God of War Laufey Now Has a Lot To Prove After Wolverine’s Messy Launch - Polygon.com

The stakes are high for PS5's next big exclusive

A full five years after its announcement, Marvel’s Wolverine is finally out on PlayStation 5. What should be a triumphant moment for Sony, though, has turned out to be an unexpected headache. Uneven reviews, a particularly loud peanut gallery, and close proximity to multiple unpopular business decisions have turned what many assumed would be a surefire bet into a strangely toxic game release.

It’s certainly not unusual for a publisher to drop a middling game every now and then, but the timing couldn’t be worse for Sony. Aside from managing an optics crisis tied to its decision to end physical disc production in 2028, Wolverine is coming at a time when it's imperative for Sony to find its groove after years of strategic uncertainty. Expect that tension to put even more pressure on its next big first-party game, God of War Laufey.

Slated to launch on Feb. 16, 2027, God of War Laufey isn’t a very risky game on paper. It’s par for the course for the PS5 era, with Santa Monica Studio looking to deliver the kind of cinematic action-adventure game that PlayStation successfully built its brand around over the past few console generations. In any other year, it would be entering 2027 as a strong Game of the Year contender, considering God of War’s past success with critics and audiences alike.

Instead, God of War Laufey will no doubt have a target painted on its back in the lead up to its launch. There are several reasons for that, some of which have already been foreshadowed by Wolverine. Insomniac’s game had the misfortune of being the first Sony game to release after its physical game announcement. That made it a lightning rod for online anger; any trailer for it or post about it was met with angry commenters using the game as an outlet for anti-PlayStation protest. Wolverine was also another target in gaming’s engagement-driven culture war, and the same fate is all but assured for the first God of War game starring a female character rather than Kratos. (Indeed, this has already begun.) As headache-inducing as those conversations are, though, there’s little data to suggest that either has an impact on sales.

Laufey’s bigger challenge is a more existential one: It needs to prove that audiences still have an appetite for Sony’s brand of big budget games.

One of Wolverine’s problems, according to critics, is that it leans too heavily on design clichés that have become a hallmark of Sony’s award-winning games. There are flashy quick-time events that aren't terribly consequential. There are slow walk-and-talks used to dole out the emotional story. There’s a scent trail that points you towards objectives and collectibles, something that became a point of hyperfocus for players ahead of launch (and which Insomniac Games recently hinted at addressing). If these design tidbits sound familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen them in other Sony games that put cinematic immersion above all.

There’s a reason that’s become standard for Sony: It has a long history of paying off. Games like The Last of Us Part 2, God of War (2018), and Marvel’s Spider-Man have all utilized that design philosophy to great effect, turning Sony’s first-party games into both critical darlings and sales behemoths. Wolverine feels like it could be a tipping point for some players, though. For those who are sick of that specific kind of game, it’s easy to point to a less successful example of the formula and use it to argue that the style is dated wholesale.

That puts Laufey in a weird spot. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it's cut from the same cloth as Wolverine. Its 25-minute gameplay reveal is typical PlayStation blockbuster fare, with cinematic cutscenes weaving in and out of high-octane action. For those who want to make the case that all of Sony’s games follow the same telegraphed patterns, it will be easy to turn it into a soapbox speech about the problems with modern gaming. Santa Monica Studio will have to counter that by delivering an exceptional experience that proves Wolverine is not a synecdoche for the industry at large.

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For what it’s worth, I don’t believe it is. As much as I tore into Marvel’s Wolverine in my review, little of my criticism had to do with its adherence to Sony’s formula. The scent trails are fine; the shallow combat that doesn’t really support 15 hours of battling against the same enemy types is a more pressing problem. It’s tempting to conflate those issues in order to build the confirmation-bias narrative that Sony’s style of game is dated, but that feels a bit disingenuous. The simpler explanation may just be that Wolverine simply isn’t as finely designed as some of its peers. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that, does it?

But the pressure is on for God of War Laufey regardless. Sony needs a reliable hit to start 2027 if it's going to gain control of a narrative that spun off its axis in 2026. Another perceived miss will leave its style of breadwinning blockbuster vulnerable to scrutiny. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing; 2024’s award-winning Astro Bot proved that PS5 owners are hungry for a wider variety of single-player games. Sony could stand to get creative and stray away from its big-budget instincts more often. That’s just not the kind of move you want to be making in a do-or-die scenario, and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

Limited gameplay and patronizing design deliver a rare miss from Sony and Insomniac