Marvel’s Spider-Man Review – A game that is totally worth the hype

First announced during E3 2016, Marvel’s Spider-Man has kept us waiting for 2 years and now the game is finally going live on September 7! We are lucky to be able to enjoy the game before the official release, where after a few hours of playing, it’s safe to say that the game is totally worth the hype. Check out our Marvel’s Spider-Man review below to know why we love it!

*May contain spoilers, read at your own risk*

Introduction

Developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Marvel’s Spider-Man is an open-world action-adventure game exclusively for PlayStation 4. The game tells a brand new story of Peter Parker aka Spider-Man, which it is not tied to any existing films or comic books but features a lot of aspects that fans would be familiar with.

The Story (referring from Wikipedia)

The protagonist, 23-years-old Peter Parker has been the Spider-Man for 8 years and has settled into his role as protector of New York City. Early in the story, Spider-Man defeats Wilson Fisk, a philanthropist who runs a criminal empire under his alter ego The Kingpin. Afterwards, a new gang known as the Inner Demons emerges to take over Fisk’s territory.

In his journey of taking out the Inner Demons, Peter learns that Martin Li, one of New York’s most prominent philanthropists, leads the Inner Demons under his alter-ego Mister Negative. Martin also runs the F.E.A.S.T. shelters located across the city, which complicates things for Peter’s personal life as his Aunt May works at F.E.A.S.T.

The Game Features

Marvel’s Spider-Man allows players to transverse around the open-world New York City using Spider-Man abilities such as web-slinging and wall-crawling freely. You can explore the city or complete side missions all you want, then get back to the main story missions when you are ready for it.

There are plenty of areas to explore, which many of the New York City’s iconic landmarks including Chinatown and Central Park can be seen in the game. The street views are also very detailed that makes you feel like you are actually walking or web-swinging across the city yourself.

Playing the main story missions leads you to a bunch of cinematic cutscenes (they are great to watch), usually follows with some small fights. You will then be required to defeat a few bosses. Every one of them has their unique battle style, you will require different strategies to bring them down. For example, you will need to web up Wilson Fisk before you can attack him (or else he will block every attack you do).

While for the side missions, you will be able to complete some random events such as saving hostages or taking down robbers. Completing these earns you some EXP and Crime Tokens, where you can use it to craft different Spider suits (most of them have their unique special power) as well as upgrading your gadgets. Better gadget means easier opponents, so it is important to get those Tokens to power up yourself. Taking photos of the landmarks also gives you Landmark Tokens to craft more Spider suits.

Obviously, side missions don’t unlock themselves. You will have to unlock the area via reactivating the surveillance towers so that side missions would appear on the map. Or, you can use your Spider-sense to scan the surrounding for side missions. Your Spider-sense can be used to detect enemies around you too!

There is also a lot of stuff such as backpacks and newspapers that you can collect around the city (to learn more about the game’s story). Collecting backpacks is one of my favourite things to do as it always comes up with something very interesting (eg: menu from the Peter Parker’s first date with MJ or a Spider plushie). You can get skill points to learn new skills that match your playstyle, which the skills fall into 3 categories – Innovator, Defender and Webslinger.

The game features puzzle solving as well. For instance, you will need to fix the robotic arm in Dr Otto Octavius’s laboratory by arranging the circuit diagrams. Some puzzles are not easy to solve, you will probably go through a few trial and errors before you can find a correct way to do it.

Other than playing as the Spider-Man and Peter Parker himself, you will be able to play as Mary Jane Watson (MJ) in certain moments of the game. As MJ is not that good at fighting, the stages involving her mostly require you to solve puzzles, stealth through the area, or escape from the area. Through controlling MJ, you will be able to know more about her inner thoughts on the reasons why she broke up with Peter Parker.

There will be plenty of characters from the Spider-Man series making an appearance in the game. Some of them may aid Spider-Man through the challenges, while some of them may lose their lives in certain events. Of course, it is not a Marvel game if there is no Easter Eggs, so pay attention to your surroundings and be surprised!

Not to mention that you can also hi-five or shake hands with the citizen, some citizen might even take pictures of you when they see you (he is the friendly neighbourhood hero after all). There will be a photo mode allowing you to stop at any moments for impressive shots. You can add in all kinds of filters, stickers or backgrounds on your shots. We tried a bit and we love it!

Here are some of the photos we took using the photo mode:

The Actions

The fast-paced combats in Marvel’s Spider-Man are definitely exhilarating. You can perform all kinds of combos with different buttons – hit the opponents on air, webbing them to the wall, throw objects at them or execute a stylish finishing move on them. Noted that certain enemies require special strategies to deal damage on them, there will be QTEs on certain stages too.

Well, even the powerful Spider-Man can be defeated too, which means you can’t just perform your actions recklessly. Thanks to his Spider-sense and reflexes, you will be warned before the enemy attacks you so that you can dodge and perform counter-attacks at the right timing. The good news is, you can fill up focus bar by getting combos or perform air attack on enemies and be able to heal using it when you are low on health.

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