June 18, 2018 by Paul Curtin
For the second year in a row, Sony ended their E3 showcase with gameplay of Marvel’s Spider-Man. And for the second year in a row, the highly anticipated web-slinging open-world game from Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank, Resistance) did not disappoint teasing an army of new villains to take on.
With Detroit: Become Human, God of War, Monster Hunter, and Uncharted: Lost Legacy all being released over the past year, Spider-Man was Sony’s only non-VR PlayStation game on the show floor at this year’s E3.
We got a chance to go hands-on with the game earlier in the week at the PlayStation Showcase, where it was again the only game demo Sony was showing off to the press. And sure enough, exactly as how the gameplay trailers have teased, freely swinging around the city as Spidey looks and feels amazingly fluid, just like watching a movie.
In the 10-minute demo, we were able explore a very small portion of the game’s very large map, taking on random sidequests and helping pedestrians in need. Similar to Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham series, combat is a mix of jumping from foe-to-foe with the tap of a single button. A single button will strike enemies, while hitting another button instantly evades incoming attacks. And other more complex moves trigger slow motion effects to make fights feel even more exciting and cinematic.
One of the main features of combat that sets Spidey apart from the rest is his use of spider webs. As the player, you can instantly use the webbing defensively to tie enemies up or to create even more powerful attacks. In the time I spent playing, I chose to shoot webbing at foes to prevent them from shooting me with their machine guns and then used the spider web/rope to grab various objects from throughout the environment to use as my own weapons.
As with the Arkham series, chaining together attacks is very easy and grabbing mailboxes and other objects with Spider-Man’s webbing and hurling them down on foes to create devastating combos always feels rewarding, giving the player the feeling of great power… of course, also with the feeling of great responsibility.
Marvel’s Spider-Man is set for release exclusively for PlayStation 4 on September 7, 2018.
