Marvel's Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition Review

Marvel’s Spider-Man, developed by Insomniac Games, was critically acclaimed by fans and reached over 13 million in sales since its launch back in 2018. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition provides even more by giving players access to the full DLC expansion, The City that Never Sleeps. 

Bridging the narrative to the upcoming sequel. If you've yet to experience this incredible adventure or love Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition is a must buy.

Marvel's Spider-Man takes place after the events of the novel Hostile Takeover. Spider-Man launches into action to aid the police in taking down the Kingpin. After taking down one of the most powerful criminals in New York, the adventure follows Peter's daily life.

Eventually, a new threat begins to emerge as Spider-Man slowly uncovers a plot to exploit Kingpin's arrest and secrets about a deadly project being developed beneath everyone's noses.

Familiar faces such as Aunt May and Mary Jane provide their iconic performances as Peter and Spider-Man's support. When the hero gets knocked down, they're there to help him keep going, especially when Peter is faced with deadly villains such as Mr. Negative, who can recruit and manipulate anyone by touching them, and other iconic Spider-Man villains.

The story is fantastic and plays like a Marvel movie. Voice acting is exceptional, and the choreography during cutscenes all shares high-quality animation and movement. Occasionally, you will need to input commands during QTE events, but these can be disabled.

What brings everything together in the soundtrack is its complementing of each heartbreaking and high-action moment. With the final boss battle, everything comes together for an emotionally charged and exciting end.

Both exploration and combat focus on keeping high-speed momentum. Spider-Man is meant to keep moving to increase his ultimate meter to unleash a unique ability. Ultimate's abilities provide extra advantages ranging from healing, damage boost, and webbing all targets in the area.

Insomniac took notes from Rocksteady's Batman Arkham series and built a combat system that complements Spider-Man's skills. Counters, web-shooting, jumping, web-zipping, and other skills and gadgets available to the player are all meant to be combined for unique and flashy combos. It's pure eye candy to see Spider-Man take down foes in certain ways, but I did wish there was an option to turn off slow motion.

Exploration is just as fun despite having to commit to a lot of grinding and busywork, clearing bases, collecting backpacks, taking pictures, fixing towers to expose more of the map, and stopping the same crimes to obtain tokens used for leveling.

But due to the incredible movement and combat, these tedious missions are less annoying. Instead, it's I had fun completing all of them because of the excellent combat and traveling system.

There are sections where you won't play as Spider-Man. With moments where you'll take control of Mary Jane and Miles Morales in sneaking sections. These are the game's low points, and the sneaking is bare-bones, with poor AI. However, these missions did provide context for how these characters handled those impossible situations.

You'll spend a lot of time in New York, and the map is brilliantly crafted, including the iconic buildings from the Marvel universe. Fast travel stations are ample in case you don't want to swin,g and they're complemented with occasionally wacky scenes of Spider-Man on the subway.

As an added bonus, you can head to the streets and meet the people you're protecting. With a full photo mode available, you can take amazing screenshots.

One of the best aspects of the entire game is the suits. You get a wide array of suits to unlock and use, all of which will appear in every cutscene except the game's core finale. Each one is based on various Spider-Man films, comics, and movies, including the recently released Spider-Man: Homecoming.

If you wish to restart the adventure with everything you've unlocked, you can. A new game plus option allows you to restart everything and play through the adventure. The only real drawback to this option is that you cannot disable the tutorials. 

This version of the game includes the City that Never Sleeps expansion. Taking place after the events of the core campaign, Spider-Man is met with an old ally, rival, and criminal, Black Cat.

After the events of the core campaign, she decides to make herself known to Peter and, within time, shares why she has returned to crime. Quickly, Peter uncovers yet another plot by one of the biggest crime families in New York and must stop them from taking full control of the city using stolen weapons.

The expansion introduces new villains, side missions, and provides more screen time for characters in the core campaign that previously received limited attention. It also bridges Marvel's Spider-Man to the sequel teased at the end of the core campaign. Showing off where the superhero stands with many of his friends, but also how he's doing following the events of the main game.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition gives those who missed out on this masterpiece from Insomniac the ability to experience both the amazing campaign and post-launch DLC.

There are multiple reasons to continue playing, such as challenges, side missions, optional bosses, and the ability to experience the story cosplaying as a different Spider-Man. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition provides the best option to experience one of the greatest superhero games this generation.

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