It’s really hard to talk about Marvel and all of its iconic comic book superheroes without mentioning the man who helped create them, Stanley Martin Leiber. Otherwise who you may all know as Stan Lee. This magnificent man has got to be one of the best creative minds to ever walk this earth. Around the early 1940s, Stan alongside his uncle Robbie Solomon worked at the new Timely Comics division part of Martin Goodman’s company. Stan was the one doing a majority of the heavy lifting. He drew every frame for each comic and he even wrote the stories for them as well. Stan Lee had a fun time working at Timely Comics, but his breakthrough wouldn’t be until Captain America. The shield tossing patriot was created during the midst of World War II when Adolf Hitler was trying to conquer a majority of Poland. The entire world was in chaos and Stan wanted to plant some hope into the hearts of people. Give them happiness.
So Stan Lee continued making new adventures for the stripped flag hero and tried to make the public a little happier with life. Surprisingly....success! The war was still going on, but he was able to put some hope into the public. Outside of Timely Comics, Stan helped co-create a few other comic book superheroes at the time and in 1942 he even joined the United States Army serving in the Signal Corps. While in the army, Timely Comics sent Stan letters asking him to write the ideas for their comics so they could continue illustrating and publishing them. At first Stan had troubles writing new comics because he became distracted from his army work and violated numerous terms, but eventually he was given the right by the US Army to continue working on comics and with good communication Stan's career as a comic book writer grew even bigger. Around the 1950s, Timely Comics became known as Atlas Comics and Stan Lee was getting tired of the comic book business. Stan was planning on quitting the business, but a new rival popped up onto the block known as DC Comics. Their heroes looked more onto the positive side showing how great it was to have superpowers, but Stan noticed something wrong about DC Comics. He noticed their heroes lacked flaws or any signs of humanity and that they focused more on perfection.
Stan went back to Atlas Comics to draft up some new heroes. Heroes that not only had superpowers, but in some way were still human. Stan Lee created the X-Men, Iron-Man, Thor, Hulk, and a certain someone we’ll cover in a few seconds. Stan Lee’s work spiraled towards the sky and Atlas Comics was soon known as Marvel. There were quite a few deals made with Marvel Comics to help popularize their work, and what started off as popularity soon turned into a billion dollar company. Animated cartoons, toys, clothing, halloween costumes, and the numerous big budget films you see on the theater screens today. Marvel is truly, well marvelous. I’m more of a video game guy to be honest. Some of my favorite heroes tend to be video game characters, but I can’t deny the fact that Marvel wouldn’t have gotten to where it is today if it weren’t for one man and his mind. Plus between Marvel and DC Comics personally I’m more of a Marvel guy. I never really read any of the comics, but I’ve watched a handful of the films. However, my number one favorite hero from the Marvel universe has to be that acclaimed web-slinging New Yorker who started from nothing. Can you guess who it is?
Well it’s pretty obvious it’s Spider-Man. Almost every kid, teen, adult, and old person from the 1900s can recognize who Spider-Man is. Besides Captain America or Iron-Man, Spider-Man is practically Marvel’s mascot. Sure there have been countless reworks and revisions of Spider-Man, some good and some bad, but we can all agree Spider-Man is a guy with spider-like powers who uses them to stop evil and just be an awesome person. There have been dozens of films about Spider-Man and in between those films there were a couple of video games. There were decent lukewarm Spider-Man games like Spider-Man 2 and Web of Shadows, and then there were several games that were just god awful. It wasn’t until 2018 that we all got a proper Spider-Man game. Not only was the best Spider-Man game, but it was just a terrific game in general. Simply named Marvel’s Spider-Man. It was developed by Insomniac Games, the same team who made the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance series. Before Spider-Man they worked on another colorful open world sandbox called Sunset Overdrive, which was exclusive to the Xbox One, but soon Sony approached the team asking them to help Marvel develop a Spider-Man game exclusive to the Playstation 4. Sony and Insomniac ignored how Insomniac just developed an Xbox One exclusive, and Insomniac got to work.
The lead directors found it hard to make a Spider-Man game since before they just made games with original IPs, but they found a way to make it work. The game was revealed in 2016 and it wasn’t until 2018 that the full version got released. Thankfully, Marvel’s Spider-Man blew up bigger than everyone expected and it kinda kicked ass. Many game critics claimed that Marvel’s Spider-Man was one of the greatest superhero games ever made and it even got nominated for a few end of the year awards. So having replayed the game can I reconfirm that it is still an amazing game? Yes. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Marvel's Spider-Man on the PS4 and why it deserves your attention. So suit up and prepare to swing across New York City.
Story
If you don’t know who Spider-Man is and how he became New York’s most trustworthy hero then let’s do a quick recap. Peter Parker, his parents abandoned him when he was at a young age and he was raised by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Peter had a huge love for electronics and began experimenting with them creating interesting gadgets and making him one of the smartest kids in his school. As he grew older he learned how to take care of himself and look after the ones around him. Randomly one day a radioactive test lab spider sneaks into Peter’s apartment, bites him on the arm, and suddenly he gets spider powers. He can climb on walls, sense the dangers around him, and easily move around like a spider. Using his knowledge, Peter crafts himself a suit and gadgets capable of converting the fluids his body produces into a sticky web substance. He swings around the streets of New York and combined with his martial arts skills he uses his power to fight evil and prevent crimes from happening in the city. He became famous in the city and his title began to spread as Spider-Man.
Flashforward several years later and Peter Parker is now a grown adult living life in New York City. He has two careers, his superhero one where he assists the New York Police in high stake crimes and his regular one where he works as a lab assistant at Octavius Industries runned by Dr. Otto Octavius. The two of them work together to develop prosthetic limbs that can be easily controlled using neuro technology. Neuro technology may take a long time to develop and may come at a cost, but the two will do whatever it takes to achieve a world phenomenon. A few hours after taking down Willson Wisk, owner of Fisk Tower, a strange gang of demon mask-wearing men begin to pop up around New York and raid certain locations. Their goals and leader are unknown, but whatever they are doing is harming several individuals. They possess weapons with this odd negative energy and it’s capable of doing insurmountable chaos.
Peter meets up with old college friend Mary Jane, his ex-girlfriend, and the both of them team up to figure out who these Demons are and how they gained access to such power. Meanwhile in his normal life, Octavius Industries is shut down by Mayor Osborn who owns his own science company known as Oscorp. Osborn confiscates a good chunk of the equipment in the lab and states that Otto has failed to pay up some of his loans forcing him to shut down his business. Otto has this strange hatred towards Osborn almost as if he knew him from before. Yet, Peter and Otto decide that they can still develop proper neuro linked technology even if they are on a low budget. After leaving work, Peter comes home to his apartment to find out he has been evicted and that he might have to stay somewhere. He decides to catch up with his old Aunt May and stay a little bit at the homeless shelter she works at called F.E.A.S.T runned by Martin Lee. So not only does Peter have to keep up his career as the web shooting Spider-Man and figure out who the Demons are, but he also has to maintain his science career and make sure he and Octavius invent proper neurolink tech. How long can Spider-Man manage all of this before things start going awry, those he cares deeply about get involved, and he starts figuring out that some things aren’t what they seem?
Gameplay
A majority of your time in Marvel’s Spider-Man will be spent exploring the streets of New York City, stopping crimes, and liberating areas overrun by baddies. You are Spider-Man after all and your main method of traversing the open world is of course swinging. You can only swing when tall building are around, but remember this is f*cking New York City it’s like walking into a grocery store and telling me you couldn’t find me a bottle of coca cola. Spider-Man’s swings have a trajectory, so if you time a swing just right you can build up momentum. If you time your swing wrong then you lose momentum. The more you time your swings the faster you can traverse around New York City. You can even use the environments to your advantage to easily build up momentum and reach the rooftops of some buildings without running up a wall.
The combat is another important factor to Marvel’s Spider Man, because depending on if you understand how to use each of Spider-Man’s moves your performance dictates whether you stop a crime or not. Spider-Man moves so fluidly during fights and he has a wide range of attacks that allow him to disperse a variety of foes. He can rapidly punch enemies, uppercut them into the air, slide underneath them and hit them from behind, swing into the air and knock them across the arena, swirl around objects in the area or downed baddies like a cyclone, slam the ground, and many more. Sometimes the player will be offered the chance to stealth around and pick off enemies one by one which is nice, because it allows the player to have the edge before they are surrounded from every direction. If you take too much damage during a fight you die, but there is a way to heal or make a difficult challenge less challenging. The Focus Bar is a special energy meter that builds up everytime Spider-Man lands a hit on an enemy. When there’s some juice in it Spider-Man can heal himself, but it’s full Spider-Man can instantly down an enemy without landing a hit on them. It’s a risk-reward mechanic, because you can use it to either last longer in a fight or get rid of an enemy quickly.
I shouldn’t forget that Spider-Man has a handful of web gadgets that he can use both during and before fights. Some gadgets are designed for direct combat and some are designed to sneak around. The Impact Web easily knocks enemies back and sticks them to walls, the Trip Wire sucks enemies towards the wall they are latched on if they pass through it, the Electric Web can stun a foe, the Web Bomb covers multiple foes at once, and many more. Some of your gadgets have a limited amount of uses and the only way to refill them is taking out enemies on your own.
There are multiple side objectives outside of the main story and when I say multiple I mean dear god they packed more stuff into this game than I thought. There are side quests, Fisk outposts to liberate, Demon warehouses to clear out, backpacks to collect, Harry’s labs which contain special challenges, random crimes that pop up while traversing the world, sites to take pictures of, and a couple other things I would mention but they would spoil some of the characters you encounter later on. Every time you do one of these things you get a special point. For example taking a picture of a site gets you a site point, or stopping a random crime gets you a crime point. Collect enough of these special points and you unlock cool new equipment. These include upgrades for your gadgets, a list of perks to use, and brand new spanking suits.
Spider-Suits are especially important because not only do you get to swing around New York City in style or nostalgia, but you also get to unlock Suit Powers. You can use Suit Powers during fights and if you play your cards just right you can turn the tables. For example, the White Spider-Suit gives you a Suit-Power that rapidly fills up your Focus Meter making healing and downing foes easy during a chaotic situation. Everytime you clear a mission or complete a side objective you level up and gain experience points. Experience points can be used to unlock new abilities giving you more choice during combat. Besides that I can’t really think of anything else to say about Marvel’s Spider-Man’s gameplay. It works fine and feels fun to play. Hopefully with just the right amount of finesse you can stop the Demons and any future crimes that happen in New York.
Thoughts
Marvel’s Spider-Man is a really good game and is probably the best superhero game ever made. Swinging around New York City feels so damn satisfying. The way Spider-Man flows around midair, transitions from swing to swing, the cool tricks he can pull off, and the way the character is animating makes it so fun to control and watch. You don’t even have to fast travel as it’s better to just parkour around the city, building up speed, and seeing how past you can swing before you take on another crime. The combat is also pretty good as well. It’s not the best combat I’ve seen in a video game and it certainly isn’t perfect, but it is really fun. You are always offered opportunities during fights and using those opportunities can make a casual fight feel a little more stylish and awesome. The graphics and visuals hold up even to this day. A lot of people complained that they downgraded certain lighting and textures from when they originally revealed it back in 2016, but this isn’t the Dark Souls 2 scenario where the lighting is completely screwed up. The lighting is absolutely amazing creating some amazing backdrops, and the colors and shine of each building makes for an amazing New York to explore. The story ended up being pretty good. Really good in fact. Peter learns how to maintain both his superhero and normal career if he wants to protect those he cares about and the rest of New York City. It’s a lovely tale to listen to and there are tons of memorable characters along the way.
Marvel’s Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man game ever made, but is it a perfect video game? No. It is anything but perfect and there are quite a few problems with this game that not many other critics seemed to highlight with this game. The Spider-Sense mechanic that is used to indicate when an enemy is about to hit you is really wonky at times. Sometimes an enemy is about to hit me and the Spider-Sense gives me about less than half a second to react. Yet again, I learned to overlook this. Depending on what difficulty you are playing on certain types of enemies can get really annoying. Trivial question: which of these two enemies seem more annoying to deal with? The brute or a guy with a gun. If you answered the second one then you’re right. Enemies with guns shoot very quickly and depending on how many there are at a given time they can knock off more than half of your health within seconds.
I’m not going to spoil it, but there is this one faction later on in the game that wields high tech equipment and they are very annoying to deal with at first. Some of their attacks deal tremendous amounts of damage, the jetpack enemies fly around with ease, they are immune to web attacks, and they have more health than they really need. Sometimes when I try to perform certain attacks they won’t register and the enemy ends up hitting me in return. I understand why they would implement stealth into this game. You have spider powers of course and spiders can move around without being seen. However stealth is quite useless especially when liberating bases, because once you get rid of the first group of enemies another wave spawns shortly. They immediately spot you and force you into combat, and every base spawns in at least six waves so stealth is meaningless.The boss fights are really cool and some of the ideas for how you fight them are really fun, but the villains outside of two main story villains are just really forgettable. No offense Marvel fans, some of Spider-Man’s villains kinda suck. Finally there is how the game handles sequence changes. Occasionally you will play as one of Peter’s friends and you are forced to stealth around a restrictive area. Out of all the ways you offer a break, you decided to do a crappy stealth section rather than the swinging we have been doing the entire game?
Besides those complaints I can confirm that Marvel’s Spider-Man is tremendous. There is a ton of content packed into this game and it's made by a team who are truly fans of Spider-Man. The game is colorful, majestic, has tight control, and the right amount of fun to be had with a game. It’s one of the better licensed video games out there and I can say I recommend it. I give Marvel’s Spider-Man an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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