Welp, I can't see how I'd disagree with anything in this review. I was hoping Insomniac at least learned how to make better boss fights after SM2. Guess I'm holding out for Control: Resonant after all.
Im drowning in games. I havent touched Pragmata but just finished Mortal shell 2 and alien firewteam elite 2 and bought onimusha yesterday and I got control later in the month and godzilla also... my poor wallet
I stopped buying brand new games unless the plan is to play it immediately and I'm still working on my backlog. Buuut that backlog is no longer growing.
Now days, unless a game I'm interested in goes on sale for stupidly cheap (like Black Friday), I simply just can't think of a reason for buying a game for the backlog, especially at full price.
I was gonna get a physical copy but with Sony being modern Sony, I’m just gonna get it on steam. Edit: I was talking about control resonant here, not wolverine.
Oh man! No apologies necessary! I was actually responding to the original comment myself. Regardless, just wanted to help navigate this nonsense with Sony. As a guy who was there after Microsoft did what they did with Xbone, I was a major supporter.
That stopped shortly after the release of the ps5 and I moved to PC. Valve is just the GOAT
I mean I’m buying Sony physical games that seem important while I still can. I feel like the delay on physical was a Remedy choice, like with AW2. Maybe I’m mistaken tho.
He sealed his argument for me when he showed the QuickTime events that go crazy slow, and you still succeed even when you don't press the button. What are we doing here?
The Spider-Man games have the same thing, I just replayed Spider-Man 2 and started not doing QTE’s to see what would happen, most of them just complete themselves anyway
The one that drives me the most crazy is "stick bashing."
Nintendo is most guilty of wanting you to do it in games, but it appears in things like Dave the Diver, too.
Look, it's not a fun mechanic, and it actively destroys control sticks.
If we have "hold to tap," we also need a mechanic that gets rid of "furiously jam your control stick in random directions" or "spin it like a psycho," as well.
we're so.. sooo close to the point where AAA-Games turn into horribly executed idle games that play themselves... and the sad part is thst I freaking love idle games, just not the idea of watching my 80€ game playing itself without any inputs from me.
There’s never a good time for a 60/10 anymore. Too much competition. Gone are the days where AAA can just throw money at graphics and that would be enough to sell
This is what Sony and a lot of those companies don't understand, they keep raising the prices of games, and they'll look to examples like GTA for why that's acceptable, not realizing that there is a massive difference between a game like GTA and a game like Wolverine. Not just in terms of quality, but also in terms of longevity and cultural significance
Not every game needs to be a 10/10 AAA cultural phenomenon, but when every game costs $80, and your choice is between one that is and one that isn't people are just going to spend their money on the one is
Then you account for all of the other issues like ownership, physical media, Etc and that $80 start seeming less and less worthwhile, and you start being even more selective about which games you spend it on
I just can't see how playing Wolverine for an entire game won't get boring. He's got such a simple move set and doesn't use any extra weapons for the most part. I would have loved being able to switch between Wolverine, Sabertooth and Mystique but I admit that's a much larger scope project
An Xmen game was already planned, this was a way to take the most popular character and start a series into X Men with garunteed sales because Wolverine. I don’t think many people will be begging for the next marvel game from them though.
Well Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with the launch of the Xbone was how Sony ended up at the top of the heap, so this is just Sony paying them back for their kindness over a decade ago.
Or when their CEO told people who didn't like the Xbox One's always online requirement to go buy a 360 instead. Genuinely one of the worst product launches I've ever witnessed.
Sony already capitalized. This is the end result of them winning the console war and basically being the real only place for higher end console gaming.
But isn’t that always the difference between pc and console? Even if pc hardware prices got cheaper that means consoles would get cheaper too. Consoles will always be a cheaper starting off option to get into gaming compared to pcs. Look at switch 3 right now even with the price increase to $500 where else cab you play new games like re9, cod, madden and 2k for that cheap
Kind of expected this. Honestly, everything from the gameplay looked incredibly vanilla and uninspired. Like no thought went into the actual gameplay and everything into the graphics and cinematography. Story looks solid but that gameplay looks rough and I'm not sure why people are defending it. He had a point when he said that at least Spiderman had his unique traversal mechanics that made the map fun to explore as you could utilize his web swining, climbing, and webs in general for fun gameplay even if the actual hand to hand combat wasn't anything to write home about.
I'm sure I'll get flack for saying this as he clearly has but to people defending such a low bar I only have one question: why continue to support this as opposed to give them some criticism so we can see better gameplay in the future? Why settle for the same rinse-repeat over and over again? Is it just because its flashy and a fan favorite character?
I don't agree with all of Skillup's takes but even when I don't I can appreciate his explanations. He's on point here.
"You can access your newly unlocked heavy attack from the WOLVES menu by pressing the start button. Then, use LB to charge your attack before unleashing it on your foes."
Genuinely wild to me that we have not only yellow paint and massive visual indicators telling the player where to go and ALSO a guiding line in a linear straightforward narrow game. This is genuinely next level hand-holding.
It sounds like they didn’t do the thing they need to do to make playing as Wolverine feel good, which is let you kill people extremely quickly. If he’s not a fucking blender, then he’s not particularly interesting to play. The moment it just feels like you’re punching people, you’ve failed. It’s the same issue with Light Sabers. The moment it feels like you’re hitting people with a stick it’s not a lightsaber.
bbbut but how are we gonna shove in a mandatory skill tree? Doesn't that mean we will have to add more enemy types and provide a more creative sandbox to challenge the player? or... god forbid... create something other than a braindead bullet-spongey enemy???
its crazy to me how the single player game super hero formula hasn't evolved since batman arkham asylum in 2009, and that's literally still the peak of the formula in my opinion. when i played spiderman I felt like it was worse arkham asylum, and I see the wolverine footage and it seems like the same shit again
yeah, I want to like wolverine, but I've had this thought since day one of the announcement.
how do they make wolverine gameplay interesting?
spiderman is interesting because of his unique maneuverability, stealth, and combat mechanics.
Wolverine doesn't really have any of that he just gets to punch people, or punch people with daggers. MAYBE he can climb walls like he's nuckles the echidna. but even that would feel slow and clunky compared to spiderman.
I've been quietly dreading that the game will play like a Mary Jane level with punching. If Anything was going to convince me to plug my PS5 back in this year, it would be wolverine. but by the sounds of it, I'll just forever place it on the wishlist next to Suicide squad so I can look at it each time it goes on sale before I decide not to buy it.
You have a lot of ways to do it. Wolverine has super-human senses - emulate both the Spider-Man and Batman: Arkham games by having missions and zones where those become critical to solving the mission. Have puzzles which factor in his mutant healing, where he has to do something that would horribly harm him but he can accomplish and then have to heal from. Lean in to things like his stealth in hunting and tracking. One of his early X-Men issues has him stealthily approaching a deer. Have him hunt the Wendigo through the Canadian wilderness. There are plenty of things you can do with Wolverine if you spend some time thinking about it.
you can also create special set pieces where he goes tree to tree to hunt down enemies. Hell, you can do pitch black corridor full of enemies and you see the with your senses and all the light would come from machines guns shooting you. Like that scene in Rogue One.
You can do many things with Wolverine. This is not his first game. Even Origins had fun ideas as custom leap attacks.
I think its fine to "defend" things if you just have a different opinion. Like personally I thought AC:Shadows was fine and got regularly dragged by people for it.
BUT imo the key part is substance. Skillup is giving substantive critique of a game hes actually played. If you haven't played it then trying to refute it is stupid. And if you have then you need to actually give a similarly substantive defense. Substantive critique is good and can help, what people usually frame as criticism ( "its [insert adjective here] slop", "its just bad" etc) should also be derided the same way that pointless defense does.
Snark culture is poisonous and we let it infiltrate gaming. Instead of actually replying to his criticism with some sort of argument lots of the comments are just snarky one liners trying to farm upvotes. Corny asf.
Any and all criticism of video games, particularly Nintendo and Sony games, are immediately handwaved as bot brigades or right wing larping, There a decent sized chunk of the audience that cannot handle ANY criticism no matter how minor.
Honestly. Genuine shill behavior when they defend this and hand-wave all criticism as "nothing will make these people happy". This is the reason we have stagnation and homogenization. Because they will literally take absolutely anything and shit on anyone that thinks we can and have done better.
Its across media. Supergirl failed because of mysogynists not because it was mid. Stranger things got shit reviews final season because that kid cane out as gay, not because of atrocious writing. Concorde didn't do well because there were no goon worthy characters, not because it was ass .
fans have been doing this since the original Spiderman’s on the PS4/PS5 came out. I honestly think it’s just die hard fans being upset their favorite IP isn’t given stellar reviews as their own sense of validation gets caught up in it.
These games are mid asl, it’s been apparent since Spiderman 2.
Not surprised, can’t lie. I never saw anything that impressive. The main characters all look weird. The storyline from what I could see was full of poor choices.
Honestly after watching the review, it’s kind of insulting how much handholding there is to guide the player. It’s kinda of understandable in open world games to some degree but in a linear game like this? It’s kinda of inexcusable. Like you can make a linear game and keep the player engaged and thinking without the need to have trails, paint, markers, beacons, etc everywhere.
It’s not a bad game by any metric from what I can tell, but it’s seems like it’s just too formulaic and too safe. Definitely not worth a pickup now, especially with so many good games that have come out and are going to be coming out in the next few months.
cough play Onimusha WotS if you haven’t already cough
The thing that always bums me out about this stuff is there ARE mechanics to guide a player that are VERY clear in games like dead space and even Bioshock infinite (which is also a very linear game) but it’s ok because it’s tied to a button.
Like if the waypoints come on if you held X and Logan sniffed the air. Having it constantly in your face is what people don’t like so hide it and let people decide when they’ve had enough of being lost.
Is onimusha really hard? I play doom on nightmare (or whatever the hardest one without permanent death is) and ac4 on hard would I be OK at it. I suck at elden ring though
So it’s kinda 50/50 in terms of difficulty. Your standard enemy mobs are pretty easy but the game definitely ramps up the difficulty on certain bosses and mini bosses(some even become elite enemies you can just stumble across). The parry system is pretty forgiving though, so if you get half way decent at timing then the game is definitely doable without dying too much.
Elden Ring has minimal handholding after the tutorial is over. They just drop you in front of the Tree Sentinel and say “You got this big dawg. Peace ✌️”.
I will wait for a sale in the future.. I still have Blood of Dawnwalker, Halo CE, Expedition 33 & Witcher 3 remaster (for the 4th time) on my back log.
Dawnwalker is awesome so far. I'm playing super intermittently due to having a 2 month old right now but when i can play im loving it. Also intend to somehow play the witcher 3 remaster when i get time haha.
Need to remove literally every bit of friction ever, or someone who really should be watching movies instead of playing video games will leave a bad review.
Holy shit, just the first 5 minutes is hilarious. It almost feels like a parody of all the 3rd person story focused action games Sony is pumping out for the lowest common denominator, absolutely braindead.
I cannot believe that the neon radiation "hidden" chests with multiple voice prompts is real. The timed sequence with constant signposting on something that is comically straight is also really bad.
The most damning thing is the reveal at the end that he realized it literally does not matter at all if you don't even press the button during quick time events. You successfully complete the task no matter what. What's the point!
As a PC user, I'm going to have to be so patient that the PS7 will be on the horizon before the "marvel heros master collection" that includes this will probably come out for $150 in a decade.
The lowest Ghost of Yotei and Saros has gone down to is about $50 so it looks like those prices aren't dropping as quickly lately. Saros has only been out for 5 months so maybe we'll see a deeper discount on that one.
The reviews very much seem to be suggesting that the game essentially displays all of it's gameplay within the first few hours and then doesn't really evolve at all from there
This is my biggest complaint about... well, most games, really. They put their best foot forward, which is great, but then they just keep doing that for the next 5-to-50 hours without any significant changes or improvements over time. Hour 1 feels exactly the same as Hour 12, which feels exactly the same as Hour 37.
Holy crap. I thought modern gaming couldn’t do any worse for player agency than yellow paint. Apparently, Insomniac went “hold my beer” and made scent lines. Wow. 🤦♂️🤡🥴
In a straightforward level based game no less... I don't agree with it entirely but I get it for open world games but holy fuck in a linear narrow level to have a guiding line is... next level
I get that but the whole point of game design and translating a character into a game is to figure out how to do that in an interesting format. Hell, a scent giving you a general direction kind of like how the fires in Elden Ring simply pointed you in the direction of your objective would've been a step up from this. Maybe have it so Logan has to purposefully stop and sniff to get just a small pointer where to go. Pair that with less obvious visuals indicating where to go and maybe make the levels slightly wider and with more obstruction and there you actually get his ability to sniff things out AND still give the player agency to figure out the objective. As it stands this is quite literally the most hand-holdy method I've ever seen in a game.
I'm absolutely with you. It seems like a weird choice from a development perspective or gameplay perspective. Is it something that can be turned on/off in the options? Maybe make it a toggle like "Bat-Vision" in the Batman games?
I'm definitely in the group that thinks Insomniac did a great job with the Spider-Man games. I'm really not sure how they could have done such a middling job with Wolverine.
Yea, thats fair. Honestly, I think whats more egregious is that not only is there a "scent" path guiding you but also that most of it is narrow corridors or fairly small areas that are obvious to navigate. Add to that very obvious "Yellow Paint" style indicators, massive objects that indicate where to go, and very little wiggle room to remotely have a player get lost is what makes the guiding line even worse. With all of that combined it sounds like its borderline on rails.
But it is a real shame coming from the really fun traversal in Spiderman. Like they nailed it there that it just comes off as incredibly confusing how they released this.
Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Bayonetta, hell...Ratchet and Clank! If you think "on the rails hack-n-slash game" is why this game is bad, which is what I see a lot in the comments here, you are completely missing the point. The complaint is shallow gameplay and signposting built for DarkSydePhil. Linear action game is a trapping that can, and still does work quite well.
Saw a comment saying how come people are okay with re9 being 10-15 hours but not this. Imagine if the Grace hospital section had a blue line gps handholding you. Maybe……but this type of ridiculous handholding makes games feel less gamey. Each to their own tho👍
Saw that coming a mile away. Everyone was really quick to dismiss criticism of the game as the standard hate campaign when it just looked uninteresting off the rip.
Guess it’s back to the great games that came out last week and this week along with more next week that are worth looking forward to, while this AAA baby food game gets left on the shelf where it belongs.
Sounds like a great game to get next year for $10 or free via PS+, turn off all the “features” when they patch that option in a few weeks from now, and play for about 6 hours and forget I started it. Oh… it’s just Avengers all over again.
I was really looking forward to this game. I put the first Spider-Man game up there with the Batman Arkham series as my favorite superhero video games. I know not everybody was happy with the second one myself included, but I still had a good time with it. After watching skill up’s video, I canceled my pre-order and got my money back from Sony. I’ll try it when it gets to be free on PS plus. But for now, I just can’t play a game that does more handholding than Pokémon.
This feels like a breaking point for single player triple A games. People are sick of playing this same on rails cinematic game over and over and over. At some point it’s just not good enough and you can’t phone it in. It seems like Wolverine is a plant by numbers game
Whether buying the game or not, this thread gives me zero fucking hope for the future of any and all video game discourse. It's either 0/10 drivel or a 10/10 masterpiece. It's fucking tiring.
Honestly not surprised by this after playing spiderman 2. They need to go back to the drawing board and start focusing on gameplay over graphics/ cinema.
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u/CASSIUS_AT_BEST Sep 10 '26
Welp, I can't see how I'd disagree with anything in this review. I was hoping Insomniac at least learned how to make better boss fights after SM2. Guess I'm holding out for Control: Resonant after all.