Superhero games have important jobs to fulfill. They have to put you in the shoes of the character and make you believe that you actually are this person. They need to deliver a story that takes some of the best parts of the character’s comic history, and mashes it all together in a package that at the very least is a fun ride to go on. The world that you play in has to be a great representation of the one that you see in the comics and other media. Most importantly though, the game needs to be fun to play. Insomniac Games checks all these boxes and delivers one of the best superhero games ever with their highly anticipated Marvel’s Spider-Man. 

There are many highlights in this game and the story is definitely one of them. The adventure kicks off with you helping the police arrest Wilson Fisk, A.K.A. Kingpin. He’s been evading jail time for years, so this is the best shot at finally putting the ringleader of New York’s crime scene behind bars. After a grandiose opening set piece that you would expect to come at a later point in the game, Fisk is arrested and it appears as if the streets of New York are going to be safer for the foreseeable future. Things are never that simple or easy for Spider-Man though, as Fisk’s imprisonment only opens the doors for others to run amok and wreak havoc, namely the main villain of the game, Mister Negative.

This story was by far one of my favorite stories to play through in a superhero game, and without a doubt the best one in a Spidey game for a number of reasons. From the start of the game it had me invested with some real stakes that continued to escalate and grow more pressing over the course of the story. Even when things quieted down some and I had a moment of piece from the high octane story moments, in the back of mind I was still wondering what was going to happen next and just how was Peter going to overcome the obstacle that he was currently facing. There was never a point during the story where I did not care about what was going on or just wanted to skip past a part to get to something else.

The game isn’t that long either and is paced very well. It took me about 15-20 hours to complete the story while also doing some side activities, and about another 10 hours after beating the story to finish all the side activities, so it can be completed relatively quickly.

What also helped make the story so great were the well written and performed characters. The characters are all people whose motivations you can understand and empathize with, even if they aren’t going about them in the right way. It’s very clear that Insomniac truly cares about and respects the Spider-Man universe, even though they took some aspects of it and made it their own. For example, Mary Jane Watson in this game is a reporter for the Daily Bugle instead of being a model or club owner. She’s not a damsel in distress like she’s typically portrayed as, instead being a go getter who’s more than capable of handling things herself and doesn’t want to rely only on Peter to help her.

I also really liked the way that Peter and MJ’s relationship was handled in the game. They aren’t together in the game and haven’t been for quite some time, but there’s still an attraction there that they have towards one another that the game plays with throughout the story. Their interactions with one another are those that two exes who are good friends would have with one another. They laugh and joke with each other, while also silently acknowledging that they both still have feelings for one another. It’s cute and funny, and above all else nothing about the way their relationship progresses feels forced.

When it comes to Spider-Man, he’s one of the most popular and endearing superheroes in the world for a number of reasons. He has some cool powers, a notable rogues gallery that’s consistently intimidating, he’s always pushing himself to do the best he can to keep people safe, and on top of all that, he’s relatable. Behind the mask is Peter Parker, a guy who fights to keep New York safe, causing him to be late to his “real” job where he doesn’t get paid enough, leading to him being behind on rent for his apartment.

These are struggles that we can all relate to (aside from the fighting to keep our city safe part). That’s not even to mention any family obligations that we may have or romantic partners that we may be trying to start a life with. Things are constantly pulling at us and it’s a balancing act to keep it all from falling apart. Although Peter has to deal with this on a greater scale, it’s something that we understand and can get behind. It makes us want to see him succeed in all his endeavors and be the best superhero that he can be.

Insomniac perfectly captures what makes Peter Parker/Spider-Man such a likable character right from the get go. The game starts with a pan through Peter’s apartment, revealing many little details about this version of the character without any dialogue being said at all. Clothes tossed on the floor, two empty money collection jars for a vacation and a new laptop, sketches of gadget designs, and a number of Post-It notes reminding Peter about his many obligations. With this short sequence, we already know that this is the character we love, and we haven’t even heard a word come out of his mouth yet or seen him on screen. Things don’t disappoint once you start playing and step into his shoes either, from a character standpoint or a gameplay standpoint.

Once you’re put in control, the first thing the game has you doing is web swinging through the city. It takes a few swings to understand just how it works, but once you get it, it feels perfect. No Spider-Man game has ever had web swinging as good as this one. By holding R2, you shoot out your web and let go by releasing the button. If you press the X button while you’re swinging, you’ll launch yourself high in the air, something that’s helpful if you want to get some elevation from the street. Just as in most of his games, you can only web swing if there’s something for the webs to attach to.

Part of what makes the swinging so great is that there’s a sense of weight and speed to it all. Hearing the wind rush past as you zoom through the city, or diving down from a skyscraper only to swing at the last second is exhilarating and never gets old no matter how many times you do it. There’s also the animations as well. Spidey looks cool as hell when he swings, doing many of his signature poses from the comics. Swinging in the game is honestly like a dream come true, and makes me wish I could swing through New York for real.

Outside of web swinging, traversal is incredibly smooth. Holding down R2 while moving allows you to parkour through the environment, and it goes off without a hitch. If you’re running down the street while holding down R2, you’ll jump and flip over any vehicles that are in your way. Run directly at any building while holding the button and you’ll immediately start running directly up its side. When you reach the top of any building while doing this, you can press the X button at just the right moment to pull yourself up and over the building in one quick and easy movement. When you combine parkour with web swinging, you’ll never be stopped from moving. The game is also pretty forgiving of any mistakes you may make while traversing throughout the world.

Combat is another one of the game’s strongest suits. It’s similar to Rocksteady’s Arkham franchise, which is a good thing as that game had excellent combat. Each attack you land builds up your focus meter, which when filled allows you to perform a one hit KO move on an enemy. Similar to in the Arkham series, when enemies come in to attack you, your Spidey sense goes triggers with a symbol over your head. For Spider-Man though, instead of countering, this indicates that you need to dodge out of the way. Spidey also has the added advantage of being such an acrobatic and aerial fighter, allowing you to jump and swing kick your way into enemies, or pull them up to you in the air and lay down a barrage of air combos on them before sending them down to the ground.

This wouldn’t be an Insomniac game though without a gadget wheel. Fitting perfectly for this game, you have an assortment of gadgets that you can create and upgrade for use in combat. There’s your standard web shooters alongside other handy tools such as an electric web, a Spider drone that goes around stunning enemies, and the ever helpful web bomb that explodes and webs up any enemy within range. Each of the gadgets that you can unlock are helpful in combat, especially as new factions appear throughout the story and the enemies become stronger. They also add some variety to pummeling criminals into the ground, making the act more fun and less tedious than it could easily become.

As you complete story missions and side tasks, you level up and earn skill points. These skill points can be put towards a new ability in one of three skill trees: Defender, Innovator, or Web Slinger. Each tree focuses on one thing in particular, but they’re all important for your everyday tasks in the game, specifically combat. It’s important to see which skills will be the most helpful for the way you like to play the game, because picking one skill over another can make encounters more difficult.

While you spend the bulk of your time playing as Spidey, there are other times where you play as Peter outside of the costume. These sections are fairly simple, and mostly consist of you interacting with other characters, but there is also some puzzle solving for you to do as well at Peter’s lab that he works at. The puzzles start off easy and ramp up the difficulty at a reasonable pace, but they’re never impossible to do. Peter’s sections are never so long that they drag the game down, but they’re long enough to give you a short break from the heroics that you spend most of your time doing.

You also get the chance to play as Mary Jane Watson at different points throughout the story. Her missions are purely stealth ones where she sneaks around to get the scoop on the shady things the villains have cooking up in the game, both for her job and to help Peter. Being spotted causes you to auto fail and restart from a checkpoint, but the game is generous with checkpoints, so you never get pushed too far back. Just like with Peter’s sections, these portions of the game are fun and short segments that help break up the pace and give you something different to do throughout the story.

Outside of the story there are a number of things for you to do. Challenge areas for you to compete in, random crimes to stop, landmarks to photograph, and so much more. Yes there are towers as well that you have to activate in order to clear up your map and discover new activities, but unlike in many open world games, there are not a huge amount of them. On top of that, it’s also very fun and easy to get to them because of how enjoyable web swinging is, so reaching each of these towers isn’t a drag. Completing these side activities rewards you with tokens that you use to upgrade your gadgets.

You can also unlock many new costumes for Spider-Man to wear throughout the game with these tokens and it pays to do so as each of them comes with a suit power. These suit powers play a key role in combat as they can turn the tide in a fight that’s going south in an instant. Thankfully, you don’t have to wear a suit in order to use its ability. You only have to unlock it, and then you can use it with whatever suit you want. There are also suit mods that you can unlock with the tokens you earn for completing side tasks. You can equip any three mods that you’ve unlocked, and they’re all useful in their own way. Being able to mix and match the mods that fit your play style makes combat all the more exciting.

If it wasn’t obvious from all the footage of the game that’s been released, and the first few minutes of the game itself, it looks pretty damn good graphically. The lighting is great, especially during sunset. It gives the city a nice shine that I can’t help but stare at. Of note though, the game doesn’t have a day/night cycle, instead progressing time as you go through the story. If you want to play during a particular time of day, you’ll have to progress until it reaches that point. Upon beating the game though, you get the option to change the time of day and weather whenever you want to.

Buildings look great too, especially when you realize that you can see inside the windows of many buildings. Upon closer scrutiny, you can see that the insides of these windows are simply flat textures that change based on where you’re looking at them, but it’s still cool that you can even see inside the windows at all. The city itself is bustling with life, and though it’s not a one to one recreation of Manhattan, it gets close enough to the actual thing to make you feel like you’re in the real place. There are also landmarks in the city referencing other Marvel characters, reminding you that there are other heroes that exist in this world even if they aren’t present in this game. Character models and animations are all fantastic, especially during cutscenes when you get close up shots on characters. The detail that you can see is simply crazy.

This is a game where Photo Mode was used a lot by me during my play through, and I’m sure many others will feel the same way. Not only is the game so good looking that you want to take as many photos as possible, but the mode itself is fun to use. There are a lot of cool filters you can use, stickers to slap on your pictures, and frames to apply as well. Just the fact that I can make my own Spider-Man comic book cover with the photo mode is enough to get me in there for a long time.

The voice acting is great across the board, and so is the score. I never got tired of hearing the game’s music during my entire time playing the game. It’s heroic and rousing, the traits that you would expect to hear from a Spider-Man score.

During my time playing the game, I did have some technical issues pop up. The game did crash on me two times, one of those times being mid-mission. Thankfully, the checkpoint system brought me right back to where I was, so no progress was really lost. There were also two side activities that I had to restart because one didn’t trigger properly, and the other spawned an enemy in an unreachable place, so I couldn’t finish. I also experienced moments where the audio would cut out for a second all throughout the game. None of these issues are game breaking by any means, but they were things that happened enough for me to take note of them.

Marvel’s Spider-Man is a really great game. It takes all the best things about the web slinger and delivers on all fronts. The gameplay is top notch, with web swinging that is simply fantastic, and the story is one of favorite Spider-Man stories to date. And even though there were some bugs, they weren’t enough to lessen my enjoyment of the game. I was expecting the the game to live up to the hype, but Insomniac went and made a game that is just as amazing as the hero it’s about.

Final Score

9/10