It’s no secret that Insomniac’s Wolverine has been a commercial and critical disappointment.
The game failed to beat the remake of a 13-year-old game (Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced) and Crimson Desert, a brand new IP, during its first 72 hours after launch. That shouldn’t happen to a game with the Marvel tag slapped on it and one of the most popular comic book characters in history, especially since Insomniac delivered an extraordinary gaming experience in 2018’s Spider-Man and a competent one in Spider-Man 2 (despite the Sweet Baby Inc. association).
I’ve previously written about why Wolverine underperformed from a business and marketing perspective, but this time I want to share with all of you, great Fandom Pulse readers, why Wolverine failed miserably from a gameplay and story perspective.
Let’s get started.
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The Gameplay
Wolverine is the kind of game that drags on for too long with the mechanics you already mastered by the 30-minute mark.
Slash, jump, dodge, barrage, ad infinitum.
I’m sure many players wouldn’t mind this, especially those of us who grew up playing classics like X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse on the SNES, Konami’s extraordinary X-Men Arcade or Wolverine: Adamantium Rage on the Genesis. The problem is when a game that’s obsessed with cinematic presentation interrupts the rhythm every 10 minutes, for over 12 hours.
Cutscenes, tutorial snippets, handholding messages, quicktime events, walking and even stealth sections get in the way of what the vast majority of players would expect from a Wolverine game: brutal action.
And to make matters worse, the game features an experience system where you unlock special skills as you make progress because… what would a Western AAA gaming experience be without some good old RPGification just to bloat up gameplay time.
The walking sections in particular are everything you’ve come to despise about ‘Sonyslop’ games like God of War: Ragnarok, The Last of Us 2, Ghost of Yotei and even Horizon Forbidden West.. they serve as ‘connecting tissue’ between the next action stage and a story that seems to take priority over everything else.
And this is where writing about all of this starts to make my blood boil.
Why did Insomniac literally waste over $305 million to develop a game that’s obsessed with becoming a movie or a Disney+ TV series instead of a memorable experience driven by gameplay?
Every 5-10 minutes, there’s dialogue you’re supposed to be paying attention to, or a cutscene, or a walking section filled with lines that by the 45-min mark you’re no longer interested in.
Oh but there’s Sabretooth, and now there’s Toad, and now there’s Tyger, and there’s Omega Red, and then you’re arm wrestling Sabretooth while having a conversation… It’s the kind of MCU-influenced chore that leaves you drained, expecting to play only to be hammered by Netflix quality scripting and the neverending promise of a huge payoff that never delivers
Yes, the presentation is impeccable and you can clearly see that in the attention to detail of every location, but the photorealism gets in the way of a game that could feel like a classic X-Men comic book with everything that we love about games…. more gameplay, less narrative and environmental distractions.
Speaking of photorealism, the uncanny valley and disproportionate facial features of female characters that have come to define modern Western gaming are all here.
Just look at Sabretooth,
And Tyger…
And Mystique…
And Lady Deathstrike…
And Jean Grey…
Superhero characters became popular by being inspiring and having near perfect physical features, so when DEI, design and narrative consultants try to make them ‘represent everyone’ and do a technically poor job at that… well, the result is uninspiring, leading to the kind of underperforming sales Insomniac’s Wolverine is apparently doing.
The Story
Without spoiling too much, and to respect your time the way this game doesn’t, I’ll keep it brief to expose the modern obsession with ‘origin stories.’
You know, the kind of origin stories that try to retcon and reinvent established lore to adapt source material for ‘modern audiences’… 007: First Light, Saints Row Reboot, that Uncharted movie no one remembers, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX, Terminator: Dark Fate… you get the idea.
The X-Men don’t exist in Insomniac’s Wolverine, no Professor X and no School for Gifted Youngsters.
There’s only Team-X, a black-ops mutant squad led by Nathaniel Essex, the guy who finds feral Logan in the woods and gave him a purpose. Then there’s Bolivar Trask, the billionaire who thinks mutants are a threat to mankind, and must be studied and disposed of.
The game tries to tell an interesting, compelling story full of references to former disappointments and betrayals, but the problem is that everything feels disconnected even convoluted… spread through dialogues, walking conversations and missions where you explicitly have to ‘talk to people’ to gain experience.
It ends up being the kind of serviceable story that you can let roll and then come back without missing anything, with yelling to stress tension and calm, ‘reflective’ scenes for ‘character development’ that… no one really cares for in a Wolverine game.
Oh, and Mystique bosses you around… every single minute you’re next to her.
Closing Thoughts
The problem with Insomniac’s Wolverine is that it tries too hard to pander to an imaginary theater crowd who is supposed to carry the game’s revenue and word-of-mouth, instead of X-Men and seasoned players who have the budget to pay the $70 price of admission.
The result is a game that looks spectacular and brutal, but that fails to live up to the legacy of the X-Men franchise. I’ve said before that photorealism, and an obsession with ‘narrative design’ and RPGification is destroying Western gaming.
And Insomniac’s Wolverine is, sadly, the best (or worst) example of that.
One More Thing
The Forge by Yorch Torch Games is the #1 source for game recommendations, game design analysis, financial insight and market intelligence for the games industry.
Subscribe today and get:
Weekly articles on business strategy for the gaming industry, with the kind of insight that legacy media and shills are too afraid to discuss.
Weekly game recommendations, from retro to indies, Eastern titles and the few Western AAA games worth playing today.
Game design deep dives of your favorite games.
And much more!