Ricky Church reviews Spider-Man: The Heist DLC…
Though its been over a month since its release, Insomniac Games isn’t done with Spider-Man and the wall-crawler’s world. The studio has released the first piece of downloadable content for its “City That Never Sleeps’ pack which sees the return of the Black Cat, one of New York’s most renowned car burglars, as she begins a crime wave stealing from the city’s most powerful mob bosses. The first DLC pack offers a compelling story and some fun new elements in the gameplay that make it quite worth it for fans of the game, whether you’re just a casual player or fan of Spidey, to get.
Black Cat was featured a bit in the actual game, but only as a voiceover as you traversed across New York looking for you stakeout for past crimes, always staying one step behind her. She’s back in full force now, targeting the collected wealth of New York’s mob bosses at the behest of another big Spider-Man villain, Hammerhead. The story is fast paced, taking maybe 60 – 90 minutes to complete, with a good focus on Spidey and Cat’s back-and-forth relationship that is entertaining and endearing. Their is a clear chemistry between them that really shows both in the writing and the performances of Yuri Lowenthal and Erica Lindbeck, the latter of whom capturing Black Cat’s playfulness and seriousness. You’re never really sure which side she is on, but feel for her all the same with her motivations on why she’s aligned with Hammerhead.
The gameplay is much the same as the actual game, but the DLC includes some enemy variants as you primarily fight against mobsters. There is the addition of one new enemy type though that proves to be rather difficult: a Brute wielding a minigun. These enemies can deal a healthy amount of damage, particularly if there’s more than one. As the story goes on, even the basic enemies get tougher as they get their hands on weapons more powerful than standard pistols or assault rifles. While it doesn’t overly change up the combat from the actual game, it still makes you adjust to new strategies such as fighting minigun Brutes in a very small area or preventing mobsters from running off with loot even as you fight a large horde of them.
There is also one section which switches your perspective to Mary Jane Watson on a mission sneaking around a mob’s warehouse. It’s a pretty quick portion of the DLC and not quite as involved or innovative as MJ’s missions in the full game. Rather, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity not to switch to Black Cat’s perspective during the DLC and really switching up the gameplay to steal stuff. The same goes for Miles Morales who only appears as a voiceover despite the intriguing place Spider-Man left him in. Hopefully the next instalments of ‘City That Never Sleeps’ will take more advantage of both Black Cat and Miles’ roles in the gameplay.
Some new additions to the game include another collectible side mission of paintings the original Black Cat stole scattered around the city and new formats to the randomly generated crimes. In these new missions, players must use a Spider-Bot to track down several car bombs the mob have planted, forcing them to find and disarm them before they explode. The mob must really love their bombs, though, because the other new crime sees them planting bombs around buildings in order to kill a protected witness. These missions are fairly easy, though in the building scenario snipers are sometimes involved to stop you. The real difficulty comes from the return of Screwball, a Youtuber/live streamer who puts Spidey through a gauntlet of challenges like racing across buildings to destroy EMP devices or combat situations against some low-level super-powered enemies. The addition of ‘photobomb’ zones in these challenges – taking a picture at a certain moment for Screwball’s audience to like – just add to the difficulty by making it more about how quick you take down enemies or reach your goal.
‘The Heist’ is an entertaining DLC that fans of the game will enjoy. Its story is concise with a great take on the Spidey/Black Cat relationship. Their interactions are the highlight of the DLC, though the new challenges certainly make it fun and memorable as well. While the inclusion of Black Cat or Miles into the gameplay had the potential to really switch it up, the DLC still offers some new elements for veterans to get used to.
Rating: 8/10
Ricky Church
