes are almost always furious brawls in which you are overwhelmed by the number of enemies, moving through reckless choreographies where parries and blows alternate in a rhythmic clang of claws and screams. On Normal difficulty, we rarely died, but once again we return to the Superman paradox and the difficulty of translating Wolvie's immortality into a video game mechanic. We believe we can say that Insomniac has managed this aspect of the game well. It won't be a revolutionary combat system; in fact, echoes of Arkham and Assassin's Creed are clearly felt, but Wolverine's nature makes his survival among dozens of enemies much more credible in terms of internal consistency, as they finally attack all at once without regard for our sequences. It's as if, once the claws are drawn, the protagonist's fury passes to the player, for once fully legitimate to unleash a blind rain of increasingly powerful blows because attack is the best defense, because as long as enough hits land, Logan can always get up for another round of fighting. 

It is this visceral satisfaction that also emerges from an exaggerated and unfiltered graphic representation that helps to combat the ever-present risk of repetitiveness for the entire duration of the adventure (which we completed at 78% in about 18 hours). Ultimately, there aren't many enemies, their attacks, however varied, are all divided into parryable and dodgeable, and even the boss fights don't stand out for inventiveness, even if often visually spectacular, but as long as tearing them apart is so much fun, one could go on doing it forever. 

The Limit of Marvel's Wolverine: The Level Structure That Curbs Logan's Potential

Not everything, however, is conveyed with the same effectiveness in Insomniac's game. The approach chosen by the Californian team for Marvel's Wolverine is that of a classic action game, level-based, so to speak, built by combining different types of sections. The purely cinematic imprint (like Uncharted, to make another comparison) thus translates into an alternation of thematically different sequences: there are fights, obviously, and quite often, interspersed with cut-scenes, parkour-like chases, guided investigations, spectacular set-pieces where interactivity is limited to (irrelevant?) QTEs and other narrative blocks of various types. 

The overall result is a more than appreciable superhero blockbuster with a rhythm that is, however, a bit too irregular. This is also due to the weak connection between the different elements: despite numerous technical refinements, one sometimes perceives the block-by-block progression of spectacular sequences designed for a player-spectator who will then be granted an outlet in the next sequence where they will be called upon to slice up a few dozen ninjas or cyborgs. 

The abandonment of Insomniac's past Spider-Man-esque open world in favor of a more structured formula is understandable, but perhaps Insomniac went a little overboard with the measurements. Sometimes Wolverine feels like a tiger in a cage, a protagonist with enormous potential artificially limited by design choices: as already mentioned, it's inevitable because such a powerful character doesn't naturally lend itself well to a video game adaptation, yet it leads to real paradoxes like the ineffectiveness of claws that just moments before pried open steel barriers against normal wooden doors whose opening is not foreseen; similarly in battle, by pressing the Triangle button, Wolvie is able to make wide leaps towards his prey, while in other sections this superhuman agility appears decidedly scaled down.

In a sense, it's all very comic-book-like: after all, how many times does Wolverine's endurance change from story to story depending on narrative needs? True, and yet in Marvel's Wolverine the contrast is perhaps a little too evident, as if the constituent elements of the game were loosely connected, appearing conceived more as a succession of scenes than as a continuous flow of events. For example, the Nightmare Trials serve this purpose, challenges that appear in the midst of exploration (like sheds that provide access to Logan's memories) and that must be faced to keep Logan's abilities progressing, but thus completely breaking the rhythm and sense of progression. 

Technical Department: Excellent DualSense, Fluctuating Models, and Two Graphics Modes on PS5

This fluctuating trend also finds support on the technical side, where ultra-detailed models and scenarios alternate with others (fewer in number and less central to the scene, to be fair) that are much less refined, emerging in contrast. Personally, we found something "strange" and difficult to define in the faces: whether it's a design choice or a glimpse into the Uncanny Valley, Insomniac's faces are less effective and natural compared to those of other comparable productions, but once accustomed to their features (as one would on paper with an unfamiliar artist) they still manage to convey the emotions intended by the story quite effectively (which is also very comic-book-like; we're closer to Bryan Singer's X-Men than to Logan, to be clear). The character design, however, is overall very well done in our opinion, with a mix of necessary tributes to the comic book look (including dozens of unlockable costumes and claws, including the Tokon cartoons) and some successful daring choices. Insomniac's gigantic Sabretooth is also beautiful, it's a shame the same can't always be said for the animations. 

Two graphics modes are available, the now standard Quality and Performance: we tried both without encountering technical problems. The code we tested, however, still had technical issues already known to the developers that will be addressed through a day-one patch, which we obviously cannot comment on at the moment. Very interesting, however, is the use that Marvel's Wolverine makes of the PS5 controller, exploiting all its features from the resistance of the triggers to the internal speaker used to replicate the unsettling effect of voices in Logan's head. Also present