It’s Reboot Time. Marvel’s Spider-Man

It took me almost a month, but I finally made it. The platinum is still a few hours away, yet the main story and all of the sidequests are now complete. It’s enough stuff already to say that this one, IMHO, it’s the best Spider-Man title ever!

The story starts with a Peter Parker that spends most of his time working at Doc. Octavius laboratory or helping Aunt May at F.E.A.S.T. (a facility run by volunteers build to help homeless people and the likes). 8 years have passed since Peter was turned into the Spider-Man: his skill is well tested, his deadliest enemies are locked up at the Raft and Mary Jane … well, she is gone. They actually broke up since Spedey was a little bit too overprotective and MJ, now a reporter in this reboot, couldn’t take it anymore. In this alternate universe Octavius, once a partner with Osborne, works together with Peter on a prostethic devices project, and Peter eagerly helps him, showing off his superior intelligence skills. The last villain standing is Kingpin, and Peter will have to deal with him right at the beginning of the game.

With no relevant enemies to fight, Peter tries to help other people in need, becoming Martin Li (F.E.A.S.T. founder) right arm.

When not helping Martin, as said, Peter is developing new prototypes at the lab, in a sort of minigame that will come up very handy later on in the game to investigate the new outbreak of violence that is going to hit New York City.

As you will understand by reading the rest of the article, things are not trivial here. At a first glance, this game resembles all of the Spider-Man titles we have seen so far (with all of its sidequests and such), but little by little the plot will uncover situations that cannot be solved with brute force alone. And together with these situations, you will have to face events that will finally turn Peter into a man in a never-before-seen Marvel’s scenario.

With Kingpin losing power a new foe rises on the horizon (Mr. Negative), together with a bunch of minions which, in an escalation of violence, will take the city on the brink of civil war. Mr. Negative’s men start to assault Kingpin’s installations in order to steal chemicals and explosives. Norman Osborne, that in this universe is not the Goblin but New York’s Mayor (???), engages a mercenary force (Sable) to reestablish order. Spider-Man gets caught right in the middle, especially when Mary Jane decides to investigate and infiltrates Kingpin’s den.

The word “infiltrates” was not chosen without purpose since this game has a lot of stealth sections. Although obviously not so refined like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, you will need to go unnoticed in more than one occasion and you’ll have the chance to impersonate both MJ and Miles Morales, the son of a policeman that helped Spidey during one of his investigations.

In addition, you’ll also get many stealth moments with Peter himself, both in the main plot and in the additional quests.

Completing quests will make you gain XPs of various kinds (different sets of tokens) that will allow you to enhance your gears or buy new costumes, each one with a peculiar look and distinctive powers.

Sidequests are often a treasure hunt: some will put you on Black Cat trails…

… others will grant you a direct confrontation with powerful enemies, like Tombstone …

The story plot is much more complicated than this, but I decided not to further delve into it to avoid spoilers. The game gets better and better the more you play it, so spoilers would definitely kill the fun. Having said more than enough on the story let’s now take a look at other aspects of the game, such as the graphics compartment that is really something. Attention to details is above average, as you can see in the following loading screens …

In the same manner, once you finish the first missions and you gain access to the “quick travel” feature, you’ll have the chance to witness other interesting loading screens while performing the quick travel …

Attention to details is also well shown in-game where, with the first time, you can actually look inside buildings…

Collectibles and the likes are spread out throughout the entire Manhattan map, with true gems explaining, in short, the last 8 years of Peter’s life …

For the entire game, you’ll try to understand where the third component of the party, Harry Osborne, ended up and you will learn more about this character during a new series of quests taking place in various Mobile Osborne Labs.

Also, in a way similar to the one seen in other games, such as Watch_Dogs, you can explore the entire city looking for (and taking pictures of) monuments and other Manhattan key figures …

Proceeding in the game will let you learn more of the new and peculiar relashionship between Octavius and Osborne, which is probably the door for a new Marvel’s expanded universe…

Getting to the fancy stuff, one of the unlockable skins is the vintage one, which will render your avatar like in the late 70s comics. The skin is indeed a true beauty and the pictures I took give no justice to it. Not only it is cool, but it also underlines by contrast the surrounding graphics, that almost looks photorealistic.

There is more than meets the eye here and, having spent a considerable amount of hours on this game the less I can say is that it is …. amazing! The story is good, sidequests are not annoying, there are plenty of features to unlock and collectibles to find. Background musics and enviromental sounds are right on spot, the graphics compartment is awesome. Furthermore, the game opens a new branch in expanded Marvel universe and rumors state that this game could become the first of the series similar to the ones we saw on cinemas (like the Avengers saga, for instance). I don’t know what else you can ask, especially when you consider that Spider-Man will always be out there to lend you a hand.

As always, thank you for reading and be advised that DLCs are already coming (October 23) and the first one will open up with Black Cat. What are you waiting for? Off you go, my dear readers, and enjoy this new masterpiece…