Spider-Man PS4: 5 Things It Did Better Than The Arkham Series (And 5 Things It Did Worse)
5. Side Missions
Spider-Man does try with its side missions but the variety just isn’t there.
The Harry Osborne research tasks are great fun but can become rather repetitive, going back and forth between locations or collecting samples. The backpack collectables are also a nice little side objective to pick up on the way to story missions. Some of the easter eggs included make deep cut references for even the biggest of Spider-Man fans. But like most of the other side missions, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.
The majority of Spider-Man’s side missions boil down to revealing stuff on the map to tick off the 100% completion. For some players this isn’t a bad thing, it would just be nice to see some more imagination.
The Arkham Series does a much better job with their side missions. Some are so intricate they could run as separate story arcs themselves.
The Hush side missions in Arkham City and Knight spring to mind, which are completely different from the Mad Hatter ones. You could easily spend hours playing just the side missions, let alone the main story. That being said they do also have their versions of collectable missions in the form of Riddler Trophies and map revealing mechanics like almost every other open-world game in the market.
Like other entries on this list, Spider-Man does nothing bad, it just doesn’t do enough new things.
Winner: Batman