Prior to 2000's Spider-Man for the PS1, superhero videogames typically consisted of shitty 2D-platformer beat 'em ups, guest appearances in fighting games, or arcade cabinets meant to generate a profit. Adaptations of famous comic book characters resulted in one turd after another, with the daddy rabbit of them all, Superman 64, coming out one year before Spider-Man. The difficulty of translating these characters to playable counterparts is a result of their inherent design. Most superheroes have a limited repertoire of mechanics and their environment interactions don't lend to cohesive piloting.
Thor has a hammer with some lightning blasts, the Flash runs really fast, Wonder Woman has her lasso and sword, but none of them have the large variety in their arsenal to bring deep gameplay that remains interesting over the course of fifteen plus hours. Their individual movement capabilities also have a difficult time interacting with a game world situation. Being able to fly doesn't translate that well to gameplay because you're piloting a character in a 360-degree space. Ascending and descending along a Z-axis interrupts fluid motion when your character can remain stationary in the air; forcing clunky combat requiring the player to establish the two-dimensional plane to strike an enemy or the other alternative of relying on auto-targeting and stale combo button mashing.
The reason games like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Injustice work is because they have the variety of a large roster and force each character into the same plane of movement. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is top down and simply makes characters that can fly levitate off the ground instead of walking, and Injustice is just a fighting game pitting characters in an X-Y axis. But, neither of these is the solo hero 3-D action-adventure title studios have tried to capture. After 2000's Spider-Man and the Toby McGuire movie game tie-ins that used the PS1 game as a basis, Batman: Arkham Asylum and its subsequent sequels really became the only other successful ventures into the genre.
Both characters lend themselves to medium crossover because they meet the above criteria. Batman and Spider-Man are known for having a collection of gadgets that can be integrated into the game by enhancing combat or tackling an assortment of puzzles. The detective nature in their respective series adds to the unraveling narrative as they look for clues creating the opportunity for stealth sections. The scheming and criminal villains they face aren't just forces of unstoppable destruction, giving developers options to create side content around their foes dastardly plans. Both characters are grounded in more normalcy despite their caped crusading. Instead of gallivanting around the world or universe with laser vision and the power of the gods on their side; they each reside in recognizable cityscapes, can still feel the effects of getting shot with a bullet, and have to rely on martial arts or human wit to defeat enemies rather than raw strength or indestructability alone.
While the 2000's Spider-Man and Arkham Asylum were very linear, more level-based games; when Batman: Arkham City was released it introduced an open-world concept. Now, the player could explore the city of Gotham completing missions and collecting achievements in a bounded environment while gaining experience to level up gadgets and abilities. It was a smart way to deliver the familiarity of these superheroes because the city they inhabit is just as much a part of the character as any of the villains they face or tragic backstory of a loved one getting 360 no-scoped by a robber. In my opinion though, Arkham City was a fairly mediocre game that offered flat combat consisting of hitting one button repeatedly with little variety in tackling stealth portions and padded out errands to make a twenty-hour game forty. Wanna collect 440 stupid Riddler trophies? Wanna watch multiple canned animations anytime Batman interacts with something? Wanna do multiple repetitive actions to accomplish a task when one instance would have sufficed? No? Why do you hate fun you shitzky scum bastard? Now, 2018's Spider-Man has taken all of these elements and the foundations set in the 2000's title to trim most of the bullshit and craft a tight, exciting experience that puts you directly in the spider suit.
Easily one of the strongest points Insomniac has accomplished is movement. Zipping around New York City at sixty miles an hour as triumphant music plays in the background makes traversing the map a breeze. In most open world games, you'd be stuck driving from one destination to the next using outdated controls while facing the minor inconvenience of traffic or scaling building at a snail's pace to jump across the rooftops. The landscape becomes an obstruction to movement; elongating downtime as the trend of developing larger and larger maps continues.
Instead of the city becoming a hindrance, Spider-man turns it into an unobtrusive obstacle course. You don't have to deal with swaths of NPC's blocking your path as you stumble through the streets because you're swinging around the open air. Rather than go around a building, you can run up their walls before launching yourself across their top ledge to shoot yourself forward. Aerial movement isn't held back by adjustment along the Z-axis since gravity controls your descension and the seamless pendulum of the web puts the rotation point outside of the player.
Now, when incorporating aerial strikes into combat it's not about the player having to manually establish the plane of encounter, it simply requires the player to time their attack with assisted targeting. Swing up, let gravity drop you, aim your attack on the decline, and strike. It works well to continue your combos, and offers quick escape or easy isolation of an enemy as you knock them into the sky to continue daddy's pummeling before b-lining through the skull of a grounded enemy. Combined with the integration of gadgets to help tackle various hordes of enemies, along with the natural dodge system derived from his Spidy-sense, Spider-man's faster-paced fighting style breaks up the monotony of simple button mashing. The gadgets also translate to the stealth sections of the game, giving the player options to scale their aggressiveness of the situation
Since Spider-man's origin story has been covered by whatever number reboot we're on, the writer's make the smart decision to focus the story on Peter Parker's relationships. If you have even a vague understanding of the Spider-man universe every plot twist is as transparent as pristine glass. Parker's working for Doc Oc before he turns into an insane person, gee I wonder how this is going to turn out? Martin Li is in control of the Chinese Demon gang as it's revealed he's actually Mister Negative, you don't say? Norman Osborn is still a dick, who would have guessed? Miles Morales gets bit by a radioactive spider to give him similar powers, can you say sequel?
Instead, the story's focus is on Parker trying to balance the role of a hero with the role of a boyfriend, a pseudo-son, a scientist, a nephew, a mentee, and a mentor. The main people he interacts with are fleshed out to understand their motivations as it relates to each role making them stand-out as characters rather than set pieces. Parker and Mary Jane's romantic involvement is stressed as he tries to shield her from the danger he attracts, and her push to be treated as an equal that can help him, is a growth point for both through the narrative. The conflict of Martin Li's good deeds through F.E.A.S.T. and Doc Oc's work on advanced prosthetics compared to their quest for revenge against Osborn reflects the struggle Peter has from admiring both men and his desire to emulate the perceived greatness he believes in. The pain Miles Morales feels from losing his father is the same Peter feels about the loss of Uncle Ben, and in order to prevent Miles from falling into despair, Peter offers his guidance. Parker's attempts to prevent Aunt May from worrying, and the eventual decision between a selfish gesture of a man versus the weighted call of a hero, represents the similar aspiration to do something outside of yourself. While the tale takes stock of and explores these aspects, it also leads to some drawbacks.
The beginning section features Parker finally taking down Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, which sets in motion the unraveling of the criminal underworld. Yet, it doesn't lead to the whole selling point of a roster of Spider-man's greatest foes coming together to defeat him. Instead, you fight Shockwave then wait 10 hours for the first fight with Mister Negative before Electro, Rhino, Scorpion, and Vulture are hastily thrown in towards the end for a few two-on-one boss fights. Technically, you can optionally fight Tombstone and Taskmaster by completing side objectives a little later in the game, but the whole point of these games is not to run around only dispatching henchmen like your popping a pez dispenser, it's to fight the iconic villains from the series. It would've been better to have mini boss fights with the individual villains so they get captured; then later in the game after the whole jail break you can have the two-on-one fights.
With the story focal point on character relationships, they decide to bring Mary Jane and Miles Morales more into the mix, which makes for these really dumb stealth parts where they crouch along a preplanned path sometimes knocking over things to distract a guard. You can't really lose these portions as long as you follow the script. Contrasted with the Spider-man sections, where you're jumping around vantage points using your gadgets in creative ways or using a take-down attack to silence an enemy, these sections with MJ and Miles become slowed down crouching simulators.
The open time between story advancement and the final fights is filled with tasks to gain additional experience and tokens to upgrade your suit and equipment. Some of the tasks are nothing more than mindless padding, like the landscape missions or the backpack tokens, but most are short enough that any tedium is minimal until you reach the later half of the game. Crime objectives are the primary offender here as they drop ninety of them on you in the last third of the game. Then tokens like the Black Cat photo locations are indicative of the subtle, not-so-subtle way of the game kicking you in the shin to let you know there will be additional content, which ends up detracting from the main game.
While the final act is trying to be told they spend time setting up DLC or sequel points. Silver Sablinova starts talking about needing some time away, but will be back. Those Black Cat tokens are just twelve instances of the game going: "She is planning a heist that Spider-man will be involved with, but in order to find out you'll have to pay for the other parts of the story." MJ fails to notice a special spider crawling around her back from Osborn's secret lab, alluding to Miles being the main character in the next game. The overall main story is still good, but these insinuations all coming up in the back half of the game undercuts the focus of the plot it's all been building towards.
But, what this game does build towards and what this game accomplishes sets the bar for these 3-D superhero adventures to a new high. Spider-man continues to be one of the strongest characters in making the shift to videogames with Toby McGuire's Pro Swinger.