Marvel’s Wolverine Review: Claw and Order

Great X-pectations

Marvel’s Wolverine sat at the very top of our most anticipated games of 2026 list, so my expectations were probably a bit high going in. When I put that list together in December, I wrote that several of us were a bit disappointed with how safe and familiar Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 felt, and that it really did seem like Insomniac Games wasn’t going to miss with this title. Honestly, though, after playing Ghost of Yōtei last year, I started to have a feeling that first-party PlayStation Studios games were going to continue playing it very safe.

I hoped that wouldn’t be the case here since this is, in a way, a new series for Insomniac Games. Sure, the developer has a history with three different Spider-Man titles, but Wolverine is an entirely different animal. The previews had me excited too, with the game leaning heavily into the kind of violence you’d expect from a character with adamantium claws. Everything we had seen since the first gameplay trailer last September pointed to a game that fit the character in both tone and atmosphere.

For those who haven’t been following along, Marvel’s Wolverine takes place in the same universe as Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, with Liam McIntyre playing Logan. The story picks up three years after he walked away from the mutant task force Team X, and he rejoins the group as Bolivar Trask and his Reavers are kidnapping mutants. It’s a global adventure that moves between Canada, Tokyo, and the island nation of Madripoor, and unlike the Spider-Man games, there’s no open world this time. On paper, it all sounds like a fresh start for the studio, but the game is ultimately very much like following a standard AAA checklist.

Uncanny Resemblance

Throughout my playthrough, I couldn’t help but think to myself how familiar much of the gameplay felt. That’s really why I believe your enjoyment depends on how many AAA games you’ve recently played, because nearly every piece of Marvel’s Wolverine reminded me of another game. If you only pick up a couple of big releases each year, there’s a good chance none of this will register with you the way it did with me.

Combat, surprisingly, reminded me a lot of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, with a more generous parrying system and groups of enemies coming at you at once. The overall structure of the game is very linear, which reminded me a lot of 007 First Light, a game I described in my review as a ride rather than a sandbox. Then there’s the storytelling, which really does follow a similar recipe to the Marvel’s Spider-Man games, for better or worse.

What makes all of this strange is that, in terms of presentation, Marvel’s Wolverine really is the complete package. The voice acting is excellent, led by McIntyre as Logan alongside Krizia Bajos as Jean Grey and Troy Baker as Nathaniel Essex. The characters have an amazing amount of detail, and the story is decent, even if it’s standard fare for a game based on a comic book character. Everything else, from the overall gameplay loop to the combat and exploration, was very mediocre, to the point that I wondered how this happened when it comes from the same company that created Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Cut and Paste

With all that said, Marvel’s Wolverine can be a pretty fun time, and combat, for the most part, is enjoyable. You’re going to play this game because you want to live the fantasy of being Wolverine. There’s the brutal, visceral feeling of his infamous claws plunging deep into an enemy as blood spills everywhere, and that is still extremely satisfying, even after 15 hours of it.

The problem with the combat is that it gets very repetitive over the course of the campaign. The skills you unlock change fights ever so slightly, and you’ll really find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. There’s an OK amount of enemy variety, but the enemies aren’t different enough that you have to sit there and come up with a new strategy or approach. The Rage mechanic, which builds across three tiers as you fight, is fine but never felt game-changing to me. Honestly, the main thing I felt when I reached Rage Tier 2 was relief, since it meant I would get a second chance at life if I fell in battle.

Maybe I’m just experiencing parry and dodge fatigue at this point, but it’s honestly exhausting seeing more and more games go the route of color-coded attacks. If you see blue or yellow, you parry, and if you see red, you dodge. I’ve lost count of how many games over the last few years have chosen this sort of design, and it’s gotten boring to me. It’s worse with certain bosses where the fight revolves around a stagger meter, which sort of forces you to parry and turns those encounters into a real slog. This goes back to my original point, though, because if you don’t play dozens of games each year like I do, this might feel fresh to you, and that changes your enjoyment of the game entirely.

X Marks the Spot

Player progression is another area of the game that I found to be very unremarkable. Adaptations are passive perks that you can equip using Strands, while there’s a separate skill point economy for unlocking and upgrading Techniques. You can equip four Special Techniques at a time, while the other unlocks are basically activated through certain button presses or combos. There are also Whisky Bottles tucked away throughout the game that award AP toward your Adaptation Level, which unlocks new Adaptations and additional Strands.

Crafting new suits is how Logan’s maximum health goes up, and that just requires Materials you find in crates “hidden” around the world. I put “hidden” in quotes because the game makes it painfully obvious when there’s one around the corner or tucked behind some boxes, thanks to a giant pulsing radar blip on the screen. Outside of that health increase, the suits don’t carry any perks of their own, so which one you wear really just comes down to looks.

By now, you’ve probably seen or read about the Scent Trails, the smoky lines that lead Logan to his objectives, along with the giant signals pinging the location of crates and other points of interest. Both are a bit annoying, especially since Insomniac doesn’t let you toggle them off at all, which is really wild to me. A post-launch hotfix reduced the opacity of the Scent Trails and Audio Sense indicators, and Insomniac says it’s exploring toggleable options for a future update. As it stands, though, there’s still no way to turn them off entirely.

Look, No Hands

As annoying as the trails and pings can be, the thing that really bothered me was the quick-time events. I can’t think of a single way the player experience benefits from QTEs that simply don’t matter. You can ignore the prompt entirely and the action will still execute, or you can press the wrong button and the scene will still progress. It’s completely meaningless, and I don’t even understand why it was designed this way.

What’s especially strange is that Marvel’s Wolverine already has a QTE Autocomplete option for players who want or need it. If I have that option disabled and the game is going to show me a button prompt, then failing it should have some sort of consequence. Otherwise, just don’t have the QTE at all and keep those sections as cinematic as possible. It may seem like a minor annoyance, but it really does take away from the overall experience when those sections just don’t matter.

Parts of the motorcycle chase scenes not really mattering were just as confusing to me as the QTEs. Did they think people failing those kinds of sequences in Days Gone was the reason they didn’t enjoy that game? It’s really confusing to see a team of veterans at Insomniac Games make design decisions like this, and I don’t think it’s a matter of insulting the player. It really just diminishes the hard work that went into making this game by basically dumbing it down. I won’t speculate on who is calling the shots on those types of decisions, but it’s becoming more and more common with first-party PlayStation Studios titles. In a world where Elden Ring is wildly successful with very little hand holding, these games are choosing to go the complete opposite path instead of finding a happy middle ground.

Logan’s Run

My definition of a great game is one that I can’t stop playing, and when I’m not playing it, I’m looking forward to playing it again. Those are the games where I can sit there for six to eight hours in a single session and not get distracted by anything else. Unfortunately, Marvel’s Wolverine was not that kind of game for me. I struggled to play it for even four hours at a time, and the only really long session I had came right before the end, partly because I just wanted to finish it and see how everything ties together.

Those 15 hours ended up taking me nearly a week to get through, which is hardly ever the case for me. I personally thought I was going to finish Marvel’s Wolverine before the weekend arrived, but I simply couldn’t get myself to play it for hours each day. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was boring, but it just didn’t grab a hold of me like other games do. When the credits rolled, I felt really mixed about the game, more so than with any other recent PlayStation Studios title.

On the technical side, I played on a PlayStation 5 Pro and found performance to be great throughout my time with the game. I didn’t experience any real gameplay bugs, just some random visual oddities here and there, like characters floating in place. I also haven’t touched New Game Plus yet, so I can’t speak to how the game holds up on a second run.

The Last Stand

After the credits, I started thinking that maybe this is just fatigue setting in, since I’ve played and reviewed so many games in the past 365 days. I do believe that was a major reason why I found Marvel’s Wolverine so average, because everything just felt so samey. Still, it’s very disappointing to me that Insomniac Games really didn’t evolve its gameplay formula at all with Wolverine. Throughout the 15-hour experience, not once did I think to myself that something was innovative or fresh, and that might be the most damning thing I can say about the game.

While I expect better from Insomniac Games, I’m starting to wonder if many of these design decisions are coming from Sony itself (yes, I know I said I wouldn’t speculate). It can’t be this much of a coincidence that nearly every recent first-party PlayStation Studios title plays it very safe. God of War Ragnarök did it, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 did it, Ghost of Yōtei did it, and even Saros did it to a certain extent. Astro Bot really is the exception in recent years, and not surprisingly, it won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024. You’d think after that, Sony would tell its developers “we want more of that,” but instead we’re just getting more of the same.

I think it’s really fair to say that some people will absolutely love Marvel’s Wolverine, because much of the experience will be unfamiliar to them. For those of us who play every major first-party PlayStation Studios title, though, that’s not going to be the case. Despite all that, I would still recommend the experience to most gamers, just not at its full price, and at $50 it’s a very enjoyable and respectable game. Overall, though, I can’t help but be disappointed, given how high this game sat on our list. Hopefully Marvel’s Wolverine does get a sequel, and Insomniac can address many of these issues and find a way to innovate and impress again. The claws are as sharp as ever. I just wish the ideas were too.

Marvel’s Wolverine has an official release date of September 15, 2026, for PlayStation 5. This review is based on a purchased retail copy of the game on PlayStation 5 Pro. While FullCleared does have affiliate partnerships, they do not influence our editorial content. We may earn a commission for purchases made through links on this page.

Marvel’s Wolverine Review Gallery (possible spoilers!)

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