When Spider-Man first swung his way onto the PlayStation in 2016 I was in love and hooked. Now we have a remaster. Does it play as well as I remember? Let’s find out.

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Reviewed on PlayStation 5

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When the PlayStation 5 was first released I didn’t feel I wanted or needed it. When insomniac showed off a brief teaser for Spider-Man 2, that’s when I said I need one. The hunt began and I was lucky enough to find one and start playing some games.

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It can’t all be good.

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On Game Bites (it will come back at some point) we often talk about Spider-Man and while I always wanted to go back and play it I had some memories of parts of the game that maybe I didn’t want to play again. Let’s get these out of the way first. Peter works in a lab and often has lab work to do. These are tedious annoying mini-games. Not all are required but some are part of the main story and my hatred for these mini-games is still very high. One of them reminds me of work I did in school and it just brings back memories I want to suppress. These forced mini-games were a big no-no.

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Besides the mini-games, I only have one more problem with the game. This problem is one of the unforgivable sins to make in games. Spider-Man is a fast passed action game. A few levels require you to play as other characters and you need to be stealthy. Sneaking around to get to point A to point B is not what I’m here for. The stealth mechanics are not the worst but that’s not what the game was made more so these areas seemed to really drag.

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Story

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The story that Insomniac delivered was fantastic. This is their first Spider-Man game but it is not a Spider-Man origin story. Spider-Man is already an established hero with a lot of enemies. There was no need to handhold us and walk us through anything which was refreshing. We did not have to witness Uncle Ben passing or the spider bite, it was all established already and was not done in any way that would confuse people who are not totally up to date on their Spider-Man knowledge.

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I will not spoil any story moments here. This is a great superhero story worthy of being the plot of a movie. I recently praised the story in Guardians of the Galaxy, in my opinion, it’s not on that level but it is close.

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Gameplay

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The gameplay is standard action controls that have been done to death since the Batman Arkham series. This is not really a negative, if it’s not broke…. Even though this combat style has been done the way Spider-Man moves is what makes it different and stand out. You are constantly flipping around while fighting, swinging to get to better positions, and using a wide variety of gadgets to fight your way through countless enemies. If you have played any modern action games you will feel right at home playing Spider-Man.n

The Path to 100%

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I have got the platinum trophy twice now in this game. That entails everything you would assume, get every collectible, complete every side mission, and complete all activities. Getting all collectibles in a game is something I rarely do, but in Spider-Man they made it very attainable. There is no hunting, you know where they all are. You can follow your map and get them all with ease. While that sounds boring, there is always something that happened along the way they kept it interesting.

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The main missions and the side missions were mostly a joy to play. There were a couple that were a drag and stopped the momentum of the game as I mentioned earlier, but the majority of the missions were great.

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The worst part of getting 100% was completing all the crime activities in each district. The city of Manhattan is broken down into its real-world areas making the map feel even more real and alive. However, in those areas, random crimes will break out that you need to stop. You need to do a lot of these in each district to reach 100%. Doing this is the only time I stopped having fun in the game. Try to knock them out early as you progress through the game.n

Verdict

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Spider-Man was an excellent first entry into the franchise. It has a great story that is on par with any of the movies Marvel has put out. With that great story also came a fun gameplay loop that kept me coming back. Some uninteresting mini-games and forced stealth segments drag the game down from being great but this is still an experience I highly recommend. n

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Final score 8.5/10