The One Feature All Spider-Man Games Get WRONG

Wall Running Has Replaced Wall Crawling

It's general inelegance that's often been the real destroyer of this mechanic though. The web head might look lifelike moving along a flat surface, each pop of the shoulder blade realistically detailed, the contortions of his fingers painstakingly animated, but it's all for naught if a small pipe sends the camera flying into the floor or brings the character himself to a halt as the game glitches out while figuring out the best way to move him around the obstacle.

This is an issue that frustrated some fans with Insomniac's latest game. Everything else in that release is so smooth, making for a proper next-gen superhero experience, yet wall crawling felt like it was stuck in the past. It was implemented to be entirely separate from the character's other movement abilities. And, hell, a good chunk of surfaces couldn't simply be stuck to, which is part of the appeal for a lot of fans.

Likewise, attaching to a wall took a second to register, and couldn't easily be combo'd with other moves. Sticking to a surface during swinging was treated as the player wanting to stop dead in their tracks, losing all momentum in the process.

This could explain why Spidey's key movement system has been all but replaced by wall-running in his games. If you're not web swinging in these releases, there's a good chance you're going to be wall running. This is all well and good, but there's no reason a slightly slower wall crawl couldn't act as a complimentary middle ground between swinging and sprinting on the side of a building.