The king of swing.
Ah, Spider-man, we meet
again, no Spider-manathon this time though!
Marvel's Spider-man: Game of the Year Edition should be the reason I
wait to buy games.
Should be, for you see, the DLC is not included on the disc, it's nothing but a voucher. The disc doesn't even include the updates, so if you want to play the DLC you have to update the game, which means Spider-man takes a whole lot of space on the console. Why not include a install disc?
Beats me, Sony has the money, so why the opted to release a Game of the Year Edition in this state is beyond.
And it sucks! I care about game preservation, but worst of all, my favorite costumes, Kaine's Scarlet Spider and the Iron Spider, are not on the base game. Poor form, Sony, poor form. I always hate it when companies skim on costs like this, and I'd have never expected it from Sony.
Well, on to the story I guess. It's interesting, it reunites a ton of characters, villains and heroes, from different incarnations of the webbed crusader, and it makes for an interesting take on the hero. I like the fact that we get an adult Peter, since most adaptations are stuck on Pete being a university student. I liked this new version of Yuri Watanabe, her relationship with Spider-man is very endearing. Silver Sable was pretty cool too. I loved what they did with Aunt May in this version, and we get a fairly nuanced take on Norman Osborn. Miles Morales makes an appearance, and I loved his interactions with Peter, however, I'm not so keen on making him a teen genius, heck, they even made him out to be smarter than Peter. Mary Jane was decent, but I really don't like how they went for the Ultimate version, making her a reporter. I get it, they wanted MJ to play a more active part on the story, but I wasn't a fan. They also made her a bit dumb, constantly getting into danger but then chiding Spidey for rescuing her, she wound up feeling more annoying than anything.
A lot of villains make an appearance here, but most don't get much development.... but when they do? Oh boy. This is the second most interesting version I've seen of Tombstone, only beaten by the one in the Spectacular Spider-man TV show. As previously mentioned, Norman Osborn felt very nuanced, and I hope we can see him turn into the Green Goblin eventually. Dr. Otto Octavius was fantastic too. So, yeah, the few villains that get developed are fantastic, the ones that only show up to be beaten at least look cool. Mr. Negative is here too, but among the developed villains he was, to me, the least interesting. At least he looked really cool and had some nasty abilities.
Just like the script, gameplay borrows various elements from previous games. The swinging, arguably the element that has mattered the most in 3-D Spider-man games since Spider-man 2, is pretty good, while not as involved as in other games, the sense of speed makes it fun. It's done just by pressing, or just by holding, R2, which sounds lame since swinging has usually been the most fun when it was a bit more complex, but trust me, it works really well. It's fast and fluid, and the rumble on the joystick makes it rather gratifying, plus, the soundtrack makes it even sweeter. Oh, and Spider-man can swim! Very slowly, and he can't dive, but hey, this is the first time Spider-man has ever been able to swim in a videogame, that I know of anyways.
The game plays like your modern open-world sandbox that Ubisoft likes so much. There's a ton of busy work, towers to climb to clear the map, the whole nine yards. It's much smaller than your average Assassin's Creed game, but also much denser, which each zone housing various side activities. Activities reward you with different kind of tokens that you can then use to unlock costumes or improve your gadgets. As for the activities, they involve random Crimes(Stop a car, stop a robbery, rescue a kidnaped person, etc), defeating various waves of enemies inside a criminal hideout, chase and capture pigeons(really), take photos of landmarks as well as simple 'sciency' puzzles.
Combat too takes cues from some of the better Spider-man games, as well as a few elements from the Batman Arkham series. Basically, you attack enemies with the square button, use your webs to throw or disarm enemies with triangle, dodge with circle(Time it right for perfect dodges!) and you can even use various gadgets, such as electric web or web bombs to help you. Unlike Batman, Spidey can take it to the air for some fun and simple aerial combat. You get a focus gauge, that raises as you land hits, that can be used to either heal yourself or use powerful finishers. You can also use a support ability(Call in help from a drone, electrify your attacks, shoot web everywhere) by pressing L3+R3 once your Suit Power gauge fills up. Each costume unlocks a different ability, so you can use the costume you like the most with the power you like the most.
As you finish missions and side activities you earn XP, and every time you level up you get some Health, Damage or Swing speed bonuses, as well as a single skill point you can then use on three different skill trees. By the end of the game you'll get every skill, so no need to worry about which branch suits your playstyle better.
So far, so good. It has a pretty good script and pretty good gameplay, but there were a few things I didn't really like. For instance, QTE, which, at least can be turned off on the options menu(Although I think these options appeared after I installed the patch?). Which I did. Also, the game forces stealth sections upon you in which you play as Miles or MJ. These aren't hard at all, but man are they boring. Playing as Spider-man is so much fun, so whenever I was forced to play these stealth segments I couldn't help but groan. Also, like with pretty much every Spider-man game, it can be a bit tough to move precisely, since he sticks into walls and moves fairly swiftly. It might've costed me a few tokens on the Challenge activities, but it wasn't too bad.
Lastly, a few times throughout the game you are forced to wait. Spider-man suggests doing side activities but... I did everything as it popped up. So the game just forced me to aimlessly swing about for like 3 minutes straight every now and then because reasons. I know, Yakuza has done this a few times, but it was once or twice at most per game. In this game this was a very common occurrence. And they do it again on the DLC packs. I had a fully maxed Spider-man, so doing the DLC side activities was something I did just for completion's sake, but the game forced me to wait just because. Luckily swinging around is fun in and of itself, but boy, this isn't good game design, it's not immersive in the least, it's just annoying.
The last thing I want to mention are the bugs and glitches. The game crashed a couple of times on me, another couple of times the XP bar on the top of the screen wouldn't go away, another time the random crimes got bugged and while the missions would spawn, the enemies I had to defeat did not. Oh, and after I defeated the final boss, Spider-man just spawned inside a building. I reloaded the last checkpoint and... I spawned on the boss arena, with no boss, and nowhere to go. I reloaded the last checkpoint again and finally the final cutscene played.
Marvel's Spider-man is
probably one of the best games starring the webbed hero. It borrows some of the best features from previous games, while also adding a few original elements of its own, the end product being pretty darn
great. It does have a few shortcomings, like the forced waiting periods or the
unnecessary stealth sections, but the brunt of the game is really good. On the other hand, I really don't like the fact that the DLC came in the form of a voucher, Sony could and should do better.
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