DLC Review: Spider-Man: Turf Wars emulates the good and bad of a comic-book story

DISCLAIMER: A review code was provided by the publisher.

After getting back into the swing of things last month with Spider-Man’s The Heist DLC, I was really eager to continue that story. Insomniac has pulled the scale back from an apocalyptic event in New York City via the main story to an effective mafia war on the streets.

Led by the disfigured and notorious Hammerhead, chaos has broken out yet again with violent gang battles, hits on witnesses, and attempts to seize control of sectors of the city. It’s a sharp contrast to what we saw in the main story which felt more along the lines of the big blockbuster movie Spider-Man stories, the City That Never Sleeps storyline feels like it’s on a smaller scale and is a standalone comic-book entry.

Instead of testing Spider-Man’s physical strength, it’s more of a test of his ability to maintain control over New York. Hammerhead seeks to break down the various powers of New York including gangs, the police, and the wall-crawler. He does this via brute force but also plays psychological games, leading to some characters reaching their breaking point and ignoring the rules to make careless attempts to take down the mob boss.

This is a bit of a darker chapter than The Heist, Hammerhead is relentless and when he finally breaks certain people, they do some unsavory things that are a bit shocking. I don’t think Hammerhead himself is the most compelling villain, he definitely feels like the weakest of all the villains in the game. There’s not any real depth to him outside of his strength and ability to corrupt the minds of some people.

Insomniac doesn’t make much of an effort to make him seem as interesting as Black Cat or even Tombstone or Taskmaster, he’s just kind of an ass who wants to see crime be more prominent again. Maybe we’ll see more in the third and final DLC next month that really adds some value to his character but at the moment, he’s pretty serviceable but cookie cutter.

There’s a lot of really well-executed story cutscenes in this chapter which features incredible cinematography and some crucial character building moments. There’s one sequence in particular in the first mission of the chapter where all the lights go out and the only light are the muzzle flashes of the guns as Spider-Man tangos with Hammerhead and some thugs. It’s super cool and also showcases Captain Yuri being a bit of a fearless gunslinger.

MJ is mostly absent from this chapter, I can’t even recall any phone conversations or cutscenes with her, you don’t play as her here either. The storyline with Miles continues via the phone who is testing his limits without the supervision of Peter in pretty hilarious fashion, I do hope we get to see one of their training sessions in the final chapter but that might be hoping for too much.

Turf Wars also includes a boss battle, something absent from The Heist! It’s not on the scale of anything seen in the main game, it’s more of a toned down version of the Kingpin fight at the start of the game but it’s still fun and keeps combat feeling challenging and fresh.

I think I may have enjoyed The Heist more as the relationship and chemistry between Spider-Man and Black Cat was electric, causing so much tension and drama between them. A lot of that is lost here and I found myself missing it as it was really fun to see those two verbally bounce off each other.

The Heist also significantly strengthened the relationship of Peter and MJ but with MJ entirely absent from this chapter, we don’t see any further development of those two. It’s a bit disappointing and feels more like this chapter was a Spider-Man story rather than the excellent Peter/Spidey stories that Insomniac loves just as Marvel themselves.

The Verdict:

Turf Wars is definitely the weakest of the Spider-Man story content as we lose a lot of great character moments between Peter and MJ and Black Cat and Spidey but it allows for us to dive into the chaotic criminal underbelly of New York City for a few hours. Hammerhead could use more depth for the sake of resonating as a character but he’s serviceable for how Insomniac chooses to use him.

Turf Wars is by no means bad, it’s still really good it just takes away some of the things many people loved about both The Heist and the main story but hopefully, Silver Linings can end this DLC saga with a bang.