As demonstrated by Kate Bishop, Hawkeye, and Black Panther, the best part of new characters coming to Marvel’s Avengers are the story missions. These introduce us to the newcomers, giving us insight into their background and motivations, and provide a whole bunch of original content into an underweight game. Spider-Man, the exclusive character PlayStation owners have been waiting over a year for, arrives with no story missions.
Revealed in IGN’s exclusive hands-on preview, instead of being introduced to the game via a solo story arc, Spider-Man is just suddenly there, doing his spider thing. Instead of a series of narrative missions, Peter Parker’s story unfolds through a series of audio logs, along with some illustrated cutscenes unlocked as players complete character-specific challenges, latterly added to existing Avenger’s multiplayer missions.
According to gameplay director Philippe Therien, speaking to IGN, Crystal Dynamics decided against creating Spidey story missions in order to focus on the new raid event that releases across all platforms alongside Spider-Man on November 30. “We want to spend our efforts on content that everyone can enjoy, so we chose to spend a lot of our energy on the Klaw raid that’s coming up at the same time.”
From a development perspective, it makes some degree of sense. Why spend a lot of time on free content that, because of nonsense deals with Spidey-owners Sony, Xbox and PC players won’t be able to play? As someone who chose the PlayStation version of the game specifically for the promise of hot Spider-Man action, however, it’s a pretty major letdown. Come on, Crystal Dynamics, we waited over a year for this?
Spider-Man and the Discordant Sound raid arrive in Marvel’s Avengers next week. With no new characters announced beyond Spidey, and the game’s ongoing struggles keeping players engaged, this could be the end of the line for Square Enix’s least entertaining Marvel game.
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