Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

So the other day I played Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. This is one of many Playstation exclusive games Sony is pushing out to PC to reach a wider audience, and so far, I’m all for it. Like many people, I initially saw this game revealed way back in E3 2016. It aimed to be the definitive spidey experience and seemed to be the game to finally push consoles into the 8th gen. Or at least that’s what everybody said. You see, I was what you would call a “Nintendo Kid”—I only played Nintendo games (or at least if they looked the part) and I only owned a Wii U at the time. It wasn’t until 2020 where I got my first PC and started to really delve into other games. Lucky for me, as mentioned earlier, just around this time Sony began publishing their catalog on PC.

During my time playing it, this felt like the most big budget, modern AAA game made, and I don’t mean that in a negative or positive light; it just sort of IS. It carries all the spectacle, all the flair, all the design choices and systems that make up the game ecosystem nowadays. You got your pretty graphics with the big open world where you can do a variety of set tasks that are multiplied and spread across the map. You have light RPG elements, you got your skill tree, you got the scripted cinematic sequences, etc. If it’s in a modern game, it’s most likely here. However, it kind of succeeds in exactly what it sets out to do. When I played this, I felt this sense of comfort, yet excitement; I was relaxed, yet also engaged. Genuinely, it’s a very nice feeling, but a bit difficult to explain.

I feel like the simplicity of the game, while nice, does tend to hamper other elements where I feel it could have gone more in-depth. For instance, the combat in this game feels like it’s never fully explored. You have a lot of options, but those options tend to be pretty cut-and-dry, only really serving its intended purpose without any cool secondary characteristics. It also has that really odd design trend where your character sort of “slides” towards the enemy when you throw out a punch or a kick, which just generally disincentivizes smart positioning and makes the combat feel out of your control.

Image Credit: Sony

The story is pretty alright. It does the job. I’m not really that into Spider-Man to tell you “oh they mischaracterized X” or “Y never gets enough screen time” or do the typical youtube-essayist schpiel of blaming “the writers” as a scapegoat whenever a small inconvenience or inconsistency in the story is present. But yeah the plot is alright. Although I feel like since Spider-Man is a pretty established character and world, it sometimes can’t shake tradition to offer something new. Like in this game the main villain for most of it is Mr. Negative, which I thought was pretty neat, bringing the spotlight to this relatively unknown character. But then, by the third act they really want to make this the “definitive” Spider-Man experience so they just shoehorn in a few of members The Sinister Six And while you’re at it have Octavius as the final boss again cuz’ why not.

This game has similar parallels to what I discussed with Resident Evil 4 Remake, where in trying to be the “definitive, modern interpretation” it sort of loses a chance to forge a new more unique identity. In 20 years Spider-Man will still be here, and by then Spider-Man PS4 will be just as old as Spider-Man 2 PS2 (2004) is today, so we’ll inevitably circle back to making another “definitive, modern interpretation” creating a perpetual cycle. That’s what I’m getting at here—Spider-Man PS4 doesn’t really do anything groundbreaking, both as a Spider-Man experience and as a game. But sometimes all a game needs to be is good, high-budget, laid-back fun.