Marvel’s Wolverine Landed at 77, and the Score Is the Story
Insomniac spent a decade setting the bar for superhero action games. Its first Wolverine has landed at a Metascore of 77 across 102 reviews — a game that works, reviewed by people who have watched this studio do considerably more.
The score, and what it’s being measured against
Seventy-seven is not a bad number. Marvel’s Wolverine is being described by most outlets as solid, cinematic and occasionally thrilling — a competent action game with a good character at the centre of it. The reviews aren’t angry. They’re disappointed, which is a different thing.
The disappointment has a specific shape, and GameSpot editor-at-large Tamoor Hussain put it as bluntly as anyone: “At best, it’s a fun but forgettable experience that’ll entertain you for a few hours. At worst, it shows that just because you can make really good superhero games with one character, that doesn’t mean you can make really good superhero games with any character.”
The comparison is unavoidable because Insomniac built it. Spider-Man is a natural fit for a studio that designs open worlds as jungle gyms and heroes whose entire appeal is movement. Wolverine is a brawler: heavier, slower, bloodier and structurally narrower, and it asks for the opposite skill set. The consensus across those 102 reviews is that the game ticks every box on the list and never finds a reason to be more than the list.
It’s worth separating the verdict from the production. Marvel’s Wolverine is a PS5 exclusive, PS5 Pro Enhanced, single-player and offline-playable, at $69.99. Gameplay in the review builds was captured on PS5 Pro in the performance pro graphics mode. If you want the fullest version of what Insomniac made, that’s the configuration the reviewers used — and if you bounced off the score, GameSpot’s own alternative list points at the 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine tie-in, a rare case of a game that outclassed the film it was based on.
Why the setup question is separate from the score
Here’s the useful distinction. A 77-rated cinematic action game is still a long single-player campaign, and you’ll play it in one of two rooms: at a desk, or on a couch in front of a TV.
Reviews of this genre converge on feel — impact, feedback, whether a hit lands like a hit. Those are audio problems as much as animation problems, and they’re the first thing a slim TV panel destroys. A television’s built-in speakers put one narrow source of sound under the picture and call it surround, which is why so many people describe big-budget games as flat without being able to say why.
If it’s a couch game, treat it like one
Wolverine is a living-room game by construction. The bottleneck there is almost never the console — it’s the panel. A 5.1.2 system such as the Jamo HCS B5 covers what this kind of game asks for: thirteen drivers in the soundbar plus a wireless 8-inch subwoofer, 420W of total power, Dolby Atmos decoding and a 40Hz–20kHz range. Two HDMI 2.1 inputs and an eARC output pass 4K and Dolby Vision through, so the picture doesn’t pay for the sound. It’s wrapped in a wooden enclosure with a fabric grille, which means it doesn’t announce itself as gaming hardware in a shared room.
Whether Marvel’s Wolverine earns a place in your library at $69.99 is a fair argument to have. Whether your living room can render a punch, a helicopter or a snarl is not — and that part you can fix either way.
Gear Radar is our editorial corner: buying guides, reviews and tutorials for people who care about how things sound. No sponsored rankings, ever.
