Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

There's a new Spider-Man cartoon on Disney Plus, and sadly, it is not a reboot or continuation of Spectacular Spider-Man, which, as far as I know, is still stuck in a frustrating legal limbo in which neither Disney nor Sony completely own its rights. Instead, what we have is a cartoon that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a prequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, or a completely new adaptation of the comics. It would be very easy for such a project to lack a strong sense of identity, and to have an incoherent plot that feels like parts of 2 different plots haphazardly stitched together. Thankfully, that isn't the case, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man actually comes out to be a pretty good Spider-Man cartoon.

It definitely still retains many aesthetic and narrative elements from its original conception as an MCU prequel. Aunt May is clearly based on Marissa Tomai's version of the character from the MCU. The Sokovia Accords and Superhero Registration Act are important parts of the show's backstory. And cameos by Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and others definitely feel like the MCU versions of those characters.

But this definitely isn't a prequel to the MCU's Spider-Man. First and foremost, the Sokovia Accords have already been put into place without Spider-Man being involved in the events of this story's version of Civil War, which is referenced several times. It also features a completely different cast of characters. There are no traces of characters like Ned Leeds, MJ, or Liz Allen. And it does feature characters like Norman and Harry Osborn, neither of whom have appeared (properly) in the MCU movies.

So this is a show that will definitely be familiar to people who have watched the MCU, but its lack of continuity with the MCU might turn die-hard MCU fans away.

Thankfully, I don't care if the show follows strict MCU continuity. All I care about is whether it's a good adaptation of Spider-Man. And it mostly is.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man - Sokovia Accords
©: Walt Disney Co.
The connections to the live-action MCU are nebulous.
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Marvel Spider-Man - title

I'm a pretty big Spider-Man fan in general. I watched the cartoons and the movies, and I play the video games as they come along, but I've only actually read a few dozen individual comics. I did, however, play the shit out of all my Spider-Man action figures as a kid! I do, however consider myself to be a Spider-Man game aficionado.

When I'm out in public, I often imagine myself web-swinging to get around. What would I swing from? Are those lampposts close enough that I could swing from one without face-planting on the pavement? I also often wish that I could hang upside down from the ceiling when I'm bored or waiting for something. As such, I pay very close attention to the way that Spider-Man moves in video games, and the quality of a given game is usually predominantly determined by how elegantly it handles movement.

Like a streak of light, he arrives just in time

The traversal mechanics and physics of Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man are fluid and work solidly. They just aren't particularly interesting or challenging, and they aren't really as expressive as I would like. It basically boils down to "hold R2 to go somewhere". It's pulled straight from Assassin's Creed's parkour system, except that holding the same button allows you to transition from rooftop parkour to web-swinging without any effort or thought. There's a few modifiers and variations that you can perform, which add a little bit of freedom and expressiveness, but it's not much. You can web-zip to perch points, hold circle to move around the corners of buildings while wall-running, and you can jump and dive to gain speed. These things help you get where you're going faster, but you could just rubber-band the R2 button and left stick, set the controller down, and you'd get to where you were going eventually anyway.

Insomniac was inspired by Assassin's Creed's "hold R2 to parkour" traversal system.

To Insomniac's credit, however, the web-swinging physics seems much more accurate than any Spidey game since the landmark Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in on the PS2 / XBox. Webs do seem to genuinely connect to objects in the environment (whether they be buildings, lampposts, trees, or so on). The only exception that I'm aware of is when you double-tap X to zip forward. I never use this move, however, because of how it cheats the physics so blatantly.

The environment is also much more detailed and populated. Buildings have more varied geometry with lots of ledges and poles and towers for you to zip to, you can parkour over cars when running in the densely-packed streets, and the map is dotted with construction sites and road work that gives you additional locomotion options and helps make the world look and feel lived-in. Spider-Man also has a lot of contextual movements in the environment that helps keep movement fluid. He'll web-zip from fire-escape platform to fire-escape platform when ascending buildings, he'll pirouette through narrow gaps, he'll swing around poles, and so forth. In general, the animations are all exceptional, and the traversal mechanics feel really good.

Spidey transitions seamlessly from web-swinging to wall-running to contextual "spider-parkour".

Spinning webs, any size

Despite the physics being generally solid, I do feel like the game occasionally cheats to make it work. Webs sometimes seem to grow in length when attached to certain objects, and the player (and therefore Spidey) can overcome the force of gravity through sheer force of will. This allows Spider-Man to swing greater distances than he should when swinging from buildings or trees that aren't considerably higher than Spider-Man is, and for him to avoid falling into the side of a building when he continuously swings from the same side of the street. All Spider-Man games have struggled with finding ways to allow him to move around in Central Park and along the coastline. These little cheats are common ones for developers to implement, and Insomniac is no exception.

Webs seem to reliably connect to something in the environment.

To that end, I'm going to say something that might get me flamed by the internet: I think I maybe actually prefer the web-swinging concept of Beenox's Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in game.

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Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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