Sat, Sep 19 · 1:00 PM PDT
The next meeting will be on September 19th at Vocari Hub. It starts at 1 PM and ends at 10 PM, but you don’t have to stay the whole time and can come and go as you please. The featured game is Insomniac’s Wolverine for PlayStation 5 which I will have setup on three systems but keep in mind that it’s single player only so you could have to wait for a bit for someone to finish playing before getting a turn. I will provide four pizzas, bottled water and soda for guests to eat at the party.
The plot of the game is essentially the origin of Wolverine after his skeleton is bonded with the adamantium but before he joins the X-Men. However much like Insomniac’s Spider-Man games things are moved around in the timeline and stories or characters are combined. The story mostly focuses on Wolverine’s time as a mercenary working with Sabertooth while they were still friends in a group called Team X. Then the Reavers and Sentinels team up to capture mutants, but when Logan intervenes to save them he meets famous X-Men psychic Jean Gray and decides to quit team X to go off with her. Then Wolverine’s former co-workers turn on him and try to hunt him down in places like Japan, Madripoor, and Canada. Supposedly if the game sells well the next one will have a whole X-Men team and maybe co-cp which sounds much more appealing to me.
Unlike Insomniac’s Spider-Man games Wolverine is not open world. The levels seem to mostly have the player move forward and then choose to either take a stealth or combat focused approach room to room. There are some larger three to ten city block areas to explore and find secrets, like costume parts or nightmare challenge rooms. I know that there are at least five boss fights in the game, possibly more. The one that they show in all the trailers has Wolverine fight a Sentinel robot in a warehouse but he only fights the top half. There are also periodic chase segments where you will either run along following a scent trail or drive a motorcycle in pursuit of a target. It’s unclear how much control you have over the motorcycle or if it’s just a cool cut scene.
The melee combat in Wolverine seems fast paced and gory but style wise similar to the counter based combat of the Batman Arkham games. The Square button strikes with Wolverine's claws. Circle is dodge roll. X I think is jump, but it could be a second claw attack. Triangle is a pounce or a leaping strike that will auto target the most dangerous enemy and hurl Logan toward them. I don’t know what R1 does but I heard that there is a kick move that for some reason breaks the guard of blocking enemies. Holding R2 is run. L2 and R2 together extend or hopefully retract Wolverine’s claws, but it might just be the prompt in a QTE to pop them out. L3 and R3 activate Wolverine’s animal senses that highlight points of interest like Detective Vision in the Batman Arkham games. L1 by itself is used to parry or counter enemy attacks. Holding L2 swaps the function of all the face buttons, X, Circle, Square, Triangle each to a separate special move that Wolverine can perform. The X-Men Legends games had a similar mechanic of holding R2 to use a special move, I wonder if that is an intentional reference. The game of course has a skill tree where you can pick what moves to use and passive buffs for Wolverine called adaptations. Wolverine’s health bar is white and he also has a yellow rage meter with three segments. Why is the rage meter not colored red, it’s so obvious. As Wolverine takes damage or takes out attackers his rage meter grows. The first segment seems to do nothing, but filling the second allows Wolverine to be killed and then be brought back to full health which is called last stand. Maxing out the rage meter puts Wolverine into berserker mode which makes most of the screen black and white but enemies are highlighted red, which reminds me a bit of the THQ Punisher game. For some reason the controls change so alternating L2 and R2 are the only way to attack with his claws and the rage mode will wear off quicker if you stop killing people.
Wolverine has at least twenty different costumes to wear and unlock in the game, probably more. I know that there are also five costumes exclusive to the deluxe version of the game. I however really only care about the Giant Size X-Men #1 blue and yellow and late 80s brown costume for Wolverine, but it’s nice to have options. You can also change the appearance of his adamantium claws, like how far apart or long they are or even change them to bone claws. The game also has a very pretentious level select screen in a fantasy void set in Wolverine’s head called a Mind Cabin. In the Mind Cabin you can change his outfit, review collectables or replay levels that you’ve already beaten. However there’s also a new game plus mode for a more traditional second run through the game. Throughout the main campaign you can find hidden portals to the Mind Cabin which will lead to either a chase or melee combat challenge room where you have a limited amount of time to achieve a high score and unlock one of Wolverine’s buried memories, which I think is usually a picture but sometimes perhaps a new costume.
