We Will Never Have a Great Wolverine Game

We saw Logan last week and we liked it well enough. The movie is mercilessly dark and despairing but despite that it still manages to end in an optimistic, satisfying place. Logan and Professor Xavier have not aged well and here they are heroes well past their prime. In a world where the bad guys have won, the the good guys have to find small moments to enjoy and Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman make those moments shine. Dafne King plays their young ward with a mysterious past and she’s awesome in the movie (I’d watch a sequel with her and…I dunno, maybe Beast and Nightcrawler?). The plot is good, the action is solid, and Hugh Jackman has never been better; he’s approaching Christopher Reeves level of superhero acting. If you haven’t seen it, you definitely should (but do NOT take children).

Hey, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s….

The success of that movie both artistically and commercially got us thinking about why there isn’t a decent Wolverine game out there. Wolverine seems like the perfect candidate for a game about him. He heals naturally, making regenerating health an easy element to incorporate. He has claws he uses endlessly, meaning a hacking-and-slashing gameplay style like Ninja Gaiden would work well. He’s got a complicated history with plenty of nemeses and he lives in a world of mutants, aliens, and robots. With all these elements to play with, why haven’t we seen a decent game?

Well, we think there are a few reasons it’s difficult to make Wolverine shine in a game. Here are are four reasons we don’t have a decent Wolverine game.

A Wolverine 3D adventure would be pretty cool too.

Claws Are All He Has

Wolverine’s claws are legendary, but his claws are also pretty exclusively his only weapon. Sure, in the movies he might briefly brandish a gun or sword, but he always returns to the claws. He slashes, that’s pretty much it. And while the claws are great, they don’t really lend themselves to powerups or other additions. How do you upgrade Adamantium? There may be room to develop other abilities like double-jumping or wall-crawling, but none of those things really seem like Wolverine either. He’s great to watch in action in a movie, but I doubt whether that singular style of action in gameplay would stay interesting for multiple levels.

Hack and slash. Hack and slash. World-weary, witty comment. Hack and slash. Hack and slash.

His Battles Are Messy

Lots of characters have pretty messy combat strategies. Kratos, for example, tends to take particular pleasure to disemboweling and dismembering his enemies across multiple levels. Wolverine, similarly, tends to kill folks by slicing them up pretty horrifically (let me warn you again not to take children to Logan). While this kind of gameplay can be fun for a while, it gets a bit gruesome over long periods of time. X-men Origins: Wolverine, for example, is a well regarded Wolverine game, but even folks who really loved it noted that you’d need a strong stomach. There may be a solution here for more creative developers (more varied and less humanoid enemies, for example), but until that comes along, all the brutal stabbing and hacking limits how much we enjoy our time with Wolverine.

Maybe now you’ll talk! Oh…..well, crap.

He Doesn’t Have Any Decent Villains

One thing that works in Batman’s favor is the fact that he’s largely the only protagonist in his universe. Sure, he has sidekicks now and then, but mostly it’s just Batman against his rogue’s gallery. He has enough enemies to populate a dozen games. On top of that, he’s got the best nemesis of any superhero in the Joker, who – with his endless toys and maniacal laugh – is the perfect video game villain. Wolverine has nobody like that; all of his enemies are really the enemies of groups he belongs to (like the Xmen). Sure, he’s got Sabertooth to smack around now and then, but he’s just a big, slow-witted thug. So no wonder Wolverine doesn’t have a game; even Aquaman has better enemies than he does.

Hey I kinda think we both need better enemies. And maybe find some folks who aren’t naming themselves after animals.

Other Mutants Are More Interesting

Wolverine’s always a welcome character in games and movies, but the truth is that other mutants have more interesting powers. Nightcrawler’s teleportation, Gambit’s exploding deck of cards, Storm’s storms and even Cyclops’ blaster give you a lot more gameplay options than Wolverine’s claws. Sure, many of these powers may be interesting for just a level or two, but Wolverine’s powers are also pretty one-note. He just works better as part of a team. And, actually, this is why Logan is a better movie than either of the other Wolverine movies. The presence of Xavier and X-23 make Wolverine part of a team again, and that’s where his powers and personality work best.