Marvel's Spider-Man

Going under the mask with Insomniac’s long-in-the-making web-slinger.

 

The promise of inhabiting Spider-Man’s body – a long-limbed figure imbued with unlikely grace, tracing arabesques through the Manhattan skyline – is an easy sell. Filling the more earthbound shoes of Peter Parker, though, a man who is constantly behind on his rent and late to social occasions? That’s not so much amazing fantasy as it is lived experience.

But Insomniac Games is insistent about pushing Spidey’s all-too-human alter ego into the spotlight. This becomes apparent in the very first moments of the game, as Peter wakes up in his apartment and we pan across an assortment of characterful domestic items: abandoned takeaway cartons, Nerf darts, a homemade smart toaster and – of course – an empty savings jar.

Creative director Bryan Intihar believes that showing both sides of the character is vital to his appeal. “The best Spider-Man stories are where Peter’s world and SpiderMan’s world collide,” he says, pointing to nearly six decades of comics stories and three separate sets of movies starring Marvel’s webslinger. But how does that translate into something interactive?

Insomniac’s answer is to focus on Parker’s scientific abilities. And, this being videogames, science equals Pipemania. We walk Peter around the lab, triggering an assortment of simple puzzle minigames as he fiddles with his inventions. In the couple of hours we spend with the game, it doesn’t do much to convince that this is a better way of spending our time than doing whatever a spider can, but the real narrative payoff of the contrast between mundane and heroic is likely to be a slower burn.