Spider-Man launched to critical acclaim and commercial success, and earned its position as one of the biggest games of 2018. However, despite all of the things it does well, there are some things that it does terribly. The worst part of Spider-Man by a distance, though, is the fact that MJ is an awful character.
At the beginning of the game, MJ seems great. The characters aren’t high school students, and Peter’s been doing the whole Spidey thing for eight years. MJ, on the other hand, has landed a career as an investigative journalist at the Daily Bugle. Unlike Sam Raimi’s damsel in distress, this MJ is her own person, which is absolutely fantastic?until it isn’t.
MJ’s position in the narrative may cause people to think that she is independent and plays an important role in the story, but her mechanics?or lack thereof?prove the exact opposite to be true. Her stealth missions are so boring and so outdated that the player can’t help but groan every time they realize they have to play through yet another MJ mission.
All MJ can do initially is move. She has no abilities. Her missions consist of hiding until a guard turns around, and then progressing to the next obstacle to hide behind, over and over again. It’s also as if the writing team behind her missions was made up of an entirely different staff to the ones who wrote Peter’s lines, as all of the guards boast mundane dialogue, which is exhaustive and is set to a loop. In ...