REVIEW

Marvel’s Spider-Man Review

by Rob Pritchard, October 1st, 2018

Unlike many modern reboots of popular media, Marvel’s Spider-Man does not show us a re-imagined version of Peter Parker’s transition from teenager to superhero. Instead, the game starts eight years after he became Spider-Man, with several villains of various shapes and guises already defeated using his arachnid abilities. After taking down the legendary Wilson Fisk, who is better known as his alias ‘Kingpin’, Peter Parker’s life is turned upside down when a series of villainous groups come out of the woodwork to take the Kingpin’s place in the criminal underworld. This jump ahead allows us to get straight into the action, and doesn’t leave us trailing through several hours of origin story that practically everyone will know off by heart.

Each of the game’s three acts and several sub-chapters are filled with missions filled with dangerous enemies, new incarnations of side characters such as Norman Osborn, Yuriko Watanabe and Peter’s beloved Aunt May, and a host of dramatic twists and turns that will leave you picking up your jaw from the floor. and reaching for your nearest handkerchief before the final credits roll across the screen. One of the most dramatic moments comes at the end of the first act, where trusted ally Martin Li turns against the side of the law. This chain of events changes the course of many innocent lives, who will eventually rise up to defend their fallen allies and help save the city.

One of the best design choices that Insomniac Games decided to make was to design the game for older players. This has allowed them to create a more mature spin on the antics of Spider-Man which has rarely been seen in mainstream media. The characters retain all their trademark character traits, such as Peter’s innate sense of justice and a strong liking to quip his way through most enemy encounters. The dialogue for each character feels true to their essence, especially the egotistical rantings of Jonah Jamerson, Peter’s old boss at the Daily Bugle who has now become the host of his own internet radio show. This radio show proves to be highly entertaining, as it reports on the public reaction to recently completed missions, and the social commentary of how a superhero can be both a hero and villain simultaneously.

The main bulk of the game is mainly set in the busy metropolis of Spider-Man’s beloved New York, with several missions switching to interior spaces such as Wilson Fisk’s headquarters, and the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelter that Aunt May has dedicated all of her time and energy to. While you will not see any trademarked businesses on the streets of Manhattan, you will get to see several landmarks, as well as fictional locations from the lore of the Marvel universe such as the Avengers Tower. One of the best elements in the overworld is that the various missions are placed all over the city, instead of reusing the same locations several times over for the sake of convenience. If you do need to travel quickly across the map, certain locations become fast travel options later in the game, although you can choose to take the scenic route and swing your way across New Work as only Spider Man is able to do.

It wouldn’t be a superhero game without being able to fight a few villains, and Marvel’s Spider-Man has a combat system that accommodates the web slinger’s fighting style perfectly. The melee combat builds on the free flow combat system introduced in the Batman Arkham franchise, allowing for more streamlined movement because of Peter’s reflexes and lighter body mass. The vast array of moves on offer include the trademark web shooters, webs that propel an enemy to the nearest vertical surface and a drone with several lasers equipped to it’s base. One of the best weapons in your arsenal is an anti-gravity device that throws enemies up into the air, so they can be easily defeated with a few swift kicks to the posterior.

Outside of the web slinging antics of being Spider-Man, you are occasionally given missions that will involve you briefly playing as Peter Parker. Whether you are assisting Aunt May at F.E.A.S.T, clearing the several tests of an assassin known as the Taskmaster or working as an intern for the infamous Doctor Otto Octavius. The latter missions are some of the most intriguing in the game, allowing you to perform complex scientific experiments by solving simple tile based mini games. Solving these puzzles will allow you to gain bonus Research medals that will help you upgrade various aspects of your superhero repertoire. Although these missions are for the most part optional, it is fascinating to take part in the research for the robotic arms that will eventually become Dr Octavius’s saving grace and the genesis of his descent into the life of a supervillain.

The various types of bonus medals you gain from each of the side missions allow you to create stronger version of your battle gadgets, as well as craft new super suits that unlock abilities such as a faster increase of your Focus gauge, a higher resistance to various forms of weaponry and electrical discharge when performing certain types of aerial attack. Each completed mission and enemy defeat also awards you an amount of experience points, which will give you enhanced swinging speed, a larger health meter and increased melee strength as you continuously level up during the game. Mercifully, the amount of experience is distributed relatively evenly, so there is very little need to grind in order to the strongest level if you stick mainly to the missions that progress the narrative.

As well as stepping into the shoes of the infamous Peter Parker, you are also given several missions which take you into the world of Miles Morales, a young man with a strong sense of justice, and Peter’s long-time love interest Mary Jane ‘MJ’ Watson. Miles’s missions are usually stealth based, giving the game a brief interlude from the action genre to take a lesson from Solid Snake. MJ’s tasks occasionally require stealth, but most of the time she channels her inner graphic adventure game heroine, examining objects and solving puzzles with interactive artefacts. Both mission types are a refreshing break from punching and webbing enemies and are designed to be short enough to not outstay their welcome.

The graphics of Marvel’s Spider-Man are some of the best that the PS4 has to offer. The detailed character models and environments bring the fictional world of the web slinger to life like never before, particularly when played on the PS4 Pro, which dramatically reduces the amount of occasional slowdown in the game’s consistently stable frame rate. The soundtrack is a dramatic mixture of orchestral compositions that perfectly match each of the situations Peter and his alter ego find themselves in, alongside a cast of voice actors such as Yuri Lowenthal, Laura Bailey and Tara Platt who provide some of the best representations of the characters that have been heard to date.

Overall, Marvel’s Spider-Man is the best superhero video game we have seen since the arrival of Batman Arkham Asylum. It’s solid combat system, combined with outstanding graphics, superb voice acting and mature action packed emotional storyline proves that Insomniac Games are once again a force to be reckoned with. There aren’t many adaptions of popular franchises that prove to be successful, but Marvel’s Spider-Man is certainly the closest we will get to a perfect representation of being able to do everything that a spider can.