Insomniac Games, the Sony-owned studio behind the acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man series, is applying a similar approach to Marvel's Wolverine, giving the clawed mutant his first starring video game role since a run of mediocre film tie-ins in the 2000s. The game matters as a test of whether Insomniac's storytelling and design formula, which has proved influential enough to shape recent Spider-Man films, can be adapted to a much more violent and morally ambiguous character.

The story reworks Marvel lore into a new continuity, introducing Wolverine as a rescued feral figure taken in by Mister Sinister, who runs a mutant-liberation group called Team X rather than a traditional X-Men set-up, alongside Jean Grey's Mariposa School. Combat draws heavily on the Arkham-inspired system used in Insomniac's Spider-Man games, with colour-coded enemy attacks prompting parries or dodges, but lacks the web-slinging traversal that defined those titles. The key departure is tone: unlike Spider-Man's or Batman's no-kill approach, Wolverine's claws produce graphic, bloody violence, including severed limbs, which the reviewer likens to lower-budget action games of the past.