Before we got started this review is only for the base game and the DLC will be covered at a future date.
I have always been a big Spider-Man fan. Ever since I got my first tape of the 90’s cartoon from the local rental place I was hooked. This love only increased when I saw the Sam Rami Spider-Man films in the early 2000’s, I was just the right age for it and it cemented my idea of what a superhero was. So when I heard that they were making a new Spider-Man game in the style of the Batman Arkham games (It wasn’t until I actually started playing that I realized that Rocksteady hadn’t made this) I was so excited. Now having finally played I can safely say that this game is exactly what I wanted it to be.
The game starts when Spider-Man in coordination with the police finally takes down Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin of Crime. In the aftermath of Kingpin’s fall a vacuum arises in the New York underworld which is gradually being filled by a brand new villain Mr. Negative who is taking out the remnants of Kingpin’s empire. While Spider-Man stop the mysterious menace of Mr. Negative? And what is the origin behind his grisly grudge against Norman Osbourne? Find out True Believers by playing Marvel’s Spider-Man!!!
Basically the structure of the game is that you get to play around in an open-world version of Manhattan doing Spider-Man things while gradually playing a series of story quests which move the plot forward. What this game gets right is the way you move and fight. Arkham was always described as the game where you get to feel like Batman, while this game where you get to feel like Spider-Man. You have a variety of movements from your standard web-swinging to more advanced stuff like ziplining and hanging from ceilings. Web-slinging is for the most part very intuitive and fluid, giving you the ability to transverse large areas both horizontally and vertically in a very quick and fun manner. However some of the more advanced moves are kind of tricky to utilize properly, wall crawling in particular is far too finicky.
Combat is also great, if not quite as intuitive as movement. You have the one combat button which makes beating up your standard mooks pretty simple, but the more advanced moves are a bit trickier. You can do a LOT during combat, web baddies up, throw stuff at gangs, yank rockets out of the air and hurl them right back at perps. Your moves are supplemented by the use of gadgets such as impact webbing, Spider-Drones and zip-webs. To paraphrase a different superhero film, “where does he get all those wonderful toys?” Essentially the combat system is very deep, much more so than the Arkham games and you have a lot of different ways to deal with enemies, but I do find the combat to be kind of overwhelming with its options and some of the moves are again kind of finicky.
Most of the time not spent on story missions will be focused on side quests and there a lot of them. You can do things from finding hidden items, taking photographs of New York landmarks, take on challenges from the Task Master, find an old man’s lost pigeons (a lot more fun than it sounds) and stop random crimes that come up on the police scanner. All of these missions are fun and what I think makes them so is that there is never a moment where you don’t feel like you’re Spider-Man. The biggest example of this for me is when you get called by Aunt May to go to supper or something, but get delayed when you see some crime being committed and you have to stop it, which is like the most Spider-Man thing ever. There are a bit too many missions which just seem to involve beating up random thugs for my taste, but the rest are varied and have you exercising a wide variety of skills. The only missions I really don’t like are the stealth ones, the stealth mechanics in this game just aren’t that good and most of the time I recall the games controls being kind of finicky tend to involve moments where I’m trying to be all sneaky like and accidentally land right in front of some goons because I didn’t do it just right.
As I have mentioned to the point of monotony the game’s developers are really good at making you feel like Spider-Man and that is particularly true with the way they handle the plot and the lore. This does not follow the continuity in the comics, but the game does a great job of making it feel like Spider-Man has been at this a while and has some history to him. At this point in his career he has graduated from high school and undergrad, moved out on his own, fought most of his major bad guys and revealed his identity to Mary-Jane. The game does a great job of portraying Spider-Man’s supporting cast through acting and writing, the obvious standout being crusading reporter and podcast host J. Jonah Jameson who will stop at nothing to make NYC aware of the menace that is Spider-Man!
Speaking of New York, the game looks gorgeous and the environments are lovingly designed from Wall Street skyscrapers to Harlem projects all with real world and comic book locations thrown in with great detail. It reminds so much of the Rami films, which I still think are the best Spider-Man media ever produced, and I am so happy with the level of care and detail the designers put in. For instance, the game has a whole bunch of secret outfits to unlock, including the outfit from the Raimi films and you better believe I spent the entire game wearing that one!
Another thing is the fact that creators are clearly very familiar with the comics and are willing to do some interesting things with the source material. The most obvious example of this is using Mr. Negative as the main antagonist for most of the game which is pretty daring considering he is a fairly recent character in the comics ( I know he was introduced after OMD at least). I also love the way they retold Doc-Ock’s relationship with Spider-Man into more of a mentor-student one, making his inevitable downfall very poignant.
I do have one quibble in that I think they focus too much on Spider-Man as a street level hero and don’t have nearly enough super-villains. It gets better by the final act, but for the majority of the game the only proper villains you fight in the main story are Kingpin, Shocker and Mr. Negative, as well as Tombstone and Taskmaster (who’s not even a Spider-Man villain) if you do some of the side missions.
Overall this is a great game and I am currently leaning towards naming it the greatest superhero game ever over Arkham City
4.5/5
Stay tuned true believers for a future raucous rant full of razzle-dazzle for dramatic DLC dynamite featuring everyone’s favorite spiffy, spunky superhero, Spidey!
Mr.Kltpzyxm's Games and Comics Blog 