(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/16/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Marvel's Spider-Man
Developer: Insomniac
Publisher: SCEI
Genre(s): Beat em' Up, Open-World
Platforms: PS4
Release Date: September 7, 2018
Given that Marvel’s Spider-Man isn’t attached to any specific source material, the developers are given moderate liberties as to where they plant their story on the greater Spider-Man timeline. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a post-college, 23-year-old Peter Parker is the oldest incarnation we’ve seen of this character. We’ve seen Peter depicted as a bright-eyed teenager yet to graduate high school so often that the rare instances where he’s an adult who is seasoned in his superhero duties seem odd and disorienting. Don’t be alarmed, skeptical Marvel fans; this drinking-aged Spider-Man who may have developed a wrinkle or two is still as spry and energetically quippy as his usual adolescent timeframe, shooting spiderwebs as gooey and viscous as he did when he was sixteen *ahem.* Honing his extraordinary abilities that come with his mutant spider DNA is no longer at its awkward and amateur coming-of-age stage. Peter’s new problems he faces are commonplace for anyone situated smack dab in their twenties. He struggles to pay his rent punctually, and an exclamation point is added by his landlord per notice via a series of sticky notes. Mary Jane Watson is no longer the source of inspiration when he shoots the sticky white webs from his wrists– (okay, I’ll stop now…) she’s a product of a bygone romance that soured with time. Peter’s pining for her is much more forlorn now than the wistful eagerness once felt back when she was out of his league. Besides saving the good people of New York as his heroic alter ego, Peter’s main prerogative as his public persona is a paid internship at the laboratory of Otto Octavius developing cybernetic prosthetic body parts for those whose limbs have been unfortunately severed. If you recognize the name of Peter’s boss and mentor as the legal name of the arch-villain Doctor Octopus, his mild-mannered role is indicative of the extent in which the game scrambles the timeline for Spider-Man’s secondary characters as well. NYC mayor Norman Osborn has yet to find pleasure in pelting Peter with pumpkin bombs, and who knew Aunt May was dedicated to philanthropy working at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter? For some reason, multiple film adaptations of Spider-Man feel the need to portray the origin story of Spider-Man and Uncle Ben’s tragic demise revolving around it ad nauseam, and Marvel’s Spider-Man made the wise decision not to gamify it. Then again, shifting away from stringent conventions regarding a narrative is what video game adaptations do best, and getting a glimpse of Peter at a slightly advanced stage in his life is refreshing.
Despite all of the foibles of young adulthood that define Peter’s present life, he’s still obligated to find time to entrap the various criminals of NYC in his weapons-grade gossamers, halting their nefarious deeds. The introduction immediately catapults Spidey into the action of infiltrating the base of Wilson Fisk, who is also notably referred to by “Kingpin.” The opposition of the armed goons on staff for this decorated, fatcat mob boss acts as perfect tutorial fodder for the player to become acquainted with Spider-Man’s combat. In all honesty, a sizable margin of players should already be familiar with Spider-Man’s combat, for the game takes more than a generous helping of inspiration from Batman’s Arkham series in this regard. The Caped Crusader’s popular interactive trilogy is perceived as the quintessential gold standard for superhero video games, so the fact that its influence crossed over to the rival comic conglomerate to keep Spider-Man from fumbling again isn’t the least bit surprising. While I realize that pointing out the similarities sounds like I’m dishing out disparagement to Spider-Man, I’ll make a case that Batman’s signature combat style translates logically over to the red web-slinger. Unlike their peers who defeat vengeful, eldritch gods and diabolical forces of great destruction, the enemies of both Batman and Spider-Man tend to dial down the scale to domestic thuggery. Even the supervillains that verge on the supernatural spectrum still tend to use their extraordinary evilness to siphon stacks of Benjamins from their local bank vault. Both Batman and Spider-Man commonly beat down low-brow criminals, and they have a habit of working in numbers. In Spider-Man’s case, simultaneously attacking and defending in the mosh pit of gang members is far more manageable. While executing a barrage of punching and kicking, another scumbag’s cheap hit from behind is signaled by a white spark over Spidey’s head so he can dodge accordingly. This flash during combat is the tingling sensation of “spidey senses,” a canonical ability of Spider-Man’s utilized cleverly in combat. The same trigger will also activate whenever Spidey is about to be shot by a firearm. For executing Spider-Man’s swiftness properly, the player’s skill will always be rewarded by automatically spurting webs in the eyes of the would-be assailant, making them extremely susceptible to Spider-Man’s torrent of knockout jabs. If one isn’t patient enough to wait for an oncoming blow, Spider-Man can still utilize his sticky white stuff in combat at his own volition. A rapid-fire webbing will tie enemies in a full body harness, the “web impact” will ensnare an enemy with one shot and glue them to walls with its impact, the web bomb is used for crowd control, and the electric web will trap those in its crossfire in a shocking bind like a taser net. Essentially, Spidey’s assortment of webs is equivalent to Batman’s gadgets, secondary tools to compensate for range and or the overwhelming swarm of enemies. While Spider-Man lays out Arkham’s choreographed combat a little too thick, I prefer the inspired imitation here. Spider-Man is inherently more physically adroit than DC’s brooding bat, so the flexibility adds a layer of fluidity to each combat situation. Add a few quality-of-life enhancements to the combat that Insomniac surely thought could’ve been improved on from the Arkham games and the countless instances where Spider-Man has to bust up a dozen skulls at once are consistently smoother than any instance where Arkham’s droogs ambushed Batman.
I suppose Spider-Man’s proficient agility and endurance can be attributed to his regular exertion roaming around NYC protecting its loud and brash denizens. The Marvel universe seems to be contained to Stan Lee’s home city and the real-life headquarters of his comic empire, specifically the borough of Manhattan. NYC’s ritziest and most tourist-friendly borough has been rendered as a world map countless times since the parameters of the open-world genre became feasible, and Marvel’s Spiderman is yet another loyal recreation. Peter’s bachelor pad and the F.E.A.S.T. shelter are located in Chinatown, and Peter is often fashionably late to his appointments at Octavius’ modest working space on the rooftop of a building in Greenwich Village. The rectangular, arboreal space of Central Park is as whimsical as ever, and the northern district of Harlem exudes that rough charm that makes it a haven of artistry. The immersiveness of Manhattan’s interactive model here may be soiled a bit when they see the Avenger’s Tower casting a shadow even over the Empire State Building, but I see it as the salient stamp that marks this NYC as a hyper-fictionalized version that abides by the ethics of comic books (and perhaps it's also a monument to Stan Lee’s ego). Manhattan under the Marvel sun is a busy and vibrant place filled with an optimism that a reality where superheroes don’t exist doesn't have. Most importantly, how does it feel swinging through the city that never sleeps like an arachnid Tarzan? I’m happy to report that it’s absolutely splendid. Insomniac nailed the flow and precarious inertia that should come with perching oneself at the eye level of urban architecture and maintaining that height by hanging by literal threads. Casting a web isn’t automatic as it depends on the altitude, but executing it at the right moment and keeping that rhythm is an aspect of this mechanic that adds to the kinetic feel of being Spider-Man. Even if a mission was located near the remains of the World Trade Center and I was currently in Harlem, I never felt the need to mitigate the time of the trip by fast traveling via the NYC metro system. However, I suppose taking the subway would be pleasant from Peter’s perspective. Waltzing around for too long atop all the skyscrapers will trigger J. Jonah Jameson’s new radio show where Peter’s old blowhard boss channels Rush Limbaugh, scapegoating Spider-Man for every conceivable societal shortcoming from the prices of gas to receding hairlines. You never change, do you, Jonah?
The trek between the main missions will always be interrupted by something if the player beckons to their call. While the cavalcade of Spider-Man supervillains is as quirky as they are notorious, the common crime occurrences are perpetrated by either their insignificant underlings or desperate hoodlums. At what seems like every five seconds, an orange caution sign appears on the radar that signifies a crime is taking place at that exact spot. Gangs will either be robbing a jewelry store, antagonizing the cops with heavy gunfire, or simply stinking up the streets with their noxious intimidation. Kingpin’s goons befoul certain spaces with their presence to the extent where they are designated as gang strongholds, and the process of ridding the site of them is coordinated like a horde mode. All of the nonviolent additional activities to do in NYC essentially boil all of the extra content down to a collectathon. Peter must’ve taken some serious Adderall to study for his trigonometry exams in high school, for the combination of prescription speed and his superhuman abilities has resulted in over fifty different backpacks being suspended from the walls and ceilings all over Manhattan, each holding a Spider-Man-related easter egg. Only under the influence of drugs would inspire such an eccentric endeavor. Peter gets a chance to engage in his photography passion again after quitting his job at the Daily Bugle, collecting the pictures of various Manhattan landmarks he takes with his camera. Black Cat, an original character totally dissimilar from another anti-hero vixen, teases Spider-Man with a series of cat dolls that subtly signify the location of her next robbery. The enigmatic Taskmaster takes a break from toying with The Avengers to test Spidey’s heroic reflexes with several hectic tasks ranging from deactivating bombs to following drones. His impersonal communication methods combined with what he asks of Spider-Man exude an uncannily sinister aura to Jigsaw. Peter’s best friend, Harry Osbourn, will also assign jobs to him from afar, but they involve using environmental science to solve the city’s rampant air pollution instead of sick and twisted riddles and games. Peter can also practice biology and electrical engineering in his workspace, connecting the flow of circuit arrays and matching the genome material to a sample respectively. These might be the most inert activities in the game, but I was consistently engaged with each of them nevertheless. Leave it to the team who created Ratchet & Clank to conjure up some compelling minigames. While not every subsidiary activity throughout the city explicitly involves collecting, completing any of these always rewards the player with tokens. Maybe these won’t be a perfect incentive for every player to humor all of the side content the game offers, but unlocking alternate spider suits and upgrading the gadgets was enough motivation for me.
But how monotonous would Spider-Man’s daily routine be if it was the focal point of the game? Where there’s a superhero, there’s always a supervillain foil to match his extraordinary might. As far as the selection on hand, only the supervillains from Batman rival the overall breadth and infamy of the big baddies associated with Spider-Man. Since The Green Goblin is an elected official and Doctor Octopus has yet to sprout his mechanical arms, which iconic Spider-Man supervillain is the one at the helm of chaos and disorder? Surprisingly enough, the primary antagonist is someone that Insomniac dug through the catacombs of Spider-Man villains to scrounge up, an obscurity that I had to research whether or not he was an original creation from Insomniac. The impetus for highlighting a generally unknown bad guy as opposed to one of Spider-Man’s classic nemeses is to pull the wool over the player’s eyes. Unlike Otto and Norman whose screen presence evokes tense anticipation wondering when they’re going to wear their outfits and shift over to the dark side, Martin Li is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Who would ever expect the kind and altruistic spearheader of the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelter to harbor psychotic tendencies? He’s practically the epitome of the rule of thumb that it’s always the person you’d least expect, especially in an environment where the deplorables of the world aren’t afraid to show their true colors and make a spectacle of it. I suppose his pale-faced reaction to Peter presenting him with an arcane Asian demon mask worn by the Chinese terrorist group that attempted to ransack Kingpin’s museum exhibit is clear foreshadowing. Once the Demons enact the town hall bombing that begins the second act of the narrative, Mr. Li reveals his villainous persona Mr. Negative to the public and Peter is shocked beyond belief. Under the special cooperation of police chief Yuri Watanabe, Spider-Man spends a hefty chunk of the game tracking down a biological weapon referred to as “devil’s breath,” something that could lead to disastrous consequences for the city if Li ever got his hands on it. All the while, Spider-Man simultaneously attempts to find a clear motive that would lead this admirable humanitarian to forsake the city he provides for. In my perspective, the unclear duality of the character is what makes him an interesting antagonist.
Naturally, Spider-Man’s pursuit of Mister Negative is what drives the narrative. Per usual for an open-world title, the difficulty across the main missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man fluctuates like the stock market. Some are lengthy quests involving perilous chases with The Demons that leave a square of Manhattan in dire wreckage by its resolution. Others essentially boil down to watching a series of cutscenes that automatically further the story, and I’d fervently chastise the game for letting cinematics perform the gameplay’s job if this was a more prevalent instance. Most of the time, Spider-Man will be kicking the absolute shit out of Demons as he would whenever they decide to disturb the peace on the streets, only with story context supporting the action as opposed to the case-by-case instances outside of the missions. Complaints are regularly issued about the repetitive mission content in Marvel’s Spiderman, and I have to admit that the buoyant and responsive combat overstays its welcome. However, Insomniac foresaw these grievances and added some diversity to the gameplay, but it seems like their efforts denote spite instead of accommodation.
While Mary Jane is no longer Spidey’s main squeeze, she’s still an active presence in his life regardless if their romantic bond has been severed. MJ’s life after college has landed her into a lucrative career as an investigative journalist working for Peter’s former place of employment. While the job requires her to proactively get her hands dirty and procure vital information, she thinks that she’s Nancy fucking Drew. Mary Jane is constantly on the prowl in the vicinity of criminals so dangerous that they would ideally be dealt with by the CIA in a world without superheroes. This is why Spider-Man and MJ have a coincidental rendezvous at the museum where we first meet The Demons. Putting herself in peril to take a few measly snapshots is a chronic calamity that must cause Peter’s spidey senses to flair up with the intensity of a nervous breakdown, but she’s equally just as sharp a thorn in the player’s side because every act of “journalistic bravery” is an interactive mission. The player will control Mary Jane snooping around the active space of either The Demons or another criminal faction, occasionally manipulating the environment to divert their gaze lest she suffers fatal consequences. These stealth sections are handled adequately, but their integration with Spider-Man’s gameplay is incredibly dissonant. Playing as a regular human inherently feels quite encumbered in a superhero video game, but that’s the whole point of why Mary Jane puts herself at risk. Apparently, dating Spider-Man has made her delusional, as his extraordinary status and abilities have diminished her confidence. I’ve heard of penis envy, but jealousy towards your boyfriend for their web-slinging is something Dr. Freud couldn't wrap his head around. My diagnosis is that these sections suck, and Mary Jane sucks for stubbornly enacting these charades in the spirit of her insecurities. Another character named Miles Morales is also playable in sections that mirror MJ’s, but I’ll discuss him at a later date.
I would’ve applauded Marvel’s Spider-Man for separating itself from other Spider-Man media with a fresh and underutilized main villain at the wheel, but the final third of the game swerves into total fan service. Once Octavius straps the functional robotic claws onto his backside, you know he’s bound to break bad like Walter White at any moment. Peter is obviously not his Jesse, so the help that Doc Oc needs to dismantle Norman Osbourn’s regime with his newfound appendages is a variation of the classic Sinister Six lineup. Doc Oc storms the maximum security containment center on Ryker’s Island and releases Electro, Rhino, Vulture, Scorpion, and the newest detainee of Mister Negative to wreak havoc to an extent NYC has never experienced before. All of the nameless thugs in orange jumpsuits also take advantage of their prison walls crumbling, so they set up blockades around the city and replace The Demons as the primary common enemy type. Maybe I shouldn’t evaluate this hodgepodge of classic Spider-Man villains with my usual air of cynicism, even if the story should’ve ended with Li’s arrest or Doc Oc taking his mantle alone so the story could maintain its integrity. I’ll gladly eat this exorbitant meal as a Spider-Man fan, and the double duels between them are the most thrilling parts of the game. However, the hallucination sequence caused by Scorpion’s venom is the most blatant borrowing of Arkham’s properties in the game, so I’ll have to dock a point or two from this end section anyway. I suppose it's rather jarring seeing Doc Oc steal Li’s thunder by the end. Not only does he inherently steal the show with his notoriety, but inadvertently killing Aunt May by unleashing the Devil’s Breath tops anything Li ever committed on the scum and villainy scale. Yes, the game ends on a tragic note with sweet Aunt May succumbing to the effects of the contagion and dying with Peter by her bedside. That’s cold, Insomniac.
Marvel’s Spider-Man gets away with two supervillains sharing the spotlight because neither of them are intended to be the primary villain. Despite their toxic rancor, I’ll have to agree with both Li and Octavius when they state that Norman Osbourn is the root of evil in NYC. Sure, he doesn’t actively cause chaos, but he’s a powerful figure who’s letting his city down nonetheless. My last comparison to Batman I’m going to address is that both superhero IPs share the same conflict of a class divide. This is why several of both series’ common bad guys are downtrodden thugs instead of decorated supervillains held up in mountainous fortresses. Comics always focus on the criminal deeds of petty theft or grand larceny and seldom contemplate why they commit them in the first place. Why do you think F.E.A.S.T. is it overcrowded with throngs of impoverished people in its two separate locations? Norman Osbourn doesn’t have to don a green mask and take up skysurfing to negatively affect his city–neglecting its destitute denizens while in a position to potentially help them is doing enough harm as is. That, and he conducted the experiment on Li that murdered his parents and he’s been undermining Otto for his entire career, so that’s more fuel to their respective fires. Despite their biases, there’s a legitimate argument that both maniacs are justified in eradicating Osbourn, so that’s a firm and logical debate regarding acting on the greater good. All the while, Osbourn has his own issues, namely enhancing the devil’s breath prototype to cure diseases instead of causing them for the sake of his sick son. I don’t inherently subscribe to the prevailing notion in modern fiction that all villains have to be somewhat sympathetic to be effective, but the pathos of every antagonist on display here works wonders as examples for nuanced character writing.
Spider-Man 2 who? This was the foggy question that Sony resolutely wanted gamers to ask after they sought to dismantle that dried-up Spider-Man released two gaming generations prior. With so much progress passed in the medium, it seems obvious that Marvel’s Spider-Man would triumph over Spider-Man 2 on presentation alone, and the high-definition graphical gloss and stellar voice acting certainly affirm this assumption. Still, all the immediate successors to Spider-Man 2 fumbled despite their enhanced visual sheen. Marvel’s Spider-Man is a Spider-Man title that understood the acute physics, combat, and world traversal that preserved Spider-Man 2 as the ultimate game with the web-slinger for years. Its prestigious presentation isn't the only trump card Marvel's Spider-Man places on the table. Its emotional story and impeccable characters outclass even the films. Marvel’s Spider-Man is more than worthy of being the interactive exemplar during the MCU’s peak of popularity. The correspondence is ultimately irrelevant, but anything to vindicate this game further.
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