Marvel's Wolverine: CombatMarvel’s Wolverine promised gory, gritty and relentless combat and it’s absolutely delivered on that front. Insomniac Games has done an amazing job of bringing the Wolverine fantasy to life.Wolverine has a number of different moves and combos he can perform, more of which unlock as you progress, as well as parrying and dodging. The latter two play a huge role in defence as enemies are incredibly aggressive and try to swarm you when there are large groups. They don’t wait for you to finish attacks before unleashing their own assaults.That makes combat relentless as you have to be on your toes and reacting to what different enemies are doing at all times. Marvel’s Wolverine does add new abilities, with skill trees that unlock more techniques and DNA strands as you progress, but the core feature is mastering the moves at your disposal.Enemies you’ll face start out simple enough but get increasingly more difficult and varied, constantly pushing you and asking more. The enemies you’ll encounter include Reavers, Seninels, ninjas from The Hand and more. Enemies have melee and ranged abilities – mastering their weaknesses and how to deal with each is critical.Wolverine can attack with his claws in two ways: with relentless attacks by pressing the square button and chaining this with combos using the triangle button. The latter means he can perform attacks that also replenish his health. Wolverine’s health regeneration ability is cleverly done in this way.Combat in Marvel's Wolverine is relentless and gory yet thrilling (Captured on PS5 Pro on Performance Pro setting) (Insomniac Games, PlayStation Studios)Marvel's Wolverine: Rage meterTying into that is the rage meter. There are three levels to this with, each incrementally giving Wolverine better damage output. Hitting the max level means Wolverine can unleash absolute fury and perform more critical strikes that instantly take out enemies. If Wolverine loses all his health and at least one gauge is filled, he can regenerate and come back to life, otherwise it’s game over.Hitting that max level is thrilling but the rage meter pretty much instantly drains and replenishes health as soon as a room of enemies are defeated. Sadly, I found on a few occasions I had just hit that level only to find the enemy that unlocked it was the penultimate or last one, teasing me with the potential of full fury before taking it away from me.And that’s a shame because Wolverine’s full rage mode is so satisfying when you do get the chance to utilise it. Tearing from one enemy to another, performing huge combos on bigger enemies and causing general chaos is what Wolverine is really all about in terms of combat.Wolverine can stealthily take out enemies too but the moves to do this are quite simplistic. Enemies can be taken out by sneaking up on them or launching at them. Usually, you’ll get spotted quite easily, but given how good Wolverine’s combat is, that’s not a bad thing.Crucially, combat rarely falls into a trap of going through the motions or letting you get too much into a rhythm. There is the occasional room of enemies that can feel a bit repetitive but usually, something different is asked of you every time.The boss battles are a bit underwhelming and some can feel a bit one dimensional. Most of them have a number of different stages, but they don’t always feel massively different or test you in a hugely different way to what you've done before.Marvel's Wolverine: Storyline and charactersMarvel’s Wolverine has a typical superhero narrative in the sense there’s a high-stakes, over-the-top, saving-the-world focus but it’s not just that in the slightest. It also tells a surprisingly deep, emotionally intelligent and compelling story, which focuses on heavy themes such as battling loss, isolation and wanting to be loved without hurting others.The main characters might be mutants, but the feelings and emotions portrayed are very relatable. Jean Grey plays a pivotal role in Marvel’s Wolverine but Wolverine is the only character you’ll ever control. The cast also includes Sabretooth, Omega Red, Nathaniel Essex, Lady Deathstrike and Tyger with antagonists including Trask and The Hand. Liam McIntyre as Wolverine, Krizia Bajos as Jean and Troy Baker as Essex are the true standouts but every character’s performance is strong.As well as all the action heavy sequences and stretches you’d expect, there are a number of quieter moments and levels dotted throughout, which are pivotal for character development. They allow you as a player to connect more with this brilliant cast and it only serves to strengthen the story. The game is split into three different acts that takes players across different locations around the world. Each of these locations have a number of levels within them.No story spoilers here but the stories about human connection and emotion are the components that will stick with you as you play through. Characters develop in a very meaningful way and seeing them come to terms with the different hardships they face and endure while trying to band together as best as they can as what they know, understand and believe constantly changes is incredibly well done.There are some moments where the story could have been allowed to breathe a bit more, as some harrowing moments take place before moving on quite quickly, but that’s the only thing of real note against the story. Jean Grey plays a crucial part in Marvel's Wolverine (Captured on PS5 Pro on Performance Pro setting) (Insomniac Games, PlayStation Studios)The linear nature of this game really helps to keep the focus on the narrative. There is the odd mission where you can approach an area in a few different ways, but these are very few and far between. There is one slightly more open area at the start of the third act of the game, but that’s about it. As someone that likes a linear narrative, I didn’t mind this at all as I found it helped to keep the story focused and to me, it makes sense for a Wolverine title.Marvel's Wolverine: Timed trials and other extrasOne thing that does take away from the story focus is one of the main side content features – and that’s Nightmare Doors. These act as timed trials where players have to achieve certain objectives within a time limit to unlock more resource points. These improve Wolverine’s strands, which can boost rage meter generation, improve damage or even sniff out valuable resources in the world more easily.In these trials, players have to defeat a certain number of enemies, survive waves or race across stages. There’s nothing against this content at all, and the survival waves are undoubtedly the standout and most challenging. However they feel shoehorned into the middle of levels and this can really dent the focus and pacing, at times the story otherwise executes so well.Players will be about to head into a huge battle, only for an optional Nightmare Door to emerge nearby, completely robbing all the tension and feeling built to that point, as focus is then turned elsewhere if you choose to complete it. To note, they are optional but as someone that likes to complete everything they can before advancing the main objective, it does take away a bit of the focus.Other side content includes finding materials and whisky bottles dotted through each level, again all of which can be found to enhance Wolverine. These can also be sniffed out and found using Wolverine’s heightened senses, which they are primarily used to do away from the main missions.With materials, new suits can be crafted which also upgrades Wolverine’s health. However a couple of these obtainable suits look incredibly jarring, such as one included from how Wolverine looks in Marvel’s Tokon Fighting Souls – in a game that places such an emphasis on realism, it looks completely out of place.Audio logs are dotted throughout some levels too, which offer some more background detail about what’s going on or about certain characters.Marvel's Wolverine: PresentationIn terms of presentation, Marvel’s Wolverine is absolutely stunning. These are some of the most realistic and detailed character models I've ever seen in a video game.I played primarily in Performance Pro mode (an upscaled 4K at 60 frames per second), checking out Fidelity Pro (native 4K at 30fps) occasionally, and this was perfect for combat, yet character models still look unbelievable. You can see details such as moles dotted on skin, different veins on hands, small dimples on faces, muscle definition on character backs, neck lines, lips quivering in intense confrontations and more.That’s not to say it’s perfect though – I did encounter some performance and visual hiccups here and there. The most annoying one, which I encountered a couple of times, was a pop-up that showed how much of a certain resource I had after finding some in a level.But this didn’t go away until I restarted the game. I persevered to begin with to see if it would go, but it affected my ability to see some oncoming attacks so I had to restart. I also encountered a couple of NPCs trying to run away but just running into objects such as barriers or a truck and had one case of an enemy trying to attack me through a truck, get stuck there and I could just jog around for an easy kill.There was some clipping too, most notably with Jean’s dress in these segments. There was also a moment where I tore an enemy into pieces and their remains fell to the ground and looked like spinning collectibles you’d find in a 2000s video game before just disappearing altogether.Action sequences in Marvel's Wolverine are a feast for the eyes (Captured on PS5 Pro on Performance Pro setting) (Insomniac Games, PlayStation Studios)Speaking of which, I mentioned the game is gory – and my word, is it. Elements of this can be toggled off in the settings, such as decapitation and limb dismemberment, but playing on the full settings, nothing is held back.Wolverine can tear through enemies, rip people’s heads off in some cases and even in general combat, limbs will be flying if you keep these settings on. It’s incredibly graphic and blood spills everywhere.Some of the injury detail Wolverine endures too leaves nothing to the imagination. You’ll see him try to be burned alive and be slashed multiple times and the detailing on how he looks afterwards is graphic.Marvel's Wolverine: SoundThe sound of this game is really impressive. The soundtrack is exceptional and the natural sound of the world, plus sounds in combat and effects such as Wolverine scraping his claws along metal are all incredibly well done.And a word on the DualSense controller as Marvel’s Wolverine comes alive in your hands as you play it. Wolverine’s heightened sense of hearing plays through the controller and you can feel every one of Wolverine’s footsteps, attacks, parries and more.