Marvel’s Wolverine has hardly received the kind of critical reception Sony and Insomniac Games might have expected from one of PlayStation’s biggest first-party releases. A Metascore in the high 70s is far from a disaster, but the scores handed out by several of the world’s biggest gaming publications make the overall picture considerably more awkward.

According to Kotaku, Marvel’s Wolverine was sitting at a Metascore of 77 after 106 reviews, making it, at that point, Sony’s lowest-scoring internally developed PS5 title. That figure becomes even more striking when looking at the better-known international outlets. IGN and GameSpot both gave the game 6/10, while VGC and GamesRadar+ landed at 3/5 and Giant Bomb went lower still with 2.5/5.

That does not mean the game has been universally panned. Quite the opposite: a substantial number of smaller outlets awarded it 8s, 9s and even 10s. The striking part is the consistency among several of the biggest and most established publications. When IGN and GameSpot independently arrive at exactly the same 6/10 score for a major Sony exclusive, the lukewarm reception becomes much harder to dismiss as the work of one unusually harsh reviewer.

IGN And GameSpot Both Stop At 6/10

IGN’s review argues that the game’s initially satisfying combat runs out of ideas well before the end of the campaign, while its level design too often falls back on safe and familiar solutions. The criticism is not that Marvel’s Wolverine is broken or fundamentally bad, but that it feels unexpectedly conventional for a game built around such an iconic character and developed by a studio with Insomniac’s pedigree.

GameSpot reaches a similarly restrained conclusion. Tamoor Hussain describes Wolverine as a solid, cinematic and occasionally thrilling action game, but one that rarely pushes beyond the essentials. The combat systems work, the presentation is impressive and Logan himself is handled with care, yet the game repeatedly feels as though it is ticking genre boxes rather than exploiting the creativity that made Insomniac’s Spider-Man games stand out.

A 77 Metascore That Hides A Sharper Divide

The same pattern appears elsewhere. VGC praised the narrative, characters and visual presentation but criticized gameplay that barely evolves across the campaign, repetitive enemy archetypes and drawn-out boss battles. GamesRadar+ likewise found the adventure too linear and thin in places, while Giant Bomb delivered one of the harshest verdicts at 2.5/5.

For Sony and Insomniac, that makes the reception more uncomfortable than a simple 77 might suggest. No one is seriously arguing that Marvel’s Wolverine is an outright disaster, but several of the biggest names in games media have identified remarkably similar weaknesses: repetitive combat, overly familiar structure, limited gameplay evolution and a sense that an enormously polished blockbuster is ultimately much more ordinary than its budget, developer and protagonist would suggest. When both IGN and GameSpot settle on 6/10, that is not exactly the kind of critical headline normally associated with one of PlayStation’s flagship first-party releases.

Source: Kotaku