Last Friday, the final DLC for Marvel’s Spider-Man was released, and it sees the conclusion of the three-part The City That Never Sleeps story arc. In it, we have seen Black Cat, Silver Sable, Hammerhead, and several other key figures, along with a handful of new and modified gameplay elements, enemies, new suits, etc. In October, I thought the first DLC was great; last month, the second DLC, clearly much more combat focused, wasn’t as good. Fortunately, the third DLC is a return to form, and it’s well worth playing through.
The story so far has seen New York become the battleground for a crime family turf war, and out of that Hammerhead has emerged as the winner thanks to his stealing of Sable tech, including a special cyborg project called Project Olympus. Silver Sable makes her return in this DLC as both a part of the story (the civil war in her home country and the increasingly desperate state of the rebels she’s wanting to support) and as someone you will fight alongside with (eventually). The best parts of this DLC are towards the end when Silver Sable and Spider-Man fight alongside one another in raucous battles against waves of Hammerhead’s cyborg-enhanced cronies, and then ultimately a team effort against the modified Hammerhead himself. MJ returns as well, but has no playable part this time. She and Spidey talk a few times on the phone, as does Miles, and of course we hear JJJ’s podcast which does a nice job as always of balancing being grating and being humorous.
In terms of gameplay, it should be no surprise that this third DLC follows the formula from the previous two and the main campaign. There are fifteen or so new crimes you can stop, another half dozen Screwball Challenges, and a few more Bases, too. I’m not entirely sure why, but I found the combat in this third DLC more enjoyable than I did in the second one. Indeed, it’s just as tongue-in-cheek ridiculous as always, especially in the Bases, with such an incredible private army of bad guys that Hammerhead has at his disposal. No new enemies are included in this DLC, but expect all the different kinds you have faced before, from the brutes, to the chaingunners, jetpack guys, orange whip dudes, and so on.
There are no new gadgets this time around, but there are a couple of new suits you can get by playing through this content. The Cyborg suit unlocked at the end is pretty weird and cool, but the Aikman suit was less interesting. One minor thing to point out is that I was glad that there were no spider-drone missions or bomb-defusing to do during the course of the story this time. Instead, the DLC plays out as mostly just exploration, combat, and some traversal. During one sequence, you are having to web sling yourself around a few-block section of the city, chasing several stolen Oscorp trucks while Silver Sable pursues the same trucks in her amazing hoverjet. Playing catch-up like this makes the experience vulnerable to some head-shaking silliness in that you have a few vehicles, and ultimately just one last truck, that is taking the exact same route, around and around the block, with this hover-jet pursuing it. Meanwhile, you are slinging your way to catch up and fend off combat drones that are trying to takedown the hoverjet until you can get up close enough to the lead vehicle. Your mileage may vary, but for me this section played out pretty poorly.
On the other hand, the rest of this DLC plays out enjoyably, and I rather liked the nine-part side mission that unlocks towards the end of the content, right before the final boss encounter. Kind of like the stolen painting side mission from the first DLC, this new side mission has you tracking down police files and hearing audio recordings. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s a very worthwhile ten or fifteen minute diversion, and the outcome of it might shock you, or at least I was rather surprised by it. After completing that, I went right to the final parts of the DLC and skipped all but one of the Bases, Screwball Challenges, and the Crimes as, having 100% the content up until the last DLC, I was burned out on doing anymore of these. Oh, at the conclusion of the game, there is a nice still-image tribute to the late Stan Lee, too.
The Silver Lining is about as good as DLC #1, and it’s worth the three hours or so it takes to play through. With the recent price drop on Marvel’s Spider-Man, it’s a good time to pick up the game and the content if you haven’t already, as this was certainly one of 2018’s finest. The DLC did a fine job overall adding worthwhile game-extending content. Clearly, the future for Spider-Man videogames has never been brighter.
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