Then there’s the swinging. It’s simply wonderful, and feels every bit as special as it did booting up Spider-Man 2 for the first time back in 2004. The sense of speed, motion and elegance is breathtaking, and with a boatload of animations and petty crimes to stop, traversal is never without purpose.
Also interesting to note is the integration of a fast travel system. Players can zip straight to a location they've already visited at the touch of a button, at which point they'll be treated to a cutscene where Spidey uses the subway. It's very "The Commuter Cometh" (a beloved Spidey comic written by Peter David), and yet another fun way of showcasing the character's relationship with the wider New York populace - a relationship made all the better through various side missions that see the wall-crawler assist citizens in need.
Without going off on too much of a tangent though, the sense of movement, speed and agility in this game is truly something to behold. Players will have obviously swung around the city as Peter in previous titles, but not to the level Insomniac have managed to achieve this time around.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
