Marvel’s Wolverine, from usually stellar developers Insomniac Games, has been met with a resounding “fine.” No one is tearing the X-Men-themed action game to pieces, nor condemning it as an abject failure, but instead the most recognized outlets have offered it a collective shrug. And given the extremely high caliber of Sony’s in-house productions for the PS5, that is enough to see it positioned as the lowest-rated game from within PlayStation Studios’ collective of developers in all six years of the console.
A Metascore of 77 is certainly no slight, and suggests—as does Kotaku‘s review—a solid if somewhat uninspiring romp. Most reviews from the well-known sites are observing just how dated it feels as a linear third-person action game, a relic of the earlier 2000s, and as such a perfectly acceptable game but one that feels anachronistic and underwhelming. Yet, when games cost $70, such responses can make a new release feel prohibitively expensive. (And this, people, is very much why you don’t pre-order.) Personally, as someone who was looking forward to playing the next game from the Spider-Man developers, I’ve very quickly decided to save my pennies and pick it up when it’s significantly cheaper. I won’t be alone.
It’s worth noting that that 77 score is despite an awful lot of smaller international sites offering Wolverine 9s and 10s, while the larger (and possibly more world-weary) sites mostly offered it a 6. That’s true of Eurogamer, VGC, IGN, GameSpot, and GamesRadar, while Giant Bomb has come in the lowest so far with a 5. (Metacritic weights its averages based on the reputation of sites, which is why the astonishing number of 8s from sites you’ve perhaps not heard of don’t have as much influence.)
With an extraordinary 106 reviews of the PS5 game listed at the time of writing, clearly there’s a broad range of opinions to be found, and if you buy it and adore it, then you’re the winner here. But it will remain noteworthy that Insomniac’s latest has proven to be the least well-received of any in-house Sony production since the PS5 launched in 2020. Currently, the highest is God of War: Ragnarok, sitting on a mighty 94, with 2020’s launch title, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, no longer in last place with 79.
But with all this, let’s not lose sight of what’s pretty important here: When this is your worst-rated game, Sony is doing incredibly well with its in-house teams. That a solid but unessential game starring a pastry-faced Wolverine is its lowest point is, in fact, something of an achievement.