It’s Really Hard To Play Basketball In Spider-Man

If you’re like me, you came across one of the basketball courts in Spider-Man’s New York City, spent some time failing to make a basket, and then moved on to fighting the next group of bank-robbing goons. But one YouTuber made it his mission to learn everything he could about how basketballs work in the popular PlayStation 4 game.

As part of an ongoing “Sling & Things” review series, a YouTuber by the name of Reetae27 recently uploaded a video detailing their experiments with performing a perfect basketball shot in 2018’s Spider-Man. While NPCs make every basket they shoot, the eponymous superhero has a few difficulties guiding a basketball through the rim, namely because the game doesn’t give players an easy way to pick the ball up and lob it towards the backboard with any kind of finesse.

No, Spider-Man takes a different approach to shooting basketballs. Some can only be rolled around by walking into them; others can be web-swung just like a player would do with an enemy during combat. Unfortunately, this means Spider-Man throws the basketball with such force that it’s almost impossible to make an accurate shot.

Reetae27 comes to the conclusion that a jump shot is out of the question, and opts to focus on slamming the basketball down through the hoop, a brute force manoeuvre that eventually yields a successful attempt. It’s not as gratifying as sinking a perfect swish and can only be confirmed through the use of slow motion video capture, but hey, it worked.

Things get worse when Spider-Man tries to join in some NPCs’ pick up game. Phantom basketballs spawn and dissolve, garbage cans and leaves float in mid-air, and sometimes the sky flickers between its normal appearance and a plain, black void. This didn’t stop Reetae27 from pursuing his goal, but it sure seems like some invisible force is dedicated to keeping the ball out of the net and ruining Spider-Man’s day.

Why can’t Spider-Man play basketball? Why is the universe so willing to twist and distort itself in an effort to keep him from enjoying some leisure time? Like so many of the world’s mysteries, I guess this question is going to have to remain frustratingly unanswered for the time being.