Marvel’s Spider-Man has a lot of outdated systems that already felt dated in 2018. The old-fashioned checklist approach to open world design has largely been supplanted – despite Ubisoft games – by more thoughtful gameplay and the monotonous busy work, i.e. catch the pigeons, find the backpacks, take the photos is the definition of filler. As much as there’s to love about Spider-Man’s crisp animations, fluid mobility, and exceptional web-slinging, there’s almost as much to criticize about, well, everything else.
But if I had to pick one Spider-Man cry to moan about for about 500 words, it would have to be the radial menu, aka the pause button that ruins every fight in the game, without a fight. This mechanic’s momentum-killer is by far Spider-Man’s most outdated mechanic, and the fact that it’s never been modified or improved through multiple reissues is mind-boggling.
Shortest Summary: Spider-Man unlocks eight different gadgets and web attacks throughout the game that he can use in battle. His Web Shooters are the default gadget, and any time you want to switch to another weapon like Impact Webs or Spider-Drones, you have to hold R1 and select the gadget you want from a radial menu by tilting the right analog stick. As you choose your gadget, time will slowly creep. But once you release R1, time will resume and your new gadget will be selected.
Radial menus have been around almost as long as controllers. They are often used in RPGs to simplify menu options. In Mass Effect, the radial menu lets you select weapons and instruct your teammates to move or use skills, while Fallout uses radial menus for inventory and to navigate crafting menus on the fly. Radial menus are faster and easier to navigate than pause menus, and they can help players avoid spending too much time outside of the game. The problem with Spider-Man’s radial menus is that they are only used in combat where the acceptable amount of time outside the game is exactly zero.
The joy of fighting crowds of enemies like Spider-Man is the ability to mix your attacks into endless combo strings. With enough skill, a warehouse full of armed thugs can be taken out without Spidey ever taking a single blow. Spider-Man can instantly reduce the distance between himself and any enemy, use the environment to take out multiple targets, and even use their own weapons against them. The fights are fast paced, improvised and filled with small animations that give each encounter a dance-like quality unique to Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the pace and momentum of combat is completely tainted by the constant need to pause the game and scroll through your gadgets.
Any time you want to take out your default Web Shooters, you have to pause the game, choose a new one and then try to resume the fight seamlessly. Instead of reacting and improvising your movements, you are forced to mentally buffer multiple inputs in succession. While it won’t break your gadget-switching combo meter, it does interrupt the flow of combat significantly. The interruption is especially frustrating if you’re having trouble decoding, as the radial menu represents each gadget only as a symbol. By the time I know which gadget to use, I often have to refocus in battle. As cool as it would be to fire off Concusive Blasts and Web Bombs as you blast your way through enemies, fighting is much more satisfying if you just ignore gadgets entirely.
The frustrating thing about the gadget problem is that it has already been solved by other games. In the Arkham series, Batman has as many gadgets as Spider-Man, but you never have to pause and select them from a menu. Using L1 as a modifier, along with different combinations of face buttons, allows Batman to weave all of his various gadgets into his combos seamlessly. I’ll never understand why Spider-Man doesn’t work the same way.
That’s not the only solution to the problem either. Just off the top of my head, I can think of more. Instead of going back to the Web Shooters when a gadget runs out of ammo, it can just cycle clockwise around the gadget wheel so you always have something new equipped. You could swipe in different directions on the touchpad to automatically equip different gadgets without pausing the game. The L1 button isn’t even used for anything! Tapping it will let you scroll through each gadget, or you can hold it and have each gadget assigned to a different button. I’d even take a horizontal menu that you can scroll through with the left and right D-pad buttons, which aren’t used either.
There are so many ways to trade gadgets, but Insomniac only offered us the worst. Even after a remaster, a mini-sequel, and a PC port, the radial menu is still the only way to swap gadgets. Mods may be my only saving grace for now, but before Spider-Man 2 comes out, I need to get this message out: death to the radial menu.
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