5/5 ★ – Endless_backlog's review of Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered.

29hrs The PS5 remaster provides many improvements to both the performance of the game and its aesthetics. The graphics are even better than before, with Ray tracing making the game even more lifelike, with light bending as it truly would and reflections on the windows and puddles that Spider-Man crosses. The load times are also incredible, at less than 2 seconds, making the cutscenes of Spider-Man riding the subway redundant. You would think that this would encourage you to fast travel more often, but it’s just so fun to swing across the city that I still found myself barely using it despite the quickness. It also utilises the PS5 DualSense controller, with haptic feedback letting you control and feel the resistance when you load up your webs. The most obvious change is in Peter Parker’s appearance, voiced by the same actor Yuri Lowenthal, but with a new face model. I’m kind of torn on this, as 2018s Josh Budniak did well to portray a mature, experienced and worn out Peter. Ben Jordan’s face model was brought in as apparently the motion capture worked better with Yuri. There’s some debate that it was also a design choice to more liken Tom Holland, although that’s up for debate. To be fair, it didn’t take long for me to take a liking to the change. For the first time I remember, this is the first time that you will actively play as Peter Parker, and I think this is explored really well. As Doctor Octavius’ lab assistant, Peter will use his scientific mind to solve puzzles in the form of combining patterns to create chemical formulas, or rerouting circuit components to fix equipment. I really enjoyed these problem solving elements and it made me look forward to the down time with Peter. Other characters will become playable through stealth missions which definitely slow the pace at times but are still a break up in gameplay. Creeping around Norman Osbournes apartment as MJ and evading Rhino in a tense level as Miles were pretty decent. They also get their own skills to change things up like MJ getting a taser and Miles hacking Sable equipment. This was actually one of the best Spider-Man stories I’ve seen across old games and movies. It took me a while to connect with the new groups of enemies in the Demons and in the Sable units, but there was plenty of personality in the games main characters to keep me pushing to their next interaction. The mentor/father-son relationship between Otto and Peter was well paced and told the origin story of Doc Ock in a way that really showed his impact on Peter. The overused Uncle Ben story that we’ve seen before is replaced by showcasing the close bond that Peter has with Aunt May, and really focuses on showing the good heart she has whilst you help her with her volunteering work at Martin Li’s F.E.A.S.T homeless shelter. Peter and MJs relationship isn’t the “Peter finally shows his friend how much he cares about her” trope and instead is a more complicated relationship that has seen them try and fail previously, and whilst friends, clearly not loosing hope that they will end up together one day. As expected, traversal is the main attraction here and it is a joy to play. Swinging around the city is fluid and not only is it realistic in that you can only swing with things nearby, but it also introduces a bunch of mechanics to make it more enjoyable. Point launch allows you to zip to something and then launch yourself straight off of it to gain additional speed and keep momentum. Web zip allows you to change direction quickly without entering a long swing and can be used to cover ground where there aren’t any grapple points. Diving from buildings also allows you to enter a new swing with extra height and acceleration. Running up and along buildings is fast and doesn’t slow down the pace after swinging and there is plenty of vent crawling as fans have came to love from previous games. As with most open world games there is plenty of side missions and collectibles to be found. Collecting backpacks with Easter eggs inside adds some more personality to Peter’s history while photographing landmarks gets you more familiar with the city. Clearing enemy bases out, activating police radio towers, clearing pollution at Harrys research stations and investigating Black Cats stakeouts are plentiful. Each side mission rewards tokens that are required in various combinations to unlock different suits. There is a huge selection of suits and pretty much every one you can imagine can be unlocked. I mainly played with Toby Maguires or the damaged suit but there’s plenty of cool ones like Iron Spider, Scarlet Spider and Negative, with other funny suits like Bagman (a fantastic four suit with a brown paper bag as a mask) and Spirit Spider, an albino Ghostrider. Several suits carry perks such as Noir suit making enemies unable to call for backup and Spider armour MK2 being bulletproof. It’s also brilliant that during cut scenes you retain the same costume you’re currently playing as. The combat in its basic form is fun with Spider-Man fluidly putting together combos and his spider sense giving you enough time to execute a perfect dodge whilst webbing a thugs face and leaving them vulnerable. My most used move was easily knocking an enemy onto the ground or against a wall and quickly tapping the web shooter to stick them to it. As you fight enemies you will generate a “focus” bar that is used to replenish low health. Through skill trees, you will unlock both new methods of traversal as well as fighting mechanics. Spider-Man can perform stealth takedowns from above, can yank guns out of enemies hands and can use the environment to grab and throw things at enemies. There’s also gadgets to unlock such as web bombs that stick multiple enemies to walls, electric webs and trip wire mines. You will also face multiple boss fights throughout the game with Mr Negative and the demons being the main antagonist before Doc Ock eventually takes centre stage. Despite being happy to see another 4 introduced in the final third of the game, I felt it destroyed the pacing as you fought through them so quickly, fighting them in pairs on both occasions which just left their characters feeling a little wasted. The only encounter that will stick with me is Scorpions solo mission. After being infected by his poison, you must travel across a hallucination of NYC with crumbling buildings, green gas filling the streets and huge stingers striking you out of the sky as you hunt for research stations to produce an antidote. A lot of people have said the DLC is pretty weak compared to the main game, and maybe it’s just because I took some time between finishing that and playing the DLC, but I enjoyed it. Across the three episodes there’s a decent variety of gameplay, my favourite was remotely controlling spider bot. Lurking around a bar full of thugs, hiding under tables, listening into conversations and disabling fans using electro magnetic pulses to scuttle through air vents. I also really liked seeing Black Cats character develop and felt more connection with Silver Sable than in the main game. My first time seeing Hammerhead since Spiderman 2: Enter Electro was a breath of fresh air and he has one of the best enemy designs in the third chapter. Insomniacs Spider-Man is a classic and for very good reason. It stands as one of if not the best superhero games since the PS4 and has become one of Sonys lead mascots. The character himself has been a favourite since the 1960s but this game really gave fans the chance to not only have an addictive experience as Spider-Man but also go through a compelling story as Peter Parker which blends effortlessly into one.