Clearing the Backlog: Spiderman PS4

Spiderman had sat unfinished in my catalogue until this weekend. Despite being one of the best games of 2018, the open world complete-a-thon left me burnt out shortly after its release. Interestingly, it’s not the open world, graphics, or story that makes this game so great. It is one of the best playing games in recent memory. The game released September 7th, 2018, and I played the digital deluxe edition on my PS4 Pro.

So let’s start with the gameplay. The combat can be very challenging, and focuses on the player dodging at the right time. Doing so will open up enemies to counter attacks. Spidey takes a ton of damage from even the most basic enemy, so choosing the right openings for attack is key. After you start your attack, you’re better off taking the fight to the air. You can launch enemies with a long press of the attack button, and you unlock more combo and air combat moves as you progress.

You also have a few gadgets that you unlock as the story progresses. For example, the web bomb gives you a form of crowd control. You can toss one of those into a group of enemies and slowly pick off the most damaging ones first. Each gadget is suitable for different encounters, but I did find some more useful than others.

Much like gadgets, you also unlock new suits as the game progresses. Suits have a power ability tied to them that recovers over time. Like gadgets these are very much geared to certain encounters. Sadly I just stuck to the spider bro ability once I saw how powerful the crowd control was.

There is also a stealth aspect to combat that has you distracting and taking out criminals one by one. Overall combat feels good. Every encounter is a threat, but the game gives you a varied toolset to level the field.

As fun as the combat is, the most fun thing to do in Spiderman is to rip around the streets of New York. The web slinging and web zipping make getting around the city the most enjoyable thing in the game. Everything just works so well. If you errantly slam into a building Spidey will just keep trucking running along the wall. It is really hard to describe just how well the movement works.

So probably enough gushing over the games greatest strengths. The game falls into the old open world checklist trap. While this might not be a problem for some people, I get burned out easily when left alone in the sea of icons on a map. The game does gate a good amount of activities behind story progression, but even still I had put the game down after about twenty hours. That isn’t to say that the open world activities aren’t fun or varied, they just wear on you a bit.

Open world games are at their best when you are completely immersed in the world, and the checklist of things to do is hidden or never on the players mind. Gadget upgrades and suit unlocks are both tied to activity completion in the open world. The game also has a handful of times where it forces the player to explore before the next story mission unlocks.

Really, the thinly disguised open world was the biggest issue I had with the game. The game looks phenomenal, and the story is a pretty fun take on the Spiderman universe.

Since I had purchased the digital deluxe edition, I did get the DLC, and I have yet to play through that. For now I will be moving on to another game in my backlog.