Marvel’s Avengers’ Spider-Man and first raid: we’ve seen them in action

Marvel’s AvengersFans have been waiting for the update they’ve wanted since last year. Not only will all players get their hands on the game’s first real endgame activity — the raid, Discordant Sound — but PlayStation players will get to step into the shoes of their favorite webhead with Spider-Man.

We’ve seen both the raid and the game’s first console-exclusive hero in action through gameplay recordings provided by Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics. And while we can’t do a beat-for-beat rundown of what we’ve seen, we can offer some impressions on both Spider-Man and the raid.

The most obvious point of comparison for Spider-Man’s appearance in Marvel’s AvengersWill be Marvel’s Spider-Man by Insomniac Games — which is, naturally, a lot to live up to, given the highly polished, single-character focus of Insomniac’s games. Spidey’s fighting style looks pretty familiar in Marvel’s Avengers, but has some clear differences from Insomniac’s approach.

Spider-Man is slower than other superheroes to maneuver around or engage in combat. Everything is in Marvel’s Avengers is a little sluggish, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but for a hero known for his speed it’s a little jarring. However, he’s just as acrobatic as you would expect, and we saw plenty of fancy mid-combat flips and handstands.

This is the second and most significant difference. Marvel’s Avengers’ Spider-Man and Insomniac’s Spider-ManPeter Parker’s team member in the new hero event. Since he’s always playing with allies — be it AI or matchmade players — Spidey gets to play more of a supportive role. He was often seen web-hosting his enemies, dazzling them for his friends.

Stunning enemies in a variety of ways seems to be Spider-Man’s main way of contributing to the Avengers. He was able to juggle his enemies in mid-air and use takedowns early to free them from a fight. We also saw him web them to walls, keeping his team safe. Spidey’s role looks to be crowd-control support rather than raw damage.

Image: Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix

Spider-Man, while we are unable to go into details, looks to be another solid addition. Marvel’s Avengers roster. Not just because they are so beautiful. Marvel’s Avengers works, don’t expect Spider-Man to be a completely new kind of hero. Everyone in Marvel’s Avengers uses the same combo system and gameplay, albeit with hero-distinct toolsets, and Spider-Man looks no different.

But players won’t have a lot of Spider-Man-unique content to play with him, and will instead need to replay familiar activities and content to level him up. Crystal Dynamics revealed on Monday in a story on IGN that Spidey won’t have any of his own story missions like the other add-on heroes, and will simply have an event surrounding his release.

After leveling up Spider-Man’s abilities, players can now take the character into Discordant Sound. Players have been waiting over a year for endgame content that’s not just a rehash of something players experienced in the campaign, and we noticed at least some new things in what we’ve seen of the raid.

Discordant Sound looks like it’ll be broken into group combat, proper boss fights, and puzzle rooms. This raid was similar to one in Destiny. It focuses on the handful of bosses, puzzles, and not so much the sprawling MMO maze.

Both Spider-Man and the new raid will be available. Marvel’s Avengers on Nov. 30 — although it’s worth reiterating that only players on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 will be able to play as Spider-Man.

A variety of other heroes like Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and other duplicate heroes like War Machine and She-Hulk were data-mined last year around the game’s launch — a data mine that included details about a Klaw-focused raid in Wakanda, lending it some credibility a year later. But with Spider-Man being the last hero Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have spoken publicly about, it’s impossible to say which of Marvel’s mightiest heroes might join Avengers By 2022