Marvel's Wolverine and Sony Formula Fatigue: Why the Game Is Already Facing Criticism

On August 13, gaming outlets and content creators shared their first impressions of Marvel's Wolverine. This gave us a much better idea of what to expect from the game, along with plenty of new gameplay footage. With the release already scheduled for September, a wave of previews like this was hardly surprising — it is a standard part of the marketing cycle for Sony exclusives. What was unusual, however, was the overwhelmingly negative response from gamers. You might assume that an Insomniac Games blockbuster starring a superhero as beloved as Wolverine would be guaranteed to succeed, yet the online backlash has become so intense that making any predictions is now difficult. Let's examine what exactly players dislike about the game and whether all this hostility is justified.

The game takes place on Earth-1048, the same setting as Insomniac's Spider-Man titles. The X-Men have not yet emerged, and the public knows almost nothing about the existence of mutants. Even so, mutants are already being persecuted: they are abducted, studied, and used in experiments.

By the beginning of Marvel's Wolverine, Logan has already received his adamantium skeleton, but remembers almost nothing about his past. For a time, he worked for Nathaniel Essex — Mister Sinister from the comics — and carried out missions as a member of Team X, a mutant squad that protects its own around the world. Mystique and Sabretooth fought alongside Wolverine, although relations between the three were far from friendly. By the time the main story begins, Wolverine has been away from Team X for several years, but rejoins the group for an operation to rescue Essex.

Although this is another Marvel-licensed game from Insomniac, it is important not to expect something in the vein of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Marvel's Wolverine does not feature a large open city where players can freely travel between missions, search for random activities, and clear districts marked on the map. Instead, it is a good old-fashioned linear action game divided into missions.

That does not mean the entire game consists of narrow corridors. Some missions feature fairly expansive areas with enemy patrols and several possible approaches. Wolverine can survey the surroundings, locate enemies using his heightened senses, quietly thin their numbers, and only then move into open combat.

There are also calmer sequences between missions, built around conversations and environmental exploration. The Princess Bar in Madripoor and its surrounding streets serve as a kind of hub. Here, Logan meets his allies and speaks with Jean Grey, Mystique, and Sabretooth. Players can also change his costumes and customize the appearance of his claws at the bar. It remains unclear how often the game will bring players back to this location.

As expected, combat is the main attraction in a game about Wolverine. The system is built around light and heavy attacks, dodging, parrying, and special moves. Logan can quickly close the distance by leaping toward a selected enemy with his claws extended, then unleash a string of attacks and finish it with a powerful blow. Overall, the combat system resembles Marvel's Spider-Man and the Batman: Arkham games, but the camera sits closer to the protagonist, while the animations look more aggressive and brutal thanks to the copious amounts of blood. Logan severs limbs, impales enemies, and turns their own weapons against them. There is little doubt that the title will earn a place in our ranking of the most brutal games.

In some sequences, other members of Team X fight alongside Wolverine and help him perform cooperative attacks. However, the main feature that distinguishes the combat from Insomniac's Spider-Man games is the rage meter, which fills during battle. It is divided into 3 levels. At the second level, Logan's combos become stronger and he unlocks Last Stand, an ability that lets him recover from a fatal wound by spending accumulated rage to restore his health. At the third level, Logan enters a berserker state: his attacks become considerably more powerful, while regular enemies can be finished instantly with critical strikes.

Logan's heightened senses allow him to see tracks, locate enemies, and plan stealth kills. Wolverine can sneak up on guards, hide in tall grass, and eliminate isolated targets before he is detected. Judging by the gameplay shown so far, however, stealth is clearly intended as a supporting system, so it is still too early to include the game among the best stealth games.

Marvel's Wolverine also features a progression system: kills reward players with XP, which can then be spent on unlocking new special moves. The core attributes can be upgraded as well, including Logan's maximum health, regeneration efficiency, rage meter capacity, and various other passive bonuses. Upgrade materials are hidden inside containers throughout the levels, giving players a reason to search optional rooms and stray from the main route even within otherwise linear missions.

First, it is important to note that plenty of gamers liked what they saw. Even so, the negative reaction on social media is difficult to ignore, and it cannot be reduced to a single problem. Some dislike the characters' appearance, others take issue with the combat, and still others object to the entire design philosophy. What unites these complaints is the belief that Insomniac is not making a unique Wolverine game, but yet another cinematic Sony blockbuster.

The protagonist's appearance has been a target since the June trailer. Social media users argue that Logan does not look serious enough in some scenes and that his facial expressions resemble cartoonish grimaces. The issue is less about graphical quality than art direction. People expected a rougher, darker, more weathered Logan. And yes, this is hardly the first controversy of its kind for Insomniac. One need only remember Peter Parker's face being changed in Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered.

The cinematic sequences have also attracted plenty of mockery. In one of the clips, Wolverine runs forward under enemy fire as explosions erupt and the scenery collapses around him. It all looks expensive and spectacular, but gamers joke that the player's involvement amounts to holding the stick forward.

The combat system has already been branded simplistic as well. Comment sections are filled with jokes that winning only requires repeatedly pressing a single button. The claim is obviously untrue, but the internet appears to have already delivered its verdict. To be fair, many attacks trigger lengthy animations in which Logan grabs, impales, and throws an enemy without further input. From the outside, it can indeed look as though the player is barely involved.

The footage of the fight against a Sentinel — a huge mechanical boss — has also come under fire. The robot slowly swings its arms while Wolverine dodges its blows and retaliates. The boss leaves its fist on the ground for a long time, giving the player plenty of time to slash it with his claws. People immediately recalled not only the battle against the Colossus of Rhodes in God of War 2, but also countless other fights against similar enemies, including the robot encounter in Insomniac's own Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. In other words, they see nothing original here either.

The rooftop chase became another source of jokes. Logan pursues an enemy by following a red trail that literally points him in the right direction. The line visualizes a scent that Wolverine picks up using his heightened senses. Gamers, however, are annoyed that they have to run along a path drawn for them.

Not everyone liked the idea of stealth in a Wolverine game either. Social media users complain that Sony is once again following a template: players must hide in tall grass and track enemies by their silhouettes. We have seen all of this before, and more than once.

Since I have not played Marvel's Wolverine, I obviously cannot draw premature conclusions about the game's quality. That is something many gamers who rushed to criticize the project seem to have forgotten. On the other hand, judging solely by the footage shown so far, Marvel's Wolverine does not exactly look like an all-time masterpiece either.

Previews from journalists who played Marvel's Wolverine are generally positive, but hardly overflowing with enthusiasm. Judging by the overall level of excitement in their impressions, it seems reasonable to expect a game somewhere in the 7–8/10 range — unless, of course, it has a few aces up its sleeve that we know nothing about yet.

So yes, there is a rational core to the criticism. Based on what has been shown, Marvel's Wolverine does look familiar — a safe project assembled from tried-and-tested ideas. The problem with the entire discussion, however, is that many people equate a familiar formula with a bad game. A 7–8/10 title can be polished, entertaining, and entirely worth the time spent on it. These days, everyone rushes to declare games either 10/10 masterpieces or worthless trash, but such judgments are usually just extremes that ignore nuance. More measured takes along the lines of “the game looks good, but not exceptional” are drowned out by more radical opinions.

It is also worth noting that the backlash against Marvel's Wolverine coincided with broader criticism of Sony and may well be part of that wider trend. Gamers are still unhappy with the company's decision to abandon physical discs starting in 2028, as well as rising game and console prices and the decision to stop releasing future PC ports. More broadly, many consider the current PlayStation generation a weak one: Sony has produced very few genuinely innovative exclusives this time around, the company invested in failed live-service projects, and single-player games now take 6+ years to develop. As a result, many PlayStation studios have released only 1–2 games during this generation.

What we are seeing now is the release of accumulated frustration. In this case, Marvel's Wolverine simply got caught in the crossfire. That is ironic, considering Insomniac remains PlayStation's most productive developer: over the past 6 years, the studio has released Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and has now almost finished Marvel's Wolverine.

Marvel's Wolverine may turn out to be a perfectly good game that had the misfortune of arriving at a time when every big-budget blockbuster is expected to reinvent its genre. The problem is not that Wolverine may earn a 7–8/10 score, but that modern gaming discourse treats such a score as a failure.

At the same time, it would also be wrong to dismiss all the dissatisfaction as gamer toxicity. Not everyone is willing to pay $70 for a decent game assembled from familiar elements. The higher the price and the more ambitious the marketing, the greater the audience's expectations — and the less impressed it will be by tried-and-tested ideas. Publishers need to take that into account as well.

Would you pay $70 at launch for a polished but predictable game, or should any game at that price be required to offer something new? Share your thoughts in the comments.