This is de rigeur for open worlds in 2018. In Spider-Man, these movements-the entire web swinging system-is handled with just a couple of buttons. It's an incredible game, set in a world that's gamified just past the point of being truly compelling. Undergirded by brilliant physics and a movement system just as inspired as Treyarch's classic, Spider-Man sells the fantasy of being a superhero, while also managing to be both a little bloated and a little empty.

And Marvel's Spider-Man is no exception.ĭeveloped by Insomniac Games exclusively for the PlayStation 4, it's the modern open-world game in micro. This hero, more than any other, is a barometer for the genre: how well a game captures the complexities and scale of swinging through Manhattan speaks to the shape and skeleton of open-world games as a whole. With a freeform web-swinging system as its backbone, it offered an entire digital New York City and invited the player to be a hero-a goal that nearly every Spider-Man game since has shared. After the genre-defining 2001 release of Grand Theft Auto 3, Treyarch's Spider-Man 2 (2004) was one of the next epochal titles to emphasize free roaming while it functioned as an adaptation of the film of the same name, though, its true ambition was to be a Spider-Man simulator.

Spider-Man videogames and the digital open world grew up together, the latchkey children of modern gaming.

Marvel's spider man pc