If you had asked me a week ago what I thought we’d be talking about on the day that reviews dropped for Marvel’s Wolverine, I might have said the bloody violence, or its take on the X-Men universe, or the lack of open-world exploration. I certainly would not have guessed “fart gas.” But it turns out that fart gas gets to the heart of what has dominated the discussion ahead of the PlayStation 5 exclusive’s launch.
Wolverine’s reviews have been mixed at best, with many, including Kotaku‘s own, taking issue with how on-rails parts of the game feel and how repetitive its combat can become. Some of the critiques gesture at a broader frustration with Sony’s latest prestige blockbuster–that it borrows too much from dated playbooks and treats players with kid gloves rather than trusting them to rise to the occasion and adapt to its unique challenges or quirks.
This sentiment propelled a clip from YouTuber Ralph “Skill Up” Panebianco’s in-depth review of Insomniac Games’ latest comic book action-adventure into arguably one of the most talked-about clips. It shows a brief snippet of Wolverine, with Logan running through snow-covered woods. It looks innocuous enough at first, but Skill Up goes on to detail at length all the ways that Wolverine overbearingly holds players’ hands and fights to keep them from wandering off course in narrowly designed corridor levels for even a second.
It’s not the only section of the game he criticizes for these flaws. Other zones also include multiple critical path markers on top of wrinkles already built into the underlying environment design that tell players where to go. It all seems aimed at propelling the player through what can’t help but look like a pretty on-rails, dumbed-down experience.
At one point, Skill Up calls out four layers of signposting. The first is a sent line trailing Jean Grey, which The Washington Post‘s Gene Park has taken to calling “fart gas.” On top of that is an individual objective marker icon that occasionally pops up to tell players where they’re supposed to be. Then there’s a purple set of magical roots that pop up to take the player to a collectible just a few feet off the beaten path.
Finally, there’s the white paint and environmental lights that draw players’ eyes to where they’re supposed to go next. Add on top of all that the constant barks from Wolverine about needing to find Jean and you have a recipe for what seems like a pretty patronizing transition between set pieces and combat arenas.
Okay… So you can turn off most of these HUD and accessibility options Skill Up is criticizing in his Wolverine Review.
Insomniac’s official settings confirm:
Mission waypoint icons: On / R3 Hint / Off → you can completely disable them.
Navigation Assist: the directional… pic.twitter.com/oehxfpkT48— Daily HUBRANX Official (@dailyhubranx) September 10, 2026
Some people online shot back that this was a problem of not fine-tuning the experience in the settings first rather than any fundamental flaw plaguing Wolverine. A surprising amount of debate ensued about just how much of this handholding stuff consisted of options that could be disabled in the accessibility menus. And indeed some of them can be, even if they remain on by default. But others, like the scent line, AKA fart gas, appear to be unchangeable.
“I’m at the same spot where Skill Up follows Jean Grey’s fart gas and you can see her fart gas in the background of the menu where those options are turned off, but Jean’s fart gas particles stay,” Park wrote on X. Kotaku‘s reviewer, Kenneth Shepard, confirmed the same restriction on his end. This could all be changed in a day-one patch, or in a post-launch update. But for now, the far gas is a feature, not a bug. Why does it matter?
It matters for the same reason that people still get agitated over too much yellow paint. There’s a sense that some modern games, especially of the prestige blockbuster variety, are playing tricks on players, substituting slick but shallow gameplay loops and genuinely impressive but mostly hands-off spectacle for gameplay experiences that feel more meaningfully interactive and tactile.
A lot of confusion that Insomniac will have to clear up.
Tons of Marvel’s Wolverine fans crapping all over Skill Up, claiming his big complaint can just be turned off.
Other reviewers are saying that might not be entirely the case and some of this “hand-holding” is permanent. https://t.co/3bnrmxUlKp
— Michael (@LegacyKillaHD) September 10, 2026
I haven’t played Wolverine yet (out September 15), so I can’t comment on whether it’s boring or fun, or some more nuanced combination of the two. But the formula it’s drawing on, neither immersive open-world (Ghost of Yotei) nor tense arcade action (Ninja Gaiden 4). is clearly drawing more scrutiny than ever. At a time when some of the most popular games are either brutal Soulslikes or in-depth RPGs, Wolverine may occupy an uncomfortably archaic middle ground that satisfies fewer people than it used to. A game that mostly plays itself might be a fine time-waster for $5, but fans have been trained to expect more than fart gas from Sony’s biggest release of the year.
