Marvel's Spider-Man

Marvel's Spider-Man is an action-adventure game based on the famous Spider-Man character and lore from the Marvel comic books and other media.

Developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment Marvel's Spider-Man first released for PlayStation 4 in 2018. The remastered version was later released for PlayStation 5 in 2020 and later ported to Windows by Nixxes Software in 2022.

The players take on the role of Peter Parker and his webbed alter ego. As Spider-Man, players have to learn web-swinging, spider acrobatics, and combat skills. The development of the game started in 2014 and is the first licensed game developed by Insomniac in its 22 years of existence.

Marvel's Spider-Man was nominated and won numerous video game awards. Because of the massive sales, the game was named as one of the bestselling video games of all time.

Plot and location

The main character in Marvel's Spider-Man is Peter Parker and this version is a 23-year-old college student and a research assistant. Peter gained superpowers from the radioactive spider bite and chooses to hide his secret identity as the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Spider-Man becomes the protector and a crime fighter of New York City for eight years. However, he struggles with balancing his superhero career and his personal life.

The main plot of Marvel's Spider-Man revolves around Mister Negative, the leader of the Inner Demons, who threatens New York City with a virus called the Devil's Breath. Spider-Man will make it his mission to fight against Mister Negative and to stop the villain from spreading the virus in order to protect the city and its innocent citizens.

As expected, Marvel's Spider-Man features familiar characters from Spidey's history. These characters are played by voice actors such as Yuri Lowenthal as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Peter's ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (voiced by Laura Bailey), another superhero Miles Morales (voiced by Nadji Jeter), Aunt May (voiced by Nancy Linari), and NYPD captain Yuri Watanabe (voiced by Tara Platt) and J. Jonah Jameson (voiced by Darin De Paul).

Aside from his supporting cast, Marvel's Spider-Man highlights some of his most famous rogues, such as Martin Li/Mister Negative (voiced by Stephen Oyoung), Dr. Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus (voiced by William Salyers), and Wilson Fisk/ Kingpin (voiced by Travis Willingham).

Gameplay

Marvel's Spider-Man is an open-world third-person action-adventure superhero game, where the player will take control of Spider-Man to traverse across Manhattan, New York City with his signature web shooters and acrobatic maneuvers. Along the way, Spidey will fight enemies with his abilities and other web-themed gadgets.

For most of the travel, the player can use his web shooters to swing between buildings, climb walls, and jump over obstacles. The player can also gain speed by releasing the web swing when moving the fastest after its lowest point, then carry the momentum forward to the next swing. The player can also opt to use the fast travel system to quickly get to key locations.

Including his trademark web shooters, Spider-Man has eight web gadgets to equip. The Web Shooters are the basic gadgets for Spider-Man, useful for traveling, tying up bad guys, pulling objects and enemies in different directions, and more. Webbing enemies using web-shooters and gadgets can get them stuck to nearby surfaces, effectively taking them out of the fight.

Other web gadgets such as Impact Web and Electric Web can be unlocked by completing story missions, while the Spider-Drone, the Web Bomb, the Trip Mine, the Concussive Blast, and the Suspension Matrix can be purchased with tokens aside from story missions. Plus, Spider-Man's gadgets can be combined with other gadgets to produce different effects.

As with previous Spider-Man games, in Marvel's Spider-Man players can unlock suits that are based on different versions of the Spider-Man from his long history in comic books, television, movies, and other video games. Aside from these homage costumes, there are other suits that make their first appearances in this game.

There are a total of 28 suits to unlock. Most suits provide special powers that can help him during combat including gaining Focus, increasing stealth abilities, and decreasing the effect of gravity. Suit mods can be used to craft new suits, gain levels, and unlock bonus abilities. Spider-Man can be equipped with up to three suit mods all at once.

For combat, there are three button keys to make Spider-Man perform maneuvers: circle button for dodges, square button for physical attacks, and triangle button for web-based attacks. Webbing attacks can cause enemies to stick to nearby objects, walls, and other surfaces. Against most standard enemies, this can mean they are immediately defeated and taken out of the fight.

Spider-Man can also combat enemies in different ways such as fist fighting, jumping off walls, throwing objects and webbed enemies, and acrobatic airborne attacks. Players will need these to defeat a wide variety of enemy types that Spider-Man can encounter such as enemies with melee-weapons, shielded enemies, airborne enemies, and even heavy-armored enemies that can deal more damage. Some enemies can only be defeated after certain conditions are met.

Aside from the standard combat maneuvers, Spider-Man has special abilities such as Focus, which can be used to restore his health or can instantly knockout enemies by finishing attacks; the Spider-Sense ability contains a white icon located around his head that shows incoming enemies; and the precise dodge allows him to dodge first and use web attacks to enemies, preventing them from attacking (though this requires effective timing).

Aside from main story missions, the player may choose to complete side missions to gain XP for leveling up and earning in-game currencies called Tokens. Tokens consist of six different types after completing objectives: Challenge Tokens for completing Taskmaster Challenges; Backpack Tokens for collecting old backpacks can be found around the city; Research Tokens for completing tasks at the research station, lab minigames, and collecting pigeons; Crime Tokens for stopping various crimes; Base Tokens for clearing out enemy bases; and Landmark Tokens for capturing pictures of landmarks around the city.

The player can level up by earning XP to unlock new skills on the Skill tree that can boost his combat and movement abilities. Tokens can be used to purchase new suits, suit mods, and gadgets, and to upgrade equipment. Marvel's Spider-Man can be played with three difficulty levels: Friendly (easy), Amazing (normal), and Spectacular (hard). The fourth difficulty called Ultimate was added during the post-release update.

In other parts of the game, the player can control Peter Parker (Spider-Man's alter ego) and focuses on puzzle-solving missions. Plust, the player can also control Mary Jane Watson or Miles Morales to focus on stealth missions.

Visuals and other features

Marvel's Spider-Man features minigames that rewards the player with bonus XP and research tokens by completing two puzzles. First, Circuit Puzzles which are solved by connecting the circuit pieces, and second, the Pattern Puzzles that center on matching patterns.

The New Game Plus was featured in the game, allowing players to play a new game after completing the first game using all equipment from the previous gameplay. There are lots of accessibility options to use such as changing button taps into holds, skipping puzzle minigames, enlarging subtitles, and an auto-complete QTE.

The Photo Mode in Marvel's Spider-Man allows players to take pictures of Spider-Man just like Peter Parker does for the Daily Bugle. This Photo Mode comes with a variety of customizations, as well as the ability to take selfies.

The Marvel's Spider-Man video game also released the two tie-in books for the game: Marvel's Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover and Marvel's Spider-Man: The Art of the Game.

Marvel's Spider-Man comes with the DLC pack called The City That Never Sleeps, which features three story-based episodes with new missions, challenges, enemies, and trophies. It also includes three new costumes in each episode. The first episode called The Heist comes with the Spider-UK, Scarlet Spider II, and the Resilient Suit.

The second episode called Turf Wars comes with the Mangaverse Spider-Man, the Iron Spider, and the Spider Armor MK I. And the final episode called Silver Lining comes with the Into the Spider-Verse, Cyborg Spider-Man, and the Spider-Man armor. This DLC pack is available in the Deluxe and Collector's Editions, as well as the rlater emastered version.

Players who purchased the game received pre-order bonuses such as the Spidey Suit Pack, 5 Extra Skill Points, Spider-Drone Gadget Early Unlock, PSN Avatar, and the PS4 Custom Theme.
The Digital Deluxe Edition includes the three chapters of the DLC of The City That Never Sleeps, as well as the pre-order bonuses, and free Spider-Man pin (available only in U.S. and Canada).

Meanwhile, the Collector's Edition comes with the DLC of The City That Never Sleeps, a free steelbook, a Mini Artbook, a White Spider Sticker, and the Spider-Man statue made by Gentle Giant.

The remastered 2022 version includes the original game and The City That Never Sleeps DLC, three new suits (a suit from The Amazing Spider-Man the Arachnid Rider suit, and the Armored Advanced suit), new trophies, and the Photo Mode. It also features the enhanced textures, improvements from Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a wider monitor support, a DualSense controller support, and the notoriously unpopular face change to the Peter Parker in-game model. The face change was intended to make Peter look more like the Tom Holland version from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.