When I was twelve years old, I remember my older brother playing the hell out of Batman: Arkham Knight. It looked so cool and a ton of fun to play, but when I played it, I got my ass kicked. Because character action game. But I still liked what I had (Not enough to put on the list, clearly), but I thought, “What if other superheroes got this kind of treatment”. And then Spider-Man came out.
Okay, so I won’t explain much of the plot. You know Spider-Man. I know Spider-Man. We all know Spider-Man. The plot involves Spider-Man getting involved with a terrorist attack and as to fight off a series of classic villains like Scorpion, Rhino, Vulture…. Is there really that many animal named villains, all while Spider-Man deals with usual thuggery, military police, and samurais, while doubling as Peter Parker. The game is a lot of fun to run around and swing through the city. I remember Spider-Man 2: The Game having some of the best web swinging, and while I can’t confirm that, I never played it, Insomniac’s Spider-Man offers a ton of variety with the web swinging. You can dive for more speed in your swing, latch onto ledges and jump off them to move faster, and as long as there is a building or tree or lamp post for you to latch onto, you are gonna swing and you are gonna swing far. The combat is a ton of fun as well. From sneak attacks, to full on combos, to using your gadgets on enemies. You can choose to clear out an area quietly, or you can jump right down and beat up every enemy in the area with a plethora of items. The amount of content in this game is fun too. Aside from fights and bosses, you got backpacks with little Spider-Man trivia inside, you can use your clues to hunt down Black Cat, complete challenges to get to Taskmaster, do sidequests to fight Tombstone, take pictures even though Peter Parker isn’t in the Daily Bugle anymore and J. Jonah Jameson is now a radio talk show host in the best podcast since the Ricky Gervais Show, and it just offers so much exploration. And the costumes, oh my god. You can unlock a ton of costumes in this game to wear, each with their own abilities. You can get the MK Spider-Man suits, the Noir Spider-Man suit, and my favorite, Classic Spider-Man, where his entire body is cel-shaded with little comic book textures on it. It’s so nice and I love it.
Man, 2018 was a good year for Spider-Man. Spider-Man was able to make it into the new Avengers movie, as well as getting word out for a new Spider-Man movie, Into the Spiderverse is an amazing animated film and my favorite animated film ever, yes, I said it, and then we get one of the best Spider-Man games in recent years. Hell, it’s probably the best Spider-Man game. I don’t know if we’ll be getting a new Spider-Man game by Insomniac, but god, please, let us get a new one by Insomniac!