With Great Power…Comes A Great Game

An in-depth look at Insomniac's superhero adventure.

Spider-Man snaps a selfie while swinging over the city

At some point, everyone dreams of being a superhero.

Whether enjoying a movie or reading a comic, at some point the gears in your head start to turn. You think about your favorite powers, your superhero name, your origin story (which hopefully doesn't involve saying goodbye to a family member.) You really start to wonder what it would feel like to be a superhero. Marvel’s Spider-Man on PlayStation is a game that lets you come tantalizingly close to fully embracing that feeling.

Spider-Man is one of Marvel 's most popular heroes which makes perfect sense given his determined spirit and relatability, as well as his quick wit. Spider-Man had been the main focus of several previous video games, but most of them were movie tie-ins and a large majority of those were not very well received. They had some good fundamentals, but they didn't truly capture what it would feel like to be an individual with the powers of a spider. Insomniac ’s Spider-Man changed all of that.

The game began development in 2014 and was set to be Insomniac's first licensed property game in 22 years. In an interview, Insomniac said that their main focus in development was trying to make Spider-Man feel unique and really focus on what makes the hero exceptional. It was teased at E3 in 2016 and released in September 2018 as a PlayStation exclusive.

I remember being very intrigued by the trailers. I'd always liked Spider-Man. I thought he was okay when it came to superheroes. But my only experience with Spider-Man had been in films. I had no idea how Peter Parker's powers would translate to a video game. The game received almost immediate praise and my curiosity turned into excitement. Two months after the game's release, I ended up with a copy as a surprise gift. Almost from the start, I could tell why the game had received so much praise. Swinging around using Spider-Man's web shooters felt absolutely fantastic. The controls were simple and intuitive- so intuitive in fact, that it was actually praised by a game developer on the original Spider-Man 2 team. New York City had been faithfully recreated and was absolutely stunning to behold.

One of the biggest criticisms I remember seeing about the game was that the combat was similar to the Batman Arkham series. Although I can definitely see where the inspiration came from, I never felt as though I was playing an Arkham game. The controls were similar, but the move sets were entirely different. Spider-Man is an acrobat who lifts someone up in the air with his punches, knocks them out cold while still airborne and then uses his webs to pick up another goon and slam them into the ground. He also has gadgets that can provide him some assistance, such as electric webs and spider drones.

An additional aspect of the game that was unexpected was the sheer amount of spider suits available to wear. Each suit comes with a power up that can be mixed and matched with other suits. This means you could settle on your perfect aesthetic while still benefiting from an additional ability. They even included movie accurate suits in future updates representing all three film versions of Spider-Man (with a particular emphasis on the version from the Marvel Cinematic Universe).

Like most open world games, Marvel's Spider-Man has a ton of side missions. Perhaps the most prominent type of additional content are the crimes that happen throughout the city, which seem to be an obvious choice to include in a game about Spider-Man. Each section of the map has a set number of crimes for you to complete and this is where the game stumbles ever so slightly. The crimes are fun at first but if you're going for a complete playthrough where you want to accomplish everything, the crimes can unfortunately be very repetitive. The other side missions mentioned above do managed to be somewhat varied in their approach. However, I must admit that I started to feel worn out after completing my 20th car chase.

One of my favorite extra activities involved the puzzles that you can complete as Peter Parker. These include balancing out and rerouting circuits as well as matching patterns of different elements. They might sound simple but as the game progresses, they do pose a slight challenge. At the very least they got my brain to work for a while and it gave me a break from punching and jumping.

And since we mentioned Peter Parker, it would be unfair to skip over the balancing act that this game manages to pull off. Although you spend most of your time as Spider-Man, the moments that really stand out are the moments where Peter takes the stage. Insomniac managed to mix fantasy with reality in such a way that I could feel the tension of one person leading two completely different lives. The game's narrative is more of an emotional roller coaster than I ever expected from a bright and colorful video game.

Before I continue, I should note that this next section will contain a very mild spoiler for the first game, but most people should still be able to enjoy the overarching story.

The next step in Insomniac’s Spider-Man journey happened in November of 2020 and came in the form of a side character and their first game- Miles Morales. At the very end of Spider-Man Miles reveals to Peter that he has also been bitten by a radioactive spider and has developed similar powers to Peter. This leads to Peter choosing to mentor Miles which provides the setup for Spider-Man: Miles Morales. In this narrative, Peter has to leave New York City for a short time, giving Miles the chance to step up and be Spider-Man. While the game has the same control layout as the first game, there is a different feel to swinging through New York. Miles is still very new to being Spider-Man and as such is not as fluid in his motions or as graceful. Nevertheless, it's still fun to play through Miles’ coming of age story, especially since he has a few different powers from Peter, such as electric attacks and temporary camouflage.

This game also served as a launch title for the PlayStation 5 and was able to take advantage of this system's features including near instantaneous load speed and haptic feedback in the controller. While I was worried that this game would simply be a side story stretched too thin, I found myself pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this game, which serves as a bridge between the previous installment and the upcoming sequel.

In 2021, Insomniac released a trailer for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 revealing that the game will have Peter and Miles working together as their respective versions of Spider-Man and that one of the game's main villains will be the Venom symbiote. The new installment has a current release date of October 20, 2023.

Marvel's Spider-Man is one of my favorite video games, and I don't say that lightly. The story is compelling and relatable in ways that I did not expect. With breathtaking visuals and engaging gameplay, this adventure will keep you entertained for hours on end. What it won't do is cure your arachnophobia. Trust me, I speak from experience.

This post was written by Vanessa Hart, creator of Deep Dive Gaming