While Marvel’s Wolverine is still a day away from coming out, reviews for the title have varied highly, sparking discussions surrounding how much the linear action-adventure title holds the player’s hands. Much of this discussion has revolved around scent trails that Logan can follow throughout a level to get to his objectives. Responding to a social media user asking why the scent isn’t an aspect of the game that can be disabled through accessibility options, Insomniac Games’ community and marketing director James Stevenson has responded by noting that the scent isn’t enabled all the time.
“The scent trail isn’t always on. It represents Logan’s canon mutant super senses and elite tracking ability,” he explained. “It only is there when he’s tracking a specific scent/sound (a person, whisky, or another clue scent) – story/mission moments or when he catches a whiff of a collectible.”
The discussion rose from Gene Park – author of the Washington Post review for Marvel’s Wolverine – calling attention to the fact that the scent trails he mentioned in his critiques are not part of any navigational assist options available in the title’s accessibility settings menu. He noted that the title does feature a Navigation Assist toggle that displays a green guide that players can follow to the objective.
When taking critical reception as a whole into account, Marvel’s Wolverine currently sits at an aggregate of 77 out of 100 on Metacritic, with some of the more negative reviews pointing out the title’s handholding as being a major mark against it. In our own review, we gave it a score of 10 out of 10 thanks to its brutal combat, voice performances, and production values, among other reasons, with our only complaints stemming from underwhelming stealth mechanics and a few minor bugs.
As for potential backlash, director Mike Daly had spoken about how Insomniac Games is “pretty used” to it, noting that it “comes with the territory” for a studio known for making beloved games based on iconic characters. Daly went as far as to call it a “good problem to have” since this means that the studio’s fan base is quite passionate, and that it only happens when a team makes a “great game that a lot of people love.” Despite this, however, he acknowledged that people will end up finding “stuff to complain about”.
“And I rest easy about this, knowing that our goal for the game wasn’t necessarily to accomplish these things that people complain about. Our goal really was to focus completely on making the best game for the character”
Marvel’s Wolverine is coming exclusively to PS5 on September 15th. For more details, take a look at our graphical analysis where we compared it to the PS5 Pro version, where we noted that the game makes use of the obvious hardware advantages of the more expensive console. And as you wait for the title’s release, also take a look at the live-action trailer that featured scenes from the game’s story alongside real-world scenes of people finding themselves in Logan’s shoes in their daily lives.
