Spider-Man: Game Of The Year Edition is a third-person open-world game developed by Insomniac Games. It is available on PlayStation 4. Joseph Pugh conducted this review on a standard PlayStation 4 console.
Overview Spider-Man: Game Of The Year Edition is an open-world action game where you play as everyone’s favorite web-slinger. You traverse New York City in true Spider-Man style, swinging and zipping around, between and over buildings. Stopping every now and then to pummel some bad guys, pick up a collectible or solve a puzzle.
This particular edition includes three episodes of the DLC titled “The City That Never Sleeps”. A story addition that takes place after the end of the main campaign. The game itself does a great job of making you feel like you are in Spideys shoes. However, it flops a bit when it takes you out of them.
The story is interesting and the voice acting is solid. Peter Parker is portrayed well, complete with a silly sense of humor and cringy one-liners. If you cut out the fluff, the story itself could easily sit alongside the various Spider-Man movies. It can be predictable if your a fan of Marvel and Spider-Man in general, but it is fun even then. You play as an experienced Peter who has already been Spider-Man for several years, so no origin story (thank goodness) and he already has a lot of history in place. This is an interesting angle to explore in a new game that is set in an established universe and it serves the experience quite well.
It has a bit of a hang-up at the beginning where it portrays the struggle of Peter trying to balance his time between being Spider-Man and the normal guy, Peter Parker. Then the game does literally nothing with that balance after the initial part. However, that’s probably for the best as the moments out of the suit are a lot less interesting in general. Swinging through New York is incredibly simple, so much so, that you will instantly feel as experienced as Spider-Man the first time you pick up the controller. You time your swings from nearby objects and let the momentum carry you before letting go and swinging again. In between swings you can do use webbing to pull yourself forward or point zip and bounce off the landing without losing speed.
You can run across and up buildings and Spidey-parkour over objects and it’s all very easy to do. You can unlock more traversal skills later, but it always remains fluid. That word is really at the heart of the whole game. From swinging around New York, to beating down bad guys, it all feels and looks fluid.