Sean Craig

Contributing Writer

Marvel’s Wolverine, the long-awaited title developed by Insomniac Games, was released on Sept. 15 of this year. Many fans of Marvel as a franchise and especially fans of Insomniac’s past Spider-Man games, have eagerly awaited this title. However, many fans, including myself, are disappointed with the games linear gameplay and lack of meaningful storyline.

“The hype was real. We were all excited for it,” said an anonymous player from the Playstation store review page. “Whoever wrote the dialogue in this game should never make video games again. Horrible. Cringy.”

I could not agree more with this user. As a huge fan of Insomniac’s games in the past, I was disappointed with the large difference between this game’s dialogue and their past games dialogue. It felt quite forced and very out of the character for Wolverine.

The game also has a severe lack of traversal or open world challenges which is what I was expecting from an Insomniac game. The gameplay is almost entirely linear with one being able to essentially drop the controller and watch during some of the games motorcycle sections.

“Having unfailable QTEs is dumb,” said another reviewer. “I get you want to sell the most copies possible. But at least give the players toggles for them to choose which experience is best. The handholding is just insulting and that’s why I refunded.”

The quick time events (QTEs) mentioned by this reviewer are parts of the game where a customer is prompted to press a button on their controller in order to continue progressing through an action-packed cutscene. In this game however the player can simply wait for the QTE to pass and the cutscene will continue on as normal. So they are essentially useless to the overall experience of the game.

The game’s combat is incredibly repetitive and lacks realism in my opinion. Wolverine is meant to be a brutal and realistic character. While the combat of the game is certainly brutal, the copious amount of blood feels cartoonish at times. It has human enemies spewing gallons of blood and taking what seems like way more hits than a normal human would be able to take from a superhero as strong and brutal as the Wolverine.

On the other hand, Wolverine is such a tanky character who is able to heal with so much ease, that everything feels very mindless in terms of combat.

While Wolverine is a popular character, these flaws in the game make me question why anyone thought he would make for a good video game character in the first place. His amount of power calls for absolutely no challenge on the players end and makes for a boring and repetitive game.

This (mixed with the poor storyline writing) is what led to the unfortunate downfall of this long-awaited blockbuster.

The price tag of $69.99 is not doing Insomniac any favors here either. Even popular games with a similar price do not sell nearly as much upon release simply because of how expensive they are.

I find it difficult to believe that this game will make as much money as Insomniac’s other Marvel games, especially with the amount of refund requests I expect it to receive. Hopefully I am wrong in my assumption, but I predict this game is going to be a relative flop.