DISCLAIMER: A review code was provided by the publisher
2018 might as well be known as The Year of the Spider. We had Spider-Man’s memorable appearance in Avengers: Infinity War, one of the year’s best games with Marvel’s Spider-Man which included a bevy of DLC, and one of the best Spidey films in the form of Into the Spider-Verse.
As The Year of the Spider comes to a close, we conclude with the last piece of DLC for Marvel’s Spider-Man titled Silver Lining. With Captain Watanabe on administrative leave and Hammerhead still on the loose with more and more Silver Sable tech, tensions are rising in New York. As the wall-crawler continues to make an effort to cease the crime lord’s operations, Silver Sable returns to the city angrier than ever.
Stakes rise as advanced exoskeleton suits hit the streets and make Hammerhead’s thugs stronger and Sable takes a less heroic approach to clean up the streets, causing a headache for Spidey. When I played the main game, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Silver Sable’s character.
She helps imprison civilians protesting against Osborn and creates a Nazi-esque occupation over New York and then by the end of the game, she wanders off with no real consequences. In Silver Lining, Insomniac attempts to make her more empathetic by revealing her weapons are actually going to help rebels fight in a civil war.
Had the events of the main game not happened, I’d be alright with this but it’s just hard to believe someone like Silver Sable can switch morals to opposite sides of the spectrum at the snap of the finger. She ends up fighting against what she was doing just a few months ago and it’s a bizarre change of character.
The team-up between the webhead and Sable does provide for some great set pieces such as a sequence where you have to chase down a convoy as Sable flies around in a jet, raining hell on said convoy. If there’s one thing the DLCs have consistently done right, it’s executing on great team-ups with other characters to provide both great action moments but also excellent character ones as well.
When all is said and done, though, I can’t help but feel like this DLC trilogy was a tad hallow for its main story. It started strong with the first episode but began to wane more and more as the focus shifted to Hammerhead who fails to be anything more than just an evil punching bag. He lacks depth, his plan quickly devolves into nothing more than a cookie-cutter formula we’ve seen before, and he ultimately feels wasted.
Perhaps my disappointment lies from the main game being of such a high caliber but I still can’t shake the idea that the writing dipped in quality quite a bit as these episodic pieces of content went on.
I do think they’re all worth playing if you want more Spider-Man, especially if they go on sale eventually, as they do build on characters you love and know and provide fun gameplay moments but the core story is a bit of a miss.
Silver Lining does begin to set things up for a sequel to the game by extending the relationship with Miles Morales and leaving a very interesting story thread open via a side mission (a la Hush from Batman: Arkham City to Arkham Knight). It’s nothing super major but should you be really interested in where they’re going to take things in the inevitable Spider-Man 2, you should probably play these pieces of DLC.
The Verdict:
Outside of some awesome action sequences, Spider-Man’s City That Never Sleeps DLC saga ends on more of a whimper than a bang. Sable’s characterization is jarring and odd, Hammerhead never rises above anything more than a C-tier villain, and it ends up feeling like a string of similar events repeating until you finally get to the end.
I do believe these episodes are worth playing if you can get them at a cheaper price or if you’re a true diehard fan of Spider-Man but Silver Lining especially fails to scratch the itch I had for more worthwhile Spidey content.
