Now Playing: Spider-Man Remastered

I can’t review Spider-Man Remastered without talking about the serious crashing issue I experienced with this PC version. It’s an issue I expected because, prior to purchasing the game I took a look at the Steam forums and saw no end to threads complaining about it. These crashes to desktop always occur when the game is trying to load. Want to fast travel on the map? There’s a 50% chance of a crash. Want to restart from your last checkpoint? 50% chance of a crash. Want to replay a challenge or an enemy base? 50% chance of a crash. Want to switch from the main campaign to one of the DLC episodes? You guessed it – 50% chance of a crash.

And, once it’s crashed your auto-save becomes corrupt and any attempt to load into it will result in a crash 100% of the time. This means you’ll always want to create a manual save prior to any load or you’ll potentially lose progress.

The only good thing I can say about it is that Spider-Man Remastered loads ridiculously fast, so jumping back into the game takes only a handful of seconds. But come the f**k on, how has this issue not yet been addressed? It’s a real shame because despite this issue, Spider-Man runs flawlessly and looks fantastic.

Granted, I am playing on a new system that crushes the recommended specs but still – playing Spider-Man at 165FPS at 1440p on Ultra settings (plus Ray Tracing) is quite the treat. The game looks fantastic and it’s so f**king smooth.

I wasn’t surprised to see that the best aspect by far in Spider-Man is the traversal system. If you’ve played the criminally underrated Sunset Overdrive that Insomniac worked on prior to Spider-Man you’ll know what I’m talking about. The traversal in SM is perfect. If I rated individual components of a game separately I’d give it an easy 10/10. It strikes the perfect balance between player control and I guess what you might call ‘auto-swing’.

You don’t have to fret about where every web will latch onto – the game does the tricky part for you ensuring a constantly smooth and speedy movement throughout the environment. And that’s another reason why the crashing on fast travel didn’t really bother me too much – because I very rarely wanted to use it. That’s how fun the traversal is in SM. You want to keep swinging no matter how far you have to go.

You also don’t mind the overly repetitive fights in the open world side content or the main missions because the combat, whilst not as perfect as the traversal, is still extremely fun thanks to a wide selection of special suit abilities and gadget attacks. And there’s plenty of options for the player to experiment and be creative by combining all of these abilities – suit, gadget and skill – in some very fun and satisfying ways.

I also love how you can combine traversal and combat. You really do feel like Spider-Man. They really did nail that feeling. The obvious comparison would be the combat from the Batman Arkham games. It’s not overly complex or challenging. It’s more style than substance. But it certainly scratches that superhero itch.

It’s such a shame then, that the main campaign of Spider-Man Remastered is a real mix of highs and lows. There were some absolutely fantastic moments, but there were also times I had to practically force myself to sit down and play because of how tedious it was. There was even a few moments when I was telling the game to ‘f**k off’ and that’s never a good sign.

So let’s address the absolute worst part of SM and no, it’s not the crashing. It’s the f**king terrible ‘stealth’ sections. Not the Spider-Man stealth sections. No. The sections in which – without spoiling anything – you play as another character and must use ‘stealth’ to progress through a mission. I say ‘stealth’ because the actual mechanics are basic as f**k. It’s literally a game of hide and seek in which you press X occasionally to create a distraction and continue on.

Who the f**k thought this was a good idea? All of these ‘missions’ could and should have been cut-scenes. Why? Because they’re f**king boring. The stealth mechanics are boring. They’re not difficult, just tedious. You might think I’m overreacting. Maybe I am, but I f**king hated them. The very last one in the main campaign is by far the worst as it forces to you spend several minutes running around an office searching for a tiny key by tediously examining every highlighted object.

F**k off! I’m playing Spider-Man, not hide and seek detective! These sections are pointless and dull and completely kill momentum within the campaign. Every time the game switched to one I immediately wanted to turn it off. Okay . . . take a deep breath because we’ve got other issues we need to talk about.

The side content in SM is mostly lacklustre and repetitive. There are a few bright spots, but not enough. It’s not bad stuff, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all entirely forgettable. I was hoping for a few more elaborate side missions that saw you dealing with some lesser known Spider-Man villains but there’s only really one of these in the entire game – and unsurprisingly, it’s the best one. When I saw the achievement pop for ‘all side missions completed’ I was honestly shocked. Is that it?

And the main campaign has some pretty bad pacing issues, too. The first act is great fun as you begin to explore the city and learn new abilities, but the second act drags hard. Really hard. I honestly can’t recall a single main mission from the second act. They all just blur together as you’re stuck fighting the same five enemy types from one mission to the next.

Speaking of enemy types, SM does do a pretty good job of mixing things up as you go by introducing new types to deal with, even if your core foes all adhere to a similar pattern – foot guy, gun guy, sword guy, shield guy, rocket guy, heavy guy – just wearing different ‘hats’.

It was during act 2 that I honestly started to lose interest in the game. It just drags the story out and frankly, the main villain during this act just isn’t very compelling. Thankfully, the end of act 2 is pretty damn amazing and suddenly the game kicks into high gear. It did, unfortunately, rush one story aspect of the game in a way that’s kind of annoying considering how it was meandering along previously, but at least shit was finally kicking off.

Act 3 is where the game finally shines as you bounce from one tense encounter to the next, fighting more familiar SM villains. There’s even some nice emotional moments. Shame about that final stealth mission which made me want to punch it. But the game certainly ends on a high note, I can’t deny that.

The DLC packaged with this edition is also pretty good, but also suffers a little from the same problems – repetitive, lacklustre side content, not to mention the crashing issue. The first DLC episode has a stealth mission – f**k no – but thankfully they seemed to learn their lesson after that because there’s none in episodes 2 or 3. They’re all worth playing and because they’re a little more focused than the main campaign, I’d even say I enjoyed them a little more.

I think if you’re a big Spider-Man fan you’ll enjoy it even more than me thanks to all the unlockable spider suits and I’m sure Easter eggs / references I just didn’t pick up on. I don’t know if I’ll get Miles any time soon. If it’s just more of the same, I think I might need a break first.

Overall, my reaction to Spider-Man Remastered was more positive than negative. The good does outweigh the bad. It’s a game I feel is crying out for a more refined sequel, one I hope addresses the issues of the first. It’s certainly worth playing though, if you can live with the irritating as f**k crashes on PC.

7/10