With almost every new Spider-Man movie, comes a Spider-Man game. This year will be no different. As Spider-Man: Homecoming is just a few short weeks away, the video game isn’t too far behind. Marvel’s Spider-Man, a Playstation exclusive, is set to drop in the early stages of 2018. With a new gameplay trailer being released at E3 this year, excitement for the latest game has grown tremendously.
While there have been plenty of successful Spider-man games in the past, often times they’ve felt much like the movies. Too many times they’ve generated a lot of buzz and excitement, only to fall flat midway through. One of the biggest challenges Insomniac Games is facing is creating a game that doesn’t follow the path of repetitiveness its predecessors have. The most off-putting part of the game is the weak story that typically pushes players to force feed their way through. Too few times are the fights even a fraction as exciting as they should be. More often than not, the hand to hand takes over and games don’t utilize enough of the environment around them.
Plenty of past failures can be overcome by taking cues from Batman’s Arkham franchise. Not only does our caped hero used plenty of tech and gadgets to subdue his enemies, he’s often sneaking around attacking from shadows and hanging baddies from the closest ledge. The entire game isn’t just about the hand to hand combat aspect of fighting. Granted, Spider-man is more of a friendly neighborhood kind of hero, not one who lurks in the shadows, but that battles that engage the environment around them need to be at the forefront.
Based on the latest gameplay trailer, Spider-man is seen using every bit of the world around him to gain an advantage. Not only does the hero bring objects to life with his web slinging awesomeness, gone are the days of simply just swinging through plainly the city. While saving the city, our hero is shown running on buildings, preventing crashing construction equipment, and diving rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of a helicopter wrecking the city.
Another great cue from the Arkham franchise was including character history. From the series, not only did they have a long list of heroes and villains appear in the games, they also had character bios in pause menu’s to bring lesser known characters into the fold. If Marvel’s Spider-man is to be successful, it also needs to pay tribute to characters from the comic’s past. If the game focuses only on one central villain and not the universe around them it will fall back into the trend of boring, often repetitive, gameplay. If they can keep fans engaged in the world as a whole rather than just the one main baddie, the games visual effects and gameplay won’t be wasted on a game players get tired of in their first week of play. Marvel’s Spider-Man looks to have all the tools of being the best so far, can they pull it off? Find out early 2018.