Insomniac’s upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive, Marvel’s Wolverine is the latest in a long line of games surrounding the popular mutant, and many fans are hoping that following on from its successful take on Spider-Man, Insomniac will do the character justice. Wolverine’s history in gaming has varied from 2D side-scrollers to brutal movie tie-ins, and has seen him both as part of a team and going solo. Regardless of the gameplay, the character has been adapted successfully many times over the years.
Not all the games to have successfully adapted Wolverine have him as a playable character. In fact, there have been some Spider-Man titles that have featured Wolverine in very different ways that still remained true to his character. Ultimate Spider-Man featured Logan in an antagonistic role as a memorable first boss battle against player-controlled Venom. As with many adaptations, including the cinematic reveal trailer for Marvel’s Wolverine, Logan was seen drinking alone in a bar before Venom threw his motorbike through the window, which Wolverine was understandably not too pleased about.
The other Spider-Man title to feature Wolverine in a larger supporting role was Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, which had the mutant as an ally for the most part. By the time players were introduced to this version of Wolverine, it’s clear that he and Peter Parker have clearly had a long enough history that he could quiz the webhead (and the players) on his past to determine if he was the real Spider-Man or not, leaning into their time working together in the Avengers from the comics. There was also a boss battle later in the game, however, this was due to Wolverine getting infected by the Venom symbiote much like most of New York City, and saw him literally cutting it out of him in true Wolverine fashion after Spider-Man helped him weaken the symbiote. Much like other characters players interacted with in Web of Shadows, the dynamic between Spider-Man and Wolverine could also shift due to the players’ actions and whether they opted to be heroic or succumb to the power of the symbiote suit over the course of the game’s campaign. The other games listed below allowed players to spend a lot more time with Wolverine as he was either a key playable character in a team, or the sole protagonist.
X-Men Legends Saw Wolverine Fight Alongside His Foes
The first X-Men Legends saw Wolverine in a prominent role in the X-Men, being one of the first of the mutants players were able to control, even if they could go on to build their own teams of X-Men from mutants introduced later in the game that didn’t include him. Over the course of that title, the X-Men faced Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants, including Wolverine’s long-time foe Sabretooth, and this set-up made it even more powerful when the two rival teams had to put their differences aside to stop the greater threat of Apocalypse in the sequel X-Men Legends: Rise of Apocalypse. Understandably, Wolverine was more reluctant to go through with this plan at first, and despite being part of the team that broke Magneto out of prison at the start of the game, he would be extremely standoffish and snarky towards members of the Brotherhood throughout the game’s story; ultimately, he understood that it was for the greater good.
Wolverine: Adamantium Rage Saw Logan Unearth His Past
1994 saw the release of 2D side-scroller Wolverine: Adamantium Rage on both the SNES and Sega Genesis, which has classic games on Switch. Although the story was the same in both versions, featuring Logan as he traveled through Canada trying to unearth details of his past – something which becomes a bit of a running theme in many titles surrounding the character – there were some gameplay differences. The Nintendo version offered different move sets, whereas the Genesis edition was a bit more lenient with Logan’s in-game lives. Overall, for the era, this was a solid Wolverine game that did the character justice with its story and characterization, despite not fully showcasing all of his abilities.
LEGO Marvel Superheroes Has Wolverine’s Enhanced Senses
LEGO Marvel Superheroes gave players a glimpse as to what the MCU could be if not for studio licensing deals, as it brought together MCU-inspired versions of the Avengers (long before Marvel’s Avengers‘ MCU-inspired suits), as well as comic characters Marvel Studios didn’t have rights to at the time. The title saw the heroes teaming up to stop the impending threat of the planet-eating Galactus, and LEGO Marvel Superheroes took full advantage of Wolverine’s other powers, using several features outside his ability to hack and slash his way through levels with his claws, using Logan’s enhanced senses and tracking abilities to lead to clues and secrets. Replaying levels as Wolverine also granted players access to specific areas, as Wolverine could use his claws to climb up special kinds of walls to previously unattainable places.
X2: Wolverine’s Revenge Balanced Stealth And Action
X2: Wolverine’s Revenge was the first movie tie-in game for Fox’s X-Men series, and much like the early films, Wolverine was the main focus. Unlike the films, Hugh Jackman didn’t reprise his role as Logan, with Star Wars and Batman: The Animated Series‘ Mark Hamill doing a superb job voicing Wolverine instead. Despite being marketed as a movie tie-in, X2: Wolverine’s Revenge opted to tell an original story about Wolverine on a quest to find a cure for a virus that will kill him in 48 hours, a premise that was not present in the X2 movie. The title did loosely work as a tie-in, however, thanks to elements from the films, such as Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Professor X, and missions that saw players explore a Weapon X facility. Fellow adamantium-enhanced mutant Lady Deathstrike also made an appearance, being one of the few character designs in the game to mirror her movie counterpart, rather than the comics.
In terms of gameplay, Wolverine is very much what players expect from the character. Wolverine has an in-game Batman-esque proto-Detective Mode to showcase his enhanced senses long before it became popularized in titles such as the Batman: Arkham series, and players can use this to sneak around levels and hunt his foes. Alternatively, he can unleash his Berserker rage to chain devastating combos, clearing out large areas at a time. One key difference to his power set is that Wolverine’s healing factor could only be activated if players pressed a button to retract Wolverine’s claws.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Is Logan’s Most Violent Game
One of the best game versions of Wolverine came from one of the worst X-Men movies, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Unlike the other games mentioned, Wolverine’s somewhat overpowered healing factor is shown off in huge detail in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with chunks of the character model being blown away during combat, even down to his skeleton, and unlike X2: Wolverine’s Revenge, players didn’t need to retract Wolverine’s claws for the healing factor to kick in. Unlike its PG-13 movie counterpart, X-Men Origins: Wolverine truly leaned into the character’s Berserker rage and the brutality that comes with attacking people with giant claws, whether they are bone or adamantium-enhanced, which was something that wouldn’t be explored in the movies until Hugh Jackman’s final performance as the character in the R-rated Logan.
This most violent Wolverine and X-Men game was full of gore and darkness that hadn’t been fully explored in previous iterations, and set this tone even before players got to take control of Wolverine thanks to its violent Days Of Future Past-inspired cutscenes years before the movie adaptation of the same name. These cutscenes framed the narrative, and saw a post-apocalyptic future where Wolverine was being hunted, before flashing back to the events of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie and showcasing his time as a soldier for Striker and the Weapon X experiments carried out upon him. With Insomniac stating the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine would also have a mature tone, and isn’t targeting kids with its story, many fans are hoping that it will have a similar approach to Logan’s abilities as X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
