A Mostly Entertaining Ride
Marvel's Spider-Man was a welcome comeback to the Spider-Man franchise of games. From swinging around to exploring the city, it has what you'd expect from a Spider-Man game. With a refreshing story in a superhero franchise that seems unique with character growth to the rather mediocre side content, it at least tends to keep you engaged during your 20 hour or so playthrough.
The game begins with a bang as you are taking down Fisk, and it just jumps right in to the combat without really easing you into it. You essentially fight almost every type of enemy during this beginning and you'll quickly learn how you prefer to take down each type of enemy, from constantly evading them to get behind them or just attacking non stop. You then go on to the true open world of the game as it introduces you to most of what the game offers, and if you enjoy collectibles and small things to do on the way to your objective, then this has it all.
My problem with Spider-Man lies directly with the combat and how poor the side content is. Just about all of the side activities has you going to a spot, fight a bunch of enemies with small bonus styles to earn tokens, and then move on. There is little variation to this other than some base camps here and there in the city, and that just turns into waves of enemies. The combat tends to just being the same moves that you feel comfortable with as there is little motivation to change it up as switching to other gadgets became rather pointless since you can basically keep using the same one over and over as it recharges fast with each enemy you take down. You level up like an other game and put points into rather minor things as I probably used about 4 things on the skill tree and just keep using what you enjoy. The tokens you earn during the game give you ways to upgrade your gadgets to mostly just do more damage or refill faster, or to earn new suits. With not being a huge Spider-Man fan in general, I found most of the suits rather lame visually since I have always liked the normal suit color schemes.
The crux of this game is the story, and by far the number one reason to play this game. You experience what it is like for Peter Parker to struggle being a super hero, having a job working with Doctor Octavious who is having a hard time paying Peter, as well as Peter helping Aunt May and also struggle his relationship with Mary Jane. All of the acting during the story is top notch, and what you'd come to expect from Insomniac Studious. The character progression of Doctor Octavious throughout the game kept me going as I wanted to see what was gonna happen next, as he is one of the characters fans of the comics or movies know about and what happens later on. The mission structure tends to be going to a place, clear out some enemies, tail a group, and so on for this style of open world game. The part that differentiates itself from other games is the parts where you play as Mary Jane and Miles Morales. I found this to be one of my favorite parts of the game as you have to sneak around and see the world from someone else's point of view. They intertwine them with Spider-Man in clever ways that I was excited when these points would come up.
If the rest of the game lived up to the quality of the story content, this would have been one of the best games of 2018. The side missions are mostly the same with you going to a spot or two, clear it out, and move on to the next side mission. There are only two exceptions to this, to the point where there as good as the story, and should have been part of the main story and not pushed off to something optional. They even have cutscenes tied to them and major character interactions that non of the other side content has. With needing to keep fighting the same style of enemies throughout the game, the poor dodging, and mediocre side activities, I can only recommend to play this game for the main story and then move on, because it is one of the best stories in a superhero franchise I have seen, cinematic or video game wise.
