The first serious contender for best super-hero video game against Rocksteady’s Arkham series, Marvel’s Spider-Man oozes high production value in all four corners of its foundation. This is a holistic review, but I’ll try to minimize spoilers in the story section of this review, which is what we’ll start with. Well, it’s more of a character review section really, so don’t worry about significant spoilers for the main story.
Though I didn’t plan on it, watching through the 90s animated Spider-Man series while writing this review has given me some nice perspective with which to compare story beats to, as well as a healthy boost of nostalgia. Fun fact: 90s Spider-Man was my introduction to the character and is what I credit much of my initial knowledge of his rogues gallery and spiderman lore to. Rewatching it has definitely cemented the fact that it’s a kids show at heart, yet I’ll commend the writing and storylines for how mature they could get. Now let me stop myself before I turn this into a 90s Spider-Man cartoon review. One thing I liked that both the game and the show did was having an already lived-in universe, with the game going even further than that, having not just Peter be an established hero, but also having many of his villains locked up at the start of the game.
Speaking of which, I love the representation of his rogues gallery here. They don’t shy away from flexing his large group of bad guys and it pays off well here, with plenty still left to explore in later sequels. Making infrequently used Yuri Watanabe Peter’s police captain liaison and mission catalyst was more than alright with me. There’s a reason that Batman’s Gordon is such an integral part of his ensemble. Giving you a voice and advocate on the inside both explains a possible conflict away and sets up one that may occur if she gets compromised or overruled. Which is a thread that’s actually pulled on in her DLC. Overpulled in my opinion, considering her melodramatic overreaction to a run-of-the-mill mafia boss. I mean come on, in her base of operations city-ending catastrophes are practically as common as seeing someone walk down the street. And no, I don’t care that Hammerhead has some personal connection to her. It’s clear the police force in this world is a revolving door of soon-to-be-corpses, so trying to act like she cares SOOOOO much that she just has to go outside the law this time is just conflict for the sake of conflict. Prepare for me to complain about that more when I get to the next game.
Mainstay characters like Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson were given a respectable deal of justice, and with how developed some of the older and newer villains like Doc Ock and Mr. Negative were I can’t complain too much when comparing screen times. On top of that, seeing a fully realized Sinister Six in the first outing of Insomniac’s Spider-Man is beyond cool to see. The duo boss fights to space them out was the best way to sparse out the excitement in a way that wasn’t overwhelming or overly easy and anti-climactic.
In broad strokes, I’m happy with their characterizations, barring some minor hiccups here and there. Yuri Lowenthal is a fantastic Spider-Man VA, with just the right amount of spunk and earnestness. Only thing I don’t like is how much of a pushover he is when someone wrongs him or gives him an unfair shake, i.e. MJ and Black Cat, and Yuri in the DLCs. His dynamic with Miles, while early in its lifespan, is the ideal mentor/mentee relationship. Miles is a bit of white-bread square, but he’s still a kid after all, and hasn’t even gotten his powers yet. It works, if just for this game. And with that out of the way, let’s talk romance shop.
I know I’m mostly alone on an island in wanting to see a proper Black Cat x Spider-Man pairing. I’ve made amends that we’ll likely never see that in the mainstream. What I can’t make amends with is the downright character assassination they perform on her in this game. DLC spoilers ahead: after her sudden return to NYC back to raise hell again, she drops a bombshell on our boy Pete: she’s got a kid, and instead of telling him if it’s his or not, she strings him along as he helps her in the hope of keeping her kid safe. Well, not only is he not the father, there is no kid at all. In classic femme fatale fashion, she’s tricked him, got the goods for herself, and screws off to walk off into the sunset. I know Insomniac has firmly planted their flag on the MJ & Peter romance, but making it somewhat believable that Black Cat has some residual non-manipulative fondness for Pete would have been welcome. Black Cat is a scoundrel with a heart, not a apathetic kleptomaniac.
I find similar disappointments with MJ, just of a different variety. This is another instance where they should have taken a page out of 90s Spider-Man’s book, which is to give her some independence from Pete. I understand she’s an integral part of his story that they want to give a lot of screentime to, but I hate having to make every love interest a journalist, writer, investigator, etc so they can be the MC’s guy in the chair. Find a different way to weave them into the story, I beg of you. Believe it or not I’m not a part of the crowd that hated her gameplay sections. They were short, simple, and inoffensive. Her stun gun tomfoolery was a bit of a jumping of the shark, however it’s something I can overlook. So long as they don’t increase the output in future titles I can handle it. No, my biggest problem is the manufactured outrage and relationship troubles. Spider-Man saving her in the Sable outpost was indisputably justified and yet blowing that up to crazy proportions felt so soap-opera-y. She’s not superpowered! Why is she sneaking around like she’s Solid Snake? I hate when shows and games make reasonable worry or protectiveness a bad thing, as though it means your possessive or clingy. They need to give Peter more firm of a backbone in future installments. The world beats him down enough as is, can he not at least fight for fair treatment from his supporting cast? Once they get over that hump the banter is nice, just mind the potholes.
Oh there was one more character I forgot to mention because of how perfunctory she is. Silver Sable is one of the main… antagonists I guess? There’s not really an explanation for why but she seems to hate Spider-Man like it’s going out of style, at least beyond the run-of-the-mill hatred for those “outside the law.” Knowing she’s clearly just a plot contrivance to justify another enemy force to fight in the third act does nothing to alleviate her shallowness. Her turn heel to a reluctant peace with Peter is so laughably forced and quick I can practically hear the time crunch in the board room when they were discussing how to deal with her character and her veritable army at her fingertips. For someone so desperate to be badass, you’d think she’d be better at hitting a target just five feet away. Nevertheless, she does her sole jobs of padding the enemy’s numbers and game time well. Between you and me though, I much prefer Mr. Negative’s demon army to her failed Starship Troopers cosplayers. In truth, I find it easier to stomach a Rhino themed supervillain than I can her being unchallenged in flying a jet around New York City like it’s her personal playground.
The story itself was fairly decent, the pacing went from a bit too slow to a bit too fast, but narrative and character beats were on point and proper weight was given to each new villain encounter, with the Kingpin introduction being the perfect intro for the player to get used to the controls and fighting. Seeing as this is a superhero game first and foremost, I think the combat deserves its own section.
Being an Arkham veteran and brawler lover I was taken aback by how initially cumbersome the combat was in this game. Not that I was expecting a Arkham clone in combat, but I can’t lie that the controls took me around a couple of hours to get the hang of. You have to dodge a LOT in this title, as well as become acquainted with a juggling form of combat that doesn’t incentivize going from enemy to enemy as frequently as you would expect. When you’re new to the game don’t be surprised to find yourself low on health often, even if you’re above average in the genre typically. Once you do get the hang of things, this game actually inverses difficulty. A fact helped by the treasure trove of gadgets, suit abilities, and normal abilities. Once you can properly utilize movement you become near untouchable. Gadgets are technically locked behind takedowns so you can’t spam them forever but you end up with so many different kinds that if you spam them in every encounter you’ll eliminate everyone with no effort whatsoever, and by the time the next encounter rolls around you’ll be mostly refreshed on your inventory.
I like a challenge and making combat feel as cinematic as possible so I spaced out and limited my gadget use as much as possible to maintain a healthy variety. After recentering my fighting expectations and practicing my moves and gadget combos I’d almost say it’s as good as Arkham’s, if in an entirely different way. My objection against that idea is unlike Arkham, there’s a weight missing in my moves. I’m Spider-Man. I can destroy these average joes with little effort realistically. While I understand balance plays a part in this, it starts to feel a little silly when I can throw a guy at a dumpster, throw a motorcycle at him, and then uppercut him five feet in the air just for him to get back up and throw me the cleanest right hook I’ve ever seen at me. A ludonarrative nitpick I know, yet I feel like it’s worth mentioning. And while we’re on the nitpicking train a nice QoL feature would be to map gadget quick-fires to easy button combos instead of freezing time to look at a wheel. It would improve combat momentum enormously. And yes I know that a quick gadget change exists in one iteration of the game, even that though is not enough or as fluid as Arkham gadget quick-fires.
The missions themselves consist of beat-em-ups, stealth sections, movement based time trials, and minigames like Pipe Dream and a line-matching one. With how easy the minigames were I find it hard to agree with the criticism that they were invasive or tone-clashing. If anything they broke up monotony, and didn’t take long enough to get annoyed with them. Besides, who hates Pipe Dream anyway? The stealth portions were ultra easy, go figure when you’re a demon in the body of a young man with a gadget arsenal to rival inspector gadget himself. Making for a plausible reason they were so sparse and most of the time optional.
The timed races were a bit of a drag to be frank, for as breezy and smooth as the traversal is precise movements can be extremely finicky when you’re going for gold in the time trials. Additionally, the limited enemy open-world crime encounters is an interesting thought, however I think they lay them on a bit heavy when they’re not completed. It feels like you get a crime alert every five seconds in the first half of the game, which can often leave me thousands of feet away from my initial waypoint that I set 10 minutes ago. Having them come back in a limited capacity post-endgame in the form of Kingpin’s henchman was a good compromise for story and action integrity, but forcing the encounters to be spaced out pre-endgame would prevent burnout for people with like me with little self-control, or just those that don’t want to be alerted every other second.
In terms of the open world itself I’m afraid I can’t boast there being too much building on the formula concocted decades ago. The photo ops weren’t a terrible idea, but we need much more flavor like that and less like find the taped up backpacks. Having a larger chunk of missions similar to the fake Spider-Man one, or hubs actually worth going to (cough F.E.A.S.T. center cough) would go a long ways in justifying such a large world, past the top-notch web-swinging. That alone almost justifies the game’s gorgeous world. Not often is it that I would be content to just run around a world for minutes on end with no clear goal or destination in mind, but for such a faithful and genuinely breathtaking activity as swinging from building to building with just some webs and a dream, I couldn’t help myself from losing hours to simply flying across the city. As nice as it is having a modern fast travel system, I would look at you sideways if you use it more than once or twice in all here.
All in all a Marvel’s Spider-Man is an extraordinary polished start for Insomniac’s superhero ventures, with premier traversal, voice acting, set-pieces, and world building. I know I’m late to the game with this one, yet all the same I’d like my seal of approval to be on the record for this one. Even its lowest points in the writing department were dwarfed by the impressive universe they’ve built here. Eat your heart out J. Jonah Jameson.
Though I didn’t plan on it, watching through the 90s animated Spider-Man series while writing this review has given me some nice perspective with which to compare story beats to, as well as a healthy boost of nostalgia. Fun fact: 90s Spider-Man was my introduction to the character and is what I credit much of my initial knowledge of his rogues gallery and spiderman lore to. Rewatching it has definitely cemented the fact that it’s a kids show at heart, yet I’ll commend the writing and storylines for how mature they could get. Now let me stop myself before I turn this into a 90s Spider-Man cartoon review. One thing I liked that both the game and the show did was having an already lived-in universe, with the game going even further than that, having not just Peter be an established hero, but also having many of his villains locked up at the start of the game.
Speaking of which, I love the representation of his rogues gallery here. They don’t shy away from flexing his large group of bad guys and it pays off well here, with plenty still left to explore in later sequels. Making infrequently used Yuri Watanabe Peter’s police captain liaison and mission catalyst was more than alright with me. There’s a reason that Batman’s Gordon is such an integral part of his ensemble. Giving you a voice and advocate on the inside both explains a possible conflict away and sets up one that may occur if she gets compromised or overruled. Which is a thread that’s actually pulled on in her DLC. Overpulled in my opinion, considering her melodramatic overreaction to a run-of-the-mill mafia boss. I mean come on, in her base of operations city-ending catastrophes are practically as common as seeing someone walk down the street. And no, I don’t care that Hammerhead has some personal connection to her. It’s clear the police force in this world is a revolving door of soon-to-be-corpses, so trying to act like she cares SOOOOO much that she just has to go outside the law this time is just conflict for the sake of conflict. Prepare for me to complain about that more when I get to the next game.
Mainstay characters like Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson were given a respectable deal of justice, and with how developed some of the older and newer villains like Doc Ock and Mr. Negative were I can’t complain too much when comparing screen times. On top of that, seeing a fully realized Sinister Six in the first outing of Insomniac’s Spider-Man is beyond cool to see. The duo boss fights to space them out was the best way to sparse out the excitement in a way that wasn’t overwhelming or overly easy and anti-climactic.
In broad strokes, I’m happy with their characterizations, barring some minor hiccups here and there. Yuri Lowenthal is a fantastic Spider-Man VA, with just the right amount of spunk and earnestness. Only thing I don’t like is how much of a pushover he is when someone wrongs him or gives him an unfair shake, i.e. MJ and Black Cat, and Yuri in the DLCs. His dynamic with Miles, while early in its lifespan, is the ideal mentor/mentee relationship. Miles is a bit of white-bread square, but he’s still a kid after all, and hasn’t even gotten his powers yet. It works, if just for this game. And with that out of the way, let’s talk romance shop.
I know I’m mostly alone on an island in wanting to see a proper Black Cat x Spider-Man pairing. I’ve made amends that we’ll likely never see that in the mainstream. What I can’t make amends with is the downright character assassination they perform on her in this game. DLC spoilers ahead: after her sudden return to NYC back to raise hell again, she drops a bombshell on our boy Pete: she’s got a kid, and instead of telling him if it’s his or not, she strings him along as he helps her in the hope of keeping her kid safe. Well, not only is he not the father, there is no kid at all. In classic femme fatale fashion, she’s tricked him, got the goods for herself, and screws off to walk off into the sunset. I know Insomniac has firmly planted their flag on the MJ & Peter romance, but making it somewhat believable that Black Cat has some residual non-manipulative fondness for Pete would have been welcome. Black Cat is a scoundrel with a heart, not a apathetic kleptomaniac.
I find similar disappointments with MJ, just of a different variety. This is another instance where they should have taken a page out of 90s Spider-Man’s book, which is to give her some independence from Pete. I understand she’s an integral part of his story that they want to give a lot of screentime to, but I hate having to make every love interest a journalist, writer, investigator, etc so they can be the MC’s guy in the chair. Find a different way to weave them into the story, I beg of you. Believe it or not I’m not a part of the crowd that hated her gameplay sections. They were short, simple, and inoffensive. Her stun gun tomfoolery was a bit of a jumping of the shark, however it’s something I can overlook. So long as they don’t increase the output in future titles I can handle it. No, my biggest problem is the manufactured outrage and relationship troubles. Spider-Man saving her in the Sable outpost was indisputably justified and yet blowing that up to crazy proportions felt so soap-opera-y. She’s not superpowered! Why is she sneaking around like she’s Solid Snake? I hate when shows and games make reasonable worry or protectiveness a bad thing, as though it means your possessive or clingy. They need to give Peter more firm of a backbone in future installments. The world beats him down enough as is, can he not at least fight for fair treatment from his supporting cast? Once they get over that hump the banter is nice, just mind the potholes.
Oh there was one more character I forgot to mention because of how perfunctory she is. Silver Sable is one of the main… antagonists I guess? There’s not really an explanation for why but she seems to hate Spider-Man like it’s going out of style, at least beyond the run-of-the-mill hatred for those “outside the law.” Knowing she’s clearly just a plot contrivance to justify another enemy force to fight in the third act does nothing to alleviate her shallowness. Her turn heel to a reluctant peace with Peter is so laughably forced and quick I can practically hear the time crunch in the board room when they were discussing how to deal with her character and her veritable army at her fingertips. For someone so desperate to be badass, you’d think she’d be better at hitting a target just five feet away. Nevertheless, she does her sole jobs of padding the enemy’s numbers and game time well. Between you and me though, I much prefer Mr. Negative’s demon army to her failed Starship Troopers cosplayers. In truth, I find it easier to stomach a Rhino themed supervillain than I can her being unchallenged in flying a jet around New York City like it’s her personal playground.
The story itself was fairly decent, the pacing went from a bit too slow to a bit too fast, but narrative and character beats were on point and proper weight was given to each new villain encounter, with the Kingpin introduction being the perfect intro for the player to get used to the controls and fighting. Seeing as this is a superhero game first and foremost, I think the combat deserves its own section.
Being an Arkham veteran and brawler lover I was taken aback by how initially cumbersome the combat was in this game. Not that I was expecting a Arkham clone in combat, but I can’t lie that the controls took me around a couple of hours to get the hang of. You have to dodge a LOT in this title, as well as become acquainted with a juggling form of combat that doesn’t incentivize going from enemy to enemy as frequently as you would expect. When you’re new to the game don’t be surprised to find yourself low on health often, even if you’re above average in the genre typically. Once you do get the hang of things, this game actually inverses difficulty. A fact helped by the treasure trove of gadgets, suit abilities, and normal abilities. Once you can properly utilize movement you become near untouchable. Gadgets are technically locked behind takedowns so you can’t spam them forever but you end up with so many different kinds that if you spam them in every encounter you’ll eliminate everyone with no effort whatsoever, and by the time the next encounter rolls around you’ll be mostly refreshed on your inventory.
I like a challenge and making combat feel as cinematic as possible so I spaced out and limited my gadget use as much as possible to maintain a healthy variety. After recentering my fighting expectations and practicing my moves and gadget combos I’d almost say it’s as good as Arkham’s, if in an entirely different way. My objection against that idea is unlike Arkham, there’s a weight missing in my moves. I’m Spider-Man. I can destroy these average joes with little effort realistically. While I understand balance plays a part in this, it starts to feel a little silly when I can throw a guy at a dumpster, throw a motorcycle at him, and then uppercut him five feet in the air just for him to get back up and throw me the cleanest right hook I’ve ever seen at me. A ludonarrative nitpick I know, yet I feel like it’s worth mentioning. And while we’re on the nitpicking train a nice QoL feature would be to map gadget quick-fires to easy button combos instead of freezing time to look at a wheel. It would improve combat momentum enormously. And yes I know that a quick gadget change exists in one iteration of the game, even that though is not enough or as fluid as Arkham gadget quick-fires.
The missions themselves consist of beat-em-ups, stealth sections, movement based time trials, and minigames like Pipe Dream and a line-matching one. With how easy the minigames were I find it hard to agree with the criticism that they were invasive or tone-clashing. If anything they broke up monotony, and didn’t take long enough to get annoyed with them. Besides, who hates Pipe Dream anyway? The stealth portions were ultra easy, go figure when you’re a demon in the body of a young man with a gadget arsenal to rival inspector gadget himself. Making for a plausible reason they were so sparse and most of the time optional.
The timed races were a bit of a drag to be frank, for as breezy and smooth as the traversal is precise movements can be extremely finicky when you’re going for gold in the time trials. Additionally, the limited enemy open-world crime encounters is an interesting thought, however I think they lay them on a bit heavy when they’re not completed. It feels like you get a crime alert every five seconds in the first half of the game, which can often leave me thousands of feet away from my initial waypoint that I set 10 minutes ago. Having them come back in a limited capacity post-endgame in the form of Kingpin’s henchman was a good compromise for story and action integrity, but forcing the encounters to be spaced out pre-endgame would prevent burnout for people with like me with little self-control, or just those that don’t want to be alerted every other second.
In terms of the open world itself I’m afraid I can’t boast there being too much building on the formula concocted decades ago. The photo ops weren’t a terrible idea, but we need much more flavor like that and less like find the taped up backpacks. Having a larger chunk of missions similar to the fake Spider-Man one, or hubs actually worth going to (cough F.E.A.S.T. center cough) would go a long ways in justifying such a large world, past the top-notch web-swinging. That alone almost justifies the game’s gorgeous world. Not often is it that I would be content to just run around a world for minutes on end with no clear goal or destination in mind, but for such a faithful and genuinely breathtaking activity as swinging from building to building with just some webs and a dream, I couldn’t help myself from losing hours to simply flying across the city. As nice as it is having a modern fast travel system, I would look at you sideways if you use it more than once or twice in all here.
All in all a Marvel’s Spider-Man is an extraordinary polished start for Insomniac’s superhero ventures, with premier traversal, voice acting, set-pieces, and world building. I know I’m late to the game with this one, yet all the same I’d like my seal of approval to be on the record for this one. Even its lowest points in the writing department were dwarfed by the impressive universe they’ve built here. Eat your heart out J. Jonah Jameson.