Just watched Skill-Up's video absolutely railing on the Wolverine game. Like what the absolute hell happened at Insomniac?? Making a mature action game that literally insults player intelligence is insane
you mean like nearly every other AAA release in the past 5-10 years? This isn't an outlier, its more of the same. Yellow paint on-rails single-player games are the norm, not an abnormality.
The reality is that the vast majority of gamers don't care about the same things that you or I do, and don't want a challenge. Wolverine will still sell well, because it has the IP and its a spectacle of a game, even if its not what the hardcore audience wants.
This game seems especially egregious. Not only does it have the fairy-trail from the Fable games. But it also marks your fairy-trail with a marker the moment you step two feet away from it. And treasure chests in the world have visual and audio alerts that you can see from across the level. They're not hidden goodies. You literally can't miss them. And they're annoyingly calling to you the whole time until you open them
This isn't just AAA hand-holding. This is mobile-game-for babies level of hand-holding
The trails were necessary in The Witcher because it's an open-world game, and you were generally being lead to small clues. The extra help isn't necessary in a linear action game with tiny levels.
this can all be patched out pretty quickly and no other reviewer mentioned it. I wouldn't be surprised if this is out on the day one patch. I love Ralph's videos but he can be way way over critical. a 7/10 game is not a bad game.
I am not a Kojima lover so this whole Physint thing doesn't make sense to me.
One of the other replies said it was probably accessibility options that were either on by default, or glitched on (Edit: Everyone is saying this is not the case, and the only accessibility option in the menu is for the QTEs? Lol...)
But I'm mixed on how I feel about that. Because without that insulting and rage-inducing nonsense, then we just have a painfully mediocre Wolverine game. And we all expect better than that from both Insomiac and Wolverine. I mean hell, Wolverine Origins was a fantastic game despite being tied to a terrible movie
The idea of a sub-par Wolverine game is crazy, but here we are. When you're not going after obnoxiously obvious treasure chests, your main objective seems to be swatting glowing bobbles in the environment that supposedly powers the bad guys
And I doubt all the white tarps and paint that signify where go are part of the accessibility options, and people have been fed-up with the yellow paint guides for a good decade or more
There's just so much about this game that makes me ask "..why?". How do you go from Spiderman to this
Nah im fairly sure a LOT of that can be turnt off, but apparently you cant turn off the fairy trail? wtf... Also the game Insomniac was making with each claw bound to trigger and half and full presses delivering different attacks. Also different claw sets had different combos etc. Sounds like they really wanted to have a proper combat game with deep combos/moves etc I guess something like DMC - apparently Sony nixed that because the control system would mean some people wouldn't be able to play the game :(
I think most AAA games are more subtle about it and there has also been some pushback on it. Games like Elden Ring being massive hits has given some devs confidence to not be so hand holdy.
They got rid of the talent that made the first spiderman game and decided to use consultants for the second game and wolverine. I never understand corporate culture that does this for any entertainment. Its the same for tv shows and why tv shows have a fantastic first season and then they change the writers for the second season and it nosedives. Just, why?
Well that answers one question I never bothered looking into. I haven't played Spiderman 2 because it honestly looked kinda focus-grouped to me. And now this fiasco
The issue is Insomniac merely used the same game formula they always have since Sunset Overdrive. The DNA of that game exists in the Spider Man titles. As does Wolverine. The issue is Sunset and Spider Man are very open games. Wolverine is a classic PS2 action brawler title utilizing modern triple AAA open world game conventions in a tightly linear game. So yeah, it comes off as even more insulting because just copying your formula and pasting into a completely different game just....doesn't work. They either needed to make a Wolverine game with own game design, or if they wanted to use their formula then they probably shouldnt have made a Wolverine game to begin with.
Don’t forget it looks like a bit of a pile on at the moment about Wolverine. A lot of the things that professional reviewers are arguing are problems with the game sound like good things to an awful lot of gamers. Linear? Nice, there are loads of open world games with maps full of collectibles. Repetitive combat? Fine with me, I don’t want to have to memorise multiple combos and modifiers and gadgets. Wolverine has three claws in each fist and he stabs people with them and he’s very difficult to hurt. It’s not a character you pick to make a game about if it’s deep gameplay. 15-20 hour story? Great. I’m not looking for an epic 100 hour plus mode. This is a game that looks like it is going to respect my time, much like their Spider-Man games did. A lot of gamers prefer the short curated focused experience over sprawling open worlds.
Wolverine is being treated in this article as a symptom of whatever is going on at Sony and its studios, but all of these reviews are marking the game down for not being something it was ever designed or marketed to be. The closest analogy I can think of is Starfield, which was only ever marketed as a Bethesda game in space, but was hit in a similar by being compared to things it wasn’t trying to be and by being Xbox exclusive at a time when it was a great way to knock points off. A lot of discussion at the time was that it would probably have scored better had it been multiplat or PS5 only.
Sony is basically starting to experience the sort of overly critical press Microsoft has had for a while now, and their first party games are going to take a hit in the review scores as a result.
I could envision people clanking on about Aloy being too talkative if Forbidden West were released right now. But I have trouble believing people would dog-pile on Yotei just because it's a Sony game. Wolverine got 7s. It's not a terrible game. But it's not a masterpiece. And only a portion of the audience found it fun and engaging so far
I'm with you. I'm fine with repetitive combat when it's fun. I'm fine with a short story when it's enthralling. But people are also saying neither of those are true. Like there's repetitive combat that's fun. And there's repetitive combat that's a slog
Either way. This shouldn't be a $70 game. Which is also, maybe even subconsciously, being taken into consideration with these reviews. If this were a $40 game, I'm sure people would be a lot more generous
Agree, £40 to £50 feels right. £70 feels like it's the new industry standard for big releases though, even on Switch 2, and GTA6 is going to push that envelope and then some with all of its different editions. People can always wait for sales or for the game to arrive on PS Plus (it's first party after all).
Nope not falling for this again. Everytime a game that is by all accounts, mediocre, comes out, there's always a subset of people that claim "review bombing, hate train, dog pile," ect.
Reddit did this with veilguard.. starfield. Cyberpunk on release, ME Andromeda.
2 easiest ways to see if a game is trash:
1) Look for comments just like this
2) is there a low sodium version of a games subreddit? That game is trash guaranteed
Weird - that's the reasoning I use to determine if a game might actually be worth playing, when everyone is acting like the sky is falling in but others are actually saying give it a go. How do I know? Because according to the wisdom of the masses as represented by threads like this one on Reddit apparently games like Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, and Doom The Dark Ages are mediocre pieces of "slop". Yet they're all genuinely good to great games that are a lot of fun to play.
All it means is unlike apparently you I don't let others make my mind up for me.
Making a mature action game that literally insults player intelligence is insane
I think what happened is that although they had a violent IP on their hands - its kind of unavoidable with Wolverine unless its a cartoon game - they thought because its Wolverine a lot of people who would be playing it would be kids because of moron parents getting it for them, so they made the game extremely easy. Some of the major studios also might be factoring in older people playing games now, whose reaction and cognitive abilities start to tank after like 60.
They want to make sure that they sell as many copies as possible so they dictate a bunch of playtests. They get a bunch of normal people to come in for like $100 and some cookies to play the game. The people aren't even gamers. They struggle with everything and the testing team writes down 'chests are too hard to find, players getting lost'.
Normally gamedevs have the leeway to go 'well that's fucking stupid' but it's a big company in 2026 and everyone is scared of getting canned and worked to the bone and no one really gives a shit anymore, so they just do what the overlords say to get by.
But then they get canned because the end results suck and they already knew the overlords were wrong
There needs to be a system in place where you can say "Charlie, the assistant VP demanded we do this. Go blame him" and then he gets canned instead of the team who listened to him
Quite the Devil's Advocate angle. I'll allow it lol Though I do imagine some executive got cold feet about a mature rating somewhere along the way and made them retool the entire game when it was 80% complete already. Which is always a fun time when you have to completely rework an almost finished product
It is an ip game of a cult superhero. They might be anticipating fans of the superhero to get it as their first ever game. Have you seen people who never played a video game navigate a game?
We tend to underestimate how much gaming knowledge we actually have and what seems a no-brainer for us is alien to those who picked up a video game for the first time.
Although there should be options to turn off the helps/hints.
What is the realistic overlap between comic book nerds and non-gamers though? Like sure there's probably a few people out there who have never played a video game yet are comic book fans, but I'd hazard a guess that venn diagram is basically a circle.
I have to guess (and it’s purely a guess) that they originally planned an open world game and then scrapped it during development and the remaining linear elements carried over too many of the open world elements that didn’t work as well without that big space.
Things like scent mines and clearly marked pathways make more sense in an open world game where you need to focus on specific areas once in a while.
But then the same thing was said about God of War (which the director confirmed. One of the heads of Sony played an early build and was so appalled that he just got up and walked away without saying anything) and yet that game managed to release in an enjoyable state
He had all the accessibility options enabled tho. Now I assume they were on by default, he wouldn’t just turn them on to then complain about it. But still feels like if they were all turned on by default that might just have been a bug.
What am I making up?? Pretty much everything he talks about is on insomniacs website on the wolverine accessibility options page. And it sounds like all of these things were enabled by default, but it’s not far fetched to think that may not be how it’s supposed to be. Plenty of games have QTE related accessibility options like auto completing, but I’ve never seen a game have this option enabled by default. I don’t know why insomniac would want to enable it by default, so the default settings might have just been bugged during the review stage. Guess we’ll see pretty quick on releases if people have these same issues or not.
You accused him of having accessibility options enabled, but if it is on by default then its no longer accessibility, its just how the game runs. And this was not unique to him, every reviewer had that experience. You are the one assuming its a bug just because of how egregious it is. But yea, we will find out soon.
The Info I had was the skillup review and the accessibility list on the wolverine website.
I don’t think it’s a wrong statement to say the accessibility options were on. All of it being enabled by default still means they were enabled.
After that I’m obviously speculating about bugs yeah. It just feels incredibly strange that they would turn all of those options on by default.
Don’t know why you got downvoted (actually I do, this whole thread is a fact free pile-on about the game) but you’re right. All these reviewers just left things like the navigation feature switched on when the first run Accessibility options set up came up. And I’d bet good money that all the commenters saying how bad this game supposedly is likely haven’t played it yet, they’re just repeating what they have seen in some clickbait review as if it’s fact.
Holy shit, that list is obnoxiously long. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, yay for the one studio exec who's daughter is Hellen Keller, but this seems like overkill
I'm all for accessibility so people aren't left behind, but there has to be a better way.. maybe a free DLC so people can hunt down the ones that they need and we don't end up with a menu with HUNDREDS of options
I do appreciate this insight though. It just highlights a whole different problem..
I’ve never heard of a few of these reviewers like Skill Up, Spawnpoiint, and Writing On Games until this review, so I viewed their takes with a grain of salt. But Gameranx Before You Buy says it’s just as bad, he just says it nicer.
If I remember, Skill-Up started out in the Souls space and branched out into genuine reviews. So depending on which corner of the videogame ecosystem you inhabit, you may have missed his rise. I have legitimately only watched a few of his videos over the years. But I don't recall ever disagreeing with him. He makes a good case for most of his complaints
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u/Vykrom 15h ago
Just watched Skill-Up's video absolutely railing on the Wolverine game. Like what the absolute hell happened at Insomniac?? Making a mature action game that literally insults player intelligence is insane