My brief review (forum friendly):

The amazing:

+ Spiderman! This game is made for spidey fans of old, if you've followed him since the beginning the game really does hit the right spots for the feels. There are so many references to the comics here yet Insomniac has kept it fresh enough so that even newcomers to spidey's world wouldn't feel lost. I'm confident to say that if you didn't know spidey before, you'll end up liking him as one of your top superheroes after the game. The plot flows well and there aren't any confusing "wtf" moments that jars the experience. Just let the kid inside you take over!

+ No, the game is not "downgraded" as proven by DF and I kept my mouth hush during the whole controversy just so people can eat their words. The game looks great especially with use of HDR. Insomniac's temporal injection is clean and precise just like they did with R&C. They've nailed the look unique to spidey's world. While I don't think it bests Batman Arkham Knight as the best looking superhero game, there aren't that many open world games that looks this polished to begin with. Models are well detailed, plenty of modern artistic graphical techniques are used and the environments is fairly close to the real New York. By that, I mean it's incredible how detailed Insomniac has recreated NYC. My suggestion is not to just keep swinging up in the air, take a walk from time to time and you'd be surprised just how detailed the city looks up close! All in all, it's a great looking game that is definitely showcase material for your 4k TV.

+ Voice acting, top notch! Music, hitting all those spidey notes! They sound great, they sound familiar, you wouldn't feel alienated if you are a fan of other Spiderman content (the movies and cartoons). Extra thumbs up to the use of sound effects as well, every villain sounds exactly like I expect them to. While the game doesn't feature a lot of low end frequency impacts, it's usage of precise and enveloping SFX makes up for it. The game sounds and feel authentic to the spiderman universe, which to me is vital.

+ Love the web slinging, it was by far the most important thing for Insomniac to get right and boy have they outdone themselves. Spidey can really do some insane leaps, dives, aerial tricks and blaze through like the wind once you get used to the moves he has while web slinging. Just be creative and let spidey handle the rest. Web slinging is intuitive, fun and never a chore!

+ The combat system takes a mix of Batman Arkham and DmC (the pointless reboot, not the traditional DMC games). As such, you get the "on rails" combat system where your creativity will determine the flow of your attacks. The Arkham games forces you to do move A till Z in a concise manner or you end up looking like a fool with very little XP gain. Unlike the AK games, Spider-Man affords you more freedom and it's OKAY to actually F up your flow of attacks, because the game allows you compromise in a very intuitive manner because that's exactly how Spidey fights. That doesn't mean you should mash square and triangle though, it just means that you have a more opportunities to compensate a repeated move in a combo chain without looking stupid.

+ Suits, suits suits!!! There are 25 suits in the game. Yes, TWENTY-FIVE not counting some others in the works for the DLC. A lot of the suits are going to put a smile on your face and they don't just look cool for the sake of being cool, they reference their comics counterpart very well!


The not so great, but okay:

~ I'm never a fan of mundane challenges, tasks, secondary objectives and all those silly things that sums up to nothing else but glorified game padding (meaning to elongate playtime). While Spider-Man has its fair share of the mundane open world stuff, I never found them extremely boring or pointless (because they aren't as you need the points to unlock suits). But at the same time, doing too many of them in a row can get a little repetitive.

~ Some of the side missions feels tacked on, last minute style. As such, they feel a little low effort but fortunately there aren't many of them and they are rather brief. Usually Insomniac is very good with side missions stuff as proven with their track record in the R&C games, but it's a bit unfortunate to see a few "rushed" side missions here.


The meh...

- Mary Jane's sections are... well, I didn't favour them much at all. Yes you can play as MJ and her sections aren't very good. I dread her parts quite a bit and they didn't seem very fitting to the game at all.

- I wish the game has a little more easter eggs in regards to other Marvel characters. Yes, unfortunately the whole Avengers hype train is not presented in Spider-Man. So those of you wishing and hoping you'd somehow see a cameos from the Avengers, well just toss that hope into the trash. This IS a spider-man game through and through.


The Verdict:

Not yet pre-order? Dafuq you waiting for?

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Sep 5 2018, 01:47 AM

I forgot to mention something regarding performance. I was reviewing the game on patch 1.00 and not 1.01, as such I did see a few number of frame drops (not drastic but it's noticeable). From what I'm hearing (from DF that is) 1.01 has improved performance though I have not tested it out.

Should have just started and ended with that sentence instead of typing some 200 word essay that no one gives a fuck about.


It's even more sad when people play modern games on TV speakers. So much of the experience is lost.


Dynamic 1080p (can drop to 900p in some rare situations) 30fps locked 95% of the time. Plays it more than decently.

Less than 30 hours if you aren't an anal 100% completionist. By that, only if you want to complete all the trials and challenges and get gold on them. I got all the suits and all the side missions done in about 23 hours or so IIRC.

I think the length is alright because anymore and it could have started becoming a little dull.

You guys know that you can cheese most of the challenges with the correct suit powers right? Like for example the stealth ones, just use the Noir suit power which does not trigger enemy alerts upon detection. Then just web kill everyone quickly, there done - easy gold token.

Velocity suit.

I think a sequel on the PS4 is entirely possible, as one of the last games for the console before the generation ends.

You can unlock everything you didn't unlock after finishing the game. Nothing is missable.

Did you get gold on ALL of the challenges? There is enough tokens for ALL the suits + mods + gadget. I have unlocked everything in the game so I can confirm, there is indeed enough tokens.

Some challenges gives 5x challenge tokens upon getting gold on them. So yeah, go get gold on all of them - they're pretty easy.

Who said you have to?

You just need to collect all gold if you want to unlock ALL the suits + mods + gadget upgrades. If you only care about the suits, you don't have to get all gold - only a few will be enough.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Oct 16 2018, 04:31 PM

You can plat the game regardless. You don't have to save scum to do it. All task master challenges and base challenges can be re-done as many times as you like until you get the score you want on them.

Then I don't know what else to tell you... you're pretty much saying "hey I have a car but the mall is 30km away and it's a hassle to drive but I don't wanna walk either".

I suggest that if you want to go back to Spider-Man, come back after the third DLC drops in December. The Heist is quite short (although pretty decent), shouldn't take you more than 5 hours to 100% it.

Wow... Turf Wars DLC is trash. I expected it not to be of high quality considering they are pumping out 1 DLC per month with some overlap - but I didn't expect it to be this bad. It's generic, boring, and the challenges (especially the bases) just downright proves Insomniac ran out of ideas.

The story is yawn inducing, I mean... this is supposed to be like Tombstone's sidestory, but Hammerhead's plot is just so generic. Start mission > swing to point B > beat up enemies > watch cutscene > repeat > end. The damn thing is barely 2 hours long - and it's a boring 2 hours!

Then there are the fights, because Insomniac ran out of unique ideas or maybe just didn't have the time - they took the easy way out: throw in MORE mobs and make them frustrating to deal with. It creates a meta where you almost forced to play a certain cheesy way (like abusing the spider bot and electric fists suit power). It doesn't allow you to have fun and fight with some creativity.

I think Insomniac has made a mistake with this season pass thing. I think they should have just compiled all 3 DLCs into one and release it in Q1 next year or something. The content here is just boring, un-fun and pointless.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Nov 21 2018, 03:42 PM

There are 2 kinds of difficulties in game design. One where it is tough but fair, another which is bullshit, unfair and stupid.

Spider-Man Turf Wars is the latter. If you look at it objectively, the enemies aren't difficult. It's just that they break all the rules and do stupid shit that completely breaks the flow of the combat - that's what make it annoying and frustrating.

The next 3 suits in the final DLC:

Pretty easy actually. Just use spider bro suit power + spider drone + electric web + stormbolt discharger suit mod.

Silver Sable DLC is way better than that turd known as hammerhead. I mean, the bar is set so low that really anything would be better.

I think Insomniac is in a pretty interesting situation right now. They can either go full force 100% effort into Spiderman 2 and hopefully squeeze it out by the end of 2020 or early 2021, before the PS5's release or they can make a proper expansion to the current game - somewhere in the realm size of Frozen Wilds and release that at the end of 2019.

Marvel has the IP rights to Spider-Man for games, previously it was an exclusive deal with Activision. Sony snapped up that deal after that contract expired since Marvel wasn't happy with how Spider-Man games performed under Activision's publishing rights.

None of us know if Insomniac is already working on Spider-Man 2 or not, it was just speculation from my part. That said, Sony and Marvel's deal for Spider-Man does not end at just "one game" just as Sony's deal with Marvel for allowing them to use Spider-Man in the MCU is not just for "one movie". Insomniac is clearly the best developer to handle this new Spider-Man franchise.