Marvel’s Spider-Man enjoyed the biggest gameplay reveal at Sony’s E3 2017 briefing.
Up until now, we’ve only seen a very short announcement trailer, when Spider-Man was first revealed at last year’s event. Now, there are 9 whole minutes of gameplay you can watch.
The gameplay video shows combat, as well as plenty of QTEs and world-building moments. We’ll deconstruct those in a second, but first let this one fact sink it: we finally might get a proper Spider-Man games that probably won’t suck. Feels good.
Let’s talk combat. Our friendly wall-crawler can use stealth to silently pick off isolated enemies using various takedowns. When the fighting begins, Spidey dances around his enemies, punching, kicking, evading and shooting webs to either stun or pull them towards him.
This all looks a little bit too familiar, right? Like the combat system from a certain video game series based on the world’s greatest detective. I’m talking about the Batman Arkham series, of course. Batman Arkham’s combat was fantastic, so no wonder a new game about another beloved superhero draws inspiration from it.
Yes, I said “draws inspiration”. Marvel’s Spider-Man doesn’t copy the system, but builds on it to create one that’s more suited to Spider-Man’s agility.
After the combat segments, we see Spider-Man confront Martin Li, the leader of the Demons gang and Mister Negative himself. It’s not clear at this point if Negative will be the big bad of the game, or just one of several evildoers. However, he sure gives Spider-Man a run (or swing) for his money.
You might notice other characters present in the video, such as the Kingpin and Yuri Watanabe. While most of you probably know who the Kingpin is, Yuri is maybe a less known character with an interesting story in the comics.
Go Google her if you want – I won’t take about it here. Bear in mind that it might spoil a possible mini-twist in the game, though one that fans of the comics are already aware of.
QTEs, or Quick-Time Events are peppered throughout the video. I’m not automatically against QTEs as a game mechanic, but there are too many of them here. While some of them look really cool in the moment, others seem to be a bit unnecessary.
You did notice the Marvel in the title of Marvel’s Spider-Man, right? Like every Marvel production since the first Iron Man, you need to watch this video till the very end. If you stay after the “credits”, you will catch a glimpse of Miles Morales, aka Ultimate Spider-Man. We still don’t know how Miles fits into the story. Special side missions? DLC? Co-op?!
Whichever the case ends up being, we’ll all get to play Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2018, on PS4.
