Spider-Man (2018 video game)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Spider-Man (2018 video game) are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Accidental Aesop: Punctuality is important. If Peter had a better work-life balance, he never would have been late to work, which never would have led to the safety hazard that got Otto's funding cut, and never would have set Otto to go down the dark path that led to him becoming a monster responsible for thousands of deaths. He also wouldn't have gotten evicted if he paid his rent on time.
  • Base Breaker: Mary Jane. Ho boy. Debates surrounding her tend to get really heated. Is she a likable, sympathetic girl with a good character arc who has a point about Peter babying her, or is she an annoying dumbass who unfairly slags Peter off for wanting to protect her after constantly getting herself into dangerous situations? Also, is her portrayal as a journalist any good, or yet another jarringly different take that shows that people just don't get MJ? One thing that does unite her fans and her detractors though is hatred for her stealth segments, which are criticized for being tedious and an annoying change of pace from the main gameplay, aside from one or two specific segments (Grand Central Station and Norman Osborn's penthouse, respectively).
    • Hammerhead from the DLC also has players pretty split. He's got fans for being a genuinely badass and threatening take on the character and an effective threat for a post-game sidestory. Others really don't like him for being a less-interesting villain than the complex Mr. Negative and Dr. Octopus, and find his transformation into a hulking cyborg monstrosity pretty silly and unfitting for a character meant to embody 30's Dick Tracy-style gangster aesthetics.
  • Best Level Ever: The opening sequence where you storm Fisk Tower is widely praised for being a fun romp that does a good job at teaching the player the basics of the game: fighting bad guys, saving civilians, the works. The atmosphere is also amazing, because despite him being the game's Starter Villain you feel like you're playing the Grand Finale of another game and the build up towards finally putting the Kingpin behind bars for good feels suitably epic.
  • Can't Unhear It: Yuri Lowenthal has established himself as one of the definitive Spider-Man actors alongside Christopher Daniel Barnes, Josh Keaton, and Tobey Maguire thanks to his amazing performance, which nails Spidey's fun-loving wisecracking side while simultaneously nailing the utter heartbreak he suffers from Otto's betrayal and Aunt May's death.
  • Character Rerailment: Disenfranchised Spider-Man fans who aren't happy with how the character's been handled from the infamous One More Day story arc and beyond view this as the most faithful incarnation of Spider-Man in years: while Executive Meddling in the comics has resulted in Peter losing his marriage to MJ and jobs so he can feel "young and hip" to higher-ups afraid letting him grow up, this Spider-Man has a steady job as a lab assistant, moves into a house that he remodels in the interquel, and once Miles starts displaying Spider powers of his own, he takes the kid under his wing and mentors him, becoming something of a big brother figure to him in the process. For fans who are annoyed with how Peter tends to be a teenager in other adaptations, seeing him as a proper adult is a breath of fresh air.
    • Probably the best example of this trope happens in the ending, which seems to be created as a middle finger to the aforementioned One More Day. In the comics, Aunt May accidentally gets shot by one of Kingpin's assassins who was aiming for Peter, and instead of letting May pass like she requests, he instead sells his marriage to MJ to Mephisto so he can keep her alive. Here, she falls ill to Devil's Breath and when Peter talks to her on her deathbed, she asks for him to let her go and to preserve the Devil's Breath cure so it can be replicated and save the rest of the infected. While he understandably struggles to do the right thing, he ultimately does right by her and lets her pass, even though the decision to do so is agonizing. This not only makes the scene an effective Tear Jerker, but embodies Spidey's creed of "With great power, there must also come great responsibility" as opposed to his complete and utter betrayal of it in the comics.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The game kicks off with an energetic, upbeat rock song, specifically Alive by the Warbly Jets that keeps playing when you're first swinging through the streets of New York and accompany the police as they move to arrest Wilson Fisk. It does a damn good job at psyching you up for the fun web-slinging adventures ahead of you.
  • Demonic Spiders: Quite a few, surprisingly.
    • Brutes, especially in the early game where you don't have a lot of good options to deal with them. Direct physical attacks are useless against them unless they're tied up or briefly stunned by being hit with a throwable object or perfect dodge, and they not only hit hard, but they often attack twice in rapid succession and move way faster than anyone as big and fat as them should move. They're even immune to finishers until the player gets two bars of Focus later in the game, making them that much more unforgiving for newer players. They stop being a problem once the player becomes sufficiently stronger, but they can still be nasty in a crowd fight.
    • Thugs with rocket launchers aren't dangerous to fight head-on. They are dangerous when they hang back and pelt you with rockets while you're fighting other enemies. Sure, they get their own special warning in the form of ominous beeping and a cursor encouraging you to get the hell out of the way, but it can be surprisingly easy to miss them amidst the chaos of an all-out gang fight. And while rocket launcher enemies are supposed to pull out a pistol and shoot you, or hit you with the launcher itself if they get close to you, sometimes they'll shoot a rocket at you point blank, and you're given no warning to dodge it meaning that you'll suddenly lose half your health for no good reason.
      • Sable Troops with rocket launchers are especially dangerous, since their rocket launchers also hit you with EMP waves that disable your gadgets. The same goes for Hammerhead's thugs once they get their hands on Sable tech in the DLC.
    • Whip thugs are impossible to hit head-on or web up, and on top of that? They hit hard and will pull you out of the sky when you start getting acrobatic. And in a game where aerial combat is your biggest strength, that's a very, very bad thing.
    • The DLC introduces two fiendishly difficult enemy variants: Brutes with miniguns, and jetpack enemies with shields. The former are as nigh-invulnerable to damage as normal brutes while being able to dish out unholy amounts of ranged burst damage while being immune to being webbed up or disarmed, and the latter can't be hit from the front, will charge at you for massive damage, and often drop gadget-disabling EMP trails just to ramp up the annoyance factor. And later in the DLC campaigns, they are everywhere.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Yuri Watanabe has gotten a lot of positive fan attention that led to a boost in visibility to her somewhat obscure comic counterpart. Not only is she a hot cop, but her snarky attitude makes her a good foil for the wisecracking Peter to bounce off of and gives them good chemistry during their interactions. Plenty of fans who can't stand this game's version of MJ tend to wish for Spidey to hook up with Yuri instead, which is hilarious if you know they are married in real life by way of Relationship Voice Actor.
    • As usual, J. Jonah Jameson. Not only is Darin De Paul's deliciously hammy performance on par with J.K. Simmons' legendary take on the character, but he's able to balance his status as an amusing Alex Jones parody with making genuinely good points when he isn't making all kinds of ludicrous accusations about Spider-Man. The climax of the game is where he shines most, and his concern for the citizens of New York and the solemn way he tries to keep their hopes up is downright touching. Not bad for a version that never actually makes a physical appearance!
    • Taskmaster and Tombstone are both optional bosses, but manage to shine thanks to bringing a lot to the table in spite of that. Taskmaster gets this for having an awesome design and a great, challenging boss fight, while Tombstone is well-regarded for being so damn likable while being a murderous drug lord, and his polite small talk with Spidey during their boss fight is oddly heartwarming and genuinely engaging.
    • Copycat Spider-Man gets this for being a refreshing take on the Fake Ultimate Hero trope: he's actually a good martial artist who can hold his own in a fight, and genuinely just wants to do good after being inspired by Spidey to make a difference. Getting to fight some of Kingpin's leftover henchmen alongside him is considered to be one of the game's better sidequests.
  • Evil Is Cool: Mr. Negative got a lot of new fans thanks to his awesome powers, brutal effectiveness as a threat, and his tragic backstory. It helps that he's a sharp dresser and a master swordsman.
    • Similarly, Doctor Octopus has this reputation for similar reasons as Mr. Negative. Sure, he's more of a schlubby geek than most versions of the character, but that doesn't stop him from being a pitiable figure and utterly terrifying as a villain.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Black Cat, as to be expected. Silver Sable also has this going for her thanks to her good looks, fierce temper, and smooth accent.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Some of the game's suit powers are insane. To wit:
      • Web Blossom ( Classic Suit) is available a little after the start, and is the equivalent to dropping a web nuke on your enemies: Spidey rapidly fires in every direction, wrapping all enemies around him in thick web cocoons that not only paralyze them, but also automatically remove them from the fight via web takedown if they're close to a surface they can stick to. If there aren't any Brutes around, you can easily beat an entire group of thugs with a single button press.
      • Spider Bro (Stark Suit) takes your Spider Drones (already Game Breakers themselves) and consolidates their strength into an especially powerful, bigger drone. It rapidly fires electric webs at your enemies until they drop, and they drop fast thanks to its rate of fire and the strength of its shots.
      • Quad Damage (Fear Itself suit) does exactly what the name implies by boosting your damage output by four times your usual strength, resulting in not only plenty of enemies dropping like flies, but bosses losing to you in record time.
      • Unrelenting Fury (Last Stand suit) punches through shields and ignores the protective... *ahem* "padding" of Brutes meaning that you can ruthlessly beat Demonic Spiders like minigun brutes and shield jetpack guys into submission without having to jump through any hoops just to damage them.
      • You may only get Resupply (Anti Ock suit) right before the final boss, but it's a boon for harder New Game+ playthroughs and the DLC campaign. It automatically refills your gadgets and does so quickly which may not seem like a big deal on paper, but seeing as how it allows you to constantly use incredibly useful items like Electro-Webs, Web Bombs, Concussive Blasts, and Trip Mines without worrying about their ammo count/cooldown, it's going to be one of your bread-and-butter abilities against the insane enemies in the DLC.
    • The Threat Sensors suit mod puts you in bullet time with every perfect dodge no matter who your opponent is, which utterly trivializes the difficulty of every encounter in the game.
    • Your gadgets are also generally busted. The standouts, however, are...
      • Concussive Blast. Any non-Brute enemies caught in its massive radius are sent flying though the air, which is a great way to get some breathing room when they're ganging up on you. If you're fighting enemies on a rooftop or near the ocean, however, it becomes the deadliest tool in your arsenal. Enemies that fall from a big enough height or into a body of water are instantly KO'ed. Basically, you've got a slightly less potent Web Blossom that you can use as a standard tool, as long as your positioning is good.
      • Web Bombs aren't game-breaking by themselves, but they make a deadly pair with the Concussive Blast or Rock Out (Spider-Punk suit) Suit Power. Use a Web Bomb on a group of enemies, then pop a Concussive Blast or Rock Out. As long as there are plenty of surfaces for them to stick on, you've cleared out an entire group of enemies in record time!
      • Spider Drones are every bit as vicious as Spider Bro is, and only slightly weaker. Deploy as many of these suckers as you can (as well as a Spider Bro for good measure), and sit back and watch as they do your job for you.
  • Goddamned Bats: Jetpack Sable goons aren't as tough as they seem since you can easily counter and punish them, but the way they weave out of your way in the air is annoying to deal with, as are the EMP grenades that disable your gadgets.
    • Brutes become this later in the game. Thanks to all the gadgets and techniques at your disposal they won't be the threats they were early on, but their agility and hard-hitting attacks still make them a nuisance when you're in the middle of a chaotic crowd fight.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: Some players weren't impressed with how derivative this game is when compared to similar open-world games, mainly in the form of the towers you have to mess with to unlock parts of the map.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Despite all the sleaze and rampant dickery, it's easy to feel bad for Norman Osborn. The man is a widower who's still in mourning, and has to live with the knowledge that his son is dying from the same disease as his wife, and what was intended to be a cure accidentally became a deadly bioweapon that would take countless lives during the Sinister Six's rampage. The way he looks so utterly broken as he's talking to a comatose Harry during the post-credits scene really drives home that this isn't the ruthless sociopath from the comics and other adaptations - he's a family man tormented by deep emotional pain.
    • Likewise, Doctor Octopus does everything in his power to alienate both Peter and the player when it comes to the lows he'll sink to in his bid to ruin Norman Osborn's life. But when all is said and done and he's been soundly defeated, it's hard to watch such a formerly kind and lovable old man be left a complete and utter wreck, tearfully begging for Peter not to abandon him.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Felicia Hardy and her father Walter - the second and first Black Cats respectively, are every bit as crafty as a master thief should be. They effortlessly trick Spider-Man into doing their dirty work, outsmart the Maggia at every turn, and are so damn charismatic and likable that it's hard to hate them. It's definitely a trait that runs in the family.
    • Before he completely loses himself to the Demon, Mr. Negative is another contender. He runs a gang of super-powered terrorists while posing as a humble, friendly homeless shelter manager with no one (aside from Spider-Man and MJ, eventually) suspecting a thing, and blazes a trail of death and destruction across Manhattan while outwitting Spider-Man at every turn. He comes this close to winning, only for Spider-Man to snatch a close victory at the last second.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Martin Li/Mr. Negative goes beyond the point of no return by orchestrating the City Hall Bombing, which results in the deaths of dozens of innocents and kicks off the Demons' escalation to full-on terrorist tactics. The man himself even acknowledges that there's no going back for him in a private journal, but believes that he has no choice.
    • Doctor Octopus establishes how far gone he is not only by unleashing Devil's Breath on New York and infecting countless innocents, but by also releasing dangerous convicts from Ryker's Island and The Raft. By the end of his reign of terror, Peter has to accept that Otto Octavius, the kind man he once looked up to is dead, and that the sociopathic Doc Ock is all that remains.
    • Hammerhead properly introduces himself in the DLC by executing a bunch of helpless police officers purely to traumatize Yuri, and it gets worse from there.
    • Screwball cements just how dangerous she's become in the DLC by upgrading from a kidnapping hoax to domestic terrorism, forcing you to disarm bombs and destroy EMP emitters that could potentially wipe out entire city blocks.
    • Yuri goes off the deep end during the "Turf Wars" DLC chapter. Comic fans familiar with her supervillain identity as Wraith will know that there's no turning back for her once she guns down an entire bar's worth of Maggia goons, all of whom were unarmed and had no way of defending themselves.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Screwball's voice is torture on the ears in the game's DLC missions, because she will constantly taunt you, belittle you, squeal about every little thing, and throw out internet slang that won't age well over the years. And to make matters worse, she will never shut the fuck up.
    • "No, wait!" *gunshot* (Get used to hearing this a lot if you aren't good at the stealth missions.)
  • Narm: While the game's generally good at avoiding this, there are a few moments that definitely qualify.
    • In the PS5 remaster, Peter Parker's new face has caught a lot of flack not just for being so different from the original, but also for how it ruins the game's more dramatic scenes. PS5!Peter's facial expressions fall victim to Dull Surprise, and during his post-fight scene with Otto and last conversation with Aunt May, he looks more like a mildly annoyed teenager who found out that his brother stole the last pizza slice as opposed to a heartbroken man being betrayed by his father figure and losing the woman who raised him.
      • Another issue relating to the above is that while the new facial model Ben Jordan looks his age (26), the facial capture tech clearly didn't do a good job at translating his likeness to a digital medium because the 23 year old Peter looks younger than Miles Morales, who's only 15. This makes his romantic scenes with MJ and Black Cat who still look their age come off as hilariously creepy and uncomfortable on their part.
    • Yuri Lowenthal's screams of agony are realistic and greatly acted, yet for some reason the developers decided to use a very distinct stock scream of his in a few dramatic scenes that completely kills whatever tension they had. Since it's recycled from missions where Spider-Man's trying to physically stop out-of-control cars from flattening pedestrians, he sounds less like someone in pain and more like someone struggling with constipation.
    • The genetically modified spider that hitches a ride on MJ and eventually bites Miles clings to MJ for a ridiculously long time (even when she jumps off a skyscraper and goes web-swinging by Spidey) before finally finding Miles and immediately biting him. While it's a Forgone Conclusion that Miles is going to end up with spider powers of his own, the spider being this picky with who it bites ends up being oddly funny.
    • Speaking of the spider, the inherent Nightmare Fuel of MJ knowing that a tarantula is crawling on her but can't scream or swat it because a hostile, trigger-happy Silver Sable is looking for her goes from tense to facepalm-worthy in the blink of an eye. Despite cornering her in Norman's secret lab - which only has one exit (which is the doorway she entered through), she briefly surveys the lab and doesn't even bother looking behind the many tables MJ could potentially be using for cover before assuming she escaped and immediately leaving. It's hard to be scared when such a deadly woman suddenly grabs the Idiot Ball with a gorilla grip and refuses to let go.
  • No Problem With Licensed Games: One of the most triumphant examples in history, this game is on par with the Batman Arkham series in terms of being considered one of the best video game adaptations of a comic book character.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Mick, the friendly cook from the diner Peter and MJ eat at for being yet another memorable Stan Lee cameo in a Marvel property. This one in particular stands out for being one of his last ones before his death later in 2018.
    • The post credits scene reveals that Harry Osborn is bonded to one of Spider-Man's most famous enemies of all time: The Venom Symbiote.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Peter Parker's facial model being replaced in the PS5 rerelease got this kind of reaction from a ton of fans, and soured them on an otherwise solid port.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Screwball wasn't hated at first. In fact, fans were tickled that such an obscure villain got some time to shine in a seemingly random sidequest. And then she became the main villain of the DLC's sidequests, and she wore out her welcome fast. Not only is she obnoxious and rude towards Spider-Man and by extension, the player for not doing her challenges perfectly, but said challenges are basically reskinned versions of Taskmaster's challenges but with the difficulty ramped up. She's also a particularly frustrating example of a Karma Houdini who is somehow constantly able to avoid being captured by Spider-Man until the very last DLC, where she forces you to run after her in an obnoxious boss fight/chase sequence. Making matters worse is that defeating her isn't even satisfying since she's smug about getting more followers online, despite technically losing. Even worse is the fact that aside from Hammerhead (who's a contentious baddie as it is), she's the only villain in the DLC, meaning that fans of Spidey's more popular and currently unused foes were left wanting.
    • Silver Sable, however, was hated from the start. She's an arrogant, hard-headed General Ripper who constantly gets in Spider-Man's way, causes more problems than she solves (while blaming said problems on Spider-Man), and is the head of the tyrannical militia violating the civil liberties of Manhattan's residents. While this isn't a bad thing in and of itself since she's a villain, the problems rise from the fact that she effortlessly kicks Spider-Man's ass every time they come to blows despite being an average human (albeit trained to peak physical perfection), and you never get a chance to take her down a peg in a proper boss fight. She's also treated a lot more sympathetically by the narrative than she should be, and goes through a nonsensical High Heel Face Turn at the end of the game. To sum it up, she's got the plot armor of a Villain Sue, but the non-existent competence of a Smug Snake.
      • The DLC tries to rescue her from the Scrappy heap by giving her a boss fight and proper character development that she never got in the main story, but fans were instead annoyed that she's an obnoxious, ungrateful Jerkass yet again and weren't won over despite her mellowing out towards Spider-Man just because she's that aggressively unlikable.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The stealth sections of the game where you play as Miles or MJ have gotten a lot of hate since day one for being tedious and annoying distractions from the web-slinging actions everyone bought the game for. There are a few setpieces that do get praise for at least being interesting (Grand Central Station and Norman's penthouse for MJ, hiding from Rhino at the docks with Miles), but even those aren't as well-received as the main gameplay.
  • That One Boss: Unsurprisingly, the DLC's massive Difficulty Spike gave us a few of these.
    • The Black Cat "boss fight" in The Heist where you're chasing her through the subway tunnels. You're forced to swing through a small, cramped environment with random columns of electricity and falling debris that are constantly trying to hurt and slow you down. And since Black Cat can easily slip away unless you're playing damn-near perfectly, every hit is devastating. Even worse, the game encourages you to make things harder than yourself by suggesting for you to web-zip your way through the tunnel, which is not optimal for this part of the game.
    • Screwball's chase in Silver Lining is even worse. Not only is it easy to lose her like with Black Cat, but you're forced to use just about every web-slinging technique you've been using in her challenges to keep up with her, and while you're chasing her you're forced to deal with mandatory "Photobombs" that are mini-challenges that you must complete or else you automatically lose. For some reason. Oh, and if that wasn't frustrating enough, she eventually deploys drones that will drop EMP waves that will slow you down during a chase where ANY drop in speed will screw you over. If you're not up to fighting her again on a replay, we don't blame you.
    • Hammerhead's boss fight in Turf Wars is basically a fight against a Jetpack Brute, which is as painful as it sounds. His Project Olympus armor lets him leap massive distances in order to cave your face in, and his attacks come out ridiculously fast. Not only is the dodge timing weird, but he'll attack three to four times in rapid succession, with each hit chopping off a sizable chunk of damage when you fail to dodge them. He can also fire powerful lasers at you if you keep your distance, and once he's low on health he'll start spamming them too.
    • The fight with Silver Sable at the very beginning of Silver Lining is a nasty kick in the nuts. She's ridiculously aggressive, and throws out three-hit combo attacks that come out lightning-quick and are seriously awkward to dodge. Gadgets barely effect her thanks to the force fields she puts up when you use them, and the same goes for physical attacks seemingly at random. But the worst part about fighting her is that she actively punishes you for playing the game the way it's meant to be played - When you pull off a perfect dodge or otherwise hit her when she's vulnerable, hitting her more than three times during a combo will cause her to fight back with an unavoidable, hard-hitting counter attack. No other enemy fights like this before or even after this fight, and the game doesn't bother to warn you in advance.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Fans were not happy to find out that Peter Parker's face got a complete makeover in the PS5 remaster, where his facial model John Bubniak has been replaced with Ben Jordan. While Insomniac has officially stated that it was so they could have a better physical match for Yuri Lowenthal and make the resulting facial capture easier to handle, plenty of fans accuse it of being a cover for Disney mandating for them to make Peter better resemble Tom Holland, his actor in the MCU. It doesn't help that despite the official explanation, PS5 Peter looks far less emotive than the original during the game's most emotional scenes.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: When Spidey knocks out Charles Standish due to thinking that he's about to kill MJ, she freaks out at him for preventing her from learning vital information and spends a good chunk of time angry with him about it. While it is a big screw-up on Peter's part, he had no way of knowing that MJ wasn't in danger, since all he saw was a man holding his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint in a camp full of armed Sable Troopers with no context and (from his point of view) very little time to act, making the way the narrative, MJ, and Peter himself all dump on him come off as more than a little mean-spirited.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A major gripe MJ's detractors have is that her complaints about Peter babying her have absolutely no standing whatsoever. She's constantly infiltrating dangerous places full of armed men that want to hurt her with no backup and no escape plan, and it isn't until the final stealth section that she even thinks about using a weapon. So is it any wonder that Peter would be concerned with her well-being thanks to the needless risks she takes?
  • The Woobie: Spider-Man really runs afoul of his infamous "Parker Luck" in this game, especially in regards to the fates of his closest friends. Whether it's family friend Martin Li or father figure Otto Octavius go insane and turn into some of his most dangerous enemies, having his other close friend Yuri Watanabe fall into villainy because of his failures to help them, and losing Aunt May and being forced to watch her die, you'll absolutely want to give the poor guy a hug by the end of the game.
    • Poor Sandman has been trapped in a container and forgotten about for eight years, and could possibly have been conscious for all of it. Since what little we know about him paints ol' Sandy as one of Spidey's least evil villains, it's safe to say that the poor sap got a really raw deal compared to the more vile and unhinged villains seen in this game.
    • Harry Osborn is sick and dying from a horrible disease, and doomed to become this continuity's Venom instead of Eddie Brock. Since he's an incredibly nice guy dedicated to protecting the environment, it's sad to know that his future looks horribly bleak.
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