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5 secrets to perfect web-swinging in Marvel’s Spider-Man
With Marvel’s Spider-Man a huge hit, we offer up our tips for perfect web-swinging through the Big Apple.
It’s probably fair to say that Marvel’s Spider-Man has done reasonably well. With colossal sales, rave reviews and a thriving culture of Spidey selfies, the new adventures of Peter Parker have been well worth the hype. And perhaps the most enjoyable part of this staggering superhero epic is the web-swinging – something that developers Insomniac Games have got just right, offering players the chance to swing through NYC with the balletic grace we’ve come to expect from our favourite wall-crawler. And while the web-swinging is accessible, there are depths to explore if you’re to master it totally. Here are our tips to become king of the swingers.
1. It’s not all about swinging, you know
You think ‘Spider-Man’, you think ‘swinging’, right? Deftly traversing through the monolithic skyscrapers of New York, stopping occasionally for a selfie, but mainly content to see the pedestrians whizz beneath you as you make your way to wherever the next big bad (or smaller bad) may be hiding. Thing is, while you’ll certainly be spending a lot of in-game time following Newton’s third law as a man-shaped pendulum, swinging is only one part of the puzzle when it comes to maintaining momentum.
In other words? Don’t try and force a swing when a wall run is a better option, and learn to mix those up with Zip to Point (L2+R2) and the course-correcting Web Zip (X button). Even if swinging is enormously fun, it’s not the only weapon in Spidey’s arsenal. Using all four abilities together is where the mastery lies.
2. Time your jumps to a tee
The precise moment you leap from one web to the next actually makes a huge difference to your speed, and getting it right becomes a game in itself. When swinging, for example, you’ll get the best boost if you jump just as Spidey’s legs come together and bend up in a right-angle to his torso – launching any earlier than that will only slow you down.
Likewise, when using Zip to Point, you’ll leap off your perch with more gusto if you time your jump to the exact moment you land. Timing is everything, so for the perfect swing, don’t rush.
3. Buy the two best moves on the skill tree
The story’s great, the combat’s fun and there’s lots to do, but let’s be honest: most of what you buy a Spider-Man game for is the urban traversal, right? Frankly, it’s never been better than in Insomniac’s iteration (and that’s coming from big fans of Spider-Man 2 on the PS2).
But there are two key abilities you don’t have out of the gate that, for our money, make all the difference. Now, you may be tempted to blow your Skill Points early for incremental change, but we’d highly recommend you keep your hands out of your pocket and penny pinch in order to save up enough for these two abilities. All our early game Skill Points went on ‘Charge Jump’ and ‘Point Launch Boost’, both of which gift game-changing jump distances. This made a huge difference to our web-swinging, and we’d highly recommend you do the same. You can thank us later.
4. Tricks = focus
Looking to really impress New York’s digital denizens? Hold Circle and Triangle while mid-air and you can perform some acrobatic forward, backward and sideways rolls between your swings. The good news is, while these flourishes look undeniably cool, they also serve two useful purposes.
The first is dishing out tiny amounts of XP, helping you inch towards the next suit-unlocking level (your base swing speed increases as you level up too, by the way). But more importantly, those flips help fill the web head’s Focus bar, letting you arrive at your next battle with special moves ready to go.
5. Accept that things will go terribly, horribly wrong
Take it from us: it’s not easy being a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Even when you’ve spent the entire launch weekend playing, and think you’ve truly mastered the art of traversing the Big Apple’s rooftops at the expense of remembering how to do literally anything else, things can – and will – still go wrong.
Often you’ll go from a seamless, cinematic spate of deft-defying swings, to an embarrassing headfirst crash into the bottom corner of an apartment complex in mere seconds. Usually when someone’s watching you play. Our advice? Learn to accept this. Peter Parker’s only (super)human, after all.
