Given Insomniac Games' track record with Marvel heroes, the upcomingMarvel’s Wolverinefrom the studio seems to be in good hands.Marvel’s Spider-Man,Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, andMarvel’s Spider-Man 2have each proved Insomniac’s dedication to both respecting and elevating its characters. While the games have nailed how Spider-Man should behave in a narrative sense, they have also captured how it should feel to play as the friendly neighborhood hero. The gameplay loop feels great, and it does a lot to encourage players to engage with repetitive activities thanks to its fluidity. That said, this loop in theMarvel’s Spider-Manseries isn’t perfect. If Insomniac Games wantsMarvel’s Wolverineto succeed, it’ll need to greatly differ its approach to one pillar of the game: the combat.
Now, this isn’t to say that the combat in theMarvel’s Spider-Manseries is bad. It does, after all, take inspiration from the belovedBatman: Arkhamseries' combat. Taking on waves of enemies, interweaving attacks and dodges, and eventually building up enough of a combo to unleash a finishing blow makes a player truly feel like the unstoppable hero that New York needs. This system seems like it would be a great fit for a Wolverine game, but there are some flaws with this style of combat. Spider-Man could easily conceal them, but Wolverine can’t.
Marvel’s Wolverine Must Dodge Spider-Man’s Sense of Repetition
One issue that has consistently appeared in the InsomniacSpider-Manseries is repetitive combat.Marvel’s Spider-Man 2improved combat, but most fights still devolve into Spider-Man facing a mob of generic goons. He spams square button attacks and circle button dodges until he has a high enough combo to use a finisher attack against an enemy, and then the cycle repeats until Spider-Man has dodged and attacked enough to use another finisher.
Additionally, due to the nature ofMarvel’s Spider-Man’s open world, each game in the series will constantly churn out randomized combat encounters that rely on this exact formula. This is done in order to kill time and make the world feel more dynamic, but after a while, it begins to showcase the repetitiveness of the combat.
This repetitive nature is further displayed by the aforementioned finisher attacks. They are a staple for this style of combat, rewarding players for playing well by allowing them to immediately knock out an enemy with a visually bombastic move. The issue is that — in a game this long and with this many combat encounters — the player will constantly be seeing the same finisher animations.
Despite this issue, Spider-Man has enough tricks up his sleeve to distract the player from both a visual perspective and a gameplay one. Spider-Man’s web-swinging allows him to launch both himself and his enemies into the air to mix up combat.Spider-Man’s gadgets— and venom strike abilities in the case of Miles Morales — also allow players to feel like they have more freedom when fighting enemies. Sure, every encounter will still ultimately end the same way, but players can at least experiment and vary their approaches to combat by lobbing the occasional web grabber or ricochet web into the mix. Wolverine, however, will have to dig a little deeper.
Revamping Wolverine’s Combat
Without aerial maneuvers or gadgets,Marvel’s Wolverineneeds to make some big swings to make its fights feel fun. If Wolverine will primarily be taking on enemies from the same position on the ground, the game will need to have significantly more attack and finisher animations than any of theSpider-Mangames have had. Combat will also need to have more gimmicks and types of attacks in order to prevent the game from feeling like a never-ending pattern of square, square, square, circle, repeat. Expanding uponSpider-Man 2’s parry system— and potentially even looking to a game likeSekiro: Shadows Die Twicefor inspiration — would be a great starting point. Wolverine’s fighting style might be simplistic in theory, but it shouldn’t feel that way for players.
Marvel’s Wolverine
Marvel’s Wolverine is a third-person action game from Insomniac Games that is set in the same universe as the studio’s Spider-Man titles.
