I remember playing the original Marvel’s Spider Man (2018) on Christmas Day that year when I got my brand new PlayStation 4. This game was not technically the system seller for me (I think half of my reason for getting it was wanting to play Ratchet and Clank (2016) a game I don’t even think I like that much), but I still really wanted to play it. I almost have a rose colored tint to my experience playing that game. I enjoyed playing it that morning while also booting up some Super Meat Boy (I think I had bought it on PSN for a dollar previously. I had played it before.) and Crash Bandicoot from the N Sane trilogy (Which I still have not meaningfully played). Judging by my PSN trophy history I also enjoyed some Spyro the Dragon from that collection. These were the tales of a Nintendo-core PS4 owner. Only truly there for mascot platformers. I also got Dragonball FighterZ that day according to a photo I took of the “Christmas haul”. I have maybe played an hour of that game total.
My point here is that the original Spider-Man PS4 (which I will refer to as “2018”) from here on out functioned to me as a mascot platformer. Despite it falling into a lot of the typical Ubisoft-esque open world trappings like revealing the map over time through radio towers, some skill trees and absurd amounts of collectibles, the movement system keeps that game alive. The combat system as well as it truly is about how you use it. You could just abuse the web shooters and throw enemies to walls a lot (what I remember doing then mixing with the swing kicks). The game felt flawless to me in a non critical sense. It really made you “feel like Spider-Man”.
I did play a decent chunk of Miles Morales, but dropped it around 3/4s of the way through, a common trapping I have with many modern video games despite that game being very short. There’s a not so brief history on my experiences with these games. I hope the anecdotes were fun because it's time for the real review.
I saved obtaining this game until Christmas of 2023 almost eerily similar to how I handled the first game but for very different reasons. I knew that I would not have time to play it during a crowded college semester. I would say that I have essentially no-lifed playing this game since New Years Eve, beating it about 4 days later. I have heard people complain about the game being “too short”. This is a good thing. Games that are too bloated are not the most enjoyable. I say this having 100% completed Spider-Man 2. The open world map is much bigger than the original yet I feel like the amount of collectibles present is much more varied with a lot more options. I was a fan of the Mysteriums for example and kind of wished there were more challenges like that. The stealth bases of “The Flame” were pretty fun side missions as well. These are basically just repackaged versions of the original side missions, but having them be on a much more spread out map makes it feel a lot less like busywork, it feels like you’re actually going to places.
I must discuss the technical prowess of this video game that I noticed while playing. Right off the bat I would like to thank the gods that Insomniac finally went back to allowing their games to run at 60 FPS (Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart did this as well) because it all feels so fluid to control. I don’t have a 4K television so I do not mind running my game in “performance mode”. Insomniac are essentially masters of the Playstation 5’s technology. The first big story mission with Black Cat’s magic portals was absolutely bananas. There are parts I do not want to spoil but the fact those portals just load completely new environments with no load times is crazy cool. It was like Rift Apart’s gimmick on hyperdrive. Load times themselves are almost non-existent in the game in general. Fast Travel which I have to admit, I used a bit, is so absurdly fast. There is no loading time, you just get transported instantaneously. The only load times I can think of in this game are when you switch between Peter and Miles and even then it's like a second or two.
This game is pretty functionally similar to the original game except a few key differences. The game keeps the ability system added from Miles Morales into Peter’s moveset initially starting him with the ability to use mechanical spider arms to get some combos going. Miles gets his powers from the previous game as well. Eventually new twists are brought into these abilities with Miles having the ability to use blue lightning abilities that feel more crowd control adjacent but still useful and Peter get the symbiote which makes you feel unstoppable using it. Traversal is also almost identical with the huge exception of the brand new “Web Wings” which I started off not really liking feeling it almost trivialized the web swinging. I just felt they should not be able to essentially fly. Web swinging was enough for me. Eventually however, I caved and started mixing the web wings into my traversal and my god, you can go so fucking fast with those wings. Honestly a great addition to the formula when used in moderation.
I want to shout out the use of the controller’s gimmicks in this game. Something that is sort of underappreciated about the DualSense is the adaptive triggers. On most games I play on the console (MLB The Show is my main one), it almost never uses that feature and when it does, it is quite odd. But this game uses them in such a natural way combining with the haptic feedback to create such an interesting control experience in stuff like unlocking those vaults.
Now I guess I’ll talk about the campaign and story which I thought was good but nothing too special. I remarked in notes I made about the “moviefication” of AAA video games. This feels like it's not trying to be a prestige film like some AAA games are but more of a completely fine superhero plot which does work for the game this is. However, there are so many moments where I kind of got bored with what it was doing. The moment that brought me to this “moviefication” idea was when we got a needledrop of The Shins’ New Slang. Why do video games have needle drops now? It distracted me for a second playing out while Peter and Harry reminisced while shooting hoops in their old high school gym. A moment that has an option to use tilt controls to shoot the basketballs. What is going on in gaming where moments of games that feel more movie-like need to have “gameplay”. There’s moments where you control Peter riding a bike while holding a conversation in that segment as well. Any time you control Peter by himself without being Spider-Man you get that same cinematic view type stuff that God of War (2018) has. There’s moments that use the medium of gaming in pretty cool ways for more traditional stories here. The side mission where you play as Miles’ deaf friend and the audio is very muffled and doesn’t allow you to hear anything is a very cool effect. There’s not really many moments like that of full immersion present here. In terms of the actual main plot it’s fun Spider-Man fare even though I did find myself a bit lost on some of these characters. I did not play the DLC for the original game which had me quite confused at points but I figured it out. The Miles Morales plot does feel pretty underdeveloped overall and Peter’s plot also feels a bit under developed too. The moments of combat during the campaign are of course fun but you leave it feeling a bit confused that it was already over. I beat the final boss and kept expecting another phase to appear until I realized, I was watching about 20 minutes of ending cutscenes and post credits scenes building up plotlines for the followup games that, according to Insomniac’s leaks, are coming within the next 3 years or so.
I also realized after ending the game and fully completing most of it during the campaign, that there is basically no post game content here at all, which I thought was kind of odd. I know that New Game+ is coming in an update at some point so I guess I am looking forward to playing that in a few months when I want to revisit the game.
While the second half of this review did feel incredibly negative, that traversal system and combat system carries the game so hard that if the story was complete garbage, I don’t think I would care that much because the gameplay is elite. That is my general gaming philosophy as a whole, the story can be great (maybe even function in gameplay in a gripping manner), but it needs to be fun to play and this game heavily delivers on that expectation.
8/10
My point here is that the original Spider-Man PS4 (which I will refer to as “2018”) from here on out functioned to me as a mascot platformer. Despite it falling into a lot of the typical Ubisoft-esque open world trappings like revealing the map over time through radio towers, some skill trees and absurd amounts of collectibles, the movement system keeps that game alive. The combat system as well as it truly is about how you use it. You could just abuse the web shooters and throw enemies to walls a lot (what I remember doing then mixing with the swing kicks). The game felt flawless to me in a non critical sense. It really made you “feel like Spider-Man”.
I did play a decent chunk of Miles Morales, but dropped it around 3/4s of the way through, a common trapping I have with many modern video games despite that game being very short. There’s a not so brief history on my experiences with these games. I hope the anecdotes were fun because it's time for the real review.
I saved obtaining this game until Christmas of 2023 almost eerily similar to how I handled the first game but for very different reasons. I knew that I would not have time to play it during a crowded college semester. I would say that I have essentially no-lifed playing this game since New Years Eve, beating it about 4 days later. I have heard people complain about the game being “too short”. This is a good thing. Games that are too bloated are not the most enjoyable. I say this having 100% completed Spider-Man 2. The open world map is much bigger than the original yet I feel like the amount of collectibles present is much more varied with a lot more options. I was a fan of the Mysteriums for example and kind of wished there were more challenges like that. The stealth bases of “The Flame” were pretty fun side missions as well. These are basically just repackaged versions of the original side missions, but having them be on a much more spread out map makes it feel a lot less like busywork, it feels like you’re actually going to places.
I must discuss the technical prowess of this video game that I noticed while playing. Right off the bat I would like to thank the gods that Insomniac finally went back to allowing their games to run at 60 FPS (Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart did this as well) because it all feels so fluid to control. I don’t have a 4K television so I do not mind running my game in “performance mode”. Insomniac are essentially masters of the Playstation 5’s technology. The first big story mission with Black Cat’s magic portals was absolutely bananas. There are parts I do not want to spoil but the fact those portals just load completely new environments with no load times is crazy cool. It was like Rift Apart’s gimmick on hyperdrive. Load times themselves are almost non-existent in the game in general. Fast Travel which I have to admit, I used a bit, is so absurdly fast. There is no loading time, you just get transported instantaneously. The only load times I can think of in this game are when you switch between Peter and Miles and even then it's like a second or two.
This game is pretty functionally similar to the original game except a few key differences. The game keeps the ability system added from Miles Morales into Peter’s moveset initially starting him with the ability to use mechanical spider arms to get some combos going. Miles gets his powers from the previous game as well. Eventually new twists are brought into these abilities with Miles having the ability to use blue lightning abilities that feel more crowd control adjacent but still useful and Peter get the symbiote which makes you feel unstoppable using it. Traversal is also almost identical with the huge exception of the brand new “Web Wings” which I started off not really liking feeling it almost trivialized the web swinging. I just felt they should not be able to essentially fly. Web swinging was enough for me. Eventually however, I caved and started mixing the web wings into my traversal and my god, you can go so fucking fast with those wings. Honestly a great addition to the formula when used in moderation.
I want to shout out the use of the controller’s gimmicks in this game. Something that is sort of underappreciated about the DualSense is the adaptive triggers. On most games I play on the console (MLB The Show is my main one), it almost never uses that feature and when it does, it is quite odd. But this game uses them in such a natural way combining with the haptic feedback to create such an interesting control experience in stuff like unlocking those vaults.
Now I guess I’ll talk about the campaign and story which I thought was good but nothing too special. I remarked in notes I made about the “moviefication” of AAA video games. This feels like it's not trying to be a prestige film like some AAA games are but more of a completely fine superhero plot which does work for the game this is. However, there are so many moments where I kind of got bored with what it was doing. The moment that brought me to this “moviefication” idea was when we got a needledrop of The Shins’ New Slang. Why do video games have needle drops now? It distracted me for a second playing out while Peter and Harry reminisced while shooting hoops in their old high school gym. A moment that has an option to use tilt controls to shoot the basketballs. What is going on in gaming where moments of games that feel more movie-like need to have “gameplay”. There’s moments where you control Peter riding a bike while holding a conversation in that segment as well. Any time you control Peter by himself without being Spider-Man you get that same cinematic view type stuff that God of War (2018) has. There’s moments that use the medium of gaming in pretty cool ways for more traditional stories here. The side mission where you play as Miles’ deaf friend and the audio is very muffled and doesn’t allow you to hear anything is a very cool effect. There’s not really many moments like that of full immersion present here. In terms of the actual main plot it’s fun Spider-Man fare even though I did find myself a bit lost on some of these characters. I did not play the DLC for the original game which had me quite confused at points but I figured it out. The Miles Morales plot does feel pretty underdeveloped overall and Peter’s plot also feels a bit under developed too. The moments of combat during the campaign are of course fun but you leave it feeling a bit confused that it was already over. I beat the final boss and kept expecting another phase to appear until I realized, I was watching about 20 minutes of ending cutscenes and post credits scenes building up plotlines for the followup games that, according to Insomniac’s leaks, are coming within the next 3 years or so.
I also realized after ending the game and fully completing most of it during the campaign, that there is basically no post game content here at all, which I thought was kind of odd. I know that New Game+ is coming in an update at some point so I guess I am looking forward to playing that in a few months when I want to revisit the game.
While the second half of this review did feel incredibly negative, that traversal system and combat system carries the game so hard that if the story was complete garbage, I don’t think I would care that much because the gameplay is elite. That is my general gaming philosophy as a whole, the story can be great (maybe even function in gameplay in a gripping manner), but it needs to be fun to play and this game heavily delivers on that expectation.
8/10