During E3 2018 we here at Gaming Instincts were able to get our hands on a playable demo of Spider-man for the PlayStation 4. During our playthrough, we noticed some things that stood out to us, some good some not so good. Each main point will be discussed here. This is Gaming Instincts hands-on impressions of Spider-man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb36wnBa8nw
Graphics
Let’s start with something simple, graphics. Spider-man looks amazing running on the PlayStation 4. Buildings and lighting effects look awesome and animations are smooth as butter. The Depth of field effects are a nice touch as well when web swinging. One thing we did notice is that when you leap off of your swing the entire screen blurs slightly, not a huge issue but with the whole screen blurred it’s a bit difficult to see what’s in front of you. The motion capture was done very well along with the facial animation capture. Camera angles during cutscenes do a nice job of capturing the action that plays out in a scene. Something we noticed during a fight was when you land a finishing move, time may slow down for both you and your attacker during the move, but once the move is over your opponent is still somewhat stuck in slow motion for a bit. Again not a huge problem but something we noticed. 
Overall with good lighting effects, motion capture and animations Spider-man is shaping up to be one great looking game, especially if your running it on a PS4 Pro, but there’s more to a game than just its looks. How it plays is what makes a game what it is.
Gameplay
As much as we didn’t want to say it, Spider-man reminds us of another familiar and popular Superhero video game series, the Batman Arkham Series. Not so much story-wise but combat wise. It’s not hard to see why this formula was adopted. It works for a brawler for a few simple reasons. It’s easy to understand, its easy to master and hard to fail at. We just wish we would have seen more variety in the combat system. Now we’re not saying its identical but it’s easy to see that clearly it was inspired from your basic punch, dodge and punch again formula. There are a few variations in combat, the player has a lot more chances to try out finishing moves on opponents. Players can use objects from the environment to beat their opponents such as car doors and debris. Players can use specialized gadgets that use web to disarm and incapacitate opponents. Mainly what we encountered during our demo was low-level thugs that all seemed to fight the same way. Hopefully, we see some more variety when it comes to generic goons upon the game’s release. 
The web swinging, however, was very impressive, over the years Spiderman games have had their own take on web swinging and this newest installment tries to deliver fast-paced and smooth web swinging, which is very satisfying. It’s easy to understand and a lot of fun when you’re not beating up bad guys. You can also run up buildings and sides of buildings to hit corners and swing around the next area. Spider-man contains quick-time events which are nicely done. There is a fair amount of action that plays in between your button presses so your not too focused on them.
The Story So Far
Spider-man has been pretty quiet about its story, we know some popular Spider-man villains will make a return such The Rhino, Shocker, Electro, and Scorpion. What we don’t know is who they are working for, some say it could be Norman Osborne. Others say it could be Doctor Octopus, whoever it may be we hope their role as the central antagonist gives them a beef in character. What every Spider-man story needs is a good villain.
Conclusion
Spider-man is fastly becoming one of our most anticipated game of this year. With its stunning graphics and good gameplay, we believe this will be one of the years highest rated and profitable game. There is still plenty we don’t know about this game and until it’s release or until Insomniac gives us more info we are waiting in anticipation.
