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New ‘Spider-Man’ game content not living up to the hype

The cover of the Playstation game for Spider-Man The City That Never Sleeps. Image from Insomniac.
The cover of the Playstation game for Spider-Man “The City That Never Sleeps.” Image from Insomniac.

Another month and another DLC package drop for the Spider-Man PlayStation 4 game, and along with it some more unmet expectations.

Turf Wars is the second in the “The City That Never Sleeps” Spider-Man game trilogy’s downloadable content (DLC). This DLC takes place after the events of the previous DLC “The Heist.” Prior to this DLC’s release, the story of the game was that Black Cat, Spider-Man’s on-again-off-again criminal girlfriend, had been working with mobster Hammerhead to rip off the opposing crime families. Black Cat eventually double-crossed Hammerhead and Spider-Man to keep all the winnings all to herself. Hammerhead retaliated by blowing Black Cat up along with her penthouse, and she is presumed dead. Well, they can’t find a body so it’s a 50/50 thing.

The story continues with Spider-Man and everyone’s favorite detective Yuri. They, along with a small group of SWAT officers, infiltrate Hammerhead’s hideout in hopes of bringing him to justice. Obviously, it doesn’t go well. These disposable SWAT guys had “redshirt guys” written all over their faces. Spider-Man and Yuri survive because of course, they do, and we start to see Yuri go down a really dark path. The ending sequence had me saying “what the front door,” only I didn’t say a front door and then I immediately took it because they went back on it.

A big element in the DLC is Hammerhead’s crew getting their hand on Sable weapons. At first, I thought this was Insomniac’s clever way of reusing assets from the main story. However, while I believe that’s mostly true, they did introduce a new form of enemy spawn in the form of a tunneling vehicle. These things burst out of the ground, housing hordes of enemies. There were flying Sable soldiers in the main game and they reintroduced them in this DLC, only now they have a shield. I hate these enemies. A lot.

Aside from the sort-of-new enemies, Insomniac put in even more side objectives, which is just busy work as always. Other than the new suits that you can unlock, which are the Spider-Armor MK1, the original Iron Spider Suit and the Spider Clan suit. That’s really it. The whole DLC will take you around three hours to finish if you binge it, which you probably will. And like the first one, this was meh.

The first DLC had fan-favorite Black Cat, who made it pretty interesting because you weren’t sure what game she is playing. Was she on your side or not? It was like that the entire playthrough. Here we just have Hammerhead to keep us invested and honestly, he’s a D-list spiderman villain at best. The stuff with Yuri does get interesting but that’s not until the end. So pretty much during the entire middle, I was completely checked out.

Unless they do something like bring back Silver Sable, since they are using her weapons and it’s kind of her mess anyway, I can already see the next DLC “Silver Linings” being another meh DLC. Maybe they’ll add Miles Morales as a playable character since he is starring in his own movie this December called “Edge of the Spider-verse.” They have already been hinting at his progress with his newfound spider powers (spoiler alert – he jumps off of a bridge and breaks his toe, off-camera).

“The City That Never Sleeps” DLC story will continue this December with their next release.

3 out of 5 stars.

Alex Coba can be reached at [email protected] or @ThatOneGuyCoba on Twitter.

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  • A

    Alex Grant // Dec 16, 2018 at 5:41 pm

    Hello David and Marcus,

    Thank you for your opinions. This article is a review so Alex Coba is describing his opinions about this game. If you’d like to read strictly objective articles you can check out our news section. Have a great day!

    Reply
  • D

    David Kline // Dec 12, 2018 at 8:41 am

    Yeah what that guy said. I used to be a journalist and this reads like someone venting in his mommy’s basement, not “writing” an “article.”

    Reply
  • M

    Marcus Marshall // Dec 3, 2018 at 11:00 am

    The game and all DLC is awesome. Nothing “meh” about it. You don’t like it? Don’t play it. No need for you to “write” these goofy “articles”….

    Reply