Marvel’s Spider-Man is a Playstation-exclusive game released last year, in 2018. It’s immensely popular, ranking at the second most popular game sold for Playstation 4. Spider-man is my favorite superhero, so I was unbelievably excited to be able to play him! When I got the game and started it up, crossing my fingers that I’d be able to understand what he was saying with the help of subtitles, I was treated to a lovely surprise!
[image ID: An accessibility menu for the Spider-man game. Spider-man is sticking to a wall on the right-hand side, while the left-hand side of the screen has a blue accessibility menu.]
An entire accessibility menu! The options for accessibility include:
Disabling parallaxing (I believe this is to help with nausea or motion sickness?)
Enabling a background for subtitles to make them easier to read
Making subtitles BIG
QTE (quick-time event) auto-completion
Changing button-taps to button-holds
Option to skip puzzles
HUD background
I personally only enable subtitle backgrounds and big subtitles, because that’s all I need. It was also incredible to see subtitles auto-enabled. No more watching a scene in confusion until I get the option to turn subtitles on after-the-fact!
There was also another accessibility note that isn’t in the accessibility menu, and was in the sound options. “Midnight” mode lowers the volume of the loudest sounds (explosions, shouting, etc) so that you don’t hurt your ears playing if you have to turn the volume up to hear voices, etc.
As for gameplay, the controls are relatively simple and intuitive, without needing to precisely aim for regular combat. Peter Parker automatically punches the enemies near him, and you can press triangle at any time to zoom right to your next enemy. In events where you DO need precise aiming, none are timed, and the camera can zoom, making it very doable.
While there are timed events, none of them are mandatory. You also have the option to pull up the controls menu if you forget at any time. Night-time is still well-lit and easy to see, and you can switch to daytime for most missions if you find it difficult to see what you’re doing. Overall difficulty is adjustable at any time.
For me, someone with frequent memory issues, the plot was easy to follow, as you can read a summary at any time from the menu, as well as bios of all the characters with pictures. Unfortunately, there are no visibly disabled main characters, and while characters with wheelchairs do exist in the game, they are primarily only found in the homeless shelter. You can chat with a few, but most are just background characters.
Overall, Spider-Man for PS4 is an enjoyable experience that tries to be as accessible as it can be for an action-oriented game. Intuitive controls, the ability to change difficulty at any time, the ability to disable QTE, and subtitles that are easy to read clearly show that accessibility was a priority for the Spider-man development team. The only downsides I noticed are in the visibility of disabled characters.
If you have any feedback or accessibility notes of your own, feel free to contact me! My experiences are not universal, and everyone has different accessibility needs. Have fun!
