Wolverine's Metacritic score has settled at a 77, which is about as middle-of-the-road as it gets for a big PlayStation exclusive. Not a disaster. Not a triumph. Just fine.
And that's the problem. Insomniac's latest superhero adventure has solid combat foundations and good performances from its leads, but the story never really coheres. The fighting peaks way too early. Compared to modern first-party PlayStation games, it's extremely limited in scope. After finishing a pre-release version, that's exactly how I felt.
In our full Marvel's Wolverine review, Leon puts it well: 'Marvel's Wolverine is never a bad experience, just an underwhelming one full of odd choices. I enjoyed it enough for the most part but never really felt blown away, or like I was getting the game Wolverine deserved.'
It's a shame, because the bones of something great are here. I loved the two hours of hands-on time I got. Turns out those two hours showed me most of what the game has to offer. Even in a relatively short 10-15 hour game, those adamantium bones get stretched pretty thin.
Other reviews echo the same note. There are some glowing outliers, but most land with Leon and me: it's fine. And fine is well below where expectations sit for a modern Sony game.
That 77 could shift as more reviews trickle in. As it stands, it marks Insomniac's worst rating for an original game since its small-scale Song of the Deep experiment. Sure, the studio has mostly been making excellent Spider-Man games since then, but Wolverine also fails to measure up to the historic scores of games like Sunset Overdrive and much of the Ratchet & Clank series.
It stings more because first-party PlayStation games are so rare. Sony's console is one of the last big outlets for AAA single-player games, and getting more than two of them a year feels lucky. When one misses, it hurts.
If you're hoping for something bigger, keep an eye on the upcoming PS5 games. But Wolverine was supposed to be one of the sure things. Instead, it's just OK, and OK isn't what PlayStation needed.