Spidey’s latest PS4-only outing promises to be one of the best games that features our friendly neighbourhood web-slinger in a long time. But does it live up to the hype? Read on…
So… anyone reading this likely knows it’s really easy to make a terrible Spiderman game. Even a quick glance over the list of Spidey title showcases myriad unfulfilled web swinger fantasies that make me sad to even think about all that failed potential. Of course there’s been a few saving graces with Spiderman 2 and Ultimate Spiderman on PS2 and some Playstation 1 love back in the day but we’re talking years since anything good came out of the Spiderman game franchise. So with this in mind let’s look at the new Spiderman game exclusive for PS4 from Insomniac games and see if it finally turns our favourite neighbourhood web swinger into a decent game.
Well let’s break format and give you the end of this review at the beginning because Spiderman is amazing and even if you don’t get to the end of this blog you need to know its great and you need to play it right now! With that out of the way lets look at why its so great.
First off the game looks beautiful. A lot was written just as Spiderman came out about how the graphics had taken a dive and were in fact worse than the trailers. Now, that’s a bare faced lie and if anything the game looks a lot better, with some of the best lighting and material physics I’ve seen recently. Yes, of course there are hiccups and sometimes faces look weird and, although it hasn’t happened to me, I’ve seen Peter Parker become Peter Spaghetti Legs, but these are video games and this stuff just happens every now and then.
One thing that cannot be understated when it comes to graphic fidelity though is the cityscape itself though, Oh my my my is this a thing of beauty. I play a lot of games and I also have a hard time reading maps so navigation for me can be a boring and stressful event. Luckily for me, the city of Manhattan in this game is so accurately detailed and has such a draw distance in regards to seeing buildings far away that after a couple of hours of swinging around I could start to figure out where and how to get to specific locations purely based on the city and landmarks themselves. This literally (not literally) blew my mind as the sense of accomplishment I got from this was amazing and its all thanks to the game having one of the most realistic and living cities I’ve ever seen.
Graphics are cool, but what’s a game without gameplay? It’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer it, you’ll look stupid in front of all your friends. Now, I know you want me to tell you that the web swinging’s as good as PS2’s Spiderman 2 and you’re in luck, because it is and if I do say so myself it’s actually better and gives me a reason to tell you to shut up about Spiderman 2. Swinging’s simple, you shoot a line with a button then release that same button to release, keep doing that and you’ve got yourself a Spiderman. You also have a lot of control with the left analog stick controlling trajectory – making changing directions and height pretty much flawless, and with the physics engine making the weight of Peter Spiderman feel as if he were real building momentum and speed is not only easy but also makes sense on a purely scientific mindset.
As well as swinging you’ve got fighting and that’s also great. Yes it’s a little derivative of the Batman Arkham games, but instead of feeling like a Bat Tank you feel like a lil’ Spider-Boy with all the speed and agility that you’d expect, there’s also a greater emphasis on upwards mobility during fights and adding the Z-Axis to combat does take it away from what’s come before and it’s really cool swinging people around the air as you also swing around in the air whilst kicking people in the head. Now I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to talk about story, not because its bad but because it’s Spiderman. If you’ve ever read or watched anything about the titular hero its pretty much just that and if you haven’t then where have you been? Also, I don’t want to spoil it because being a SpiderFan there was nothing more exciting then working my way through the campaign only to be greeted by some of my favourite villains from the franchise and then doing a little girly laugh to myself about how cool this all was.
Honestly there’s a lot more I could talk about it, most of which would be me gushing about how linking web swings to wall runs to free-falling then back to web swings is seriously cool, but I think that to get the most out of the game you need to stop reading and start playing!
Author: Hal, Plymouth store
