The tale of the Emperor's New Clothes is a well-known fable. At its simplest, it tells of a young boy who is the only person to point out that the Emperor, consumed by hubris and surrounded by sycophants, is actually naked and not dressed in the finest robes.
When it comes to Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4, I feel like that boy. In the face of what feels like mandatory excitement for the game, I've remained largely nonplussed, and even after playing the upcoming superhero adventure at E3 2018, I can't quite grasp what people are so excited over.
That's not to be overly, deliberately harsh – there is a lot to like about the game, at least on the surface. For one thing, Spider-Man looks (appropriately, given the character's traditional adjective from the comics) amazing, with one of the most realistic depictions of New York City to ever grace a video game. Developer Insomniac has outdone itself on the graphics front, creating an open world environment you could happily explore just for the visual feast of it all, one where regular people go about their business on the ground while you swing about overhead.
Webslinging is also great, each strand you fire anchoring to an actual building and Spider-Man's motion governed by the actual physics in relation to those points. Swinging in a low arc, grazing the streets, then catapulting yourself forward with a new webline is incredibly satisfying. Start combo-ing that into Spidey's wall-running skills – hold R2 as you approach a wall and you'll run, not wall-crawl up it – and you'll soon get into a pattern of super-parkour that is arguably the best of any Spider-Man game to date.
It's also nice that the game doesn't reset Peter Parker to a high school student, as Spider-Man so often is whenever he's transplanted out of the comics. Insomniac's take on the character has been an active hero for years and has the skills and technological enhancements of an experienced crime-fighter. Anyone who reads the comics will also be pleased to see more modern additions to Spidey's supporting cast and rogues gallery in the game, such as NYPD Captain Yuri Watanabe as his police contact, or Martin Li/Mister Negative as one of the main villains. This is clearly a game that's trying to be forward thinking in the version of the Marvel Universe it presents, rather than only using the same characters people have seen time and time again.
After that, though, I found Spider-Man far too repetitive of elements found in many other superhero games. Fights against grunt enemies are fast-paced and allow you to use a nice variety of melee strikes, agile spider-jumps, and web tricks, while charged-up special moves and technological gadgets allow you to take out larger groups. In the E3 build though, there seemed to be little variance in enemy behavior – they'd try to circle Spidey, take turns attacking, and occasionally fire guns, even though bullets can be easily dodged. With some encounters throwing several waves of cookie cutter enemies at you, it can get repetitive, fast.
Even boss battles felt formulaic. With at least part of the game's story centred on some of Spider-Man's biggest villains being freed from New York's super-prison, The Raft, it appears rounding them up will form one of the main drives of the game. I encountered The Shocker in the middle of a bank robbery, and after some perfunctory spider-bants, launched straight into battle.
The fight was predictable and telegraphed. Shocker had set attack patterns, such as blasting shockwaves around the bank, which had to be dodged until prompts allowed Spider-Man to land some more powerful blows. Shocker gets webbed up, Shocker breaks free; his attacks continue with slightly modified blast frequency until, after throwing debris from the fight at an overhead installation three times, you pin him underneath the wreckage. From the easily readable enemy behaviour pattern to the structure of the multi-stage fight, it felt like a boss fight I'd done dozens of times before.
Read more: All the games, trailers and highlights from E3 2018
Activities in the wider open world also evoked a strange sense of déjà vu. As I speculated from footage of Spider-Man in the earlier Sony conference, side quests such as finding backpack stashes webbed up around the city or disposing of bomb stashes do indeed feel like they've been lifted from the Arkham Knight games, particularly the Riddler challenges found there. Sometimes, Captain Watanabe will radio through with news of a crime in progress nearby, or gangs of Mister Negative's henchmen attacking civilians, giving you something more immediate to do – but then we're back to the problem with repetitive combat. However, there were markers for other types of events and missions scattered about the map that the hands-on didn't provide adequate time with – hopefully, the final release will have more varied adventures on offer.
If Spider-Man is your first superhero game, you'll probably love it. The movement systems are sublime, and it looks fantastic. If you have nothing else to compare it to, even the combat, boss battles and side missions will feel fresh. Yet from what I've played so far, this is shaping up to be a game with few surprises, and while the spider-emperor may have a shiny new white emblem on his suit, his game is naked in all but hype.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
