Marvel's Spider-Man

[mmmark]

Picked this up on psnow that I have free for a week. I honestly thought I’d like this but I cba with the spider mens. Can’t stand having to chase something unreachable until the game wants you to catch them then a punch to your face and rinse and repeat.

 

Finishing a main mission and the next objective is 5 minutes of swinging away. No I don’t want to find backpacks and other icons spread around like a Ubisoft wet dream. The puzzles are awful, I hate the look of Peter and his mass of hair, his lines and phone calls never stop.

 

I cant see the appeal here but not everything can be for everyone. Arkham Knight is better imo.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Spiderman is better than both of them

[mmmark]

Arkham Asylum is pretty enclosed iirc and not at all like Spider-Man so that would have been a silly comparison.

 

It’s not really up for debate or to be believed, my “statement” is my opinion. I honestly prefer the traversal, setting and batmobile over the swinging and soulless world of SM.  

[Maryokutai]

Arkham Asylum is a Metroid game in all but name. I've yet to play Spider-Man but from what I've seen it seems like more of a "standard" open world game.

 

Coincidentally that also means I find it hard to believe Spider-Man could be better than Asylum but I'll get to it soon-ish to see for myself. I've been having a borrowed copy lying around for months now, I kind of feel bad for the person who gave it to me...

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah I had pretty similar thoughts to you where you are in the game @mmmark, the side quests are just almost all

shite, worse than Ubisoft stuff for me. Looking back through my posts in this thread I believe it took me 19 hours before it finally got its hooks in me. 
 

I agree the side quests/objectives in Arkham Knight - and maybe the city environment itself - are far superior but the story and traversal in this beats it hands down. It was mainly the story though that ultimately brought it up from a 6/7 out of 10 to an 8 for me in the end.

[one-armed dwarf]

Arkham Asylum has better level design but I really don't like how the fighting in that game feels like you're playing Simon Says while holding a turd wedged between your arse.

 

Spidey is the first one of these to make me feel like a superhero. There's one section which was on a E3 showing where you're fighting in a building site and you can quickly use the web swinging to access different levels and completely mess up the baddie's henchmen. I just prefer the mobility in it versus how in Batman you just sort of grapple hook everywhere and use gadgets.

 

You might say Spiderman is also a better character than Batman but perhaps this is too controversial.

[mmmark]

38 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Spidey is the first one of these to make me feel like a superhero. There's one section which was on a E3 showing where you're fighting in a building site and you can quickly use the web swinging to access different levels and completely mess up the baddie's henchmen.

The first game to make me feel like a super hero at least in a marvel or dc sense was Spider-Man 2 on GameCube and that was 16 years ago and is so similar to this. Great swinging but stop and everything looks crap. Combat is button mashing. 
 

That fight at the building sight is near the beginning and involves wave after tedious wave of enemies. The one at the art museum is better but that’s just roping people up from above like Batman. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Saw this posted somewhere and thought it looked pretty sick

Taking a photo of a guy who's ass you kicked is some SSS shit

 

The sequels to this and God of war are the only Sony exclusives I'm looking forward to right now.

[bellow]

Same here. I'm questioning whether the PS4 will be my last Sony console ?.

 

I've played so few games on it, it's unreal. But Spiderman was a blast, there's no doubt about it

[Maf]

This is probably not a good idea but I would like it if in the sequel there is a big story mission with a boss fight where in a cutscene or something previous the bad guy mostly damages Spider-Man’s web shooters so when you’re playing the mission there’s real RNG that they will only work 60% of the time. Enough that you will still try them but not so much that it isn’t annoying or causes panic when they don’t work.

 

It should be like 2 sections of a mission as well. 1st part where you’re chasing whoever across the city and the second part is the actual boss fight, but still on a rooftop. 
 

Also I’ve been looking at my trophy list the other day and a combination of not really wanting to play very much and seeing Spider-Man sitting there at 98% is really annoying so I think I will do the NG+ and Ultimate difficulty stuff soon. I wonder if you can do them at the same time or if Ultimate difficulty has to be a new playthrough from scratch.

[Maf]

Started my NG+ Ultimate difficulty run through. It’s a bit difficult because the damage from enemies is really high but that’s massively offset by the gadgets which are just as effective on hardest as they are on normal. Ie, web bombs still blow up groups of enemies no trouble and web mines immediately defeat someone who’s being juggled. Also these are early game enemies so having end game gear is basically bullying lol. 
 

I’ve turned off puzzles this time because I got to the first one and just couldn’t be bothered. I have fallen into doing all the side content though. I meant for this to be just a critical path playthrough, and maybe I’ll abandon the side stuff and it’ll become that, but right now I’m just swinging around, turning in radio towers, grabbing backpacks. 
 

The camera mode in this game is still the only camera mode I really care about in games. Superheroes just lend them selves well to posing and the options with it are great. 
 

[one-armed dwarf]

That screenshot is way too saturated

 

I did the turn off puzzles thing when I played as well, this is the kind of thing I was talking about before Nag about skipping parts of games you don't like. It's neat.

[Maf]

The background is really thrown off because of HDR but the filters and everything is all me. I like it. 

[Maf]

The new suits in this game look amazing. I think the Far From Home suit might actually be my favourite one

 

 

[Maf]

As much as I’m not trying to 100% the game there is still so much side content I can’t resist doing. The only things I’m not doing at this point are the Screwball and Taskmaster missions. Everything else is quick, easy and fun. I’ve even cleared a lot of the random crimes in a lot of areas because why not. It’s just fun to do. Also even though I remember there being too much random crime events in this game, if you do them as you go then the areas get ticked off quite naturally.

 

Considering I’m playing on Ultimate difficulty I’ve only died once so far. The game is very, very manageable. Some of that is because I have all the gear upgrades for sure, but I don’t use half of it. I think the drones, electric webs and anti-grav gadgets are so not Spider-Man I just really stick to basic punching and web attacks. Insomniac are always so much about the crazy weapons - see Ratchet and Clank. But I really hope they expand on the melee combat, aerial combat, uses of the environment and more things to do with webs. The fighting in this game is really solid. I still love just bouncing off one guy on to the next and just seeing how long I can stay in the air while throwing rockets at people. But the options feel very limited. Yes I just said I’m ignoring a lot of the options, I just wish there were more logical options for Spider-Man. 
 

The dialogue in this game is perfect. Honestly hard to recall when the relationship between Peter and MJ has ever been better. Ultimate Spider-Man always did it very well but that was really teenage romance drama, which I love absolutely. This is more mature than that and they do so well at implying history and affection without always telling everything about it. The scene where Peter tries cooking MJ dinner, really might be one of my favourite cutscenes ever from a video game. It’s so perfect. 
 

Spider-Man’s humour is perfect as well. “Have you tried falling slower!” Is a perfectly in character keeping Spider-Man joke. This game makes me laugh a lot. Part of it because the writing is good but also partly because I get giddy seeing Spider-Man be the funny Spider-Man I remember. 

 

Which leads me to the final thing. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a 7-10 year old Spider-Man fan and have this game. How god damn lucky. All I had was Maximum Carnage which I hated but always tried to play and then Spider-Man on PS1 which for it’s time was an awesome game and I played it and later the sequel over and over and over. But they were nothing compared to this game. Even Spider-Man 2 on the PS2 when I was a teenager. Yeah that was the first game to nail the swinging. But that’s pretty much all they got right. Being a kid today, loving Spider-Man and then getting this must just be mind blowing. It’s just so brilliant. 

[Maf]

A small, cool thing I didn’t know could be done

 

 

[Maf]

I got really in to the photo mode again...

 

War on the streets of New York!

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Jimboxy]

Started this tonight, just on the opening mission to get Fisk, but I completely suck at the combat. I just can't seem to get in a rhythm with it. I'm sure it'll come and I started it quite late at night but as it stands if I don't get any better I'll have to bump down the difficulty. It looks lovely though.

[bellow]

I think you'll be alright. I remember that Fisk fight being incredibly full on for the opening of a videogame, so many moves to remember when you're probably still on your first session with the game.

 

Soon, though, you will just be Spiderman.

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't think the game paces itself very well with all the combat tools, it gives you way too much at the start and then by the halfway point you've everything unlocked and you're left looking for more.