Despite all of its obvious faults, I couldn't help but really like Wolverine

Wolverine is a fascinating video game, and my relationship with it has been equally fascinating to explore over the last week as I’ve been making my way through the story. The criticisms out there are real and valid. The boss fights are overly long despite how simple they are, the combat can be both tedious and obnoxious, and the exploration feels like it detracts from the missions more than it adds to them.

And yet, as the credits rolled, I found myself oddly satisfied. I’m not sure how great Wolverine is, but I know I liked it.

When looking at Wolverine, it's the type of game where my frustrations are much easier to express than the aspects of the game that I loved. But I think that has less to do with the quantity of “bad” things, and more to do with how obvious they feel. But even those bad pieces have aspects I’ve adored

Starting with the combat, the game offers a blend of Arkham-esque combat with something more parry -heavy, like Sekiro Jr. You can slice with your claws, pounce on baddies, and cast a variety of abilities (on shockingly long cooldowns) to slice through foes.

At its most basic level, this combat can get a little boring. Some encounters just feel like a button mash, because the threat on the normal difficulty feels almost nonexistent, thanks to Wolverine’s healing factor. But some elite-style enemies force certain playstyles (like needing to kick shields) that interrupt the flow of combat entirely. Other enemies will continue to attack you even when you’re locked into certain animations, leading to some obnoxious scenarios.

But like all things Wolverine, there are moments where this combat really shines. Certain encounters just click perfectly, and you feel like the Wolverine the same way Insomniac’s Spider-Man games evoke the web-head, slicing through foes, diving after them to pin them to the ground, and then driving your three-pronged blades into one of their skulls. This is largely thanks to the rage system, which builds as you fight enemies, eventually unlocking a super fast, execution-heavy mode that is extremely satisfying to use to clear an encounter.

This is how Wolverine goes. You can look at something like the mission design, and realize how deeply uneven it is. Some missions sing, while others are overly tedious or long. Some challenges flow incredibly well, while others feel barely tested. 

However, there is one aspect of Wolverine that never stumbled for me, and never had that “up and down” rollercoaster quality: the narrative and the performances.

The Wolverine story is different to say the least, but that shouldn’t be a surprise if you’re an Insomniac fan. One of the best parts about the Spider-Man games is the way they take a character and his villains that we’re familiar with, and they put them in unique and interesting situations. Mystique, for example, is a common frenemy of the X-Men, and she very much starts out as an ally of Logan in this game. But they take some very disciplined moves to put her in the position she is at the end of the game, which lands really nicely in the moral grey that we expect from her.

Basically, Insomniac doesn’t treat these modern myths as sacred or pure. They exist to be twisted and changed, evolved into an unexpected interpretation.