Review— Wolverine

Logan is no stranger to the video game spotlight. X-Men Origins, based on the movie of the same name, is the best example of Wolverine’s true experience. But now Insomniac has brought gamers a new entry. Is it the weapon we all truly deserve? Let’s review.

Content

Violence
Brutal, bloody combat. A huge draw to Wolverine is his knack for taking life-ending strikes and getting back up. In turn, Logan’s claws are infamous. Truly unique in concept. And the damage they do to the human/mutant/robot body is always abysmal. Because of these factors, Wolverine is a gory game. But the game settings allow you to turn off blood and gore separately. Cutscenes with something like a decapitation get blurred, and while Logan will stab someone in the head, no blood or extremely graphic elements will appear.

Language
Oh yeah. They all have potty mouths. Everything from a** to motherf***** is used.

Alcohol/Substance Abuse
Logan is a drinker. He drinks lots of alcohol in multiple scenes. Whisky bottles are the game’s collectibles.

Sexual/Suggestive Content  
Because of Logan’s scene of the adamantium process he recalls, there are brief scenes of partial nudity.

Review

Logan is found in the wilderness by a man named Essex. This leads us into a different world of the X-Men, where Charles Xavier isn’t around, or hasn’t appeared yet. There is no Institute for Gifted Individuals. Mutants are still hated, but even more, they’re tracked down, experimented on, killed, and scattered to the shadows of the world. There’s hardly a safe refuge for them. That’s where Essex comes in. He has Team X, consisting of Sabretooth, Mystique, and Logan. This team is a shadow of its former self, with other members that Logan will visit later on. Logan himself also rejoins at the request of Essex, and that is where our game begins. 

Wolverine is a cinematic, character-driven story. You follow Logan closely as he fights through a world of mutants and humans with friends, enemies, and everything squished in the middle. The story takes many forms, from fighting and saving mutants to taking care of personal matters. The gorgeous visuals enhance every moment, from the quiet intimate moments to the huge metropolitan chase sequences. And there’s a lot that goes on. Logan gets a lot of moments that he is known for: motorcycle chases, stealth infiltrations, one-on-one bouts, and surviving extremely insane deaths. Being character-driven, a lot of the time is spent interacting with people and watching Logan’s relationships with people develop.  For me, the best was the relationship between Logan and Jean. The writing felt fresh, and I loved how naturally it felt that their chemistry grew. The flirting on the plane is one of my favorite moments, because it was a unique moment of affection that I honestly have not felt in a video game for a really long time.

Will It Wolverine?

This is a game that tries to encapsulate being Wolverine. Being the cool loner that can’t let people get close to him, fighting baddies that no normal person can deal with, and having hearing and smelling senses that can detect just about anything. I think we can see that developing a game around that could shift the way superhero games work. Batman and Spider-Man need maps because they’re crime fighters. Wolverine just needs to get in and get out, so levels are linear and to the point, save for a few moments. Wolverine has scent markers and on-screen sound indicators for points of interest like resource chests and story progression. (UPDATE: As of writing this review, an update came out allowing most of the trails, nightmare trails, and sound markers to be toggled off.) Having to keep a main character in mind with a healing factor makes for a unique challenge in a video game. If you can’t die, you can’t lose a fight. 

I believe through Wolverine, we can see that making a game around such a unique character is possible. But I don’t believe Insomniac pulled it off. Did they make a game with a constant healing factor? Check. Savage combat? It’s here, but has potential for more. What I do like, though, is how much of the environment can be destroyed. Moving on, the motorcycles were fun, but should have had a health bar of their own, instead of the game using Logan’s healing factor. Those moments became too easy. I’m glad the combat of Spider-Man did not translate over. Wolverine isn’t light enough to pull off aerial combos, he is a stout, small king that rips and takes damage. But even Kratos from God of War had a wide variety of combat options, and he was also a tank. The game is all about health management; the hazards and enemies do a great job of trying to reduce it. What would have been a great addition is sacrificing some health for more vicious combo finishers that assume Logan suffers intentional harm to get a crucial kill. 

There was a lot of room for Insomniac to fully develop the idea, but sadly they did not, and as of now, the game is solid but lacking depth. For all of its gameplay, beauty, realism, and story, there’s room to grow. It hurts to say, as a big fan of Wolverine, but this game is not the best there is at what it does.