We’re all ready for Spider-Man. In fact, we’re so ready for Spider-Man, that I’m about to go ahead and give it a review score just based on the hype that I’m feeling. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go that far, but the anticipation is getting pretty bad and it’s only gotten worse since I was able to play it last week at the Playstation press conference after-party.
Like many of you, I’ve been playing Spider-Man games, reading comics, and watching cartoons and movies for the vast majority of my life. Some of my favorite gaming moments came in the form of the original Spider-Man arcade games and were quickly followed up by the early generation PlayStation games. We’ve been through a lot with Spidey, and that’s not about to change.
After the PlayStation press conference I had the awesome opportunity to be one of the very first people from the general public (okay, it was mostly journalists, PR people, and developers) to have the opportunity to play Spider-Man and it really rocked my world. Sure, we expect that our favorite web-crawler is going to be beating up some bad guys, solving some mysteries and swinging fluidly throughout New York City. However, the way it feels so natural when you do so is exactly what’s going to make Spider-Man a hit.
When our demo had completed Dustin (another member here at HP that got to check the game out) and I commented to each other that we had spent most of the time with the game simply swinging around Manhattan, running up walls, and perching on top of ledges that we didn’t even complete the tasks that were presented to us. At one point, we both became so involved in a police chase following a robbery that we forgot about the mission at hand. It didn’t matter. The movement mechanic was so fluid and defined that you feel like you’re doing something simply by maneuvering around the city.
Spider-Man has been a long time coming, but it looks like we’re going to be fully satisfied when it comes time to enjoy the full release. We don’t expect that there is going to be anything world changing in this iteration of the series. You’re still Spider-Man. Still taking down bad guys. Still soaring through the air with webs from building to building. But the mechanics are so tight that you won’t even notice the story.
