“With Great Power” – Spider-Man Inspired Shooter

This project was made for my “Advanced Game Mechanics” module at University, where the brief was to take a mechanic from a game or genre and insert it into a genre where it isn’t normally found.

My idea was to take the web-swinging from the Spider-Man games (usually platformers or third-person adventure games) and make it work within a First-Person Shooter game. The name comes from the famous quote said by Uncle Ben:

“With Great Power comes Great Responsibility” – Ben Parker

 I took inspiration from a few titles across Spider-Man’s gaming history, focusing the balance between physics and player control when swinging. My main reference was Spider-Man 2 (2004) for PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, widely regarded as one of the best Spider-Man games in terms of controls and game feel. This game allows the player to build up momentum while swinging to reward skilful manoeuvres while giving players a reasonable amount of air control to avoid overshooting, which is similar to the risk-reward balancing style of multiplayer shooter games such as Quake and Overwatch.

My initial idea was to make a networked multiplayer shooter with a deathmatch gamemode, but as I had only dabbled with the Unreal Replication Systems I realised I wouldn’t be able to get the web physics working well within the time I had for the assignment. So I pivoted to a “Target Test” game mode – multiple targets would be scattered around the level and the player would have to break them as quickly as possible, using the web swinging to reach different areas. This soon evolved into a full-on “Speedrun” mode with checkpoints.

I commissioned the first-person animations from Halsey Watt, providing filmed references superimposed onto gameplay as well as communicating throughout the process for any small tweaks.