I’m Tired of 100-Hour Games, And Marvel’s Wolverine Is Exactly What I Want Right Now

Have you ever gone on a vacation with a set of goals or sightseeing hotspots that you absolutely must visit? You arrive at your destination, and then follow a tightly wound travel itinerary to make sure you check off everything on your list. After all, living life is about experiences and making the most of the time we have, is it not? When the vacation is over, you head back home and almost feel like you need a “vacation from your vacation.” It’s a very real feeling that I’ve heard many people in my life, myself included, share about their time off from work and the mundane responsibilities of life. It almost doesn’t make any real sense. A vacation is meant to be a time to unwind, decompress, and enjoy yourself to the fullest. When you think back on it, perhaps inserting a beach day into your busy vacation schedule would have satisfied the soul far more than visiting a tour of those three museums and exhibits you might easily forget about within the next few weeks. This is often the conflict that I experience with expansive games that scale to 100+ hours of play in order to land the full experience of the title. And that’s why, despite middling reviews, Marvel’s Wolverine is so incredibly refreshing.

The modern gaming scene is chock-full of promising releases one right after the other. If we just look back at the last four weeks alone, Mortal Shell 2, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, The Blood of the Dawnwalker, Aliens: Fire Team Elite 2, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, FC27, Halloween: The Game, Runescape: Dragonwilds (on console), and more are just a glimpse at the complicated choices gaming fans everywhere have to deal with. It doesn’t matter if you’re made of money. Absolutely no average person has enough time in the world to budget for this rate of high-profile titles and licensed games. That means that our time is valuable. So, it’s important to evaluate how many Crimson Deserts you really want to take on.

Wolverine Offers a True Reprieve from the Checkbox Games

Marvel’s Wolverine might hold your hand, but it doesn’t cut corners when threading an explosive experience coupled with a fun narrative. I think we’ve cultivated a generation of gaming fans who have become used to meaty titles, whether that comes in the form of a new Witcher title or an engrossing PvP or games-as-a-service experience. And don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with those games. But not every game needs to be this way. A linear narrative that guides the pacing of the action with “painted” grapple points might actually be the “day at the beach” you need. I know it was for me.

The discourse surrounding Wolverine had me a bit concerned. But I jumped into the game anyway and found an imperfect yet incredible Wolverine story that never seemed to let up when it came to thrills and intensity, and it fully respected my time. I could nitpick the game to death. But why would I want to? From a technical perspective, Wolverine may deserve the scores it’s been receiving. But for me, the entertainment value was at an all-time high. Something is refreshing about living the power fantasy of Wolverine and not feeling like Malenia is once again roasting me like a marshmallow over the fire with her sword. Believe me, I’m a Souls fan as much as the next person, but there’s something to say about a tight, fun experience with brevity that feels akin to a gnarly theme-park ride. The cherry on top came when I knew that I could finish the game just in time for Silent Hill: Townfall.

It’s the memories that make an experience worth its time

What I can tell you is that across my entire range of experiences with 100+ hours of massive open-world games like Crimson Desert, The Witcher 3, or Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I can’t recall any of the minor details of these games, including side quests, NPCs I performed simple tasks for, or all the collectibles I found. I do remember the core story and the mainline experience that made these games attractive to begin with. Sometimes, all that fluff for the sake of immersion and living a virtual life in a different world isn’t all it’s chalked up to be. I remember my favorite movies with incredible sequences and quotes far better than I remember the details of my favorite games. Perhaps that’s a signal that maybe we’re doing too much.

As I get older, my life gets busier and time moves faster. It’s the tragedy of the human condition. You spend your entire childhood wishing to speed things up so you can feel the freedom of adulthood. Then, when you get there, you simply wish you could go back and slow things down again. As a gaming fan with almost four decades of joystick-or-controller-in-hand experience, I reckon I’ll be playing video games until the day I die. But my perspective is shifting, and I’m longing for more titles like Marvel’s Wolverine. Despite the criticisms surrounding the title, I hope enough players find the same satisfaction and value I do in thrilling, experience-driven titles that become a “moment in time” adventure.

Maybe it’s time to drop the idea of 100% completion, or turn down that side quest, or maybe, just maybe, pick up a game that gives you a streamlined experience, leaving you plenty of time to move on to the next one.