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The story
Marvel’s new action game “Wolverine” (developed by Insomniac, a PS5 exclusive) launched to a string of glowing reviews, but every review added to Metacritic since then has scored low. Of the last 10 reviews, only one topped 76 points, and the overall score has slid down toward 75 — the cutoff between the green and yellow color bands. There are even reports that used-game retailer GEO cut its trade-in price by ¥1,500 just 10 days after launch. On 5ch, opinions split over the sudden drop: some suspect the early high scores were promotional favors, while others point to Insomniac’s layoffs and the resulting shake-up as the cause.
Last 10 reviews
70 points
40 points
Source: metacritic.com / Original article here
What people said
What's up with this pattern where only the first reviews are high and everything after tanks?
if you think of it as killing 12 hours when you're bored out of your skull, 76 is fair.
Keep up the good work, Sony's review-bombing squad.
No doubt Totoki (Sony's cost-cutting exec) is squeezing the budgets hard.
but outlets that post their reviews later don't have to kiss up, so of course it ends up like this.
…and it turns yellow.
Green goes down to 75 and yellow starts at 74, so it might just barely hold on.
There are already 140 reviews, so it should level off soon.
and this is the best they could make…
Are they even going to recoup the costs?
In the end, whatever pressure padded the early bonus scores is coming back to bite them.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease, I guess.
Silent Hill's scores are dropping too.
None of the big-name titles are really taking off lately.
the real average is probably in the 60s, right?
That's rough.
and they're fast and cheap to make too.
Sony's obsession with high-end graphics shows they don't get where the industry's heading.
This is the Metascore, not the user score, though.
So you're saying Fire Emblem fanboys have infiltrated every gaming outlet to rig it?
You good? Need a tinfoil hat?
Ranked 4th on the PS Store this year for ratings.
https://ps-store-db.live/static/cards/shared/2026-09-26-af7d7ca55b0a00bb.png
Wonder if this year they'll actually run GOTY on merit alone, without buying it.
GOTY's become nothing but paid promotion and an outlet for nationalist propaganda at this point.
The whole thing's existence is already sketchy.
Same studio's Spider-Man 2 announced its numbers within 3 days.
You already know why, lol.
Used-game trade-ins are about to dry up too, so more people will wait and see — buyers holding off will only pick up speed.
If a bunch of key members left, that would explain the brutal gap compared to Spider-Man.
If they weren't pulling strings, both the user score and Metascore would probably be half of what they are now.
The publisher's attitude — dump-and-run sales tactics, pressuring reviewers — is absolutely KOTY (Kuso-Game-of-the-Year) tier.
Background and Key Points
Metacritic scores are a weighted average of reviews out of 100, color-coded green at 75 and above, yellow from 50–74, and red at 49 and below. It’s common for scores from major outlets with early access to cluster right after launch, with scores trending harsher as time passes — a pattern seen repeatedly with big-budget titles, not something unique to this game. Words like “manipulation” and “pressure” are flying around in the thread, but these are all speculation; nothing in the thread actually shows the publisher influenced the reviews. Developer Insomniac has previously dealt with a major data leak and layoffs, and some suggest the resulting organizational changes may have affected the scores, but this too lacks any numerical backing. Concrete figures like the drop in used-game trade-in prices reflect market reaction, but don’t directly prove anything about the game’s quality.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Sad News] Wolverine’s newly added Metacritic reviews are all scoring low, and it’s bad“.
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