Spider-man Review
Played on: PS4
Available on: PS4
Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Time played: ~25 hours
From day one the prospect of a AAA Spider-man game has had fans excited. Taking a well respected studio like Insomniac Games and giving them one of Marvel’s most beloved franchises was sure to have amazing results, right? Not only that but this game would be a PS4 exclusive, meaning it had to be good enough to sell consoles in addition to itself.
Fast forward 3 months to when I get around to playing Spider-man and you probably already know that the game was well reviewed, is moving consoles, and will be in many Game of the Year discussions come year end. But does it deserve to be? I say no, but I can see why in today’s gaming climate it would get that level of recognition.
The game begins 8 years after Peter Parker has already become Spider-man, meaning it completely skips the origin story and assumes you already know all that. Peter is working alongside his good friend and mentor Dr. Otto Octavius in the lab, and when not doing research he is swinging around the city fighting crime. Mary Jane Watson and Peter’s romantic relationship is somewhere in the recent past, and good hearted Aunt May is working at a homeless shelter called FEAST. Aside from some money troubles, life seems pretty good for Peter until he uncovers a plot by a group of super villains that threatens the lives of all of Manhattan.
The first thing you will notice about Spider-man is that it’s an open-world action adventure game with strong RPG elements. Your playground includes all of Manhattan, which only takes a few minutes to webswing from one end to the other. Although it’s relatively quick to traverse, it is densely populated with people and things to do.
From the get go you always have a plethora of side missions and collectibles at your fingertips. Collecting backpacks and taking pictures of landmarks are on the simpler end of the spectrum, while clearing criminal outposts and solving the city’s environmental issues are on the other. There are around a dozen different side activities you can partake in, so you won’t run out of things to do anytime soon. It does a good job of spreading these out throughout the entire game so you don’t feel overwhelmed with options, and the fact that they are all relatively quick to complete also helps.
At the beginning of the game I was excited to find and do everything. Your first experience as Spider-man is pretty exhilarating, and it’s largely driven by the fantastic web slinging mechanic. Swinging through the city is fairly intuitive and to do it well requires a certain rhythm that makes it an extremely rewarding way to travel. Web slinging is the one thing Insomniac had to nail in order to make this a viable game, and they definitely did. You eventually unlock an option to fast travel around the map, but it’s an option I rarely took as it was always more fun to swing through the city.
On my way to main story missions I would make sure to clear each area I passed through to experience as much as possible. There really is a wide variety of things to do as Spider-man, and I had a voracious appetite to consume them all. However, as the game went on they lost their luster and repetition began to set in. Just how many car accidents and robberies take place in this city?
But it’s not just repetition that made me lose interest in completing side activities. About halfway through I realized I was hooked on collecting tokens, the currency you use to buy and upgrade stuff, instead of being hooked on the activities themselves. This happened because a majority of the side activities can be completed in a short amount of time, roughly 1–3 minutes, and are constantly at your fingertips as you swing around the city. So rather than me deciding I want to go over there to do a thing because I think it will be fun, I would do the thing because it’s on my way, shouldn’t take me more than a couple minutes, and will give me a few tokens. The enjoyment came from the reward, not the activity, and once I was leveled up enough I began skipping all the side content since I didn’t need to progress my character anymore.
Speaking of progression, there is a lot to upgrade and unlock in Spider-man. There’s a skill tree for combat moves, useful gadgets to use in combat, alternative Spider-man suits to wear, and slots to equip special abilities. All of these things are unlocked over time and can be upgraded, so there is a lot to put your XP and tokens to use.
Initially unlocking new gadgets, moves, and abilities feels rewarding, but once I settled in to my most effective strategies for defeating enemies I had little incentive to try new things as they became available. That’s partly because normal difficulty doesn’t provide much challenge, but also because a lot of new tactics the game wants you to employ just don’t seem that useful. If I had bumped the difficulty to Hard maybe I would have needed to try new strategies, but otherwise my simple approach to stealth, combat, and crowd control worked just fine.
Combat in Spider-man draws heavy inspiration from Batman’s Arkham series. There’s one button for melee attacks and another for web attacks. Between the two of them you’ll rack up massive combo counts as you control large amounts of enemies. There’s an opportunity to incorporate gadgets and new moves as you acquire them, as well as take down enemies via stealth, but the core of this style of combat remains the same throughout. New enemy types will change the formula slightly for a bit, but once you’ve figured them out it’s back to smooth sailing. This type of combat isn’t bad but it’s also not my favorite as it eventually feels button-mashey and doesn’t provide a strategic challenge. However, employing stealth is fantastic as it’s always enjoyable to string enemies up from light poles and web them to walls.
As you can tell so far I have pretty mixed feelings but one area that isn’t the case is with the story and character development. The relationships Peter has with both Mary Jane and Otto are complex and nuanced, and no matter what was going on I couldn’t help but think about the people that were most important to him and what would happen to them. I was bought into who they are as characters and why they mattered to Peter much more than I expected, especially considering how familiar Spider-man characters are. The writing gave me reasons to care about them, and the voice acting and animations brought them to life in a way that made them real.
Also, the steady stream of main story beats kept my interest all the way through and even caught me by surprise in a few areas. They did a good job of varying your activities here, which I won’t spoil by telling you how they do that. The ending left me satisfied with the questions it answered, but I’m most excited about the ones it didn’t as there’s room for an even more interesting Spider-man tale after this one.
Other highlights of the game include great graphics with beautiful scenery, polished animations, exciting small and large scale set pieces, an epic soundtrack, and just enough cheesy humor to be cute and not annoying.
Overall, Spider-man is a good game. Manhattan is a fully realized and polished world that can be fun to explore. Playing as Spider-man and swinging through the city is a unique experience, even if combat won’t challenge or excite you. It also nails storytelling in a way that gave me a new appreciation for a familiar set of characters.
However, there is one thing holding it back from being a great game. The dopamine drip of collectibles and repetitive side activities set up the wrong motivation to explore its beautiful world, and ultimately detract from the experience and make it feel like it is stuffed with filler content.
+ Webslinging is unique and fun
+ Interesting narrative with believable characters
+ High level of polish to everything
- Side activities become repetitive and unnecessary
- Combat is button-mashey
