After years of Spider-Man games, Insomniac could have approached Wolverine as another variation on a formula it already knows extremely well. Give Logan a large city, fill the map with activities, replace webs with claws and build another polished Marvel adventure around constant movement.
Marvel's Wolverine, out September 15 on PS5, goes in a noticeably different direction. Insomniac has made a more linear, heavier and considerably bloodier action game where fights happen at arm's length and Logan rarely leaves them looking clean. It feels less like the studio adapting its Spider-Man formula and more like an opportunity to make the kind of superhero game that Spider-Man never allowed it to make.
Spider-Man works because movement is effortless. Peter and Miles fly between buildings, bounce across rooftops and turn entire city blocks into playgrounds. Logan isn't supposed to move through the world with that kind of elegance, so Insomniac built his combat around physical weight instead.
The developers describe Wolverine as a tank. He closes distance aggressively, crashes into enemies and uses the environment with little concern for what survives the encounter. His claws aren't treated like glowing melee weapons that simply reduce a health bar either. Limbs come off, bodies are torn apart and blood becomes part of the visual feedback of a fight.
That brutality isn't there only to make the game more adult. It helps distinguish Logan from Insomniac's previous superheroes. Spider-Man spends his fights controlling a crowd without killing anyone; Wolverine often looks like the crowd is the thing that needs saving from him.
The same attention extends to Wolverine himself. Damage can tear his suit and expose wounds underneath, while his healing factor visibly repairs the damage. His body becomes a record of what just happened before gradually returning to normal.
It's a small detail, but an important one for a character whose ability to survive punishment is as defining as the claws themselves. Wolverine shouldn't simply lose health and then look untouched once the encounter ends. Watching his injuries disappear makes regeneration feel like part of the character rather than an explanation for a conventional health system.
Insomniac has even paid attention to less heroic details, from Logan's body hair to how his clothes respond to damage. The result isn't always flattering, which is exactly why it suits him.
Moving away from a single open city also gives Marvel's Wolverine a different rhythm. Instead of spending most of the game crossing the same map between objectives, Logan travels through several locations, including Tokyo, as the story pushes him into different environments.
That structure fits a character whose history stretches across countries, wars and decades. More importantly, it allows Insomniac to control pacing rather than constantly finding reasons to populate another enormous map with icons and repeatable activities.
The trade-off is obvious: Wolverine doesn't offer the same freedom that made exploring New York such a major part of Spider-Man. But Logan doesn't need a city-sized playground. A tighter structure keeps the focus on encounters, environments and the story instead of asking him to become another superhero responsible for clearing a map.
Marvel's Wolverine still carries plenty of recognizable Insomniac DNA. Combat has upgrades, abilities and familiar action-game fundamentals, while cinematic sequences and character-driven storytelling remain central to the experience. The studio hasn't suddenly abandoned everything it learned from Spider-Man.
What has changed is how those ideas are being used. Wolverine gives Insomniac permission to make fights uglier, environments more intimate and its superhero less concerned with looking heroic after every encounter. The violence, visible regeneration and tighter structure all serve the same purpose: making Logan feel fundamentally different from the heroes who came before him.
After years of gracefully swinging above New York and saving criminals from falling off rooftops, Insomniac finally gets to leave some blood on the floor.
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