Marvel’s Spider-Man

Marvel’s Spider-Man is a competent if uninspired take on the famous superhero: borrowing its overall structure from the modern open-world design, Insomniac’s game excels when it comes to traversal and movement but offers a by-the-books story, some questionable stealth sections, and a combat system that heavily impresses at first, but may eventually overstay its welcome.

The game’s first right decision is to present Peter Parker as an already experienced Spider-Man, as there’s no need to cover tiresome ground and show his origin story yet again. So, when the game opens, Peter has already made a friend in the police, Yuri Watanabe, shares a troubled history with Mary Jane, and has formed a rivalry with New York’s greatest mob boss, Wilson Fisk. There’s already history between the characters to be explored.

The first set-piece is a siege on Fisk’s headquarters, where the police is having trouble dealing with Kingpin’s heavily armored goons. When Spider-Man comes to the rescue, we can already see what makes this character stand out from other superheroes: the way he has a more down-to-earth life, as he must juggle his mission to save New York with his “real job” while caring for his family. On his way to Fisk, for example, he receives a call from his boss telling him he’s late for work, and when he’s climbing the crumbling Kingpin tower, it’s his Aunt May who calls to check up on him.

The first scene in the game has the camera travel through his desk, showing a half-eaten energy bar and Chinese take-out, handwritten notes, and a mess of tools and magazines at his table. Spider-Man is a superhero who is behind on his rent and has to find a place to crash when eviction becomes inevitable. The game succeeds in this regard, in grounding Peter Parker’s life, making him – despite his powers and genius – a more tangible figure than it’s common in the genre.

The writing also nails his funny personality: as Spider-Man, he cracks jokes all the time, making fun of his enemies and his situation. A common bit has him emulating a noir voice while talking with Yuri, referring to himself in the third-person as “Spider Cop”. She hates this, of course, but indulges him sometimes, which makes the joke create a playful dynamic between the two characters that reflects their growing friendship.

The game just forgets to give the protagonist much room to grow. Here, Peter Parker barely has a narrative arc, with the only real struggle coming in the form of his relationship with Mary Jane. She is a fearless reporter who doesn’t hesitate before infiltrating a terrorist group, so he fears for her safety. But, while he believes he’s being protective, she feels suffocated by his constant judgment.

The villains, then, end up disconnected from Peter’s emotional struggle, even if they are very close to him. His boss, for example, is Otto Octavius, who is developing his devilish mechanical arms with Peter’s help. There was an opportunity here to make Peter feel guilty about the creation of his enemies, but this theme is barely scratched by the story.

Besides a couple of lines of dialogue that acknowledges the fact, this is only brought up by Jonas Jameson, who we constantly hear on the radio blaming everything on Spider-Man. The game, however, never really stops to discuss how sometimes Jameson may be right – and, especially, what Jameson being right means for Spider-Man and the city. This is the major problem of Marvel’s Spider-Man’s story: there is potential here, in theme and characters, but things remain surface-level.

Otto Octavius, for example, is one of the game’s two big villains – the other being the leader of a so-called “Demon Organization” – and they both share the same motivation, which is to hate Norman Osborn, rightfully blaming him for their misfortunes. Their revenge plotline, however, never leaves the beaten path. Even their lines of dialogue are too commonplace: “The only way to fight a monster is to become one,” the villain says, justifying why they are willing to sacrifice innocent lives to achieve their revenge.

Marvel’s Spider-Man’s villains needed more shades of gray. Take Otto’s characterization in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 as an interesting contrast. In the movie, he was a good man turned monstrous because of his project. The mechanical arms completely twisted his personality, but he still managed to get back in control for a small window of time just so we could see in his mournful expression how sorry he was for the things he had done. Here, Otto is consumed by revenge, the arms just remove his inhibitions: the violence he perpetrates is his innermost desire. In other words, gone is the pathos (a quality that evokes pity, useful in tragic characters) that made Raimi’s character so endearing and, in its place, there is just a bland, one-dimensional motivation.

The game’s appeal lies not in its story, but in how we control the character. The secret is momentum, it’s the way Spider-Man moves across New York City at incredible speed, web-swinging from one building to the next with little effort. If we swing towards a building and hit it by accident, he will start to wall-run in the same direction, keeping his speed, and if we hit an object in the process, Peter will just parkour over it, never breaking the flow of the action.

Wall-running and parkour are not automatic actions but feel like they are, because to perform them we must keep holding the button we are already using to web-swing: it’s our action that is automatic. And if we find ourselves at a spot without buildings to attach his web, we can still propel Spider-Man forward with the simple press of a button. The effect is impressive: web-swinging through New York is a breeze, it’s easy, it’s exciting, and most importantly, it’s frustration-free.

The game’s combat system follows a similar motto, impressing us with the fluidity of the animations, which make combos look on the screen much more complex than they actually are to perform. With little effort, Spider-Man will shoot two guards with webs, sticking them to a wall, then remove the gun from a third man and throw it at the face of a fourth, uppercut a fifth one, pushing him up to the air, follow him there, kick him a few times, and finally throw him back to the ground right at the face of the sixth enemy. It’s a combat system built around mobs, with an efficient autotarget system that allows us to easily go from punching one enemy to kicking a second – all with the help of a dodge button that – contextualized with the “spider-sense” – can make Spider-Man as invulnerable as Batman in the Arkham games.

This is a combat system that works wonders when Spider-Man is dealing with mobs of enemies but struggles with boss fights. One climactic clash with the leader of the demon clan takes place in the subway and is as restrictive as it is unexciting: here, we lose control of how Spider-Man usually controls, as the hero is now artificially stuck to the ground. The fight amounts to waiting for the enemy to attack, press the dodge button, and then attack. Rinse and repeat. When the battle evolves, we have to dodge… to the side or up, instead of just pressing a button. The whole sequence, then, doesn’t work mechanically – it’s too simple and repetitive for that – and doesn’t work as a set piece either – it’s too tame and uninventive for that. Not all boss battles are as problematic as this one, but this serves as a testament to how the combat system falters when it comes to single encounters with powerful foes.

There are countless mobs for Spider-Man to fight in New York City, but this leads to another issue because there may be too many of them. New York is divided into districts and each one has crimes to solve, which amounts to going to the scene and beating up the perpetrators. Initially, there are just five of these crimes in each district, but we eventually get twenty of these per district, plus four types of enemy bases with five waves of mobs each, plus the mobs we fight in special challenges, and finally also the mobs we fight in campaign missions and on a few sidequests.

In other words, in Marvel’s Spider-Man, we have a combat system that is as visually impressive as the game’s structure is repetitive. Luckily, most of these many, many fights are optional, but it is still a problem when all the content amounts to offering the same experience over and over again – it turns the game into a shallow spectacle we play on automatic while thinking of other things.

This may be why there are stealth sections spread throughout the campaign, where we play as Mary Jane: it’s a way to offer a bit of variety, mixing the usual combat with something else. These brief missions evolve over time – we start having to just hide, then we can throw objects to distract guards, then we gain a weapon, and so forth, but they are still too basic for their own good.

The first issue here is that these stealth sections are too linear and rigid, offering just one way to progress while punishing being caught with an immediate game-over: there’s no room for experimentation and player expression. Second, they are too simple and obvious, with the game usually signaling which object we must knock down to distract an enemy: we don’t need to observe our surroundings and plan accordingly. Finally, they also suffer from the usual funny videogame logic: if you turn off a light source, a guard will leave his post to stare at the broken lamp – a lamp that was already in his field of vision, no less – while you move crouched behind them, completely invisible to their senses.

Even when playing as Spider-Man himself, stealth can lead to some silly moments, such as realizing non-alerted enemies don’t look up: we can decorate a room as a butcher shop, with the hanging bodies of dozens of enemies tied in webs, while their companions stand right beneath them, utterly clueless that something wrong is going on. Besides that, there’s also the fact that there are few reasons to use stealth as Spider-Man (the game will sometimes reward stealth with tokens to buy new costumes in an attempt to remedy that) because combat is a much more complex – and so rewarding – system in the game.

This game will never be praised for the quality of its stealth sections, but there is actually one mission that stands out above the rest. We control a third character after a terrorist attack. The set-piece works because it builds the villains – the so-called demons – as a terrifying force. When we play as Spider-Man, they are just another batch of mindless goons to be easily dispatched, but here, when we are in control of an ordinary person and must witness people being shot and blown up, people just like our character, these goons suddenly become fearsome and dangerous. The violence they perpetrate becomes tangible and real. It’s the best sequence in the entire game.

Finally, we have to talk about the open-world design here, which doesn’t stray away from the established formula for the genre. This means there are many towers that unlock parts of the map – here with a simple, mindless hacking minigame –, many collectibles to find across the city – at least, Peter will comment on each one, making them more meaningful –, and many side quests to accept – usually a person will say someone needs help and Spider-Man will go to the designated spot on the map to dispatch more mobs of enemies. The highlight here is the missions related to Harry Osborn – Peter’s friend – as they either offer some challenge related to traversal – such as going to a place without losing too much altitude – or offer funny bits, such as making Spider-Man deal with bird poop.

The open-world design of Marvel’s Spider-Man is emblematic of the overall experience. It’s competent, polished, and offers a couple of stand-out moments, but ultimately it is also derivative and repetitive. It’s a great start for the franchise, which needs just a bit more ambition next time.

November 19, 2023.