Marvel's Spider-Man Review
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Developers: Insomniac Games
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Publishers: Sony Interactive Entertainment
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Genres: Action, Open World
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Platforms: PS4
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Release date: September 7th 2018
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Playtime: Around 30 hours
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Reviewed on regular PS4
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Uploaded gameplay:
After the excellent PS4 exclusive God of War, Sony published yet another brilliant game in 2018, giving me a reason in 2019 to stop playing indies on the Nintendo Switch and play a good “Triple A” game in the home console (another “Triple A”, let’s not forget Sekiro).
Let's start simple: Marvel’s Spider-Man is an open-world game where zipping and swinging away is more fun than other games as a whole. Just the fluidity of movement in the animations and transitions between running up a building and throwing a web was super satisfying and constantly made me lose track of time. But there's plenty more to praise in this one and, of course, some negatives as well (pun count: 1). Surprisingly, the story was extremely well executed, so much so that I deliberately wanted to proceed to the next story mission instead of wasting all my time swinging through New York and beat bad guys.
It's not an origin story for Spider-Man, though. Both Peter Parker and his Spidey counterpart are a fair number of years into the superhero life, even if sometimes Peter's relationships have to suffer for it. Uncle Ben has been dead for a while, Aunt May is running a community shelter and MJ is still doing her (dangerous) investigative work. Meanwhile, Norman Osborn is the city's mayor and Peter is working under Doctor Octavius to develop prosthetic limbs. With this setting, both Peter and Spider-Man's lives are going rather well, specially because Spidey manages to put Fisk in prison at the beginning of the game. In other words, the city is safe, even if not for long, something you'll have to play yourself to find out why.
But what made the story so good was, well, a lot of things. Peter was quite the charismatic protagonist, with funny lines and quips, but answering the call to action when needed. Of course, if not for the amazing performance Yuri Lowenthal, his dialogue would have never landed as well as it did. Then, there's also the pacing. Nothing felt rushed or out of time, be it the gameplay upgrades, story beats, change of character, etc. Insomniac was in complete control the whole time.
Speaking of different characters, story missions weren't always played with Spider-Man. In some, I was in control of Peter while working at Octavius' lab, others the gameplay was more stealth-oriented, as I was put in the shoes of two of Peter's friends (I won't mention names to keep the surprise). All of these were fun and surprisingly well implemented. The stealth was not frustrating, rather, it was perfect to make me feel like the character I was controlling during those tense situations and not make a peep for fear of being found. While controlling Peter, gameplay was based around mini games to correct electrical circuits and complete spectrograms. These were fairly easy, but still, they always included a skip option to, well, skip the puzzle.
To wrap up the story missions, the boss battles deserve to be praised as well. There are a handful of them, but they are a joy to play as you fight [redacted] or [redacted], or even when you fight [redacted] and [redacted] at the same time.
Back to the open world, there is a lot to do, specially the more story and side missions are completed. While there is fluff content like the backpack and pigeon collectibles, at least the swinging around from one to the next is quite fun. There are also enemy camps and crimes (random short events) where the focus is combat (and stealth before the enemies notice you) and it's most definitely another highlight of this game.
Combat was yet another excellent part of Marvel’s Spider-Man: snappy, quick to get into, fluid and, overall, quite satisfying. Every punch and kick felt good to land and, adding to Spider-Man's agility and web-based attacks, there were a lot of options during combat. Stealth was rewarding in the beginning of encounters, putting enemies out of commission with a single attack or suspending them with webs in a beam, one at a time, was both fun and easy to pull off. Then there were also gadgets, pretty much guaranteed kills, hence their reduced availability. Though, don't think combat is easy, play around too much and you'll be laying in the ground in a matter of seconds. Even after unlocking Spidey's full moveset there is still a good challenge to be found.
Regarding the side activities unlocked throughout the game, some were better, some not so much. The research stations were mostly fun, putting Spider-Man's abilities to the test in all fields, but the Taskmaster challenges were a bit dreadful, mostly because the performance in the challenge was rewarded with points and it wasn't that easy to rank high, from my experience. At least these culminated in what was probably my favorite boss battle, just for the idea behind the boss and how it was implemented.
Lastly, the side activities bring us to one of my personal highlights: the unlockable suits. We all love to unlock new skins and suits for our characters, specially when they are so well distributed throughout the course of the game and properly rewarded for our efforts. There were thirty suits available in total (including four that have been released as free dlc since the release of the game), which means I could literally change suits every five minutes and still not get bored of doing it. Suits are crafted in the menu by using the currencies earned from side activities, so there is a fairly constant unlock of new suits. Most come with its own suit power, but the twist is that those powers are not suit exclusive, that is, you can use the same power with any suit of your choice. Props to Insomniac for that!
To conclude this review, Marvel's Spider-Man is an excellent game and one of the best "Triple A" game I've played in a while. Just like God of War, it clearly had a huge budget to back it up as a key PS4 exclusive, but we all know a huge budget doesn't necessarily mean a good game. Yet, Insomniac Games made an incredible, dare I say amazing, game that was stupendous from the first minute to the very last. From the combat to the voice actors' performances to the simple and fun movement, this must be the best rendition of Spider-Man in a videogame. By all means, a standout from 2018 and, personally, a certain choice for this year's edition of ZeReviews Games of The Year awards.