I've made it expressly clear that I adore all the Insomniac Spider-Man games and seeing as how this is effectively just more game I was almost guaranteed to like it.

The plot of this game isn't as emotional as the main game and I'm honeslty pretty happy about that. The main game felt like the big major comic book arc and this DLC felt like it was just meant to be a quick bonus little Spider-Man story where he fights a threat on a much smaller scale. I really appreciate how they got some lesser known villains for this too. (Whens the last time you've seen Hammerhead appear in anything since Spectacular Spider-Man?) Black Cat making her first physical appearance in this series here too and she's voiced by Erica Lindbeck and I have a crush on every character she plays.

Alot of the plot here is mainly just to set up for Spider-Man 2 and to hint at Peter training Miles for his game. I love the JJJ Episode where he has to go to the hospital at the realization that there are two Spider-Men now. It's a very nice cooldown after all the big drama of the main game. Genuinely just a fun, small scale Spider-Man story to tide the fans over between this and Miles Morales and thats all I wanted it to be.

The issues though come from the side content. Overall I think the side content here is a tad better than the main game. Or at the very least its more story focused than most of the main game ones which I think is neat. However they are kinda bullshit sometimes. Like I appreciate the extra challenge but when the bonus rewards are asking me to get a 100 Combo chain against swarms of the most aggresive enemies in the game I kind of start to get pissed off. But that's not even the problem.

Screwball. Enough said.

Also her challenges are actually kind of fun but when you try to go for the Ultimate Score on some of them they are just actual bullshit and they kind of push me from wanting to play them. (which wouldnt be an issue if they weren't based around Screwball and you had to hear her voice during all of them.)

Anyway yeah this DLC is pretty good. Nothing crazy but a fun side story between the much bigger game releases.



Also Black Cat is sexy as fuck.

The City That Never Sleeps is is effectively the title of the season pass of Spider-Man on PS4, comprising the 3 DLC mission sets released for it that together comprise what is more or less a 4th act that follows the main game's 3. It follows Spider-Man taking on a resurging Maggia crime wave led by Hammerhead. It took me about 12 or so hours to get all the trophies in all 3 DLCs, but that, as with the normal game, is a fairly easy task to accomplish compared to many other PS4 games.

Given that this is more or less 3 smaller stories that make up a 4th act, it almost feels like an expansion to the main game or a micro-sequel that reuses the same city. Swinging around the city was still as fun as ever, and the 9 new suits (3 per-DLC) were a very welcome addition to the base game's 29, but it is just more Spider-Man. Despite being shorter, the story is still well told, and I especially liked what they did with Yuri's arc over it. If anything, I kinda wish it had been one large expansion from the beginning instead of 3 smaller storys, as the larger connected narrative feels a little rushed compared to the base game's. The DLC's don't seem to run as well as the base game, though. There were several times where I would flying across the city on my way to another activity and the game would just freeze to load in the area I was going into, and a couple missions had a floating/frozen car that kinda made that mission freak out, where those were never things I encountered in the base game.

The pack of 3 starts out a bit lukewarm, with The Heist having some remarkably aggravating and not fun challenge missions (which were already the worst part of the base game, so making those worse is saying something), on top of some other fairly uninspired side activities and a difficulty level that's a bit of a step down from act 3 of the base game. It really picks up the pace in the 2nd and 3rd bits of the pack though, with Turf Wars and Silver Lining having a very nice difficulty curve across the whole of the TCTNS expansion with some really brutal new enemy types, much better challenge design, and some enemy base missions that will really test just how good a grasp on the combat you have. Even the bosses are damn tough compared to a lot in the main game, with the final boss of the 3rd pack, while not having the atmospheric gravitas that the main game's climax has, it was certainly a far harder boss.

If you were to buy the digital deluxe edition of the game, which is $80 compared to the normal game's $60, then that's a pretty good value proposition as far as I'm concerned. You're getting 33% more game, and you're paying 33% more for it. At $10 a piece separate, it's a bit of a bigger ask, as is the $25 for the season pass, but this is a very easy recommendation if you pick the digital deluxe edition on sale for $50 like it is at the moment of writing this review.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. While it's not exactly a must-play, completely revamped version of the main game's story, it's a very well executed expansion to the base game that is well-priced and has good value for money (which is something many other game's DLC's can't really say these days). Even if you may feel that paying $20-$30 extra bucks on top of the base game's $60 is a bit much, I can say with high confidence that this is gonna be something well worth checking out if and when Spider-Man ever gets a GOTY Edition sometime next year ^w^