There’s a lot of good news coming out about Marvel’s Spider-Man. Not only is the webswinging fun, and the combat slick, but there are way more Spider-Man suits then we thought. It turns out unlocking these suits is part of a core gameplay loop in Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Suits also come with their own special power. These are usually thematically appropriate for the suit, but happily, Marvel’s Spider-Man lets you mix and match whichever suit and power you like. This can further be customised with skills, suit mods, and gadgets.
Suits aren’t just unlocked in Marvel’s Spider-Man, they’re crafted. As you level up, you’ll notice the suits unlocked in your menu. Once you’ve earned the right “tokens” from doing various activities in Manhattan, you can make the suit.
Crafting tokens come in six kinds:
- Crime Token
- Backpack Token
- Research Token
- Landmark Token
- Base Token
- Challenge Token
You’ll be able to see how much each suit costs in the menu, and mark missions on the map which correspond to the tokens you’re after. We’ll go through how to get each token below.
These tokens will also be used to craft suit mods and some gadgets. These are usually the same gadgets you unlock by levelling up, whereas other gadgets can be unlocked by coming across a specific part (such as a stun gun) somewhere in the city.
Crime Tokens
Unsurprisingly, these tokens are earned by stopping small-time crimes you find throughout New York. While the nature and ferocity of crime will change as you impose your will on the city, there will always be a steady stream of robberies and drug deals for Spidey to interrupt with a wisecrack.
Your new helper in the police force, Yuri Watanabe, will be in your ear giving you intel. As you sync up with Osborn surveillance towers around the city, you’ll also be able to scan with R3 to see if any crimes are nearby. Swing by, thwap a few thugs, and get one token closer to unlocking that suit you’re eyeing.
Backpack Tokens
For some reason, Spider-Man has stashed backpacks all around the city. Lucky for him, he remembered to put a tracker in each one — making them easy to spot with your scanner, and visible on the minimap.
Backpack tokens are one of the easiest resources to collect when unlocking suits. All you have to do is show up. You’ll also find a nice memento inside, serving as not-so-secret secrets for Spider-fans.
Research Tokens
So here’s the thing. Marvel’s Spider-Man is an open world game, with many open world tropes, and that means if you want to unlock lots of Spider-Man suits, you’re going to have to play a lot of its electronics puzzle minigame. You’ll find these in lab where Peter Parker works.
This is spectacularly similar to Bioshock‘s (or, hell, so many games’) minigame of connecting a line of power from the start of a computer chip to the end, using puzzle pieces.
Though we will say, these do get a fair bit more complex than usual. Much like the combat, it’s probably harder than you expect.
Puzzle pieces start to come with certain limitations, and a new dimension is introduced when you also have to make sure the power line has the right amount of electric charge by the end. It’s not a bad minigame — just know this “research” is unavoidable on the quest to unlock suits.
Landmark Tokens
This is another easy one. Swinging around the city, Parker might comment on a particular skyscraper or point of interest. Taking a picture of this from a good vantage point will net you one Landmark Token.
While simple, the suit unlock costs don’t often require a Landmark Token, which is probably due to the limited number of landmarks in the city.
Base Tokens
It’ll be widely reported by this point that Wilson Fisk will have been arrested at the end of what amounts to “level 1” in the game. Yet Fisk’s construction sites remain around the city, and his organisations still use them for… not construction.
It’s the belly of the beast, and your Spidey sense will trigger constantly in these fights as you look for an attack opening versus heavily armed grunts defending their turf.
Our first base attack featured a small army of basic grunts, but we wouldn’t be surprised if brawlers and other tougher enemies showed up later on. It’s intentionally harder than the other tokens, and Insomniac has factored this into the cost of suits.
Challenge Tokens
A shadowy figure who toys with Spider-Man will be doling out challenges throughout the game, and this is the sixth type of token used to unlock suits.
You should be honing your Spidey skills through combat constantly, but it’s nice to have challenges set up while you’re going from A to B. Might as well test yourself and earn a token in the process.
Some of the more expensive, late-game, and useful gadgets and suit mods require these. Come endgame, you may be wishing you did more challenges.
By level four or five, we were already unlocking suits we hadn’t even seen reported yet. There should be around 24 suits or more in this game, so we don’t yet know about the majority of them.
Unlocking these suits will require two kinds of token. The stealthy Noir Suit, for example, requires one Landmark Token and two Backpack Tokens. The same goes for gadgets and suit mods.
All of which is amazing news. Each suit will come with its own power, which can be swapped into whichever suit you please. On top of it all, unlocking these Spidey suits is attached to fun, skill-based activities instead of you-know-what. It rhymes with schmicro-schmansactions.
Things are looking up for Marvel’s Spider-Man. We can’t wait to suit up.
