Marvel’s Wolverine is the world’s biggest budget IQ test. review

Played on PlayStation 5

At a time when games based on movies were popular (at least that’s what publishers thought), there were a lot of superhero releases. Sega has released action games about the Hulk and Thor, 2K Games has released action games about the Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider, Activision has released a lot of games about Spider-Man… One of the best games in this galaxy is Raven Software’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine – a dull but brilliant “Seven” action movie. It came out in 2009, and seventeen years later we got Marvel’s The Wolverine, which evoked nostalgia for the action games of that era – as if you’d missed the game on PS3, and now that a remake (or even a remaster) of it had been released… you’d be trying to understand why it plays like a hastily thrown together movie from the previous decade.

⇡#jump, kick, kick

In the first battle against a horde of soldiers, doubts about the gameplay are already raised. As Wolverine, we swing our long claws, dodge attacks, parry enemy blows, and jump from target to target. This last feature is my favorite – it really feels like you’re controlling a character with superpowers who is far more dexterous than his opponents. However, there’s no depth to any of this – you press the same button, defeat one enemy, then switch to another… and at the very beginning of the game you’ll be asking yourself: will this all be just as fun a few hours later? Will anything change in the future? No, it won’t change.

Wolverine often screams, but not always with a purpose

The local “fights” are equally spectacular: Wolverine violently rushes from one poor guy to another, knocking opponents to the ground, gouging them with his claws and even tearing off body parts – this isn’t your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who carefully wraps everyone in his web so that no one dies. Blood is everywhere in Marvel’s Wolverine, but Wolverine is far from immortal—if you falter and miss five or six hits, you can easily move on to the next world. There is no first aid kit; when you unlock this skill (very quickly), you can only restore health by killing unconscious enemies. If the hero is mortally wounded, he either dies immediately or gets back up when his rage is full.

The scale is divided into three parts. After reaching each part, Wolverine’s blows will become stronger and stronger. In the last third, the hero will enter “Berserker Mode” – the screen will darken enough to hit the enemy several times, and the inscription L2+R2 will appear above his head, which means that the target can be effectively eliminated. This mode probably won’t end for long, which can get you distracted quickly in batches Opponents that usually take longer to defeat. It sounds and is fun to play, and it is at first. But combat is already primitive, and with an angry Wolverine, the process becomes even more pointless – without mini-bosses in the arena (and most of the time there aren’t), enemies have nothing to hold against you at all, so they pose little threat.

Not really, to be honest

Then you discover that the combat system is more arbitrary than you thought. For example, there’s parry: when an enemy attacks and his weapon lights up, you can press L1 and Wolverine will react accordingly – just like in all games. It’s just that here you can press the block button unconsciously – you don’t need to press it perfectly at the right time like in soulslicks or normal linear action games – and chances are you’ll be able to repel an attack with multiple presses. That said, all the combat here works like this: you use a triangle to jump to the target, quickly press “square” twenty times while “spam” the blocking button, and repeat the whole process multiple times until the next story scene. Sometimes you’ll activate a special move on an area, such as Dash or Cyclone Strike, but these abilities take so long to cool down that after using them in one fight, they may not be available in the next.

As a result, the incredibly powerful Wolverine turned out to be a very boring character – which is probably to be expected. Spider-Man has webs and related technology, Batman has countless gadgets, and Wolverine is just a clawed Hercules, there’s not much to say here. Maybe that’s why they decided to make Marvel’s Wolverine a 15-hour linear action game rather than a drawn-out open-world action game – you’ll be bored with the gameplay long before the final credits roll, and if you still have to run from mission to mission, players will actually fall asleep with the controller in their hands out of boredom. There’s some extra content here, but it seems to have been added reluctantly – you’re walking along a linear location, and suddenly you see tree roots crawling out of the ground, leading to a door with a test: get there as quickly as possible, defeat the enemy within a minute, etc. As a gift, you’ll receive a mini-story from Wolverine’s past and upgrade points.

Many useful skills and techniques are unlocked very late – only in the second half of the game

⇡#surround

Due to the linear nature of the game, another problem arises – Wolverine’s moves and actions are too limited. A lot of people made fun of Kratos for suddenly forgetting how to jump in the God of War reboot, but that could be explained by his age – they said, the hero isn’t as agile anymore, etc. The Wolverine in the game is a regular Wolverine: he has to jump anywhere he likes, his claws have to go through any walls, etc. But the linear structure makes that impossible—even if the game puts you in more or less open positions, they’re still fraught with limitations. You can climb this wall, but you can’t climb this wall. You can jump to this branch; the corresponding icon will not appear on the other branch. The environment is damaged, but very rarely – wooden boxes fall apart with a single blow, and many other objects are “screwed” tightly to the floors and walls.

Due to the many limitations, the location designers had to add a lot of hints that there was no point in hinting at where you could climb and interact with it. There are so many of them that at times Marvel’s Wolverine feels like a parody of modern action games. Someone poured white paint onto a piece of plywood. For some reason the white paint is bleeding under the lamp that is screwed to the wall. The railing near the stairs was damaged, and the damaged areas were covered in… yes, white paint. When the designers decided to add variety, they used snow, which works the same way. Sometimes you’ll see both snow and paint at the same time – so players don’t get confused.

Well, who drew that? !

However, that’s not all. In many story scenes, Wolverine will smell someone and a visual will appear on the screen, leading to the target – even in a linear location. This “feature” of the game was derided on social networks, but such a mechanic seems to be more or less appropriate – more a matter of directorial skill than hint. Sure, the effect looked weird in the release build, but after the patch it’s no longer noticeable. Even more puzzling is the way the game hints at collectibles – in some episodes, chests are reported to be almost a kilometer away, and when approaching them, an unpleasant sound is made, prompting you to turn the corner and look for the “Collector” there. It seems nice to simplify the search this way – chests contain the currency needed to purchase many outfits. But at the same time, because there are so many prompts, you feel like you’re either being put to the test or being treated like an idiot who will accidentally take the wrong turn and get lost.

These interesting hints have a big advantage – thanks to them, the game can evoke at least some emotions, besides complete indifference. The main problem with Marvel’s Wolverine is that Wolverine can be replaced by any character – and very little will change. As you control Spider-Man, you can spend hours flying around a web of skyscrapers, enjoying gameplay like nothing else. Wolverine has fewer abilities than the protagonist prototype, who can walk through buildings and attack helicopters at any time. He didn’t stand out in any way, even losing out to non-superhero characters like Kal in Star Wars: Jedi Knight or Sofia in A Plague Tale. This doesn’t change over the course of the game – when you’re taught to knock off opponents with shockwaves in the second half of the game, you’ll understand how difficult it was for the developers to introduce at least some variety into this tedious gameplay.

The boss designs are reminiscent of old movie games, and that’s not a compliment.

There’s probably something to be said about the plot, but it’s just as boring as the gameplay. The main story has stalled, and a lot of the characters that are supposed to evoke emotion aren’t given time to develop, so you don’t have to worry about their fate – someone dies, and that’s okay. But Liam McIntyre is great as Wolverine – as was the case in the Spartacus series, where he replaced the late actor in season two, here you won’t get used to him immediately – after all, the hero has long been associated with Hugh Jackman. But as time goes on, we like him more and more, but Troy Baker, who we’ve only seen before in Death Stranding, looks like a fake tooth here.

***

I’m not comparing Marvel’s “Wolverine” to Marvel’s “Spider-Man” or some other action movie about superheroes, but to another Sony exclusive, “Days Gone.” The same boring action movie is reminiscent of dozens or even hundreds of previous games, and you won’t even remember it after watching it. Maybe it’s just a bad choice for the character – he has nothing to do in the open world and the linear locations are too cramped for him. In moments like this, you need to put yourself in the developer’s shoes and think about what they could have done differently. In this case, maybe it’s okay – Wolverine has been great in the comics and the two-hour movie, but having him in the entire game seems like a bad idea. Let’s see what the studio has in mind for Venom – according to leaks, he’s next in line.

advantage:

• Spectacular bloody battles and spectacular finishing moves;
• Several exciting story scenes in which Wolverine does things he can’t do in the game;
• Dozens of costumes from various comics, movies, and games featuring Logan.

defect:

• The combat portion doesn’t really develop and becomes boring long before the game is over;
• The excessive number of prompts causes the game to resemble a parody of modern action games;
• Wolverine isn’t that different from other heroes in similar games, which is why the gameplay feels secondary every time;
• Dull main plot that doesn’t offer anything interesting.

Rating: 5.0/10

More information about the rating system

video: