Marvel’s Wolverine Review – PlayStation 5 Pro

Insomniac Games has already proven they understand superhero traversal and spectacle. Marvel’s Wolverine takes a wonderfully distinct approach. This standalone adventure focuses on a deeply violent and chaotic chapter in Logan’s exceptionally long life, abandoning web-swinging agility in favour of raw, grounded brutality.

The result is a visceral action game that leans heavily into its mature rating.

The combat is incredibly nasty, the world is grimy, and the line between hero and animal is constantly tested. The narrower scope of this contained experience serves the character incredibly well.

Insomniac deserves immense praise for refusing to sanitise the character, finally delivering the uncompromising, blood-soaked Wolverine experience we have been wanting for years.

Story

Set three years after Logan left the mutant strike force Team X, the campaign kicks off with a frantic, blood-soaked mission to rescue their former mentor, Dr. Nathaniel Essex, from a remote facility owned by the mutant-hunting billionaire Bolivar Trask.

The game eschews a slow buildup, delivering exposition on the run as Logan teams up with familiar faces like Mystique, Sabretooth, and the powerful telekinetic Jean Grey to battle Trask’s cybernetically enhanced Reavers across the globe.

Insomniac treats Logan’s trauma with surprising care amidst the chaos. This exploration of his past is primarily delivered through the brilliant Nightmare Doors scattered throughout the campaign.

Guided by his heightened senses, Logan can step through these doorways to face intense combat and traversal trials. These optional sections are deeply psychological, forcing Logan to fight through surreal manifestations of his time in the Weapon X program and other repressed memories. The supporting cast is sharply written throughout, particularly Troy Baker’s excellent turn as Essex, a slithery mentor whose motives never feel entirely clear.

In many ways, the campaign represents the closest gaming has come to delivering a truly interactive Marvel Cinematic Universe feature film. On the positive side, this translates to a breathtaking rollercoaster of perfectly paced set pieces and jaw-dropping cinematic spectacle.

However, that intense level of polish occasionally comes at the cost of player agency. There are distinct moments where you are effectively just pushing the thumbstick forward to trigger the next scripted explosion, creating a rigidly constrained feel that wrests control away just as the adrenaline peaks. The story remains at its absolute best when it finally slows down, allowing Logan to show his weary heart beating beneath the adamantium skeleton.

Gameplay

Combat is the beating heart of the game, and it is appropriately ferocious. Logan eschews defensive manoeuvring to tear straight through enemies with unbridled aggression. The mechanics focus on closing the distance quickly, unleashing devastating claw combos, and using the environment to dispatch foes. You can pin enemies to walls, throw them through windows, and execute brutal finishers that highlight the game’s mature rating.

The standout feature is the interplay between the real-time healing factor and the rage system. As you take damage, you can visibly see Logan’s flesh tear away to reveal the adamantium skeleton beneath, only to watch the muscle and skin knit back together. However, it is your offensive momentum that fuels the core mechanics. Landing attacks, parrying strikes, and securing kills all contribute to a three-tiered pool of adrenaline.

The game actively rewards relentless aggression, turning Logan into an unstoppable, feral force. Reaching Tier 2 allows you to trigger a lifesaving ‘Last Stand’ heal when downed, while maxing out at Tier 3 lets you unleash a stylised monochromatic explosion of savagery punctuated with blood red swirls – much like the rage mode in PlayStation stablemate Ghost of Tsushima.

The tracking mechanics are also useful for those less familiar with more open-plan action games, allowing Logan to follow scent trails to hunt down targets or locate hidden collectables in the form or caches and scattered whisky bottles.

Crucially, the environments support this combat model, though they lean heavily into a structured, cinematic format. The design funnels you from one intense combat arena to the next, with some light stealth elements before the inevitable brawling begins. This narrower focus is bolstered by a deeply satisfying progression system.

Exploring the environments yields a fantastic selection of unlockable suits that serve as a brilliant cosmetic tribute to Logan’s comic book history. The true mechanical depth comes from the Adaptations.

You can unlock dozens of these unique abilities and equip four Special Techniques at once, allowing you to build a custom loadout tailored to your specific playstyle. As you unlock a devastating suite of these new abilities, the combat remains incredibly rewarding, even if the enemy variety can feel a touch repetitive as you approach the final chapters.

Audio

The sound design is suitably heavy and oppressive. The iconic ‘snikt’ of the claws deploying never loses its thrill. The combat audio is filled with sickening crunches and tearing sounds. The ambient noise of the environments builds a fantastic sense of place, keeping the tension high even during the brief moments of exploration in the snowy wilderness or neon-lit city streets of Tokyo.

The musical score is where the audio presentation truly excels. Emmy-winning composer David Fleming has crafted an extraordinary soundtrack that brilliantly mirrors Logan’s fractured identity. The music seamlessly blends the twanging acoustic guitars of classic American Westerns with the serene, traditional instrumentation of Japanese samurai films.

This stylistic clash perfectly reflects his complex history and globe-trotting journey. The voice acting is top-tier throughout, with Liam McIntyre’s lead performance capturing Logan’s gruff, deceptively complex demeanour flawlessly, alongside Troy Baker’s brilliant turn – likeness and all – as Essex.

The dynamic soundtrack layers these sweeping cinematic scores with moody synth beats and heavy rock riffs that kick in when the action escalates. Furthermore, the haptic feedback on the DualSense is used brilliantly to simulate the metallic scrape of claws and the heavy, thudding impact of Logan’s brawling style.

Performance

Visually, Wolverine is an absolute powerhouse, and playing on the PlayStation 5 Pro elevates the entire experience to a new tier of technical excellence. The environments are dense with detail, featuring incredible destruction physics and realistic fluid dynamics that pool on the floors of the combat arenas. The character models are stunning. Logan’s deteriorating and regenerating character mesh serves as a genuine technical showcase for the hardware.

While the base console handles the game brilliantly with standard Fidelity and Performance modes, the PS5 Pro completely transforms the visual presentation. Insomniac has implemented PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) to deliver a remarkably sharp and clear picture across the board.

For those with a 120Hz display, the VRR uncapped options are an absolute game changer. Running the game in Fidelity Pro with VRR enabled allows you to enjoy all the advanced ray-traced reflections and dense geometry while the frame rate hovers beautifully around 50 to 60fps.

This sweet spot completely eliminates the sluggishness of traditional 30fps modes. Alternatively, Performance Pro provides visuals equivalent to the base console’s Fidelity mode while pushing the frame rate anywhere from 80 to 110fps. Either way, the fast-paced, aggressive combat has never felt smoother.

Editions and Value

Marvel’s Wolverine launches with a standard retail price of £69.99, while the Digital Deluxe Edition comes in at £79.99. The additional £10 provides a handsome cosmetic package aimed squarely at longtime comic fans.

Upgrading grants five exclusive outfits along with five unique claw variants and an immediate four-point boost to your Technique Points to jump-start your loadout.

The overall value of this premium tier depends entirely on your desire for cosmetics. The base game already contains an excellent selection of unlockable outfits tied to exploration and Gauntlet completion, meaning the Deluxe suits are purely a bonus for completionists.

Thankfully, Sony offers the Digital Deluxe content as a standalone £10 upgrade on the PlayStation Store. This provides a brilliant workaround for savvy buyers. You can easily pick up a physical copy from retailers like Argos for roughly £62.99 and purchase the digital upgrade separately. This strategy drops the total cost to £72.99 and secures every piece of content available at launch while saving you some money.

Verdict

Marvel’s Wolverine is a confident, brutal adaptation of one of comic history’s most iconic characters. By abandoning large-scale open-world fluff, it delivers a tightly paced, highly cinematic action experience. The combat perfectly captures the sheer ferocity of the character, and the technical execution of the healing factor is remarkable.

With beautifully detailed levels and a deeply rewarding progression system, the sheer quality of the presentation easily overshadows minor gripes with the linear structure and late-game combat loop.

It is a dark, gripping, and incredibly satisfying journey that proves Insomniac can handle the grit just as well as the glamour.