Marvel's Wolverine PS5 Previews Praise the Combat, Question the Story

The embargo on Marvel's Wolverine lifted on 13 August 2026, and for the first time the people writing about Insomniac's PS5 exclusive have actually held the controller. Journalists played roughly two hours at the studio, and the picture that came back is consistent enough to be useful: the combat lands, the presentation is enormous, and the story people saw did not surprise anyone. The game is out on 15 September, PS5 only.

That matters more than a normal preview round-up, because Wolverine is the biggest first-party release on the PS5 calendar between now and Grand Theft Auto VI in November. If you have been waiting to decide whether to pre-order — or whether to take the £569.99 console bundle — this is the first week there has been anything solid to decide on.

What the Previews Actually Say

Four hands-on previews went up together, and Push Square's round-up is the cleanest place to see them side by side. Eurogamer summed its own piece up as ferocious, destructive and cinematic — but predictable. GameSpot came away sold on how the fighting feels. GamesRadar+ read it as Insomniac doing what Insomniac does well after two Spider-Man games. IGN liked the fundamentals and deliberately stopped short of a verdict on two hours of a linear game.

Put together, that is a fairly specific consensus, and it is not a hedge: this is a confident, well-made PlayStation action game that is not trying to reinvent anything. The praise clusters on moment-to-moment combat and on the sheer physicality of Logan. The reservations cluster on the story and dialogue, which more than one writer found familiar if you have seen a few Marvel films.

Worth keeping in proportion: nobody played the second half, nobody saw the ending, and a two-hour slice of a linear, narrative-led game is exactly the sample size least able to tell you whether the story works. "Predictable so far" and "predictable" are different claims, and only the first one has evidence behind it.

How the Combat Works: Rage, Claws and Senses

Insomniac's own hands-on report on the PlayStation Blog names the systems, and those parts are confirmed rather than impression. The spine of it is a rage mechanic with three tiers: as the fight goes on, Logan escalates from efficient to genuinely reckless, and the moveset opens up as he does. On top of that sit Special Techniques mapped to the directional buttons, and Adaptations — the longer-term upgrade track for skills and health.

The counterweight to all that aggression is Enhanced Senses, used for tracking and for stealth takedowns, and Ability Inhibitors — enemy tech that shuts your mutant powers off and forces you to approach differently. That is the part worth watching. A game about an unkillable man needs something to take away, and inhibitors are the designed answer.

Everyone who played it made the same structural point: this is not Spider-Man's moveset. Spidey has a huge traversal and gadget vocabulary; Wolverine has claws, kicks, parries and the environment. Insomniac built the combat around forward momentum rather than blocking and waiting, which is a defensible reading of the character — but it is also a narrower set of verbs, and that narrowness is what the more cautious previews are circling.

The preview build covered the opening mission in Telambang, a Sentinel Prototype boss fight, and time in Madripoor's Lowtown, with Team X — Mystique and Sabretooth — on a job at a Bolivar Trask facility.

Linear, Not Open World

The clearest structural fact to come out of the week is that Wolverine is linear, not an open world. Madripoor is a place you move through, not a map you clear.

For a PS5 owner that is the single most useful thing in this round-up, because it tells you what kind of evening this game is. Insomniac's Spider-Man games are systems you live in; this is a campaign you play through. Expect a tighter, shorter, more directed thing — and expect the story to carry proportionally more of the weight, which is exactly why the reservations above are worth taking seriously rather than waving off.

60fps With Ray Tracing on a Base PS5

The hardest news of the week is technical. Insomniac has confirmed that Performance Mode runs at 60fps with ray tracing enabled on a standard PS5, and that this is the default mode — the first time the studio has shipped a game set that way out of the box.

TechRadar and Push Square both carried it from the studio directly. Senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed framed it as a target set early rather than salvaged late, saying the game "feels super smooth"; head of technology Mike Fitzgerald made the same point about building to that budget from the start. On Marvel's Spider-Man 2, ray tracing in performance mode arrived at the end of development.

Two caveats, because they are the ones being asked. The resolution has not been given — dynamic resolution is doing work here and Insomniac has not said how much, so anyone quoting a pixel count is guessing. And most pre-release footage has been captured on PS5 Pro, where the studio says it pushes harder without saying how. If you are weighing the two machines, our PS5 versus PS5 Pro comparison is the better guide than anything in this week's previews.

New Game Plus and Nightmare Doors

Two more confirmed additions. New Game Plus is in at launch, carrying upgrades and unlocks into a second run — notable because both Spider-Man games shipped without it and patched it in months later. For a linear game with an upgrade track, having it on day one is the right call.

The other is Nightmare Doors, a side activity built around timed vertical trials that unlock pieces of Logan's past. It is the closest thing the game has to optional content in the Insomniac side-mission tradition, and TechRadar reported it alongside the New Game Plus confirmation.

One practical note for anyone who has been wary of how graphic this is going to be: Insomniac's accessibility documentation lists an option to reduce gore, alongside the usual audio cues, screen reader and audio description. Our PS5 accessibility guide covers the system-level settings that sit underneath those.

What the Previews Could Not Judge

Three things remain genuinely open, and it is worth naming them rather than pretending the previews settled more than they did.

Length and pacing. No runtime has been given. For a linear game that is a real question, and two hours of the opening does not answer it.

Whether the combat holds up. A narrower moveset can stay satisfying for twelve hours or wear thin by six. Nobody has played enough to know, and the honest previews said so.

The story. Reviews land closer to release. Until then, "familiar opening" is the only supported claim.

The Bottom Line

Nothing this week changes the plan for 15 September, and one thing improves it: a ray-traced 60fps default on a base PS5 is a genuinely good result, and New Game Plus at launch is a small courtesy Insomniac has not always extended. Those are facts you can bank.

The impressions are warm rather than ecstatic, and the pattern in them — excellent to play, conventional to watch — is worth holding onto. If you were already in, nothing here should put you off. If you were waiting to see whether this is the studio's best work rather than merely another good one, the previews have not answered that; reviews closer to launch are the point at which they will. Our running list of everything confirmed stays the reference for the rest of the run-up, and the wider 2026 PS5 calendar puts it in context.