Wolverine Gameplay Demo Violence Makes It Look Like Mortal Kombat

State of Play made its return today, and just as Sony promised, it kicked things off with a fresh–and brutal–look at Marvel’s Wolverine from Insomniac.

Game director Marcus Smith outlined the story, which centers on Wolverine attempting to save a group of kidnapped mutants from an extremist group called the Reavers. From there, we saw a lengthy chunk of gameplay as Wolverine infiltrated, and then eviscerated, a sprawling camp of bad guys.

After seeing Leech being loaded into a truck, Wolverine slices through a steel beam to create a chain reaction that brings down a shipping container on the villains, and then he’s joined by Jean Grey, who helps hold the Reavers in place while Wolverine does what he does best. At what point she even telekinesis-throws a bad guy into his claws. It’s pretty gnarly!

The truck starts to get away, so Wolverine gives chase in a nearby motorcycle, using it to jump atop the moving caravan and leap from truck to truck, playing pin cushion with the baddies. Frankly the last one should just see what he did to their friends and give up, but they never do.

One notable element throughout the trailer is that the Reavers seem to be augmented with cybernetic parts. Many of them have prosthetic limbs and the big-bad leading the caravan has cyborg arms that can go hand-to-hand with Wolverine’s claws.

The final sizzle reel teased lots of other characters like Omega Red, Mystique, Sabretooth, and Ogun.

An update on the PlayStation Blog noted that Logan can hit a higher tier level in his Rage meter than we saw in the demo, which creates a visual effect inspired by the Black, White, and Blood series of Marvel comics. It also noted that Wolverine will feature a large array of accessibility options.

As the new gameplay showed, Insomniac is aiming to deliver a mature and darker experience when compared to its work on the Spider-Man games. Wolverine isn’t exactly known for treating his enemies with kid gloves, and this new footage highlighted how Marvel’s famous mutant will hack and slash his way through the opposition.

At the same time, the developer has also teased that it’ll be digging deep into the core of Logan and what makes him tick. Australian actor Liam McIntyre provides the voice and motion-capture acting of the character, and he said that his performance will reveal the “essence” of the character.

Marvel’s Wolverine launches on September 15 for PS5.