At risk of puppeting quite literally every other games reviewer in the universe, this game makes you feel like Spiderman. This isn’t exactly a surprise or anything, it’s a superhero game. Superhero games will always be the same quality, the same gameplay, the same story, etcetera. That being said, it’s a Spiderman game, big whoop. Regardless, I should say this: the game was good. It’s not great, mind you. It’s just good. That isn’t to say I didn’t like it, though.

Spiderman video games tend to fall in the same trap of having the same formulaic story as the last game – all the bad guys that only the sweatiest, basement dwell-iest nerd has heard of gang up on Spiderman, and are led by a more popular bad guy on a quest to screw everything up for everyone without any discernible motivation whatsoever. Unfortunately, this is the case for this one in particular as well. Without getting into specifics, Spiderman is assaulted by eight guys I’ve never seen in my life, that are led by a more recognisable character from one of the movies (in this case, doctor octopus).

A story is second to gameplay, though, and the gameplay is what you’d expect from a superhero game – just press the square button over and over again, and you can basically win every single fight you encounter. It works fine, I’m not complaining, but the developers refused to make any effort to INNOVATE with their gameplay. Speaking of dumb things video game developers do, there are segments in the game where you DON’T play as Spiderman. In a Spiderman game. This is a bad idea, even if it’s done well (which it isn’t).  To put this in perspective, this is an action game that’s only 70% action. If there’s breaks in the action, then the player loses interest since they have to use more than 5 of their brain cells and think rather than abuse the square button.

One of the game’s biggest selling points that was advertised to absolute death, was the dumbfoundedly intricate virtual world – a near one to one recreation of New York City. This is one of the game’s greatest upsides, of course (or only upside, to a more cynical player). But, there’s still a few downsides regardless – the game is nearly impossible to finish.

(In the weekend it’s taken to play this game, I’ve only been able to finish the main story, and two side missions). Now, if you have a lot of time on your hands this is no problem. But I’m a high school student – time is one of the many things I’m not in possession of.

In the end, the game greatly surpasses recent attempts at making a somewhat passable game in the Marvel universe, but not much else. If you have both time and money, I’d half-heartedly recommend this game to you. Then I’d ask why you’re asking me about video games while I’m doing my homework.