You chase a helicopter dragging a crane through NYC’s skyscrapers, dodging missiles as it smashes into - and sometimes through! - buildings. You scale a building through its elevator shafts, covertly webbing snipers that appear through sliding elevator doors while dodging flaming bombs hurled from above. The biggest moments in Spider-Man are as varied as they are dramatic. His anti-Spider-Man tirades will often fill your ears as you move to your next goal. Jonah Jameson, the newspaper publisher with a penchant for screaming fits, has moved to the airwaves. You’re patched into scanner traffic with random crimes that happen around town, and J. Spidey’s cellphone is always ringing with a mix of crimes in progress and Peter’s real-life obligations. Spider-Man is excellent at maintaining an urgent tone, and you’re never lacking for anything to do. These hurdles contrast with a vigorously paced throughline. It makes the task feel less like an achievement and more like in-game busy work. This feels like a dated impediment to your progress traveling to those zones isn’t more hazardous, and nearby objectives and crimes are still visible with a quick scan by pressing in the right stick. You aren’t gated off from any part of Manhattan (sorry, other boroughs!), though you’re unable to see the full map of the city until you unscramble some conveniently broken radio towers in each section of town. Even when the game’s fast travel finally unlocked, I felt like I would much rather get to my destination the old-fashioned way: swinging down Fifth Avenue, barely missing cabs and pedestrians. There’s very little learning curve to perfecting your traversal, and the breezy movement - particularly when you fling yourself through the sky at the zenith of a web-swing - never gets old. You’re immediately able to swing freely from building to building, making great arcs in the air up the city’s wide avenues. Spider-Man’s Manhattan captures the paradoxical architectural vastness and relative geographical smallness of the actual island. Its world brims with elaborate set-pieces, and yet, like so many flashy blockbusters, it never quite finds the beat in its heart-pounding action.įor better and worse, Spider-Man is a meticulously rendered throwback to old Spidey films and games, to the last decade of open-world game design and to an easy style of superhero storytelling we rarely get to see anymore.Įven when fast travel finally unlocked, I would much rather get to my destination by swinging there It offers the thrill of swinging between astonishingly realistic skyscrapers across an uninterrupted Manhattan skyline, but also relies on relics of open-world gameplay that feel jarring and dated. Spider-Man aims for the biggest audience with an accessible roller coaster storyline. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences.

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