MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN
Ian Dean knows there’s more to being a hero than a tight suit
We only review finished games, so in Viewpoint we go hands-on with near-final code of a game that has just missed our review deadline. Ian Dean is a huge Spider-Man fan and spent four hours playing through the earlier part of the game. Is it as amazing as we’d hoped? Times Square is on fire, cops are shuffling energetically behind their squad cars, and a thug shouts: “Bring in the Hammer.” It’s intense. I can’t quite see what the Hammer is but it’s tearing through parked cars like I guzzle a Colin The Caterpillar birthday cake. This is the first scene of SpiderMan. It’s a chaotic Hollywood blockbuster of an opener, the camera hovering alongside stressed cops and sweeping past shops and cars exploding with a shaky urgency. Amid all of this is Spider-Man, and I’m in control. As introductions go, it’s one of gaming’s best.
KICK TO THE ARACHNADS
Essentially a combat training mission, it introduces kicks and dodges on re and respectively, while w shoots webbing to trap and manage the group of thugs. As in Batman: Arkham Asylum a buzzing ‘spider-sense’ pings above our hero’s head to signal an attack is imminent and it’s time to hit dodge.
The combat is fluid and reactive, faster and more agile than Bats’ clunk and thunk – Spider-Man zips between enemies’ legs, vaults over their shoulders and cartwheels from danger. Tapping u fires barrages of webbing, and holding r sends foes into the air for juggling.
The pace is maintained as the action flows into the Fisk building, where Spidey continues to pummel gangs of armed thugs, learning to overcome shielded goons and larger enemies immune to standard combos. There’s even time to pay homage to Spider-Man’s iconic rubble lifting scene from The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #33, before the mission ends in a battle with Kingpin, and the super-villain’s inevitable arrest.
The following hours play out with surprising variety. In a fight on a skyscraper, wave upon wave of thugs assault Spider-Man. Swinging in, I initially opt for a stealthy approach, picking off enemies with Spidey’s newly acquired Impact Webs – one hit knocks out an unaware villain – but ultimately I return to dodging rockets, webbing goons to pillars, and combo-kicking my way to success.
Later I get to experiment with the game’s stealth in a mission that has Spidey and Mary Jane Watson working together (she’s now a reporter on the Daily Bugle). Sneaking around the rafters of a dodgy auction house (and through secret ‘ventrances’) taking down enemies one by one plays out like a streamlined version of Arkham – here spider-sense enables you to see when an enemy is ripe for picking off without alerting his pals.
When things do get wild, there’s even more nuance to the combat system to discover, as Spider-Man bounces off walls, pinballing himself into his enemies.
SWING SHOT
Between story missions I enjoy Insomniac’s take on New York, a large open world filled with people – there’s no McGuffin here to see the city evacuated. As I swing, tapping i at the peak of the arc or q to zip towards focal points, people point: at Spidey, at enemies, but generally interacting with you and the world. It makes any random mugging more meaningful as you’re saving your people.
While this city is a believable playground, it’s a little disappointing to discover Insomniac has borrowed from Ubisoft’s Big Book Of Open Worlds when it comes to unlocking city missions – you need to hack NYPD cell towers (like in Arkham, you need to match radio waves) to unlock New York’s side-quests. These include backpack missions: Peter Parker has left old luggage around the city, and if you collect them you’re able to unlock and craft new suits.
This aside, there’s a lot of depth to this Spider-Man’s open world. As I play new gadgets, suits, combos, and challenges are unlocked, each has multiple branches to work towards. That Impact Web I played with earlier can be crafted to include area-effect webbing blasts. This Spider-Man has been kicking around New York’s skyline for eight in-game years, but he still has lessons to learn.
This is where the game’s real heart potentially beats, in presenting a version of Spider-Man who is a little jaded. It’s a world in flux, with heroes who aren’t wholly heroic and villains with good intentions but bad form. Even with perhaps one too many nods to other games – Arkham and Assassin’s Creed – if Insomniac can maintain the humour, intensity and eke out new depths from this old hero, it’ll be a winner.
“A GREATEST HITS OF OPEN WORLD DESIGN BLENDED WITH SOME OF THE BEST STORY BEATS ON PLAYSTATION 4 – THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE SONY’S BIGGEST HIT YET.” We’ll have our review of Spider-Man next issue, out 25 September.