“Marvel’s Spider-Man: Turf Wars” DLC Review

After starting off the DLC series with Black Cat, Marvel’s Spider-Man is back with part two of The City that Never Sleeps with Turf Wars, featuring Hammerhead. While The Heist had its highlights, it was too intimate of a setting…

After starting off the DLC series with Black Cat, Marvel’s Spider-Man is back with part two of The City that Never Sleeps with Turf Wars, featuring Hammerhead. While The Heist had its highlights, it was too intimate of a setting and I had hoped we’d see a much larger expansion of the storyline. Not so much, unfortunately.

What’s It About

Turf Wars picks up shortly after the events of The Heist. I wasn’t incredibly clear on how far after, but as far as the game was concerned, it didn’t really matter. There was almost no reference to The Heist, which I felt was a little odd, especially considering how it ended.

Instead, Hammerhead wastes nearly no time making his presence felt, tricking a unit of police officers directly under command of the fantastic Yuri Watanabe. When he kills all but Yuri, the DLC dives into Hammerhead’s rise to holding the city hostage while Yuri makes it her personal mission to take down as much of the mob as possible by whatever means necessary.

The story is fine but ultimately odd. Hammerhead is a fine enough villain from Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, but to have such an impact on the city? He’s not on Mr. Negative or Otto Octavius levels, but that’s basically how he’s presented with the increased police presence and attitude. Yuri, meanwhile, is on a great but far too truncated storyline that deserves more than just this DLC. If her storyline had kicked off in the previous chapter and they had spent more time developing her journey from point A to point B, she would have been much better served. Instead, Hammerhead is a superpowered freak and Yuri goes 0 to 60 in no time. It’s jarring.

Why Should I Care?

This round of DLC is just a recycled and repackaged set of offerings from The Heist. You’ll get a new set of Maggia-focused crimes, which now include police escorts. I dreaded the escort missions because of painfully slow they moved, which led to really odd swinging mechanics. I was better swinging, perching, and waiting, knowing that nothing was going to show up until we reached the final location. Hideouts are back and mostly uninteresting. Screwball challenges are back and I still can’t stand them because they even made stealth challenges more annoying than engaging.

And instead of massive amounts of rockets, energy shields show up. Don’t worry! There are still plenty of rockets. The energy shields are slightly challenging, but not nearly as irritating as the flying Sable from the main storyline. I found the difficulty to be a little fairer this time, but that’s offset by awful camera angles. There’s one drone scene somewhat early in the DLC that takes place in a bar and the views are horribly limited. But the boss battle against Hammerhead to close out the chapter takes place in a construction area of a building and features just awful, awful angles. I died far too often because I couldn’t see most of what was going on around me.

Beyond that, there wasn’t much. The Heist at least had the courtesy to add an additional storyline of side missions. This just felt far too the point, but at least you get several new unpowered Spider-suits with the original Iron Spider Armor, Spider-Armor MK 1, and Spider-Clan.

What Makes It Worth My Time and Money

Far more than with The Heist, Turf Wars just made me want things to be over. It was still fun to swing around and beat up bad guys. I even got more into using a wider variety of gadgets due to some of the challenging enemies. But there wasn’t anything that was so engaging that made me want to invest so much time into this chapter. I liked the direction Yuri’s storyline was going, but it didn’t develop enough. Hammerhead was fine, but was just far too goofy and unbelievably powerful at the end. It started taking the story and action to a much different place than The Heist and I just wasn’t feeling it this time. It’s more of a “have to play” for a completionist mentality rather than a “must play” for the sake of enjoyment.