This article originally ran under a different banner/website in February of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! My heart still aches for the eight hundred Activision Blizzard employees who were laid off a few weeks ago. I knew my only hope to turn my mood was to play a cheerful game. A game that would make me feel like I could accomplish anything. A game that inspires heroics. A game that makes me feel like my cries for Bobby Kotick to be fired will be heard. Luckily Insomniac Games has created a game around one of Marvel’s optimism-infused heroes: Spider-Man. Now, I can see you all rolling your eyes. You expect me to say how Marvel’s Spider-Man makes you feel like Spider-Man. Oh, how tiring that memetic phrase has become. NO, I SAY!!! I will not tell you that lazy and cliché phrase to acquit my feeling to you. I will review this game without using such idle rhetoric. With that challenge in mind, let’s swing right into Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Our story begins with Peter Parker aka Spider-Man rushing to Fisk tower. After 8 long years being at ends with the mobster, Spider-Man and the NYPD finally have enough evidence to lock up the famed crime boss, Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk. During this takedown, Marvel’s Spider-Man introduces the mechanics such as web-slinging, various attacks, and dodges, but after the cuffs are put on Fisk, the game lets you loose in the concrete jungles of New York City. Fisk’s end only sparks the beginning of Spider-Man’s journey as a gang called the Demons move into town. The Demons are run by the villain Mr. Negative who is hell-bent on taking down the mayor, Norman Osborn. You perform a balancing act of Peter’s personal struggling relationships with Aunt May and Mary Jane Watson, his job that entails watching Dr. Otto Octavius slowly descend into madness, and of course, his never-ending duties as Spider-Man as crimes in New York City begin to raise.
Many people have said that the point of Spider-Man is not to watch the web-slinging hero fight foes like the Green Goblin, but to show how superheroes’ relationships get stretched to the limit as they try to save everyone. Honestly, none of the movies or comics have ever convened this point harder than Marvel’s Spider-Man. Peter is constantly bombarded with calls saying he’s late or asking if he forgets he had plans with someone. You really get the sense that Peter is being stretched to breaking point working hard to balance holding the city and his own personal life together.
Along with the side cast of Aunt May, MJ, Osborn, and Octavius, Marvel’s Spider-Man includes many other characters to simulate the feeling of picking up the latest Spider-Man comic. Many characters like Miles Davis, Harry Osborn, and Black Cat make guest appearances. While J. Jonah Jameson has left the Daily Bugle to run an irreducibly ironic podcast called Just the Facts. Occasionally, you will tune in to hear Jameson rip you apart for failing side missions like car chases. While he has the potential to be annoying, Jameson comes off as a parody of podcasters like Alex Jones, as I half expected Jameson at any point, to cry out that Spider-Man is turning the frogs gay.
Now while any normal game, running around putting out fires might get old quick, in Marvel’s Spider-Man you don’t get that annoyance because web-slinging around New York City is so exhilarating, cathartic, and just flat-out fun. Insomniac Games clearly worked overtime to make web-slinging as fluid as possible. While initially, the web-slinging might seem basic revolving around a few buttons, you soon see the physics on display are incredible. A lot of the web-slinging boils down to a timely release of the web. Release a little early and you’ll be able to keep speed and momentum, but hold on longer and you trade speed for height. So often I felt the momentum that Spider-Man has while sitting completely still on my couch.
Early on, Marvel’s Spider-Man establishes a fast travel system, and frankly, that confused me. While assuming as it is to see someone sleeping on Spider-Man’s shoulder as he rides the subway to fast travel, the rush you get from web-slinging around New York is so electrifying, that seeing the next mission on the other side of the city, didn’t immediately cause me to looks for fast travel locations. I climb up the tallest building, usually the Avengers tower, and leap off hoping to gain as much speed as I can. It soon became a thrilling challenge to race through the city keeping at high speeds. Sure, the fast travel system can save you a minute or two, but personally, I will always choose to soar through New York City like the hero Spider-Man is.
The web-slinging would be pointless if that was all to do in Marvel’s Spider-Man, luckily like most superhero games, you have plenty of bad guys to beat up. The combat is very similar to the brawling combat in the Batman: Arkham series, but to say Marvel’s Spider-Man is copying Batman is unfair to the webhead. For starters, you cannot just sit there and mash the counter button as you could in the Arkham series. While Spider-Man’s spidey sense does tell him when to dodge similar to Batman’s bat sense, Spider-Man will acrobatically jump over his opponent rather than break their arm like Batman. Luckily Spider-Man has many more tools in his fight toolbox. Verticality is one of them as you are able to launch yourself and your opponent into the air and perform various agile attacks. Along with your standard punching, Spider-Man has an array of web-shooters that can help in fights. From your standard web shooter to web traps to electric webs, you start to wonder if it is secretly Batman hiding under the spider’s mask.
Much like Batman, you can hide up in the ceiling and stealthily pick off enemies one by one, like Batman, it is optional and nothing stops you from jumping into the brawls. While this all might seem like too many tools, Marvel’s Spider-Man never forces you to use all of them. Even when the game throws curveballs, you can often find creative solutions. As a fan of the web bombs, I found the enemies resembling Whiplash from Iron Man 2, incredibly frustrating. That was until I realized if I shot the web bomb on the ground near them, they wouldn’t block the bomb. All of these elements blend smoothly into a combat system that I can only describe as fluid. Much like the web-slinging, you always have that acrobatic rush as you effortlessly weave through the battlefield in the most satisfying third-person brawling that I have played in a while.
Now, I have given a lot of praise to Marvel’s Spider-Man so far, but it is far from perfection. The game has a 60 mile an hour feel to it between web-slinging and crime-fighting. The worst thing you can do in this scenario is to force the player to slam on the brakes and crawl at two miles an hour. These pace-killing moments occur when the game forces you to play as Miles Davis or MJ Watson in these painfully dull stealth sections. Every so often the story switches to them doing something incredibly reckless like infiltrating a gang’s or military force’s hideouts. We must help them navigate to safety in a slow, basic, pace-killing stealth mission. No wall-crawling. No stealth takedowns. Just slowly walking behind boxes.
I found these sections decreased my sympathy for these characters, especially MJ. I roll my eyes when she cries about having to be saved by Spider-Man and every time I can help siding with Spider-Man when he says she shouldn’t be going to these dangerous places. I find it impossible to sympathize with her claims of being sidelined when she’s interrupting my web-slinging and brawling. I can’t help but remember the phrase: “If it is not the most interesting part of the story, why are you telling it.” A phrase that can easily describe the MJ/Miles sections. One of the MJ sections even has Spider-Man in the same room as her. You command him to take out guards in the way and the whole time I was wondering why I wasn’t playing as Spider-Man. If you wanted us to be sympathetic to MJ’s claims that she would like to do the saving once in a while, why not have a dream section where MJ has spider powers and has to save Peter. Please Insomniac, flex some of those creative muscles.
My other initial complaint was with Marvel’s Spider-Man being an open-world sandbox. I often find sandbox games intimidating. As someone who tries to do everything in a game, I find the idea of doing numerous amounts of the same task daunting. I worry I’ll get stuck in a mindless trance and will awake weeks later like Rip Van Wrinkle wondering what year it is. When I saw the numerous checklists in Marvel’s Spider-Man, I initially counted it against the game, especially when at first glance they appeared to be copy-pasted all throughout New York. It wasn’t until I was halfway collecting backpacks that I started to come around. The backpacks felt similar to the tape recorders in Bioshock, providing a small bit of insight into the previous eight years. Activities like Black Cat’s stakeouts and Taskmaster’s challenges introduced some smaller characters that I felt Spider-Man fans and newcomers could enjoy. The outpost of various criminals, Fisk’s henchmen, and the Demon army were an excuse to do more of the combat I was enjoying. The research stations were more of an excuse for web-slinging challenges. If the web-slinging and combat were the hearty base of this cake, then all these side activities were the frosting.
Along with all these side activities being really enjoyable, many of them reward you with currency you can use to buy various Spider-Man outfits ranging from some suits from the various Spider-Man movies to ones from obscure comics and spinoffs. All of the suites have various powers including some electric punches, bullet deflection, and the extra mechanical limbs seen in Avengers: Infinity Wars. Powers and suits can be mixed. My personal favorite combo was the punk rock suit combined with a power that made me immune to bullet damage as guns can rip you apart fast. While initially, the thought of multiple currencies set off the microtransaction alert in my head, I was safely assured Marvel’s Spider-Man has no microtransactions. You simply play the game and unlocks suits for playing. In the age where Activision has to sneak in loot boxes in expansion packs of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, it is great to see another single-player game that isn’t constantly nagging you for more money.
For me, Marvel’s Spider-Man has set a new bar. It has set a new bar for superhero games. It has set a new par for sandbox games. It has thoroughly set the bar for console games in general. If games can’t match these levels, well I have no problem going back and swinging through New York City. Marvel’s Spider-Man is an exhilarating, joyful ride that worthy of your time. Marvel’s Spider-Man does an amazing job making you feel like Spider-Man. DOH!!!