Will Marvels Wolverine Fail because its lack of “Web Slinging”

Marvel's Wolverine is officially out on PS5 today, and I'm not going to pretend I'm walking into this one with a level head. My expectations for this game have been on more of a rollercoaster than Logan's healing factor can keep up with.

Let's rewind. When that first teaser dropped — Logan just sitting at a bar, quiet, no combat, no spectacle — I was hooked. That teaser alone had me penciling this in as a top-five-of-all-time contender before a single frame of gameplay existed. That's the power of a good tease, and also, in hindsight, maybe the danger of one.

Because the more recent trailers came out, and somewhere along the way my excitement started leaking out like a slashed tire. Nothing about what I saw was bad, exactly — it just didn't hit with the same gut-punch as that first look. And then the review embargo lifted, and, well… it wasn't the bloodbath I feared, but it wasn't a coronation either. A 78 on Metacritic is a "solid, not spectacular" kind of number, and the write-ups match that: gorgeous visuals, satisfying claw combat, a genuinely well-acted cast — but also some eye-rolls at the writing and a fair number of "we've seen this before" shrugs.

Here's the thing that's actually got me nervous, though, and it's not really about scores. It's about why Insomniac's Spider-Man games work as well as they do. Everybody points to the combat, sure, but swinging through New York is the actual soul of those games. That traversal is what makes downtime between missions feel like play instead of padding. Wolverine doesn't get that. This is a linear, story-first, "adults-only claw murder simulator" (their words basically, not mine) with barely a sliver of open space to explore. Which means the combat isn't get to carry the highlight reel — it has to carry the entire game, for a reported 15-hour campaign. That's a lot of weight to put on one mechanic, no matter how good the parry timing feels.

And yet — funny enough — it sounds like the people actually playing it are coming away warmer than the critics did. That gap between "reviewers were lukewarm" and "players are into it" is exactly the kind of thing I want to test for myself instead of taking anyone's word for it, mine included from three paragraphs ago.

So here's where I'm at: cautiously optimistic, mildly braced for combat fatigue by hour eight, and extremely ready to finally just play the thing instead of theorizing about it from trailers and review aggregates.

I'm loading it up today. Full first-look impressions coming soon!