Due to the success of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel is gaining a strong presence in the video game industry. To keep up the momentum, Marvel is having the same developers, Insomniac Games, develop two new games.
“Marvel is right at this point where it could really take advantage of good games, good movies, good stories, and kind of bring it all together,” Gaming Club advisor Daniel Deitsch said. “So we’ll see if this is a cheap cash grab or a true attempt to dominate yet another market.”
The Playstation Showcase event on September 9 included reveal trailers for both upcoming Insomniac games: Marvel’s Wolverine and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. This caused excitement among many people who own a Playstation 5.
“I remember watching the trailers for them and being super hyped,” YouTube video game reviewer Ben Shadle said.
While both games are highly anticipated by many, there was no gameplay revealed for Wolverine. Even though Insomniac has the formula for what makes a very well-received Spider-Man game, how well that translates to Wolverine has yet to be seen.
“I’m not sure, is [Wolverine] going to be a big open-world game?” Gaming Club advisor Patrick Murphy said. “I don’t know if that makes sense for Wolverine.”
Murphy said it might make more sense if the game is more “close-in” and hand-to-hand combat oriented, but it all depends on what Insomniac wants to do.
According to Murphy, while Spider-Man 2 will be a day one purchase for him, Wolverine does not provide the same level of desire to play it.
“Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is cool in movies, but as a character to play as, a big brawler kind of dude doesn’t sort of strike me as as fun as Spider-Man zipping around,” Murphy said.
However, Murphy said that anything Insomniac puts out is probably going to be amazing anyway and therefore worth checking out.
To some, the previous track record for Wolverine games is a cause of concern. Deitsch said that Marvel has a tendency to not do Wolverine justice even though he is the “poster boy” for the X-Men and the mutants.
“They tend to rely on the, ‘Hey, this is Wolverine, so we don’t have to make it good because people are going to pay for it because it’s Wolverine,’” Deitsch said. According to Deitsch, in the end, it’s all going to come down to how fun the game is to play.
Insomniac Games Franchise Strategy & Studio Relations Head Ryan Schneider said on PlayStation.Blog that while working on Spider-Man, Wolverine continuously came up as a character they would love to work on.
This resulted in Insomniac pitching the idea of a Wolverine game to Marvel.
“In the vein of our Spider-Man games, our goal here is to not only respect the DNA of what makes the character so popular, but also look for opportunities to make it feel fresh and truly reflect the Insomniac spirit,” Schneider said.