Spider-man PS4

I don't review a lot of video games. They take a lot of time to complete (especially when they're really good) and I often feel like I'm not hitting all the points that video game reviewers usually need to hit. Gameplay and graphics are not my strong suit and while I comment on graphics and gameplay, I feel like I'm really just saying my gut feeling without any real knowledge of what equates great and what doesn't. My focus is on the story and therefore I really only focus on video games where the story is at the forefront, and I'm 100% invested in the story. And boy is that the case with Spider-man for the Playstation 4.

Spider-man follows the titular superhero (voiced by Yuri Lowenthal) as he fights crime that plagues New York City while balancing the work and relationship issues that a 23 year old usually deals with as his alter ego, Peter Parker.

While there are a lot of twists and turns, side quests and DLC (that I haven't gotten to yet), the main story of Spider-man begins when a strange gang of masked criminals start to terrorize the streets of New York. Spider-man must investigate the gang and their mysterious leader, Mister Negative as they bring chaos to New York and try and bring the structures of power to their knees.

Along the way Peter is balancing his relationships with his ex-girlfriend Mary Jane (voiced by Laura Bailey), his aunt May (voiced by Nancy Linari), his boss at his research job Otto Octavius (voiced by William Salyers), and other characters you might recognize from the Spider-man universe.

The thing I really liked about this game was how fresh the take on the Spider-man story felt opposed to previous movie adaptations and games. This game is not the video game adaptation of a movie, it's its own original story and it takes the story of Peter Parker to a place I'm not sure I've really seen it go.

Peter Park isn't in high school anymore, he's graduated college actually. He's been Spider-man for a few years now and he's put away a lot of high level bad guys. He has a working relationship with the NYPD, especially Captain Wantanabe (voiced by Tara Platti). He's not working at the Daily Bugle, he's instead doing research with Otto Octavius.  Mary Jane, a reporter for the Daily Bugle (not an actress who doesn't contribute anything) knows Peter Parker is Spider-man but they're broken up and yet have a really compelling and fun relationship nonetheless. Norman Osborn (voiced by Mark Rolston) is the mayor of New York. Miles Morales (voiced by Nadji Jeter) is in the game and he has a huge part as well as a lot of interaction with Peter Parker. Jonah Jameson (voiced by Darin de Paul) has retired from the Daily Bugle and does an Alex Jones-like podcast where he continuously rips on Spider-man. There's just a lot of new things in the story and it was a lot of fun seeing this world play out.

And it's not just the ingredients and new story elements that were interesting, when put together, you get a really interesting main narrative that I couldn't wait to get all the way through, and was a little sad that there wasn't more. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the sequel to this game and they would be insane not to continue the story, especially with what they set up in the end.

I think what made this game so compelling was all the characters and their relationships. But at the same time, this game was able to take those great personal moments and mix them with really great, over the top, epic action sequences, especially in the cut scenes. I have a lot of great things to say about the game play, but I don't think I've really see cut scenes that were as good as the ones in this game. Many of them felt so cinematic and honestly had me on the edge of my seat with how intense they could be.

It feels like everyone involved with this game absolutely loved Spider-man and they wanted to not only give a lot of nods to the grand mythology that the character has, but also give the cut scenes and story the wide range to really show off the kind of capable and emotional character Spider-man can be.

The motion capture is just spectacular and pieced together with a really well made narrative, there were a lot of cut scenes, especially near the end that I had a knot in my throat due to how emotionally invested I had become with these characters.

It's true that the story is never going to be as cohesive as a movie might be because these cinematic scenes are still broken up through game play, but I thought the story felt so cinematic that I would have been totally fine if this had just been a movie and not a game.

Another criticism I would have of the story is a lot of the villains throughout the game. That's not to say they're not interesting, they for sure are, but with the exception of one villain in particular, the villains in this game felt very much like the rogue of the week and not the quintessential bad guy that you need for a movie. I recognize that this is in fact not a villain and therefore it works, but if I'm looking at this from a story perspective, I wish I knew more about Mister Negative. He's a good video game villain because he creates a challenge. But the villains that exceed the standards of video games are the ones that it fits with the story.

Furthermore, the plot(s) of the game flow like a video game. And yes, I recognize that this is a video game, not a movie. But the narrative was so cinematic that I can't help but compare the story to that of a movie.

While I'm unfairly comparing this game to a movie, I would say that there are some parts that I think could have had some more emotion to them if this wasn't an action video game.

For example, one of the main parts of the story is a huge attack. Now in the context of the story, it's a big deal, there's debris everywhere, it's very 9/11ish, but it loses a little bit of it's effect when earlier in the game I was chasing a helicopter around New York and it was crashing into the sides of buildings creating a lot more carnage than I think the game gave it credit for. On top of that there are bombs that you'll throw in the game play that have quite large explosions, because of that, the video game aspects kind of clash with the story telling aspects.

That being said, the game play was absolutely fantastic. This game might be one of my favorite games of the year because it was such a pleasure to play.

I think one thing I was worried about with this game was that it might be overly complicated or rely too heavily on combos in order to make you actually feel like Spider-man. But to my surprise, the controls, while somewhat complicated at times, are incredibly easy to pick up with practice, and even if you're not hitting all the right button combinations, you still feel pretty awesome swinging through Manhattan with random small crimes popping up no matter how far in the game you get.

I legitimately had a difficult time with the game because I was so conflict at times between pausing my progress in the game and going after the collectibles and side missions, or continuing the awesome story. Again, one of the biggest downfalls of the really great story is that it's not a cinematic movie. Usually my perfectionist side comes out and I want to knock out the side missions or collectibles before completing the story, but Spider-man introduces new collectibles throughout the game and encourages you to do both.

The other thing that surprised me was how much I enjoyed the subtle peppering of missions where you don't play as Spider-man. You either play as Mary Jane as she does some investigating reporting, or Miles Morales in what is mostly stealth missions to get from point A to point B. While those don't sound interesting, they're mainly in the game to change up the pace a little bit and give you a different characters perspective to enhance the story.

I'm really glad these missions were pretty infrequent and only really happened to serve a purpose, and I do think it broke up the monotony of always being Spider-man.

The game also did it's rewards system pretty well. If you're like me, another way the game can get monotonous is if you're looking at the same red and blue Spider-man swinging around the entire time.

 In another example of the game encouraging you to moderate between the story and side quests, it has a collection of costumes that you can earn throughout the game by spending tokens you receive for different events like challenges, crime prevention, and other collectibles.

If you're a fan of any of the movies, you'll be really happy with the costumes they open up. You can change into a new costume pretty much whenever you want and there are plenty of fun options to try on to give the best Spider-man experience.

I don't have a lot of huge issues with the game. The story is one I would for sure go back and re-experience. The game play is a blast and keeps you totally engaged and it is not repetitive at all. I honestly think this game and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse have drastically changed my perspective on Spider-man as a property, especially as the character has become pretty tired in recent years.

There was a time that Spider-man used to be the greatest superhero that Marvel had. Sam Raimi's films were the gold standard of superhero films and everyone's favorite superhero was Spider-man. But I've felt that for quite a while, the hero was overplayed and audiences just weren't as interested in his adventures as they used to be, myself included.

It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we've had three live action versions of the character over the past decade. We know the story, we've seen more inventive and just different stories from a wide variety of heroes since, Spider-man just isn't as compelling as he used to be. And I would include Tom Holland's Spider-man to a certain extent. I love his version of Spider-man but I think he's very much been designated as a side character in MCU team up films, and Homecoming, while a great film, was incredibly smaller in scale than previous Spider-man films, missing a certain level of epicness to the Spider-man story.

But after seeing Into the Spider-verse and playing this game on PS4, I've been reminded on why Spider-man is such a rad character and how epic he can be.

Somehow a video game and an animated film was able to do the character of Spider-man the best its been done in quite a long time. I never thought I'd say something like this, but the MCU can learn a thing or two from Sony and Insomniac Games on how to do Spider-man because while Tom Holland is great, I would take these stories over his any day of the week.

But those are my thoughts on Spider-man for the PS4, what did you think? Did you like the game? What'd you think of the gameplay? What'd you think of the story? Do you agree that there's an underground revival of Spider-man happening under our noses? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me requests for other movies, TV shows, or video games I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!