At first blush Spider-Man seems to draw its inspiration from Rocksteady’s Arkham series of Batman games. This is especially true once you find yourself sneaking about the environment, snagging crooks and stringing them up in the rafters of a warehouse or the lamp posts of a construction site.

I’d say the two combat systems each have different goals, however. The Arkham games are reactionary first, focused on timing counter-attacks and dodges until the player has a suitable opening. The second goal is to remove any potential advantage the opponents have over Batman himself, be it in the form of stun batons, shields, or guns. While expert players of the franchise’s challenge mode will no doubt point out additional depth to the system, I would say the combat system emphasizes Bruce Wayne’s lack of superpowers and focuses instead on gaining the upper hand – even if you can argue that Batman always has the upper hand simply by being Batman.

In Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s superpowers mean he always has the upper hand. So while there are still elements of that reactionary system, it encourages the player to be more aggressive and acrobatic. The combat in Spider-Man is effectively what happens if you evolve the Arkham combat to more closely resemble pure action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta.

If you follow TheGamingBrit as I do, then you’ve likely already seen his take on Spider-Man. You’ve also seen his comparison to Devil May Cry that would be self-parody were he not so serious about it. I won’t condemn TheGamingBrit for his preferences, but I do think he’s so clouded by his preferences that he cannot see the advantages – and even necessity – of a game like Spider-Man being less complex.

Titles like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are perfectly suitable for targeting hobbyist gamers, but a property like Spider-Man is going to appeal to younger and broader audiences based on its multimedia legacy. Players of all skill levels are going to jump in, and as such you need a system that immediately… ugh… “feels like Spider-Man” no matter the skill level.

Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are stylish and rewarding, but if you don’t grasp the system you don’t feel awesome. You feel like you’re trash and the cutscenes are lies. However, being more accessible does not necessarily rob the game of depth.

As stated, there are elements of that reactionary brawler style like the Arkham titles. Hit the dodge button once Peter’s spidey-senses start tingling, most notably. However, the player is also encouraged to move more freely like Dante or the titular Bayonetta herself. Perhaps more freely, given the speed at which web slinging launches Spider-Man from here to there. Launch a foe into the air, sling right up to him, toss him into a crowd and then pull the next goon right into your face.

Spider-Man is known more for his acrobatics than he is for his strength, and the game is designed to accommodate. While the player is capable of removing their opponents’ weapons and gear – just as Batman does – they are also able to launch foes into the air, pull them from the ground, slip between their legs for a back-attack, or even catapult right into their foe.

Unfortunately to truly break out the superpowers you’ll need to first unlock new abilities in the skill tree. Some of the most seemingly basic functions aren’t available until you’ve leveled up, such as the “perfect dodge”: slowing down time by dodging just before the enemy strikes. This ability becomes a near-necessity later in the game as only a perfect dodge seems capable of avoiding enemy gunfire. On normal difficulty or above, any attempt to dodge or sling away results in near-expert precision as the gunman tracks and even seems to lead Spider-Man’s movements.

Which is perhaps the most jarring aspect of the game’s combat. The challenge should come from properly juggling Spider-Man’s abilities in order to keep your distance from foes, constantly aware of what weaponry is in their hands and prioritizing who to tackle first. Unfortunately many of these supposedly weaker, slower goons are capable of supernaturally gliding several feet in order to connect a punch, or are able to spin on their heel mid-swing to follow Pete’s dodge behind them.

When the enemies are capable of such feats, it feels as if the difficulty is instead made artificial. The punishment for mistakes also seems to bear a heavy price, as Spider-Man reels back for several seconds. During this moment of recovery he is completely vulnerable to attacks, and if you happen to get caught on some geometry – say, a playground swing set that acts as a semi-visible wall – then every thug will continue to pummel Peter until he’s gone unconscious.

Until the final act of the game these circumstances are quite rare, and often the product of poorly planned combat environments. The aforementioned playground, for example, is walled in, has very little space for Peter to get around, and comes with two hulking Brute types. Such enemies have to be webbed up or stunned in order to land a blow. Trying to outmaneuver them in such a cramped space ultimately results in backing up against a wall. Especially when the swing set is not composed of physics objects, but is instead a cleverly decorated block Peter cannot pass through.

If the game were smaller then Insomniac likely would have better been able to balance each encounter. As it is, most mistakes made by the player feel more like wrestling with the game’s systems rather than them behaving as they should. A problem that likely would have been reduced if the foes weren’t programmed to effectively and impossibly cheat to force a degree of challenge onto the player.

Regardless of the legitimacy of challenge, the end result is still a system that enables the player to zip across the battlefield in seconds. Getting crowded? Slip onto higher ground, get a quick grasp of the situation, and find the most lethal foes to dispatch. Swap out one of the many gadgets available to electrify brutes, launch a whole crowd into the air, or perhaps even yank some metal shelves onto those rocket launching punks in the back.

While those that have mastered the Arkham mechanics will no doubt have issue with my assertion that they’re reactionary, this slew of options is precisely why I do not consider Spider-Man to take after its philosophy. Even such characters as Brutes, whom block every punch swung, can be disabled in a multitude of ways. You do not need to remove the shield from goons in order to launch them into the air. The player is even capable of flinging rockets right back at the men who launched them… assuming your purchased the skill for it.

That’s the real downside to it all. To truly get anything out of the combat and play the part of the proper superhero, you need to patiently wait until you can unlock the abilities one by one. That experience gained from excelling in combat is so minimal to leveling up only drives home how pointless the skill tree is in the first place. A manufactured illusion of progression, holding depth of play hostage to help justify sending the player on hours of errands around the city.

To play attorney to Insomniac, I can see holding abilities and mechanics back in order to ease players into the system. Help them master abilities slowly rather than overwhelm them with an impossible to comprehend list of minutiae – y’know, like those ridiculously lengthy lists of combos in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Were this the actual case, however, then there would be far better methods to introduce some of the more complex mechanics. Many of the abilities like perfect dodge had no reason to be gated at all.

Unlike God of War, however, your foes are also kept few and simple enough early on that you’ll still have yourself a grand time. While Sony’s earlier Greek and Norse crossover caused a God to feel like a pitiful weakling swinging a foam toy at the start, Spider-Man is swinging, punching, and brawling like he’s been doing it for eight years.

It’s just a shame that New Game Plus wasn’t built into the game at launch, as having all those abilities from the start is no doubt the ideal way to play.