The Playstation 5 was my first entry point into more recent Spider-Man games with Spider-Man Miles Morales being a key launch title. Packaged in with Miles Morales was the re-mastered version of Insomniac’s Spider-Man from 2018. In 2018 I was in a transition period in gaming and had given up my hardcore days of my past and there was a large period of time where I missed a bunch of game releases. Spider-Man from Insomniac is a wonderful experience, and I am glad it got a beefed up upgrade for the playstation 5, as this is a game that should not be missed.
Spider-Man remastered is a massive open world action adventure game, of course set in the spider-man universe. The main story involves a number of spidey’s villains including Mister Negative, Vulture, Shocker, Electro, and many more. I was pleasantly pleased as both a marvel and a spider-man fan. The story features some great writing and really well done cinematics and cut-scenes. The quality is up there with the more recent spider-man movies. I will avoid spoilers in this review, but the main story line is very enthralling throughout with a number of twists and turns.
Besides playing through the main story line, being an open world game, there is a ton of side content that is sure to keep players busy for hours and hours. I finished everything 100% and got all 78 trophies on the remastered version in the span of about 45 hours total playtime. The main story can be plowed through in about 8 hours, but you will definitely want to take the time and complete a lot of the extras. Extras come in the form of finding hidden collectables, side missions, special challenges, secret photo opportunities, and much more. They are not without issues though, as most of them feel the same and they can get tedious. However, the awards and unlockables are well worth a little bit of grind. Tokens are unlocked for doing different tasks, and these are critical to upgrading spider-man’s gadgets and powers. There are also a ton of spidy suits to unlock, and all of them are cool, unique, and visually pleasing. You can highly customize spider-man into whatever gear, skills, and powers you want him to have, overall it is a very customizable experience.
The core gameplay to spider-man remastered is very tight and defined. Swinging throughout and exploring the city is very fluid and smooth. Most importantly it is also a blast just to swing around exploring with spidey. The majority of the games action is done through combat, and the combat is also very fluid and smooth. The core combat mechanics remind me a lot of Batman Arkham Asylum (dating myself with this one). Part of the combat is sneaking around and being stealthy while trying to silently takedown as many enemies as possible, while the other half of combat is using a variety of combos and abilities while quickly dodging enemy attacks with a button press. At is core it is very similar to Arkham Asylum, but the majority of hand to hand combat encounters in this genre play out mechanically like this. There are also puzzles scattered throughout the game, and they are good enough to be serviceable, but they are kind of just there. There are also stealth sections involving different characters where you fail the mission if you are caught. These are sporadic and do mix things up and keep things fresh, plus these sections are done very well.
Spider-man looks very good on the PS5, and im sure for its time in 2018 that it also looked good. There are different graphical modes to play in, but I preferred the 60FPS mode without ray tracing to create a perfectly smooth 60FPS with a really sharp resolution. The sounds in the game are sufficient with good audio design. The dialogue and story tidbits that are played while swinging around the city are very good and keep things happening at all points. Technically there are a few glitches here or there and mostly have to deal with enemies getting stuck in walls or glitching out. However, nothing game breaking.
Overall spider-man (remastered) is a very fun, lengthy open-world adventure with an awesome story line and fun gameplay. It is one of the better games in the genre, and one of the better comic/superhero games I have played, especially in awhile. I really wanted to give spider-man a 9/10 however, some of the staleness of side content and tasks take away from the game a little bit. Spider-man (remastered) is a very solid 8/10. I recommend it to anyone.