Marvel's Spider-Man - Insomniac's technology swings to new heights
Marvel's Spider-Man continues Sony's winning run in first-party releases, once again combining state of the art technology with well-realised gameplay and a wealth of content. For our money, it's also the best and most ambitious release yet from Insomniac Games, and the most complete Spider-Man experience to date. Our focus here concentrates primarily on the game's technical aspects - if you're looking for the final word on last week's 'downgrade' flare-up, we debunked that yesterday.
From a technological standpoint, Marvel's Spider-Man represents the pinnacle of Insomniac's prowess, albeit one that shows a clear process of evolution starting from Xbox One exclusive Sunset Overdrive, gaining considerable polish and refinement in 2016's Ratchet and Clank. By marrying the vast selection of gadgets and action-driven gameplay of Ratchet with the open world traversal systems of Sunset Overdrive - and the story-telling of the Resistance games - Spider-Man feels like the apex of everything Insomniac has worked to build over the past decade.
It starts with the characters - Spider-Man takes a stylised approach to design, as you'd expect from something based on a comic book character, but that doesn't mean the level of detail isn't exceptionally high. Spidey's suit stands out with superb texture work - the material reflects light properly and small details are visible throughout. In close-ups with various characters throughout the story, there is also a lot of detail revealed: sub-surface scattering is used during cut-scenes, allowing light to penetrate the skin and scatter about realistically beneath the surface. Meanwhile, materials-based lighting is remarkable - the leather of Mary Jane's jacket is a stand-out example.
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