Wolverine PS5 Tech Review: Combat & Visuals — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Marvel's Wolverine has had a long gestation. Initially debuted with a short cinematic tease from five years ago, this single-player brawler is finally arriving on PS5 consoles. Pre-release

[00:14] media has suggested a more linear, bloodier counterpart to Insomniac's Spider-Man series, with bigger action moments. So is this a worthwhile Wolverine experience? And what's the PS5 Pro advantage. Wolverine is at its best in the heat of combat. Most of the

[00:37] game is spent in busy action scenes where the titular character tears through enemies while slashing, kicking, and spinning. Insomniac just nails the moment-to-moment animation here, with perfect timing, excellent hit reactions,

[00:50] and clear readability from the gameplay camera. On a controller, the game plays responsibly, with clear priority given to seat of your pants feel. There are few melee action games that have a better connection between player input and brutal on-screen results. Spider-Man 2 had

[01:07] excellent combat as well, but I think Wolverine has more consistently satisfying fights. Some of that comes down to the game's more visceral intensity. The Spider-Man games are clean and lighter fare as Spider-Man aims to disable foes, not kill them, and generally dispatches

[01:23] enemies with fisticuffs and web-sewing acrobatics. There's only so much you can do with a hit reaction when enemies need to remain intact, and combat has a bloodless P-13 character.

[01:35] Wolverine has fewer compunctions about killing, and combat is a much more violent affair on the whole. The game is more visceral, but not gratuitous, without much in the way of explicit gore. Hit reactions are punctually with plenty of blood, however, which spurts violently as

[01:50] enemies are dispatched. These blood globules flick excellent in motion and hold up in the game's photo mode just fine, where we can get a better sense of their three-dimensional appearance and excellent lighting response. The blood's stripes have convincing physicality and appear

[02:05] to have some kind of civic simulation, so they fall in accordance with the motion of the scene. They also exhibit some level of persistence, standing the ground or dispersing into volumes of water. The goal here isn't necessarily realism, as the blood is heightened and follows a sort of comic book sensibility,

[02:22] but it does give the combat emphasis and visual consequences that were missing so much from the Spider-Man titles. Wolverine's swipes also tear through the environment. Many objects in the game can be broken into pre-scored chunks, and those chunks fly in arcs that follow the player's strike.

[02:39] Most combat arenas have some amount of destructible fodder, and the physicalized bits of debris do look pretty cool. Like in a lot of other games though, a focus on destruction sometimes does highlight elements of the environment that are largely impervious to player actions,

[02:54] like this window, this food cart, and this patch of stealth grass. The combat feels great throughout the experience. Wolverine doesn't necessarily have the depth or dynamics of other melee fighting exemplars,

[03:07] at least on the default difficulty which is a little bit on the easier side, but it does pack some of the most polished combat as seen in gaming. Even if the core action can be boiled down to a few essentials, it doesn't really get

[03:19] stale and I think the game's excellent visual combat response is to thank. On the lighting front, I think the outcomes here are mostly good, but that assessment carries a few caveats. On the plus side, Insomniac's excellent hardware RT Reflections tech returns here, which seems

[03:35] of them formed the game's artistic makeup to a large degree. Any given space in the game is likely to have a wide range of reflective surfaces, as metals, water, and plastics reflect a convincing impression of the world the maximum player Every single graphics mode on PS5 and PS5 Pro packs arty reflections tech and I imagine the art was probably designed with this technology in mind from the start Insomniac seems to use a minimum of stream space information

[04:03] to inform these reflections, and I was only able to spot a small amount of an SSR-like effect at the base of certain reflections. In-game, you're really looking at hardware RTR reflections the overwhelming majority of the time, which is pretty unusual for a

[04:18] current-gen console title. There are some quality compromises relative to the normal scene, but these don't stand out too much in general. I did spot a couple of moments, however, where I think a more traditional planar reflection is in use, namely for certain large,

[04:33] smooth mirrors where the flaws of the game's idea reflections might become more obvious. These reflections show a better match between the scene and reflected world, but presumably have a much higher performance cost, and only really work for certain plane-like velocity surfaces.

[04:50] In one cutscene, I spotted what seemed to be a planar reflection giving swaps for a ray traced reflection, as this mirror breaks, which I think provides a better idea of the quality difference between the two.

[05:02] In other areas, the game relies on more aged core techniques. Wolverine is using cascaded channel maps, for instance, which sometimes show obvious cascading behavior during gameplay or exhibits some pop-in.

[05:14] Their resolution can appear a bit on the low side in some sequences, and you shouldn't expect superfine shadow detail on small objects. Shadows during cutscenes at least are high resolution enough to avoid most of these foibles.

[05:27] The game's diffuse GI poses a bigger problem, and this is probably my most significant sticking point with the game's visuals. In most of Wolverine's configurations, including PS5 Pro in Performance mode, as I'm testing

[05:39] but use seems to rely on a combination of a probe GI along with an SSAO technique to provide more higher frequency lighting information. In many shots, I have no particular quality complaints, especially in the areas where balanced lighting is drowned out a bit by strong directional light sources.

[05:56] Scenes in aggregate usually look handsome enough, but smaller scale details sometimes aren't lit in a satisfying way, as the character of the AO and GI can conflict a bit. Sometimes the lighting lacks a clear sense of directionality, as spaces seem to glow a little instead of having coherent, opinionated lighting.

[06:14] The occasional scene will suffer from more conspicuous lighting problems as well. These aren't mammoth issues necessarily, and they aren't nearly as apparent in fast combat, but they do stick out during exploration. This seems to be a common move among Sony published games this generation, especially those built on internal technology.

[06:32] But on the flip side, we don't see some of the characteristic noise and break-up often associated with RTGI techniques, especially on consoles. SSL occlusion problems do manifest if you look closely, but the controversial soap and

[06:46] pepper noise patterns that typify some current generation games aren't present here whatsoever. It's a sensible enough decision then, even if I think future efforts would be better off with more evolved lighting technology.

[06:59] generally appear detailed and showcase reasonable density. The clear highlight is Wolverine himself, who is well sculpted and expressive in the game's cutscene sequences. His strand hair and the strand hair of other characters looks pretty good as well, though aliasing can be an issue.

[07:15] Log swaps are still apparent during gameplay, but these are kept to a minimum for the most part. Gameplay areas are built with enough visual barriers and turns that the player rarely gets the runway for LOD swaps to become too obvious, though if you look closely you can spot LOD

[07:30] behavior and pop in more often. On PS5 Pro, Wolverine has two main graphics modes, fidelity and performance, which target

[07:45] 30fps and 60fps respectively at a fixed refresh 60hz output Visual differences between the two are fairly additive in nature as the Fidelity mode packs better logs, crisper shadows, superior full regeneration, and seems to have better shadow

[08:01] coverage. Image quality is also a little better with Fidelity mode, but Wolverine does use PSSR, and image quality is excellent in all PS5 Pro modes. The resolved image isn't perfect, a tear is a particular issue, and some bits of environmental

[08:17] detail fail to resolve clearly at times, but it's excellent in most scenes. I counted out a number of shots across both modes, and I believe performance mode is usually at about 1440p internally, while fidelity mode is usually around 1800p internally, but

[08:32] PSSR homogenizes those differences in the resolved imagery. The fidelity mode also packs an advanced ray tracing toggle in the settings, but lets you to dial in a few additional lighting effects, adding screen space GI, raytrace ambient occlusion

[08:47] and higher resolution raytrace reflections. If I was playing in GeoLiVe 1.0 Pro, I'd keep this toggled on but it doesn't ultimately add that much to the game. Reflections are much clearer, so they do expose some limitations of the game's raytracing

[09:01] a little, having SSGI pass seems to marginally change the lighting character of the environment. The most obvious apparent SSGI change that I spotted was this little highlight on the phone here from the in-lid light.

[09:14] RT-AO is an improvement over the SS-AO that is otherwise used, but its impact is limited. The most obvious difference is that it does not exhibit the camera occlusion issues that SS-AO suffers from. It also tends to be more localized with a slightly less heavy appearance, but it doesn't

[09:31] really do anything to resolve the game's diffuse GI issues. With the advanced RT Tartle on, Wolverine runs at a somewhat lower resolution, usually sitting somewhere between 1440p and 1800p in the gameplay shots I tested, though actual

[09:45] differences in the on-screen imagery are slight. All modes seem to do a good job of resolving a relatively clean and forking picture, so any image quality differences feel like minor quibbles. Firm rates are very good at 60Hz output.

[09:58] The performance mode is good for close to a locked 60fps during gameplay, only interrupted rarely by a one-off drop frame. I spent the majority of my playtime in the Performance mode on PS5 Pro, and I never found a scenario where the game dropped frames for an extended

[10:14] period, so I think the experience is relatively faultless. Cutscenes are an exception, as the game does drop frames when camera cuts, but this is hard to notice in real time. The fidelity mode with the Advanced RT runs just fine as well, logging a consistent 30

[10:30] camera cuts continue to drop frames, which is not generally that noticeable, but is more obvious than in Performance mode. In typical Insomniac fashion, Wolverine also supports the PSR Pro's range of advanced

[10:43] display output features. Most notably, the 30fps fidelity mode can run with a 40fps target when you dial in 120Hz output in-game and in the system settings. This mode looks identical to the 30fps fidelity mode, but with lowered resolution rendering.

[10:59] The pixel count suggests it comes in at roughly 1440p typically, with the advanced RT toggle turned on. This mode runs at a consistent 40fps when it captures unsurprisingly, with some relatively rare drops during gameplay and dropped frames on camera cuts.

[11:14] If you dial in 120Hz and VRR, the game can run in an uncapped performance configuration in both fidelity and performance modes. Expect about 70-80 FPS on average during gameplay and performance mode, and something closer

[11:29] to 50 FPS in fidelity mode, though there's considerable variance. This is a neat feature, though I think a locked, but lower refresh is not a bad choice either. PS5 Pro has a lot of configurability but I would lean towards just sticking with the performance mode myself The visual additions in fidelity mode are relatively minimal and a 60fps or higher frame rate makes gaming feel fast and smooth

[11:53] PSR evens out any of the usual image quality differences here, so fidelity mode is really just offering a set of iterative settings bumps. But there's no bad choice here necessarily, as all the game's performance configurations

[12:06] seem to work well. So far, I've been sampling the PS5 Pro, which offers the premier role-playing experience,

[12:18] but most players will be playing the game on a retro-based PS5 console. In performance hood, PS5 visual settings seem similar to the PS5 Pro version of the game, but image quality is worse, except a softer image with more aliasing artifacts.

[12:32] It looks perfectly good considering the hardware, but it doesn't offer the precision or stability of PS5 Pro. here seems slightly cut down clocking in at about 1296p or so on average in my counts.

[12:46] The fidelity mode gets some iterative upgrades just like on PS5 Pro with better shadows and less aggressive level of detail scaling. The image quality is much better here with internalizations that hover around 1800p. PS5 doesn't get the Pro's advanced ray tracing toggle here, so fidelity mode's lighting is

[13:03] more similar to the performance mode. Both PS5 60Hz modes run just fine, just like PS5 Pro. Expect stable performance overall, with dips on camera cuts and in selects of gameplay

[13:15] moments. PS5 seems to like to draw up frames a little more readily than Pro, but I think it packs a good performance level for the most part. If we dial in 120Hz output, fidelity mode can be played at a 40fps frame rate.

[13:29] Again, resolutions take a haircut, with typical resolutions closer to 1440p, but performance seems good with the usual caveats. 120Hz plus VRR can take us into unlocked territory if we want,

[13:42] and again here, the frame rates are improved modestly over their fixed refresh alternatives. Performance mode is good for about 60-70fps typically, and fidelity mode delivers 40-50fps

[13:54] or thereabouts, with considerable shot to shot variance. On PS5 I'd probably still gravitate towards the performance mode, but there's more of an argument for the fidelity mode here, because the image quality differences are far more pronounced.

[14:07] PSSR is very good at leveling resolved image quality on Pro, while the PS5's analytical upscaler, which is likely Insomniac's IGTI, is less effective. Wolverine makes for a very good visual experience.

[14:22] Combat is the highlight here, but it's generally up to a high quality large route. It's obviously more limited in scope than many other contemporary titles, but it does feel more consistently polished than any game I've seen recently. The fused GI is the

[14:36] only significant sticking point in my mind, though Wolverine's largely pre-calculated solution does carry certain image quality benefits. As a game, I think Wolverine will connect with most players pretty well. This is a classic AAA experience with relatively on-rails progression and gated

[14:52] movement. But the core gameplay is entertaining enough, and polished enough, that I think it There's space for games in this industry that explore novel concepts and push for open-ended gameplay, and there's space for more traditional directed games built on simple combat loops.

[15:09] Especially if those games happen to use that focus to perfectly polish that core experience. So Wolverine is an excellent action game and comes recommended on both PS5 consoles.

[15:21] It doesn't tear through boundaries, but it does offer a satisfying single-player adventure. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, and press the bell for YouTube notifications. Check out the Patreon at patreon.com for exclusive and early access content, and to get in touch,

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