After months and months of waiting, further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Spider-Man is finally coming to Marvel's Avengers on November 30, exclusively for PlayStation players.
Spider-Man is releasing as part of the Spider-Man: With Great Power Hero Event in Marvel's Avengers, which will tell the story of Spider-Man through unlockable challenges.
Surprisingly, Square-Enix made the release date announcement as only a small part of its broader content roadmap update published Thursday.
In Spider-Man's story mode, Peter Parker discovers that A.I.M. plans to acquire tech that would make their robot army invincible, prompting Spidey to join forces with Ms. Marvel and Black Widow, who remain unaware of his identity. One of Spider-Man's big conflicts throughout his journey will be whether to stay a solo superhero or to lend his strength to the Avengers Initiative.
Spider-Man being a PlayStation exclusive stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the Marvel's Avengers player community, with some worrying he won't be a very substantial character since only a portion of players will have access to him. Marvel's Avengers coming to Game Pass for both Xbox and PC just last September, has only widened that gap.
The November 30 update brings several new features for all players, thankfully. A new Klaw raid set after the events of War for Wakanda will have the Avengers returning to the Vibranium Mound to defeat Klaw once and for all.
Here's what else to expect:
- Crystal Dynamics is also increasing maximum player power levels from 150 to 175.
- Gear recycling will let you recycle higher-powered gear to boost your current gear if you prefer to keep your current look.
- Shipments: A new path for players to earn cosmetics and other items via gameplay. Shipments will cost 500 units (in-game currency) and pulls from a collection of in-game items, with a chance to contain an outfit that can't be acquired any other way. Thankfully, you can see what's in the shipment before purchasing it, and you're guaranteed to get a special outfit in every 100 Shipments. Crystal Dynamics says it'll be sharing more information about this feature in the future.
- Per-hero weekly objectives: Rather than using only one hero per week to farm challenges, you can farm rewards with each hero now. Crystal Dynamics says it's exploring applying this change to other parts of Marvel's Avengers as well.
We'll have to wait and see if Spider-Man truly shakes up the Marvel's Avengers community. For now, Square Enix had some less-than-kind words for the troubled games-as-a-service superhero adventure. The publisher called negative reception to the game a "disappointing outcome," the implication being that Crystal Dynamics' roots as a single-player game studio didn't mesh well enough with a games-as-a-service project.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/friendly neighborhood freelancer for IGN.