In Marvel’s Spider-Man, the titular hero is in your hands, giving the power and responsibility to stop crime, beat up baddies, and keep the neighborhood friendly. Thankfully spared from another origin story, you join Spider-Man eight years into his crusade against crime, starting the story off with one of Spider-Man’s greatest victories. From that point you will grow stronger as a hero, develop relationships as Peter Parker, and web-sling through the city to unravel the story laid out before you. Insomniac Games delivers on a package that may have some overall problems, but remains an amazing experience to play.
After the introductory boss in the game, all seems as it should be in New York. However, as the story develops it will go places you wouldn’t expect. The story doesn’t solely revolve around Spider-Man, but segues into scenes where you control Peter while interacting with Aunt May and Mary Jane. Insomniac could have opted to tell a traditional story of superhero “A” beats up villain “B” and saves the damsel in distress, but thankfully this isn’t the case. We get a deeper look into Peter’s life and how being Spider-Man takes a toll on that life.
Peter is found at a low point in his personal life, creating a relatable character with depth that most can connect with. The side characters also offer relatability and emotional connections creating a story far more meaningful than many action games seen today. Aunt May offers emotional support to Peter as she always does, and MJ takes an even larger role in both Peter’s and Spider-Man’s life as she assists both when need be. MJ’s help plays itself out in the occasional stealth segment where your control MJ to gather clues or other informative items. These segments offer a nice change of pace and create a more fully realized story. Throughout the entire game the story keeps you invested and offers a far better story than what is normally expected from previous Spider-Man games.
The story of the game is a triumph, and thankfully the other aspects of Marvel’s Spider-Man do not disappoint. Perhaps even more impactful than the story is the absolute brilliance found in the traversal and web-slinging movement. This may be the only game I’ve played that offers a fast travel system that I have never used aside from the mandatory tutorial subway ride. While it may take a bit to get all the moves down, there is nothing quite like nailing the right moves to get to your destination as Spider-Man does in the comics. Going from one location to another is different every time due to the almost improvisational feeling of what points to swing from or how best to increase Spider-man’s speed. The controls are fast, accurate, and easy enough to learn. Not only are the movement controls as slick as ever, but the combat feels and looks amazing as well.
With plenty of moves and gadgets in your arsenal, combat offers a diverse way to subdue your enemies. Fisticuffs are similar to the Batman Arkham games, but with faster and greater movement as Spider-Man has ground and air combat skills. Towards the end of the game the combat may feel repetitive, but it always feels great to take down a wave of enemies without getting hit and rack-up massive combos. The boss battles is where the combat shines, as they generally require much more movement and web-slinging than your average thug fight. As you progress through the game, you acquire more moves and gadgets to extend your combos and are able to invest skill points into three different skill trees.
The progression is timed well and feels balanced throughout the game. Once you have learned how to employ one set of moves or a gadget, you have leveled up enough to unlock the next skill you want to learn. My favorite skills involved faster movement to more acrobatic combat, as I enjoyed the visual aspect of Spider-Man’s unique fighting style. Your skills are upgraded through leveling up with XP, but gadgets, new suits, and suit modifications are all acquired through tokens. These tokens are rewarded to you for completing side missions along with other open-world activities, and that brings up one of the biggest issues with the game.
There are a variety of side activities that are available for Spider-Man, each giving you a sense of heroism when completed, but the activities begin to become more laborious than fun after the first few dozen completed. Instead of finding creative ways to make later game encounters harder, they simply throw more heavy enemies Spider-Man’s way making the fights not so much harder, but longer. While the combat is fun and fast, fighting wave after wave of enemies can only be entertaining for so long. Along with a greater number of enemies a is lack of story in the side activities, or any compelling reason to complete them aside from gaining progression tokens. All of the story in the game is found in the main questline. No one is asking for huge complex story threads in the side activities, but it would be nice to have more than go stop the bad guys who are doing bad things and that’s that. The activities that require traversal skills such as finding hidden backpacks or chasing down pigeons remain fun throughout, but defeating waves of enemies becomes dry faster than Insomniac must have anticipated.
With all that said, there is no doubt that Insomniac Games have created something special in a genre that has a tendency to brew cringe-worthy stories and lackluster gameplay. Even with some repetitive missions, Marvel’s Spider-Man remains one of the best I have played in recent memory and has a story that puts nearly any other superhero game to shame. With great traversal, combat, and story comes one hell of a game.
