Marvel’s Wolverine review scores landed at 78 on Metacritic and roughly 79 on OpenCritic after the embargo lifted September 10, 2026, well below Insomniac Games’ three prior Marvel titles. Critics agree the combat and Liam McIntyre’s Logan are strong, but split hard on a linear structure, thin enemy variety, and a story reviewers say undersells its own premise.
Insomniac Games and Sony lifted the review embargo on Marvel’s Wolverine at 8 a.m. PT on September 10, 2026, five days ahead of the game’s September 15 release on PlayStation 5. Metacritic and OpenCritic began aggregating scores the same morning, and by the afternoon dozens of named outlets, including IGN, GameSpot, and TheGamer, had published full reviews.
What the Scores Actually Are
As of September 11, 2026, Marvel’s Wolverine sits at 78 on Metacritic across 112 critic reviews, a “Generally Favorable” rating in Metacritic’s own banding. OpenCritic‘s Top Critic Average reads 79, with roughly three in four critics (75%) recommending the game across its growing review count. Both trackers will keep moving as more outlets file reviews through launch week, but the game has cleared the bar Metacritic and OpenCritic both use to separate “favorable” from “mixed.”
How It Compares to Insomniac’s Spider-Man Games
The number that has driven most of the coverage is not 78 in isolation, it’s 78 next to Insomniac’s own track record. Every previous Marvel game the studio has shipped landed in the mid-to-high 80s or better on Metacritic. Marvel’s Wolverine is the first to fall short of that band, and by a wide enough margin that several outlets have called it the studio’s lowest-scoring original release in roughly a decade.
| Game | Release Year | Metacritic Score |
|---|---|---|
| Marvel’s Spider-Man | 2018 | 87 |
| Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales | 2020 | 85 |
| Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 | 2023 | 90 |
| Marvel’s Wolverine | 2026 | 78 |
Readers weighing whether the drop is really about Wolverine specifically or about open-world scope can compare the underlying design choices in our breakdown of the best Spider-Man games, ranked, which found that every prior Insomniac Marvel title built its highest scores around physics-driven traversal across an open world — a structure Wolverine deliberately abandons.
What Critics Agree On
Across the review spread, from perfect scores to 6/10s, the same two things draw consistent praise: the combat and Liam McIntyre’s performance as Logan. Reviewers repeatedly single out the weight of the claws, the finishers, and how aggressively the game lets Logan tear through enemies, along with the character writing and presentation around him. Where the reviews diverge is almost entirely about structure: mission variety, enemy variety, and how much the game leans on on-screen guidance rather than letting players find their own way through a level.
Where Critics Split
IGN and GameSpot both landed at 6/10, the low end of the named-outlet spread, while outlets like TheGamer scored it well above the aggregate average. IGN wrote that the game’s “slick and satisfying combat wears thin well before its conclusion, so much so that even its strong character work can’t quite save it from being anything more than okay.” GameSpot’s review landed on the same 6/10 and raised similar concerns about mission structure repeating itself over the campaign’s length. TheGamer went the other direction at 4 out of 5, calling the combat “fast, ferocious, bloody, brutal, and pretty much every gory adjective you’d expect to be associated with six razor-sharp claws,” while still conceding that “combat can get a little repetitive towards the end since Logan’s moveset doesn’t evolve much past the halfway point.”
The ‘Fart Gas’ Debate, Explained
Before the embargo even lifted, one design choice became a talking point on its own: a persistent blue scent trail that follows Jean Grey through the game as a navigation aid, which The Washington Post’s Gene Park nicknamed “fart gas” in a widely shared piece of review coverage. The trail is one of several always-on guidance layers reviewers say the game leans on, and multiple critics confirmed it stays visible even after players turn off related navigation options in the settings menu. It isn’t a stealth or takedown mechanic — it’s a wayfinding cue — but it became shorthand in launch-week coverage for the broader hand-holding complaint running through the lower-scoring reviews.
What the Score Gap Means for Insomniac’s Marvel Slate
The pattern in these reviews is more specific than “worse game.” Nearly every critic, favorable or not, praises the same two things — combat feel and Logan’s characterization — and nearly every complaint is structural: a shorter, more linear campaign, thinner enemy variety, and guidance systems like the scent trail that critics say remove player agency the Spider-Man games never had to solve for. That’s a design-philosophy gap, not an execution failure — Insomniac’s technical craft is not what’s in question here. It suggests the studio’s open-world Spider-Man toolkit doesn’t automatically transfer to a contained, linear brawler, and it’s a live question for whatever Insomniac ships next under its multi-game Marvel deal with Sony: reuse this same guided, corridor template and risk the same critique, or rebuild the traversal-and-freedom formula that took Spider-Man 2 to a 90.
Where the Game Stands at Launch
None of this makes Marvel’s Wolverine a failure by Metacritic’s own banding — 78 is still “Generally Favorable,” and OpenCritic’s 75% recommendation rate means three out of four reviewing critics are telling readers to buy it. It’s a real game with reviewers split between calling it a focused, brutal showcase for one character and a shorter, more restrictive experience than Insomniac’s open-world Marvel games. Full pricing and edition details are in our preorder guide, and our launch trailer breakdown has the full look at what Insomniac showed before review day. The game remains a PlayStation 5 exclusive, releasing September 15, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Marvel’s Wolverine’s Metacritic score?
As of September 11, 2026, Marvel’s Wolverine holds a 78 on Metacritic across 112 critic reviews, which Metacritic classifies as “Generally Favorable.” The score may still shift as more reviews are added through the game’s September 15 launch.
Is Marvel’s Wolverine rated lower than Insomniac’s Spider-Man games?
Yes. Marvel’s Spider-Man scored 87 on Metacritic, Miles Morales scored 85, and Spider-Man 2 scored 90. Marvel’s Wolverine’s 78 is the lowest score any Insomniac Marvel game has received.
What are critics praising and criticizing in Marvel’s Wolverine?
Critics consistently praise the combat’s weight and brutality and Liam McIntyre’s performance as Logan. The most common criticisms are a more linear mission structure, limited enemy variety, and heavy on-screen guidance, versus the openness of Insomniac’s Spider-Man games.
What is the ‘fart gas’ controversy about Marvel’s Wolverine?
It refers to a persistent blue scent trail that follows Jean Grey through the game as a navigation aid, nicknamed by The Washington Post’s Gene Park. Critics noted it stays visible even with related navigation settings turned off, and cited it as an example of the game’s heavy-handed guidance.
Is Marvel’s Wolverine a PlayStation 5 exclusive?
Yes. Marvel’s Wolverine, developed by Insomniac Games, releases exclusively on PlayStation 5 on September 15, 2026.
