How to defeat Omega Red in Marvel’s Wolverine

Here’s our full breakdown of how to defeat Omega Red in Marvel’s Wolverine across all three phases. The opening boss fight is the first proper gut-check from Insomniac’s latest Marvel installment, and if you’ve just watched Omega Red rip a chunk out of your health bar with those tentacles, you’re probably wondering how anyone survives him with claws intact. Good news: he’s beatable, and once you’ve got the rhythm down, this fight becomes less “brutal wall” and more “satisfying dust-up”.

Our tips on how to beat Omega Red should point you in the right direction and if you’re still having difficulty, you can check out the video guide below, which will show how it all strings together. This is without a doubt, the hardest boss fight in the first half of Marvel’s Wolverine, so take your time defeating him and enjoy the challenge, which is pretty significant on the hardest difficulty, The Best There Is.

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Get comfortable with the parry first

Before you even think about tearing into Omega Red with your claws, you need to make peace with the parry. This fight lives and dies on your timing with it, and it’s not the most forgiving window in the game, especially if you’re playing on the hardest difficulty. Drop down to a lower setting and that hit window opens up considerably, which is worth knowing if you’re getting stonewalled early on, but with the rest of our tips and the video guide below, you should be able to crack it.

The trick is patience. You’re waiting for the attack to actually reach you before you commit to the parry, not the wind-up. Go in too early and you’ll whiff it completely and eat the hit anyway. Get it right, though, and a string of successful parries will stagger Omega Red, opening him up for some proper punishment with a few claw strikes on square, capped off with a triangle finisher for extra damage.

Build your rage to save your skin

While you’re working through those parries, keep an eye on your Rage meter. The goal is to have at least one revive banked before things get hairy, and the way you do that is by staying clean, landing your parries and avoiding damage rather than trading hits recklessly. If you have at least one bar of Rage then you will be able to revive yourself if you get caught a few too many times by Omega Red’s sinister tentacles of doom.

You can use revives to be able to scrape through the fight, the bigger benefit is to be able to stay in the fight for long enough to build up your parry timing and patterns skills. Getting these right will give you a better chance of landing a solid run against Omega Red that feels a bit more like Wolverine.

How to beat Omega Red in phase 1

Look out for his tentacle hits, which can be parried and practice getting your timing right on them. As mentioned above, you want to parry just as the hit is coming at you. In phase 1, Omega Red whips his tentacles last, right and down and in an ideal world you’ll get all of them to really boost your stagger.

When he raises his shield, hold down kick to break straight through it and keep the pressure on. You can dodge his projectile throws pretty easily and then its just a case of repeating the process until his health bar goes to zero. However, this isn’t the end of the boss fight as there are another two phases to get through before you’ll take him down.

Surviving phase two

Phase two ramps things up. Omega Red moves quicker and his attacks hit harder, but the underlying plan doesn’t change much: keep landing those parries to build stagger, because dodging alone will keep you safe but won’t give you the openings you need to actually win the fight.

Watch for projectiles and be ready to get well clear whenever he fires out his tentacles for a grab move. You absolutely want to dodge rather than parry, because if he gets you, Omega Red siphons Wolverine’s health directly, making the fight longer and harder. You’ll know it’s coming because his tentacles glow red before he fires them out. Dodge it clean, then parry everything that follows, and you’ll deny him that healing opportunity.

This phase is also where Wolverine’s special moves become genuinely useful, especially the knee-to-the-head attack, which also builds stagger nicely. It doubles as a get out of jail card too, since it can break you out of almost any move he throws at you if you’re struggling to read it. You might still get hit in the process of landing the knee, but after that the move will be interrupted, so you’ll only take a little damage instead of being susceptible to the whole lot.

Don’t be afraid to take a breather mid-phase, either. Wolverine’s passive regeneration is quietly one of your best tools here. Hang back for a few seconds instead of throwing yourself back into the fray, and you’ll claw back a big chunk of your health bar for free. When you do want to press the attack after he unleashes the tentacle move, dodge the the grab, step in to parry the follow-up shots, then use a kick to smash through his guard and start chipping away again. Play patiently, wait for your openings, and you can get through this phase without taking much damage at all.

Mastering the brutal third phase

Phase three is where Omega Red gets properly dangerous, and it hinges on one specific skill: dodging the flurry of swinging red attacks, which have a little lag in his animation right before he swings. It’s the hardest read in the entire fight, but once you can spot it consistently, you’re in business.

From phase 3, the pattern becomes a bit more dodge-focused. You’ll need to sidestep two tentacle strikes in a row before you get a window to hit back, so use that moment wisely, and don’t be shy about firing off your special attacks when the opportunity is genuinely there rather than forcing them into a gap that isn’t actually open.

His attacks get noticeably more layered here, mixing blue and red hits that dictate whether you should be parrying or dodge, so pay close attention to the colour rather than just the shape of the animation. You’ll also need to dodge two more tentacle strikes and a lunge attack in sequence, which sets up another chance to build stagger through parries. Keep dodging the red-tinted attacks specifically; they’re the dangerous ones.

As you get close to beating Omega Red, he gets desperate and starts throwing out his spinning red attacks more frequently, usually in a pattern of four quick strikes followed by a single delayed one. Learn that rhythm and you can dodge through the whole sequence, or simply interrupt it with the knee attack to shut it down entirely and buy yourself a clean opening. The longer you can string together a clean run without getting hit, the more your passive health regen and rage meter will work in your favour, potentially banking you another revive before the fight is even over.

Putting it all together

Once you’ve got each individual piece down, the loop becomes pretty simple: avoid the jump-in attacks, land your parries, force the stagger, dodge those red attacks and cash it in on your stagger opportunities. Repeat that cycle through all three phases and you should be able to defeat Omega Red. It’s a genuinely tough opening boss fight, but it’s also one of those encounters in Marvel’s Wolverine that rewards you for understanding the moves and reading the enemy rather than button-mashing your way through. This makes it all the more satisfying once his health bar finally hits zero.

Check out our computer games section for more news and features on Marvel’s Wolverine, or visit the official PlayStation webpage for the game at https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/marvels-wolverine/. You can also drop a comment or share our tips with the links below if the article helped you get to the beat Omega Red.