Marvel’s Spider-Man Review – Spectacular web slinging

In an interview with TIME in 2015, Stan Lee revealed that his publisher thought his new creation Spider-Man was the “worst idea he’d ever had”. No one liked spiders, teenagers should only be sidekicks, and no one wanted a hero with real world problems. Fast forward 56 years and Spider-Man, one of the most recognisable super heroes ever, returns to gaming in Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games — and gosh does this team know how to do our favourite web slinger right.

In an extremely intelligent and refreshing move from Insomniac, this take on Spider-Man skips the origin story. Opting instead to focus on the exploits of a hero who has been in the business for 8 years already. A more mature Spidey brings with it a narrative shift from the web slinger most people would be familiar with. No longer in high school, Peter Parker is now dealing with adult problems while also the criminal underworld.

Our story commences as the criminal Kingpin of Manhattan, Wilson Frisk, is finally taken down by Spidey and the NYPD. This is however only the beginning. With the head boss of the criminal syndicates of New York wounded, a new and unknown enemy force crawls out of the cracks to make a powerful play against the city. I won’t spoil anything beyond that, as one of this game’s strongest points are the twists and turns but also the heart behind it.

Gameplay will seem familiar, familiar but expertly polished. Spider-Man obviously can’t be contained and lends itself to an open world. You’ll be traversing buildings and unlocking districts, each district will have the usual collectibles and challenges as well as randomly occurring crimes that you will need to foil. Getting around will be key, thankfully from the word “Go!” swinging on your webs around the skyscrapers is easy, unbelievably satisfying and visually stunning.

Combat and enemy encounters lean heavily into this game’s inspiration, the Batman Arkham series. However, while the bones might match when the games are compared, everything on top of that has been changed. Entering an area you’ll have the ability to take a stealthy approach at first, using a mixture of tools and your webbing to pick off enemies while staying out of sight. While this is heaps of fun, that’s not your only approach as you can throw yourself head first into fisticuffs with your enemies.

While Batman is built like a tank and his combat leans into his ability to take a hit and hit back, Spider-Man is instead all about speed. Instead of using counters you’ll be dodging attacks and darting around the battlefield. This matches Spidey perfectly. Taking a hit lowers your health significantly so you’ll need to stay on your toes, timing dodges perfectly and utilising an array of web based gadgets. The tides of combat turning against you? That’s fine, disengage and put some distance between you and your enemy by taking to the sky before swinging back into action with a new approach.

While in the Arkham series I found myself relying on the same moves and gadgets over and over, the frenetic behaviour of combat in Marvel’s Spider-Man lends itself to experimentation. I never find myself doing the same moves over and over and each new skill I learn as I levelled up is utilised on a regular basis.

Along with new moves and new gadgets, you’ll receive a healthy collection of suits to unlock. As you unlock each new suit it will bring with it a new special skill that can turn things in your favour when Spidey is taking a beating. In a wonderful stroke of genius, as you unlock suits the skill that comes with it can be attached to whatever suit you like. This means you can look as spectacular as you like but also use the skill that you enjoy the most. I’ve been using a webbing barrage skill but wearing the Ben Reilly Scarlet Spider suit, because back in the 90’s little Cameron definitely had the hots for that look.

All of this comes together for a slick feeling that sees you effortlessly blend traversal with combat. This combination meant that I lost hours to swinging around the city and dropping into combat. I would actively seek side missions because, unlike some games, there isn’t a fight around every corner. This makes each crime you disperse feel unique even if it repeats itself once or twice, sometimes offering variations you weren’t expecting.

While borrowing from old ideas, the gameplay also throws in the occasional Quick Time Event and again they hit this on the head. The events are used sparingly, are well telegraphed and you’re not sent very far back if you fail one. Unfortunately one downside would be the addition of some “hacking” mini games. The two variations slow down the high speed gameplay and can be jarring. That being said, the mini games themselves are stronger than many out there in the industry. The ideas behind them are simple but thoroughly explored so that they are challenging but quick to resolve—also thankfully not timed at all.

The reality is that the city you inhabit is a character all of its own and the attention to detail sells a living breathing world. Landing on the street in a lot of open world games would see you staring off into the distance with maybe a handful of people walking around. The streets of Manhattan here are bustling and populated with what I remember being a believable amount of people from my time in New York. Better still, the people react to you, strangers taking photographs, shouting out to you, pointing you towards places of interest or even high fiving you with a little button prompt that rewards you with a small XP boost.

The loving care put in to the city is obvious. Districts feel distinct, Greenwich village sports Rainbow Flags, people jog in Central Park instead of just walking around and so much more. Shop fronts have been designed to never duplicate so that while some may be similar they are unique. All of this before you get into the huge volume of Easter Eggs for Marvel fans. Jump off of Avengers Tower, swing past the Wakanda Embassy or photograph that Sanctum Sanctorum, the city is filled to the brim and is an absolute pleasure to explore.

Visually the game is stunning. Whether “Puddle Gate” was right or not, I didn’t notice anything that looked like poor graphics. Character models have nice subtle motion capture to add to the emoting capabilities of cut scenes. This makes interactions with the supporting cast that much more engaging. Swinging around the city, the lighting reflects off buildings as you pass them and at no point did I notice characters just popping in to existence, although to be fair the game distracted me enough that I wasn’t checking for this.

Outside of the “hacking” mini games, probably the only downside I can see would be the slight arbitrary open world activities that every open world game has. Hacking towers to unlock an area to then look for challenges and collectables. Even then though, unlike a lot of games these all have a reason to exist that makes sense and aren’t over used so they don’t really feel like padding. This just again ties in to a team who took the time to polish some of the most annoying mechanics in gaming to show how they should be handled.