Over the past week or so there has been one topic on the tip of everyone's tongue, Spider-Man the recent PS4 exclusive that has been breaking records and making every owner of a XBox One just a little green with envy. Having beaten the game to it's absolute completion, I figured it was about time to share my thoughts on the game. If you couldn't guess from the titles of this piece, I absolutely loved this game, and I will go even further by saying that this game is not only the best Spider-man game ever made, it's the all around best Spider-Man anything ever made.
If I were asked to describe this game in one word it would have to be: free-flowing. Everything about this game has been tailored to that motif. Web slinging through Manhattan is smooth and seemless allowing you traverse distances with speed and grace better than in any of Spidey's preceding game IP's. The combat is designed to promote aerial combat, and using Spidey's webs to use his surroundings create a never ending string of combos that make you feel untouchable as you dodge around and sling up large groups of enemies.
As strong as the gameplay is, it's accomplanied with an even better story. PS4's Spider-Man has probably one of the best original Spiderman stories I have ever seen. One of the great things that the MCU has accomplished is finding a seemingly perfect middleground between source material and artistic liscense. This game sets out to do that perfectly. Spider-Man is a completely original story that even provides some major changes to some of the more iconic members of the Spider-Man rogues gallery. However, while the artistic libery is taken, they do not forget the roots of where these stories came from and in doing so you have an organic blend for a true and original Spider-Man story. I would furthermore like to say that while I love MCU's approach on Spider-Man, and while I enjoyed Spider-Man: Homecoming a great deal, this is the Spider-Man story that we should have gotten from them, a story that hones into every asset Peter has as a character: a scientist, a photographer, ajokester, a guy with terrible luck (especially in regards to his personal finances), and most importantly a guy whose city comes first before everything else. While it may be unfair to ask a movie to deliver all of that, AND tell a compitent story, it's hard not to expect more when this is sitting right there and it clearly exists in a shared universe.
This leads me to the last thing I would like to gush about. While the main story of this game is certainly rich enough on its own, it is amplified by the existence of a shared universe of characters. Easter eggs to major Marvel Properties like the Avengers, Doctor Strange, and Daredevil pepper the game as you zip around Manhattan and see Avengers Tower and the Sanctum Sanctorum, or pick up collectibles in old backpacks like a Murdock and Nelson business card. Hell, even Task Master appears in a fantastic side mission where he gauges your abilities through several challenges and even takes you on a few times. This particular mechanic is what most were hoping to see from Deathstroke in Arkham: Origins or Arkham: Knight. Not only does this game create an atmospheric and expanded universe, it builds upon the foundation of previous games of the genre before and even makes ginormous improvements.
That's not to say the game is not without faults, but they are certainly minor ones. The biggest two are that first, I felt there weren't enough boss fights. While it is certainly EXTREMELY fun beating up large groups of thugs and cranking up the combo numbers, a true testament of skill in a game like this are bossfights, and with Spider-man's massive Rogues Gallery, I was kind of hoping for a bit more in this department. While the fights we do get are stellar and really fun, there just aren't enough of them. This is issue is one that I am hoping gets rectified here soon, as they are releasing 4 story expansions over the next 4 months. The last complaint I have was all the mandatory missions of MJ and Miles. While both characters are well written and contribute to the story very well, I feel their missions were honestly just thrown in there to slow you down a bit. As I said before, free flowing is the best way to describe the game, and in fact movement is so fluid that traversing Manhattan from one side to another can feel almost instantaneous after you've fully upgraded your web slinging abilities, so I feel these missions were just a mechanic to force you to slow down, and while they certainly did their job, I came here to play as Spider-Man, which neither of these are (at least during the events of the game).
I wuld easily rate this game a 9.5 out of 10 with potential to get that perfect ranking once these DLC's are released. I earnestly encourage everyone to get ahold of a PS4 somehow and give this game a try because oh boy is it worth the time.
This has been another edition of Comic Relief! See you guys next time!
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