Marvel’s Spider-Man (PC, PlayStation, £49.99)
Verdict: King of the swingers
Rating: 
I swing in the rain. Just waving in the rain. What a wonderful feeling…
Sorry, didn’t see you there. I was too busy, well, rocking. Or, to be more precise, web-swinging like Spider-Man through the urban canyons of New York City. It really is a wonderful feeling.
I’m doing this because of a recent(ish) policy change at Sony. They used to be very wary of their “PlayStation exclusives” – that is, games that could only be played on PlayStations and not on any other console.
But now, for some of their biggest exclusivities, they’ve started releasing them on PCs a few years later. There have been some great ones so far: Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, God of War…
…and now, this week, Marvel’s Spider-Man from 2018. With all the original expansions and newly embellished for desktop gamers. It is, I think, the largest of all.
I swing in the rain. Just waving in the rain. What a wonderful feeling…
Sorry, didn’t see you there. I was too busy, well, rocking. Or, to be more precise, web-swinging like Spider-Man through the urban canyons of New York City. It’s really a wonderful feeling
This is partly due to the blockbusting scale. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles to compete with this grand comic strip, told over about 20 hours, and packed with both spectacle and (brilliantly voiced) character work.
It’s also because of how the game looks. Without the improvements for PC, Marvel’s Spider-Man was a blast. It’s, um, beautiful with them. The Manhattan Island version is a crystalline complex of rays of light and reflections that sometimes made me yawn instead of gaming.
But I was soon gaming again, thanks to that swinging mechanic. Press a button to send Spider-Man Tarzanning through the air, release him to make him fall. Up, down, up, down, with a few decorations along the way. It’s a masterpiece of momentum and it never gets old.
Even if Marvel’s Spider-Man threatens to become like other games – sending you to a part of town so you can beat up some crooks so you can hone your skills – there’s always a great take on just getting around. Wow! And indeed, hooray!
Two Point Campus (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Switch, £34.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass)
Verdict: graduated cum laude
Rating: 
I suppose there was a time in my life, during the horror of my final exams, when I wanted to drop out of college.
But to prove that we all have the ability to change, I’ve spent much of the past week building a university. Even several universities.
That’s because I played Two Point Campus, the new game from the nice people who brought us Two Point Hospital. Both are management simulations, which is one of the most misleading names in all games. As people who grew up playing Theme Park in the 1990s will tell you, managing things can be a lot of fun.
I suppose there was a time in my life, during the horror of my final exams, when I wanted to drop out of college
But to prove that we all have the ability to change, I’ve spent much of the past week building a university. Several universities, in fact
And Two Point Campus is definitely fun, not least because of the gameplay. If you’ve played a management sim before, you know what to expect: you decorate the rooms and furniture of a university; hire teachers to teach, janitors to do maintenance; then try to keep everyone happy – especially the students – while making some money along the way.
But Two Point Campus does it all so conveniently that a decades-old formula feels fresh. It strikes a very fine balance between allowing you to put down the faculty of your dreams quietly and – fast! fast! – pressure you to handle a new emergency.
It’s also fun because, well, it’s fun. Like its neighborhood-based ancestor, Two Point Campus has a colorful look and a slightly sardonic sense of humor. Your establishment’s tannoy blurts out advice like, “Students are reminded to set reminders.” And instead of a red brick, you’re more likely to set up a castle-like school for knights, with jousting lessons.
This makes your college a pleasure to zoom in on, to get a closer look at the cartoon crazies, with names like Dennis Gutterflake and Synapse Periwinkle, wielding rayguns in science class or flirting at the statue of love. Don’t mention the tuition fees.
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