After playing 2 hours of Marvel's Wolverine, Insomniac has crushed my fears of a post-Spider-Man slump: "This is uniquely Logan"

Insomniac built the adamantium skeleton for Marvel's Wolverine with its Spider-Man games. The upcoming PS5 game clearly builds on the combat, the cinematic presentation, and even the progression systems of those previous titles. But after spending two hours playing Marvel's Wolverine, touring Insomniac's Los Angeles headquarters, and speaking to some of the developers bringing the game to life, it's clear that this is more than a simple reskin of Spider-Man. James Logan Howlett's burning heart beats at the center of it all.

"One thing we're really proud about at the studio is shipping games," head of technology Mike Fitzgerald tells me. "This is our fifth title on the PlayStation 5. We're really proud of that. Part of that is knowing how to build on prior games effectively. If we'd taken a Spider-Man game and put a Wolverine character model in, that wouldn't feel right. It wouldn't be right for the character. It wouldn't be fulfilling the player fantasy for the fans. So it's about building carefully on what we have and then rethinking a whole lot of the fundamentals."

So the flippy, acrobatic combat of Spider-Man – which, itself, echoes Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham series – has slowed down, with a closer camera perspective and more tightly-packed enemies. The violence is more extreme. The story is darker. And, most obviously, we're now following a linear, globe-trotting adventure rather than exploring a singular open world.

Rage against the killing machines

"Throughout development," senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed explains, "any decision we're making, we're trying to go: 'Is this right for Wolverine? Is this telling a Logan-centric story? Is this the best way we can do this to make the player feel like they're playing as Wolverine?'"

Nowhere is this intent more obvious than with the Rage system. As you fight, striking enemies and parrying their attacks, you build up a meter representing Wolverine's bestial anger. Once it's maxed out, the color drains from the scene, Wolverine powers up, and you can launch instant-kill takedowns by pulling both triggers at once. The meter quickly drains once you reach this state, but you can keep it going longer by continuing to kill.

Image 1 of 4

This system really incentivizes you to be aggressive, constantly escalating the speed with which you're taking down the bad guys, perfectly in line with your character's own overflowing rage. It's introduced with a great little moment in the game, where Logan's anger at seeing his fellow mutants mistreated boils over, and you're given control with maximum Rage to rip the perpetrators to shreds. If you've seen any of the trailers for Wolverine, you'll know just how bloody this game can get. But, importantly, Logan's violence feels like an outpouring of his desire to protect others.

"He's not bloodthirsty," Fitzgerald says. "He's not a sadist. He's not reveling in the violence that he's doing. We want the game to reflect that as well. The game itself isn't like 'look at how bloody and gross we can be.' It's more like this is a natural consequence of who this character is and what he grapples with over the course of the game."

The Rage system also accounts for Wolverine's superhuman healing. You do have a traditional health meter, but as long as you've got some Rage in the tank, you can get back up and keep fighting. Die without any Rage to keep you going, though, and you'll have to restart from a checkpoint. It may not be 100% true to the specifics of Logan's mutant ability, but it does keep the spirit of those powers intact and faithfully represents the character's relentless nature.

"You wouldn't see another character with that set of abilities or mechanics," Reiner-Reed says. "This is uniquely Logan."

Image 1 of 2

This is no origin story

The start of the game shows a brief flashback to when Logan was living a seemingly feral life in the wilderness, just as he meets a mysterious figure promising a home for mutants. But this isn't Professor X talking about a home for gifted youngsters. This is Nathaniel Essex, a character with a lengthy X-Men comic history as the villain Mister Sinister.

But if Essex is going to become the villain of this story, that's going to be a late game twist. Insomniac dragged out the ultimate heel turn of Otto Octavius as Doctor Octopus in the 2018 Spider-Man game, which could be the blueprint for what's happening here. For now, though, the game flashes forward, with Wolverine rejoining Mystique, Jean Grey, and Sabretooth as part of Team X to rescue Essex from the anti-mutant extremist Bolivar Trask.

What follows is something of a superpowered D-Day invasion, where I charge up a muddy hill toward a massive fort, slicing through Trask's minions as I go. While there's plenty of action and bombast, this is very much the game's tutorial, as I'm introduced to the basics of combat. The true depths of the Rage system haven't unlocked yet, but even here the combat feels meaty and rewarding.

My favorite move is pushing triangle to leap forward and quickly close the distance with an enemy. It's not entirely dissimilar to Spider-Man's Web Strike, but at this closer combat scale, it reminds me of how Batman would automatically leap between opponents in the Arkham games. Here, it's an active ingredient in the combat soup, something to stay engaged with as the rhythm of parry, dodge, slash slash slash carries on.

I find myself surprised by how quickly I can get around the game's bigger areas. Wolverine can't use web shooters to speed through these levels, but he can still move. Logan runs quickly, can climb up walls, and leap leg-shattering distances. There's an open-ended area early on where I have to take out a series of mutant-detecting alarms guarded by patrolling soldiers. It feels like an absolute playground, thanks largely to how quickly I can move through it, and how easy it is switch between brutal, stalking stealth and full-blown combat.

I'm also introduced to each of the game's major cast members, but notably, this isn't their first meeting. Nor do I hear much about Wolverine's backstory, and that's very much by design. "Logan already has adamantium infused to his bones," says creative director Marcus Smith. "He does not remember how that happened, why it happened, and we are not really covering it because we're not doing an origin story." There are already plenty of places where you can learn of Wolverine's origins, and having the specifics shrouded in mystery here helps build gravity and intrigue around his relationships.

Later in the demo, I'm whisked forward to a part near the end of the game's first act. Here, I get the culmination of all the combat tricks I've learned up to this point as I take on a massive Sentinel prototype. It's a multi-stage boss fight where I've got to wear down its various weak points to deal big damage.

It's familiar stuff if you've, uh, ever played a video game before, but it's a great little challenge. In fact, it's the only time I die outside of a later optional challenge room – and it sneaks in a few unique mechanics, like an ability to call in a sniper shot from Mystique with a tap of the R1 button, which stuns the giant machine so I can get a few extra licks in.

Madripoor me another

Eventually, Logan ends up in Madripoor, and here the game allows me a bit of a breather. The story slows down as I wander a small bar and nearby stretch of street while Logan meets up with his allies to discuss everything that's transpired. There are fun little Easter eggs to discover here – a playing card hinting at Gambit wandering around this universe, for example – but the real treat is the character interactions.

I'm impressed by just how convincing the storytelling and character performances are. There's a wonderful little moment between Logan and Mystique where they play a round of "never have I ever," as our hero is grilled on topics like lost loves. I get to choose what parts Logan drinks to, and relish the chance to get inside the character's head and imagine his past and what's brought him to this point.

There's a haunted sense of history to how Logan and the crew refer to their past adventures and the mistakes they've made along the way, and it works in part because the story is so well-delivered. The devs say getting this right was a monumental task. "Cinematics is something where there's not, 'Hey, this is just the cinematics department, and they take care [of it],'" Reiner-Reed explains. "It takes everybody. There's lighting, there's artists, there's performance and optimization, there's animation, mocap."

This Madripoor section is also my first opportunity to properly explore, finding collectables here and there that tie into the game's various upgrade systems. I'm able to unlock a few new abilities – both passive buffs and active attacks that run on a cooldown in combat – and check out some additional suits for Wolverine, but I don't have much space to actually dive into those systems before my time with the demo ends. For now, it feels more like a teaser for the fact that, yes, there will be reasons to explore and go off the beaten path in the full game.

There are also additional challenges to take on in a sort of dreamy cabin space that will apparently appear at various points across the story. Inside, Logan can interact with various totems to take on optional timed challenges, like fighting hordes of soldiers in a snowy battlefield or racing through an abstract, nearly psychedelic collection of parkour obstacles. I certainly wasn't expecting to be reminded of Mirror's Edge during Wolverine, but the abstracted arenas for the traversal challenges put me in a similar frame of mind. These time trials are fun enough, but those that I played were pretty simple and easy. I was able to get not just a gold rating, but platinum after just a couple of tries.

Image 1 of 6

The combat challenge I took on, however, really put me through the ringer. Here, I had to manage an array of goons pelting me with fists and bullets while I whittle down a big, muscular brute with parries, dodges, and strikes – then I had to do it again, with a second wave of foes, all within a strict time limit. I failed this one over and over, but I had a great time doing it, and really learning the fight made my eventual success feel pretty sweet. The solution? Rage. Building up that rage is essential.

Before playing Marvel's Wolverine, I was afraid I would miss so much from Insomniac's previous Spider-Man games. Sure, the combat and missions in those games were fun enough, but the truly excellent part was swinging through the streets of New York City at breakneck speeds and digging for little odd jobs and side missions along the way.

Going hands-on with the game completely erased those fears. Insomniac has repurposed the fundamentals of its previous games here, yes, but it's done so in a way that feels appropriate for Logan. The turn from friendly neighborhood wall-crawler to this brooding new hero makes all the difference.

More from our interviews with the Marvel's Wolverine developers and further impressions from our hands-on time are still to come. For now, here are the upcoming PS5 games you need to have on your radar.