Let’s all have a laugh about how abysmal the Marvel’s Avengers video game is.
Done? Good. Now let’s address the elephant in the room: The PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man DLC is due out on November 30. That’s right, the poorly received game is going to introduce one of Marvel’s most popular heroes to spice things up a bit.
This, of course, comes fresh on the heels of an incredibly successful series of games developed by Insomniac, which began with Marvel’s Spider-Man back in 2018 and continued with the less-successful but still-solidly-performing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. And with the next game in the series, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, due out in 2023, that’s a decent amount of inarguably fun and well-written Spider-Man video game content for Marvel’s Avengers to compete with.
So for a game that is already the butt of industry jokes (from a developer who seems like they were all but thrown under the bus by their parent company), at a time when we already have an amazing Spider-Man series to enjoy, it kind of feels like, no matter how you square it, this DLC content is almost destined to fail. It is already a sore spot for Avenger’s fans who don’t play within the Sony ecosystem.
But if this version of Spider-Man doesn’t stack up against the Insomniac-led incarnation — and believe me, comparisons will be made — then you’re probably going to see some more backlash, especially after what seemed like an interminably long wait for this content. I mean, this was first announced way back in August of 2020.
It will be interesting to see just how this version of the Web-Crawler will stack up against Insomniac’s take on the character and lore. Especially since this will offer a far more linear and grounded space for Spider-Man, with no real large-scale environments like the open world the Marvel’s Spider-Man games offer.
If the Marvel’s Avengers version of Spider-Man is just a more on-the-ground facsimile, with similar fighting styles and move sets, will that be enough to justify his inclusion? Further, if this content is truly epic and well worth playing, will that fact only sow more discord among those who can’t experience the content?
In a lot of ways, there is quite a bit resting on the shoulders of everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I hope Crystal Dynamics can pull it off and maybe breathe some much-needed new life into Marvel’s Avengers, a process that seems like it began with Avengers on Game Pass. That is, of course, before squandering that good will by selling XP boosters (although, to be fair, they did do a turnabout once backlash unsurprisingly reached a bit of a fever pitch).
So is Spider-Man the kick in the pants this struggling behemoth of a game needs? Only time will tell, I suppose.
You can check out the Marvel’s Avengers Spider-Man trailer below.
