Insomniac Games' long-awaited solo outing for Logan launches September 15 on PS5, and the review embargo has already told most of the story. After years of near-silence following its 2021 reveal, Marvel's Wolverine arrives with a Metacritic average sitting around 77-78 (OpenCritic tracking similarly, in the high 70s to low 80s depending on the aggregator's sample at time of writing) — a solid, "Generally Favorable" showing, but a clear step down from the studio's Spider-Man trilogy, which posted 87, 85, and 90 across its three entries.
That makes Wolverine Insomniac's lowest-scoring original release in roughly a decade, and the weakest critical debut of any Marvel game the studio has shipped. It's not a disaster by any measure — but after years of anticipation, "good, not great" wasn't the verdict most fans were braced for.
What critics loved
The character work is the clear consensus highlight. Reviewers across the board single out Liam McIntyre's performance as Logan, along with the game's presentation, sound design, and the way its combat system escalates as new Adaptations and Special Techniques unlock. Outlets that scored the game highly framed it as doing for Wolverine what the 2018 Spider-Man did for that character — brutal, kinetic combat built around claws, kicks, a Rage meter, and a Healing-Factor-driven "Last Stand" mechanic that a few critics called the best superhero combat system since God of War or Jedi: Fallen Order. A handful of outlets, including COGconnected and Hardcore Gamer, gave it perfect or near-perfect scores on the strength of that combat and character writing alone.
Where it lost ground
The complaints cluster around structure. Multiple reviewers describe the campaign as tightly linear — closer to a corridor-driven Uncharted game than the open-world Spider-Man formula Insomniac is known for — with thinner enemy variety and less player agency than expected. Pacing and storytelling took hits from some outlets too; Giant Bomb landed on the harshest score in the roundup, criticizing what it called mediocre plotting and poor pacing despite enjoying the combat in isolation.
One specific detail became its own mini-controversy ahead of launch: a persistent, always-on blue scent trail that follows Jean Grey through levels as a navigation aid — quickly nicknamed "fart gas" in a widely shared piece of coverage — which several critics noted stays visible even after players try to disable related guidance options in the settings menu. It's a wayfinding tool rather than a stealth mechanic, but it became shorthand for a broader complaint: that the game leans harder on hand-holding than its combat depth deserves.
The scores, at a glance
Metacritic: ~77-78 (Generally Favorable), 110+ critic reviews
OpenCritic: high 70s to 80, roughly 73-79% of critics recommending it
High marks: COGconnected (10/10), Hardcore Gamer (10/10), Game Informer (85/100)
Low marks: Giant Bomb (50/100), with GamesRadar+ and MMORPG.com also landing on the more critical end
The verdict
Marvel's Wolverine is a hard game to summarize in one line, because the reception genuinely splits between "career-best combat system" and "the biggest disappointment of the PS5 era," depending on which outlet you read. What almost everyone agrees on: Logan himself — the performance, the brutality, the way the combat feels once its systems open up — is the reason to play. What holds it back from Spider-Man-tier acclaim is everything wrapped around that combat: a linear structure, a story some critics feel undersells its own premise, and hand-holding that clashes with a character built on raw, unassisted survival.
At $69.99 for the standard edition and $79.99 for Digital Deluxe, exclusively on PS5, Wolverine lands as a focused, gory, 15-20 hour ride that's very good at what it's good at — even if it never quite becomes the generation-defining exclusive Sony was hoping for.
Review scores reflect the critic consensus as aggregated by Metacritic and OpenCritic following the September 10, 2026 embargo lift, ahead of the game's September 15 release.
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