To start this off, my experience with the original Spider-Man on PS4 wasn’t exactly what you would call positive. Heresy I’m aware considering how the game was beloved by pretty much everyone and their grandma but it just wasn’t doing anything for me at all, the problem being I couldn’t really articulate why. Having played the remaster on PC now I can more confidently highlight why elements of this game never jived with me (and some still don’t), but I do think there are others that made me appreciate this game just a little bit more.
Can’t really say much on the story, not exactly what you would call a Spider-Man fan (probably plays partly into why I didn’t initially care for the game to begin with lol), but it was fine enough. Spider-Man himself is always fun to listen to with his constant quips and banter between other people, and man Yuri Lowenthal just absolutely KILLS IT as Peter/Spidey, as he usually does with every role he’s in (Luka my beloved). Honestly all the voice actors put in a great performance all around, it’s just that I don’t particularly find the story engaging. Nothing inherently wrong with it and nothing that brings the experience down mind you but nothing that enhances it either. Outside of the story the game in general looks gorgeous, both the character animations and models and the overall city are really well done, though I do understand why people are upset that they basically changed Peter’s model in the remaster to look more like Tom Holland for whatever reason. I personally didn’t mind too much and got used to it quickly. The original model is still clearly better though.
Right off the bat, the swinging is no doubt the best thing about this game, and I think everyone can agree on that. Traversal is super fast, fluid, requires finesse to keep your speed going, looks super cool, everything about it is great. I don’t think it’s as organic as the swinging in Spider-Man 2, you can’t get as experimental or creative with web swinging as that game sadly, but it’s a super close second. I bring this up because sadly this is probably the BIGGEST positive I can give the game.
Combat for me is a mixed bag. It’s not terrible mind you, it’s fast paced, flashy and is super mobile with how you can zip around the arena from one enemy to another, but I feel it doesn’t really have a lot of variety and gets really repetitive fairly quickly. The game basically brow beats you into air comboing enemies over and over again. Most enemies on the ground can’t hit you while you’re in the air, you generate bonus focus while air comboing, it leaves specific enemies completely helpless, I mean heck there are even enemy voice lines that basically go “I CAN’T HIT HIM WHILE HE’S IN THE AIR!!!” and “DON’T LET HIM GET YOU IN THE AIR, IT’S OUR ONE AND ONLY WEAKNESS!!!” It also doesn’t help that there’s not a whole lot of variety in Spider-Man’s arsenal of moves, it’s definitely improved when you get more skill tree upgrades especially in terms of crowd control, but he basically only has like 1 grounded combo and 1 air combo and that’s about it. I see quite a few people compare this system to the Arkham games (and yes the Arkham comparisons will be highlighted throughout this review, it’s basically inevitable lol), but honestly I don’t really think the styles of combat are comparable. Arkham’s combat is much simpler, you can’t really juggle someone in the air in that game, but it’s more of a rhythmic style of combat, flowing hits from one enemy to the next, using button combinations to deal with special enemy types all while trying to get a high combo score. The closest I can compare Spider-Man’s combat to is like…a watered down hack and slash. Again, it works and it’s perfectly serviceable, just not terribly exciting and a bit repetitive. I think it especially gets tiring when it comes to the enemy base assault challenges where they just spawn like 6-7 waves of enemies at you. The gadgets you get throughout the game aren’t really fun to use in combat much, you can’t really incorporate much of them mid combo like in the Arkham games, they feel like fairly tacked on additions with the exception of like, the standard web shooter. If anything I think the more interesting elements of the combat stems from webbing enemies, not only as a means to nullify and leave enemies vulnerable (and later upgrades allows you to grab webbed enemies and fling them around rodeo style), but webbing enemies against walls or floors results in an instant KO, stuff like that is very interesting and ultimately satisfying to pull off, I wish the game had more unique elements like that when it comes to the combat.
The stealth though? Yeah it sucks. It REALLY sucks. Here’s where I think the Arkham comparisons are the most justified because this game basically just rips off the Arkham Predator sections but fails to understand what made them work in the first place. For one, stealth in this game just seems pointless to me, unless there’s like a hostage involved to where you have to stealth (there never is). But like, Spider-Man isn’t really weak to bullets like Batman is, he can just easily dodge the bullets of armed enemies repeatedly. And even when you stealthily take down everyone in the room, most of the time the game just spawns more enemies for you to fight already aware of your presence anyway, so what was even the point of picking them off if I was just gonna have to go in guns blazing anyway? I might as well have started loudly taking everyone out from the start, it doesn’t really make a difference. What’s the point of doing stealth in that situation then? To make the enemy room…slightly easier? I don’t get it. Second, I said earlier that it ripped off the Arkham stealth sections but didn’t really understand what made them work and a BIG part of that is how the enemies behave. In Arkham when you pick off more and more enemies they start to get more terrified, they turn around more frequently making them harder to ambush, they adapt their tactics depending on how well you do, things actually escalate and get harder as the stealth section goes on. Here it’s the same tune every single time, enemies just…don’t seem to care when they see their comrades hanging from the ceiling and the only challenge comes from distracting enemies to separate them to easily pick them off again. It gets really boring and dull in no time, but that’s not even the worst of it. Oftentimes the game has you play as Spider-Man’s roomates, MJ and pre-Spiderpowered Miles Morales to play more traditional “throw distractions to sneak by enemies to avoid getting spotted and instakilled” stealth sections as well. These are the absolute low points of the game, it’s so incredibly dull, everything about their gameplay sections has been done infinitely better in other stealth games, it’s just a waste and it grinds the pace to a halt so hard. Every time the game changed perspectives to either of these characters I audibly groaned because I knew what would soon follow. On top of that you also sometimes take control of Peter himself to play stupidly easy circuit minigames. I used to really hate these when I first played the game because of how time wasting it all was but considering how much of a non issue they are I’ve softened up and just stopped caring that much.
The rest of the game is what I would consider generic open world busy work. Literal Ubisoft radio towers, trinkets to collect, pictures to take of locations, black cat picture locations, generic enemy base assaults, science lab based challenges, uh…pigeons to chase after? It’s all completely optional sure, but it’s very unrewarding filler that’s plastered all over the map. Admittedly though while hunting for the bags was mundane I love how each one of the items is unique and how Spider-Man comments on each of them, it’s great world building and is super charming.
In essence I can see a glimmer of a really solid title in here somewhere, but it’s buried underneath heaps of generic open world tropes and trying hard to be something it’s not. I’ve loosened up and warmed up to this game a little bit, but I still kind of felt constantly underwhelmed and drained throughout all of the small glimmers of polished high points. All I can hope is for the upcoming sequel to REALLY renovate the experience and make it truly stand out on its own.
Can’t really say much on the story, not exactly what you would call a Spider-Man fan (probably plays partly into why I didn’t initially care for the game to begin with lol), but it was fine enough. Spider-Man himself is always fun to listen to with his constant quips and banter between other people, and man Yuri Lowenthal just absolutely KILLS IT as Peter/Spidey, as he usually does with every role he’s in (Luka my beloved). Honestly all the voice actors put in a great performance all around, it’s just that I don’t particularly find the story engaging. Nothing inherently wrong with it and nothing that brings the experience down mind you but nothing that enhances it either. Outside of the story the game in general looks gorgeous, both the character animations and models and the overall city are really well done, though I do understand why people are upset that they basically changed Peter’s model in the remaster to look more like Tom Holland for whatever reason. I personally didn’t mind too much and got used to it quickly. The original model is still clearly better though.
Right off the bat, the swinging is no doubt the best thing about this game, and I think everyone can agree on that. Traversal is super fast, fluid, requires finesse to keep your speed going, looks super cool, everything about it is great. I don’t think it’s as organic as the swinging in Spider-Man 2, you can’t get as experimental or creative with web swinging as that game sadly, but it’s a super close second. I bring this up because sadly this is probably the BIGGEST positive I can give the game.
Combat for me is a mixed bag. It’s not terrible mind you, it’s fast paced, flashy and is super mobile with how you can zip around the arena from one enemy to another, but I feel it doesn’t really have a lot of variety and gets really repetitive fairly quickly. The game basically brow beats you into air comboing enemies over and over again. Most enemies on the ground can’t hit you while you’re in the air, you generate bonus focus while air comboing, it leaves specific enemies completely helpless, I mean heck there are even enemy voice lines that basically go “I CAN’T HIT HIM WHILE HE’S IN THE AIR!!!” and “DON’T LET HIM GET YOU IN THE AIR, IT’S OUR ONE AND ONLY WEAKNESS!!!” It also doesn’t help that there’s not a whole lot of variety in Spider-Man’s arsenal of moves, it’s definitely improved when you get more skill tree upgrades especially in terms of crowd control, but he basically only has like 1 grounded combo and 1 air combo and that’s about it. I see quite a few people compare this system to the Arkham games (and yes the Arkham comparisons will be highlighted throughout this review, it’s basically inevitable lol), but honestly I don’t really think the styles of combat are comparable. Arkham’s combat is much simpler, you can’t really juggle someone in the air in that game, but it’s more of a rhythmic style of combat, flowing hits from one enemy to the next, using button combinations to deal with special enemy types all while trying to get a high combo score. The closest I can compare Spider-Man’s combat to is like…a watered down hack and slash. Again, it works and it’s perfectly serviceable, just not terribly exciting and a bit repetitive. I think it especially gets tiring when it comes to the enemy base assault challenges where they just spawn like 6-7 waves of enemies at you. The gadgets you get throughout the game aren’t really fun to use in combat much, you can’t really incorporate much of them mid combo like in the Arkham games, they feel like fairly tacked on additions with the exception of like, the standard web shooter. If anything I think the more interesting elements of the combat stems from webbing enemies, not only as a means to nullify and leave enemies vulnerable (and later upgrades allows you to grab webbed enemies and fling them around rodeo style), but webbing enemies against walls or floors results in an instant KO, stuff like that is very interesting and ultimately satisfying to pull off, I wish the game had more unique elements like that when it comes to the combat.
The stealth though? Yeah it sucks. It REALLY sucks. Here’s where I think the Arkham comparisons are the most justified because this game basically just rips off the Arkham Predator sections but fails to understand what made them work in the first place. For one, stealth in this game just seems pointless to me, unless there’s like a hostage involved to where you have to stealth (there never is). But like, Spider-Man isn’t really weak to bullets like Batman is, he can just easily dodge the bullets of armed enemies repeatedly. And even when you stealthily take down everyone in the room, most of the time the game just spawns more enemies for you to fight already aware of your presence anyway, so what was even the point of picking them off if I was just gonna have to go in guns blazing anyway? I might as well have started loudly taking everyone out from the start, it doesn’t really make a difference. What’s the point of doing stealth in that situation then? To make the enemy room…slightly easier? I don’t get it. Second, I said earlier that it ripped off the Arkham stealth sections but didn’t really understand what made them work and a BIG part of that is how the enemies behave. In Arkham when you pick off more and more enemies they start to get more terrified, they turn around more frequently making them harder to ambush, they adapt their tactics depending on how well you do, things actually escalate and get harder as the stealth section goes on. Here it’s the same tune every single time, enemies just…don’t seem to care when they see their comrades hanging from the ceiling and the only challenge comes from distracting enemies to separate them to easily pick them off again. It gets really boring and dull in no time, but that’s not even the worst of it. Oftentimes the game has you play as Spider-Man’s roomates, MJ and pre-Spiderpowered Miles Morales to play more traditional “throw distractions to sneak by enemies to avoid getting spotted and instakilled” stealth sections as well. These are the absolute low points of the game, it’s so incredibly dull, everything about their gameplay sections has been done infinitely better in other stealth games, it’s just a waste and it grinds the pace to a halt so hard. Every time the game changed perspectives to either of these characters I audibly groaned because I knew what would soon follow. On top of that you also sometimes take control of Peter himself to play stupidly easy circuit minigames. I used to really hate these when I first played the game because of how time wasting it all was but considering how much of a non issue they are I’ve softened up and just stopped caring that much.
The rest of the game is what I would consider generic open world busy work. Literal Ubisoft radio towers, trinkets to collect, pictures to take of locations, black cat picture locations, generic enemy base assaults, science lab based challenges, uh…pigeons to chase after? It’s all completely optional sure, but it’s very unrewarding filler that’s plastered all over the map. Admittedly though while hunting for the bags was mundane I love how each one of the items is unique and how Spider-Man comments on each of them, it’s great world building and is super charming.
In essence I can see a glimmer of a really solid title in here somewhere, but it’s buried underneath heaps of generic open world tropes and trying hard to be something it’s not. I’ve loosened up and warmed up to this game a little bit, but I still kind of felt constantly underwhelmed and drained throughout all of the small glimmers of polished high points. All I can hope is for the upcoming sequel to REALLY renovate the experience and make it truly stand out on its own.