I am perched on a ledge looking down at the streets of Manhattan when I hear that there is a robbery happening in Hell’s Kitchen. I leap off the building and webswing as quick as I can. I land outside the building being robed and there are thugs spread out all over the street. I slide under one that tries to punch me but before I can knock him back I am shot.
You start the game 8 years since Peter Parker became Spider-Man. You hear that the Police are trying to apprehend Wilson Fisk, also known as Kingpin. You rush over to help the Police but when you take Kingpin down he warns you that within a month you would regret it. He was onto something because after he is taken down a new group move in on Fisk’s properties.
As you travel Manhattan you find crimes and hidden objects. They are shown once you reactivate the Police’s Oscorp Surveillance Towers. This reminded me of the Assassin’s Creed games when you used your eagle vision to scope the area. One thing I really like about this game is that even when you reactivate the police scanners you can’t see all the objectives. You have to play through the main story to unlock other objectives.
One of the first map points is the backpacks. I feel like the backpacks were the most fun to collect because in each of them you find something that is from Peter Parker’s past. When you select them Peter then describes how the object has significance. I really liked this because it gave the game so much depth in such a small way.
There are a few ways to travel the map. You can walk, run along walls, and webswinging. The most fun and quickest way is webswinging. However, it can be a bit tricky to control and sometimes you end up hitting buildings. I have ended up failing a few missions because of this due to it slowing you down immediately and takes time to pick up your speed again so you lose the enemy.
The first boss fight worried me a bit because it had a quick time event. I don’t mind stuff like that if they are leading up to a boss fight but I’d rather fight the boss properly. The other bosses that I fought didn’t have the event again so I was really happy with boss fights after that.
There are different types of enemies and some are defined by the weapons they hold so having a fight with a group of enemies can be incredibly fun. This is because each of them have a different way to take you down and different ways to be taken down. One of the enemy type is a brute. They are incredibly strong and you cant go toe to toe with them. You need to hit them with webs and it leads them open to attacks.
The way that Spider-Man has been designed to fight has been done to perfection. I’m not a huge fan of the movie Spider-Man and didn’t really know why until I played this game. He is much more agile and I love that you can dodge an enemy by sliding under them and then attacking from behind.
It is a fantastic game for fans of Spider-Man and/ or the Marvel universe as well as newcomers that just want to pick up an action-adventure game with a good mystery. There is a lot to do and traveling round Manhattan was so much fun even when I was just going round collecting backpacks. The fights were incredibly smooth and Spider-Man’s movements were amazing.
GameCritUK 