Marvel's Spider-Man is a 2018 action game featuring everyone's favorite web-slinger. It's a reasonably open world style game in the vein of other modern action games like Grand Theft Auto 5 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with plenty of marks on the map to denote side-quests and collectibles, but with an overarching story that you can handle at your leisure.
Spider-Man is my second favorite superhero (Batman is number 1, but not by a large margin), so as soon as I saw the trailers for this game, I knew I would want to partake. I'm not big on paying $60 for video games, though, and my backlog is huge, so I was patient, and waited until it went on sale for $20 at Walmart a couple of months back.
The gameplay in this game is rock solid. Combat feels wonderful, with a nice balance of Spider-Man feeling like a beast, but also somewhat vulnerable (one of the reasons why he's such a great hero). It gets tougher when you are dealing with multiple enemies at once, certain enemies require different approaches to defeat, and you have a wide range of possibilities to handle the different attacks that will be thrown at you. Even though each class of enemies has certain strengths and weaknesses, the combat always feels improvisational and fluid, just like Spidey himself. I don't play too many modern video games in this vein, but in my experience, combat feels most like games like Sleeping Dogs or Assassin's Creed. You have a standard attack button, and a dodge button that you'll utilize when your spider sense is tingling. You also have access to web based attacks, as well as some gadgets that Spidey will invent throughout the game. Apparently this aspect is similar to the most recent Batman games, but I haven't played them enough to speak conclusively about this. It is so frequent that in modern games (future review spoiler) like Red Dead Redemption 2, combat feels clunky and unsatisfying because the focus is on immersion and realism, and real humans don't punch instantly in response to a button press. Super heroes, however, can "realistically" be expected to move like this, and this game definitely scratches both itches. The only slight downside to combat is that in fights with multiple opponents, it can be difficult to target the ones you want. This can be particularly frustrating in difficult fights where you'll want to target a specifically troublesome enemy.
The web swinging is unspeakably satisfying. While I loved swinging in Spider-Man 2 for the PS2, this game uses improved physics and technology to create a web swinging experience that I really don't think can be surpasses. You'll need to have real objects to swing from, avoid the weird situations in Spider-Man 2 in which you'd just be swinging from clouds or birds or what have you. Spidey moves incredibly fast, but is also agile and can run on walls, slide through fire escapes, parkour across roofs, and launch himself on command to any point on a building at which you can aim. There's a fast travel system in the game, but I never really used it due to the great degree of fun swinging around presents.
The story in the game is very nice, and feels mostly like an authentic Spider-Man arc from the Lee/Ditko era. Spidey faces plenty of bad guys, deals with challenges in his love/personal/financial life, feels the strain of the responsibilities of his powers, and generally represents an identifiable human being. The story is advanced by some of the finest facial capture I've seen in a game, and the voice acting is excellent as well. Some aspects of the story feel forced, and not really Spider-Man-like. As a part of the game, you'll have to control other, non-super, characters through some insanely dangerous stealth situations for little narrative reason that I could find, frequently with Spider-Man's approval. These missions were the rare times in which I felt myself being pulled out of the world that was being built with some serious questions about the ethics of what was going on, which was disappointing.
Speaking of stealth, it was fun at first, but I quickly grew bored of it, as I do in most stealth video games. You can hop around high objects and stealthily take down enemies, but these enemies are tremendously stupid. You can be walking right next to an enemy and have them not become even slightly cognizant of your proximity. You can yank and enemy up with your webs, and slam his head off a metal post (Where is the story about all of the brain damage Spidey has done? Where is the concussion protocol for criminals? Why isn't Daredevil involved as legal counsel for the defense?) without nearby enemies hearing a thing. If you're like me, you'll start off every battle by stealthily taking down the one guy you'd like to deal with in combat least, and then just start making a ruckus to get the good part rolling. The weaknesses of the stealth mechanics made the stealth sections featuring non-Spider-Man characters even worse, as I wasn't really having fun with the basic mechanics.
The game has a few little minigames placed into it to advance the narrative of Peter as a science whiz. These are pretty fun little diversions, and never overutilized in the game.
Graphically, the game is very nice, but not exceptional. It's got really good facial animations, as mentioned earlier, and perhaps the nicest sunsets I've seen in a game. But on the whole, it's just a solid PS4 title, nothing to write home about.
The music is good, but definitely begs, borrows, and steals from greater forefathers. You'll hear snatches of Batman (the movie), The Avengers, the syrupy synths of Mass Effect, and as my wife has pointed out while watching me play on occasion, even some epics like The Chronicles of Narnia movies. There's nothing to complain about here, but it's not genius in any way.
This is a REALLY good game, and is probably my favorite dedicated superhero game of this variety. I love games like Marvel v. Capcom 2 and X-Men Legends, but this definitely is a different beast, and is significantly better than other games in this vein. It has a few rough spots here and there, but is on the whole a heavily recommended title. I'll give it a 9.4/10.
I think I've already teased the next game I'll be playing at some point before, so I'll skip on a teaser for now. I'll be back with another full review, likely on Monday, so stay tuned!
-TRO
