Reviews for Marvel’s Wolverine have dropped, and it’s fair to say that many of them are a bit disappointing.
At the time of writing, Insomniac Games’ big budget action title sits at an eyebrow-raising 77 on Metacritic, based on just over 100 evaluations.
Now I should stress that a 77 is not a bad score, despite the growing sentiment that anything below an 80, or 8/10, is unworthy of your time. Even Metacritic itself states that a 77 is “generally favourable”.
But given the largely excellent track record of PlayStation Studios, that 77 looks surprisingly low.
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For context, Wolverine is now counted amongst the lowest rated first-party Sony games of this console generation.
And by first-party, I mean major development outfits owned by Sony. The likes of Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio, Sucker Punch, and, of course, Insomniac Games.
To compare Wolverine with other first-party PS5 releases, we’ve got…
- Astro Bot (94)
- God of War Ragnarok (94)
- Demon’s Souls (92) (developer Bluepoint technically wasn’t a first-party studio yet when Demon’s Souls released)
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (90)
- The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered (90)
- The Last of Us Part 1 (89)
- Horizon Forbidden West (88)
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (88)
- Saros (87)
- Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (87)
- Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered (87)
- Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut (87)
- Gran Turismo 7 (87)
- Returnal (86)
- Ghost of Yotei (86)
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (85)
- Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (85)
- Astro’s Playroom (83)
- Days Gone Remastered (78)
- Marvel’s Wolverine (77)
- Concord (62)
Again, this is only taking first-party studio titles into account. If we’re talking PS5 exclusives published by Sony, then games such as Destruction AllStars and God of War: Sons of Sparta all rank lower than Wolverine.
In any case, it’s a fairly steep drop-off for Insomniac. The Burbank-based outfit has gone from releasing Spider-Man 2 in 2023 — rated at a very impressive 90 — to giving us a 77-rated Wolverine four years later.
Indeed, the studio hadn’t crafted a game with a Metacritic score lower than 85 across the whole generation — and Insomniac’s been busy over the last seven years or so, delivering more titles than any other Sony-owned developer in that time.
Wolverine makes for an interesting outlier, then. And I’m left wondering how the game will end up being perceived in the future — especially once players have had their say.
For what it’s worth, our own reviewer Liam really enjoyed Wolverine, despite some pretty clear flaws. It got an 8/10 in our Marvel’s Wolverine PS5 review.
