Apparently Spider-Man 2s Traversal System Is Broken...

so a YouTuber named dark space made this video a little bit ago basically going over issues that he thinks that Spider-Man 2 has with its traversal system and I think a lot of his video has a couple of good points that I agree with but majority of the video is really bad faith disingenuous points and just like it's just really bad so that's what I'm here to go over today so I hope you all enjoy the video now that Spider-Man 2 has been released it's official they basically just copy and pasted The Swinging physics nice they did however include an option to disable the invisible barriers and some protections that altered The Swinging physics so what you're telling me is they copy and pasted it but they added something that makes it not a copy and paste and changes the physics okay um all right while it's great that they added that it's not really anything near what I was hoping for the game swinging is great and a lot of fun as an arcade swinger I like how he says it's not what I was hoping for which is fine I guess but then he immediately transitions into him playing on with swing assist on it's perfectly executed for an arcade style swinging system little kids will pick it up very easily as it practically swings itself for you IGN Gamespot and other similar reviewers will enjoy the swinging and give it raving reviews they'll say it really makes you feel like Spider-Man but I'd argue that it makes you look like Spider-Man it doesn't make you feel like you really did anything you're seeing on screen in fact if you try to do things that go against what kind of automatically happens you'll realize that you actually don't have much control at all over what he does the Casual player who just wants Sleek looking swinging where you don't have to think too much will love this but the player that's looking for a challenge and would have a lot of fun trying to avoid obstacles and navigating difficult environments will not get as much out of these physics I'm sorry what the what what the what are you talking about if you try to do things go against what the game does for you you know cuz you're not playing this game at all it just plays itself for you what the what the [ __ ] are you talking about and then he shows this clip of this automated an uh like animation that you get sometimes when you like run into like the tip of like a whether it's the top of a building or like what he does right here the little street sign you do realize that this Hal your momentum right you do realize you get punished when this animation right here happens right and later in the video he's going to go on to praise the Spider-Man 2 movie game which you know all of these people like to do the people that bash on insomnia swinging when in that game if you mess up your swing or you hit like like this something like this right here you don't get a fancy animation but you still lose your momentum the only difference in it's omniac Spider-Man games is that you get a cool animation that plays can you point out the problem here and then he just starts getting all pretentious about it and he's like the player that will enjoy navigating through difficult environments and trying to avoid these obstacles will not get very much out of this this swinging system that is just minute physics okay okay so uh I'm going to play some clips right now of just my swinging gameplay on zero swing assist and some of these clips will be me [ __ ] up or navigating through obstacles and different little streets and bends and turns throughout the environment in the city while either keeping my momentum and or being flashy [Music] [Music] get [Music] [Music] he some you h h h get go [Music] [Music] [Music] h get [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he get you sorry for so many Clips I was just trying to get my point across and granted again in some of those CL or in a couple of those clips I was messing up but you know when you cut like me you just don't mess up that often you know I'm talking about but I like how he says this the Casual player who just wants Sleek looking swinging where you don't have to think too much will love this but the player that's looking for a challenge and would have a lot of fun trying to avoid obstacles and navigating difficult environments will not get as much out of these physics he's saying this showing off the most basic form of swinging in the game and being like Oh the players who who want that obstacle and challenge while they're swinging which I literally just disproved he's just being completely disingenuous this is like me like recording me playing the Spider-Man 2 movie game and being like the Casual player who just wants Sleek looking swinging where you don't have to think too much will love this but the player that's looking for a challenge and would have a lot of fun trying to avoid obstacles and navigating difficult environments will not get as much out of these physics the Casual player who just wants Sleek looking swinging where you don't have to think too much will love this but the player that's looking for a challenge and would have a lot of fun trying to avoid obstacles and navigating difficult environments will not get as much out of these physics now to anyone that's played the Spider-Man 2 movie game you see how [ __ ] stupid that is if it were between getting the map expansion we got here or getting a more realistic and challenging swinging option I would have chosen The Swinging option well good thing you got both the new area on the map isn't really that great for s gamepl anyways uh I don't know the the new area seem pretty good for swinging for me uh you know that just sounds like a skill issue oh wait wait no this game plays itself for you so there's no skill involved so uh I don't know maybe he's right on that point holy [ __ ] in this video we'll cover the issues with insomniac's need to hold your hand too much will break down the bad swinging physics issues that plague the game we'll compare this 2023 AAA Spider-Man game with Spider-Man games from decades ago hang in there Squidward it's all part of the job Insomniac has a problem with their swinging it holds your hand too much it does all the work for you this is great for Mindless swinging and Mindless swinging is exactly what your gameplay looks like probably a step below mindless i' I'd probably go more brain dead ah yes the game that plays itself for you even though you're sitting here losing momentum and trying to make some Grand standpoint that I've already won over earlier keep losing momentum don't have any goodlook swinging gameplay and you're sitting here talking about oh the the game plays the game for you but this is awful if you're the type who enjoys a challenge when racing games are fun it's because they test your abilities and skill they allow you to push the limits when drifting around corners dodging cars and timing your moves they don't break for you they don't turn the steering wheel for you unfortunately Insomniac Spider-Man 2 does I swear to God this video could be an hour long of me just showing Clips over and over and over again as to why the [ __ ] you're saying right now is so dumb no the game does not swing for you and every time you try to show a clip of it showing that little automated animation that it does your swinging gameplay looks like ass this is like me going into a racing game with game play that looked like this and was like oh all I'm doing is is pressing R2 and moving my sticks slightly I'm still moving forward and the game is still driving me forward now it may look like I have Helen Keller behind the wheel right now but but but trust me the game is playing itself for me instead of breaking and steering the wheel for you it forces you to let go of your webs now I'm going to touch a bit more later on like the game making you like let go of your web but for right now with what he's saying right now how does the game forcing you to let go of your web any type of assistance you know what would be actual assistance there's a system in the game in place where you have to press X at the correct time to keep your momentum and keep your speed when you're swinging if the game did that for you you that would be actual assistance but the game letting go of your web when you don't want it to that is not assistance it forces you to move in the direction they want you to when swinging I'm going to touch more on that point right there in a little bit it fights you to keep you inside the air tunnels when you wings suit so much so that you can literally put the controller down and walk away and it will still guide you through all the turns height shifts and everything all the way until it ends so there's one part of that statement that is ever so slightly true there are win parts are like little wind tunnel areas in the game that you legitimately cannot touch you don't need to touch your controller when going through them but there are also wind tunnels in the like throughout the map that you do have to touch your controller when going through but the first thing he said was just a straight up lie the game does not fight you to stay inside the wind tunnels in your clip you are literally fighting the game to go it back into the wind tunnel so here's a clip from someone who's not trying trying to lie about the game you know just casually swinging da oh I'm in a wind tunnel oh I want to get out of the Wind Tunnel whoop oh let's go back oh I'm back at the wind tunnel oh my god oh wait no maybe I want to go back through it maybe I want to go back through it oh wait why didn't it just pull me up to the wind tunnel I thought it was trying to fight you to get back in all right we're back in oh I'm out let me just get out okay okay I'm in I'm out uh wait no no no still want to go back in I'm in let's go I'm out I'm in and I'm out I deliver a message shut it automated traversal like this feels offputting it gets worse though the biggest issue I had with Spider-Man 1's web swinging was how automated and cleaned up it felt it was polished but it was all for the looks the animations immediately corrected any mistakes you made the risk was non-existent because the game would forcibly maintain a bu buer distance between you and other objects like buildings it was like a kid mode kid mode the web you were hanging from would essentially shorten and you'd stay hovering above any objects that were getting close below Spider-Man 2 changes none of this oh what uh ah damn maybe maybe you didn't notice this cuz you keep playing with swing assist on but um it does it it it literally does and also uh in Spider-Man PS4 you could lose momentum a lot but I'm assuming you're probably not very good at that game or try to get very flashy in that game either it's a little harder to replicate these issues now because the game pulls away nearly all control from you when trying to prove these issues near the ground Spider-Man will swing off in whatever Direction you started your swing no matter how hard you fight it or pull back he will suddenly fly at Max Speed in the direction you were facing then if you try to turn around and go back toward the ground slowly he'll just automatically let go of his web [Music] meaning it's extremely difficult to hang from a web near the ground now it's doable but it's ult so as I just showed and as you just said yes it's doable so what are you crying about right here I'm so confused on like why exact like what do you gain from like hanging from a web from low to the ground like what the [ __ ] who wants to do that what what like yeah man I really loaded up this Spider-Man game so I can just sit here and [ __ ] hold on to my web without doing anything in regards to him talking about oh when you jump off the ground it starts moving you forward or when you have momentum you're going it like it pushes you forward yeah that's uh that's kind of how pendulum physics work but if you want to turn around there's literally two simple options that you can easily do oh look I'm going to slingshot off this building oh wait hold on I want to turn around real quick wow oh no I want to do it again oh there you go you know what come to think of it I don't want to do a loop-de-loop this time but I still want to turn around let's do this whoopy dooo forcing you to let go of your web when the game decides it's time to is extremely annoying it removes all control from you see now we're going to get into a territory where I actually start to agree but slightly agree he said it takes all the control away from you no it doesn't I don't even think I need to elaborate on that it takes a slight bit of control away from you but let's keep going and the fact that this ridiculous issue wasn't removed the second time around is egregious and proves that Insomniac is not comfortable with letting us play with the swinging physics in our own way it has to be protected because they know its limitations they know it won't work out well if you let the player decide when to let go uh yeah it it won't because the game engines physics are not 100% realistic we know this but again let's keep going this makes it so you can't do cool tricks like a loop on your own in fact I think that their swinging physics system doesn't allow for Loops this is why an insomniac Spider-Man 2 you can only do one single Loop and it has to be done in com comination with a dive move right beforehand essentially setting up the game mechanic to be played by pushing a button also after the single Loop completes he automatically lets go of his web even if you continue to hold the right trigger and again this is where I partially agree I do think the loop-de-loop mechanic should be changed in the next game so that you don't have to dive to initiate the move and the other thing that could come from this is we could string air tricks into do like into the loop the loop and I also agree that you should be able to loop the loop more than one time but I do not agree that that it's like some terrible problem that you have to dive whenever you or whenever you want to do a loop-de-loop because when I I use the loop-de-loop mechanic very frequently and whenever I want to do a loop-de-loop I pretty much do it not to mention the fact that this is an unlockable skill meaning you have to unlock it to make it possible you can forget about trying to do a loop without diving and using the skill because at the peak of the Swing he'll automatically let go of the web I don't see the problem in in them making it an unlockable skill it's like saying it's a problem that a lot of the combat moves are unlockable skills that's like saying it's a problem in the Spider-Man 2 movie game that you have to progressively unlock more speed upgrades and air tricks oh but speak of the devil Spider-Man 2 from 2004 didn't have this issue you could hold on to your webs all day and night you could do 100 Loops if you had enough inertia I want you to show me I want someone to legitimately link me a video in either my Discord DMS or this comment section to someone doing two loop-de-loops in in a row while playing Spider-Man 2 the movie game as much as you guys like to praise the physics system in that game and how you're praising it right now doing loop-de-loops in that game feels like it's a rarity because you have to be moving so goddamn fast while you're swinging for it to actually work and no I don't mean swinging like this when you're like legitimately trying to [ __ ] loop-de-loop and you're not even like actually like in the flow of swinging cuz when you're doing it like this you can do it pretty consistently if you just move back and forth and you keep pressing L2 but when you're actually in The Swinging MO and you're going through the motion swinging through the city the loop-de-loop mechanic in that game and how you do it is it's not even like it's really not that good especially compared to how it looks in Spider-Man 2 PS5 and I am personally pretty [ __ ] good at that at Spider-Man at the Spider-Man 2 movie game and I've watched a lot of videos of like professional people or like people that are like pros at the game I've watched a lot of them play and I still have not seen a clip of someone doing two continuous loop-de-loops and the clip that you're showing right now is literally you running on the side of a building with the web in your hand you're not doing Loops you're just running around in circles on a building with the web still in your hand this is because that game had actual physics for its swinging it's obvious that this swinging system is not physics-based it's just a curated mix of animations partly Guided by you but mostly Guided by the game I just want to talk to him why do you have a shotgun I just want to talk to him Dad this is ridiculous I just want to talk to him I just want to talk to him you want to know something that's funny about this in Spider-Man 2 PS5 if you do a loop-de-loop and you mess it up and you hit a building when you do the loop or you slam it to the top of a building or slam it to the ground on top of losing your momentum you will either die immediately or take a [ __ ] ton of fall damage you know what game that doesn't happen in masquerading as a physics simulation to prove that you play very little role in making your character swing and Traverse to the city all you have to do is see what happens when you do nothing by holding the right trigger down and only pushing the left thumb stick forward your character will automatically swing and Traverse the whole world all on his own you don't even have to do a single thing you could just set the controller up with some rubber bands and walk away and he'll jump run and swing in whatever Direction you left him facing this issue was bad in the first game and I was hoping they'd fix it this time around but I think they made it worse in one single attempt I was able to have Spider-Man travel from one end of the island all the way to the other on his own swinging jumping and running through every single obstacle throughout the city that stood in his way I tried this with a the first game again and I couldn't even do it after five attempts uh you'd have to be an actual labite to not be able to tell that you are literally in your own footage actively pressing R2 when you need to press it or sometimes whenever you want to press it you're still playing with swing assist turned on and again I haven't tried this for myself doesn't really matter if it's true or not because again the point still stands your game play looks like ass when you do this this is not fun and I'm literally going to play the same clip I played earlier in the video this is like me going into a racing game with game play that looked like this and was like oh all I'm doing is is pressing R2 and moving my stick slightly I'm still moving forward and the game is still driving me forward now it may look like I have Helen Keller behind the wheel right now but but but trust me the game is playing itself for me physics are essential to a Spider-Man game this is why Spider-Man 2 from 2004 is the gold standard for web swinging physics because it actually has physics and Insomniac doesn't really rely on physics entirely they take a more controlled animation heavy approach while it does clearly use physics to mostly sell the illusion of swinging it's held back so much by insomniac's need to cover things up and make everything control Insomniac wants it to look pretty they want to hide the blemishes the fails the missteps and more but in covering all that up they defy physics in the process I already went over in the beginning of the video how like literally when like the point that he's making right now he's like literally just debunking himself the the only difference in Spider-Man 2 PS5 is yes they cover up the messes with cool animations but you still mess up and lose your momentum and more but in covering all that up they defy physics in the process and take away your freedom to do your own creative things because the original Spider-Man 2 from 2004 uses real physics and isn't Faking It the webs you swing from are real objects that interact with the world so when you wrap around an object or building the web wraps around it too coiling and short ing in the process however 19 years later in Insomniac Spider-Man 2 webs phase through buildings as if they don't exist I don't know why he keeps acting like just because Spider-Man 2 PS5 doesn't have 100 or doesn't have like close to realistic physics like the Spider-Man 2 movie game has that it somehow takes away the players's control and you can't do many creative things okay so like let's take a look at like some of the things that you can do in Spider-Man 2 the movie game that you can't do in Spider-Man 2 PS5 okay you've got wall bouncing that looks like this and granted I love this this is great in this game but I may have been cooking up something similar in Spider-Man 2 PS5 I'm just playing it's obviously not the same the Insomniac Spider-Man games do kind of have Wall bouncing however I do think it the way wall bouncing Works in Spider-Man 2 the movie game works better than it does in the Insomniac Spider-Man games but let's look at what else we got we got holding on the two webs with two hands and then you can kind of slingshot out of this midair you've got webs coiling around buildings which doesn't really add much in terms of like mechanics that you actually have out of this the only thing that it would really add is being able to do loop-de-loops which you already got that and then like wrapping around poles and shooting yourself down the street which also have in Spider-Man 2 PS5 and I think both of these mechanics and doing stuff like this not only works better but feels better in Spider-Man 2 PS5 and then you have pole swinging which is like a nothing Burger of a feature you can run along the side of buildings with web still in your hands and uh let me just look through my notes here oh wait that's it so let's look at some things that you can do in Spider-Man 2 PS5 that you can't do in Spider-Man 2 the movie game can you do this in Spider-Man 2 what a about this or how about something like this or what about this what about this or this stuff [Music] [Music] [Music] h does the movie game have an in-depth air trick system that has the risk reward of doing tricks and trying to be all flashy but you could be losing your momentum or messing up with the reward being looking cool and recharging your boosts he can you do this in the movie game anyways you get the point there's way more stuff that you can do in Spider-Man 2 PS5 creatively and features and mechanics that you have available than you do in the Spider-Man 2 movie game and all the mechanics and all the features that were shown in those clips are things that you string together to do these creative types of things he then goes on to make some arguments about the parkour which I pretty much agree with partially but I don't really care to waste time arguing it so I'm going to skip a little bit later into the video but again if you want to watch his full video for yourself it will be in the description when swinging near walls an insomniac Spider-Man to you are not allowed to rest against them or slide against them instead he immediately lets go of the web and starts running up the wall 19 years ago in Spider-Man 2 you could rest against the wall while still holding your web but now in insomniacs world you have no control the ability to just do what you want to do he'll just start running up the wall like he's got somewhere to be again I really don't know why you want to sit like on a building with a web for I really can't understand why you want to do this so bad you know what mechanic you should have said that could have came from this running along a building with a still in your hand that would be a great feature and I would love that the wall running in this game is ridiculous the man immediately runs up any wall he sees if you accidentally get him near one this is not true you have to be moving towards the building the wall to the left to the right it doesn't matter and you also have to press R2 even if you go from a full on dive if he sees a wall in front of him all his inertia will suddenly disappear and he'll start running upwards don't give me the excuse that he's a superhero so this is possible he doesn't warp reality he's just extremely powerful sure he should be able to turn and change direction on a dime but he should at least have an animation or shift to the New Direction rather than magically floating there I'm not going to make an excuse here I'm just going to wonder what what what's your problem with this I'm so confused like how does this negatively impact the game also he's able to run up buildings at Mock 10 speed but he can't run across the street at anywhere near this speed now I agree with this cuz this is a little goofy to top it off did you notice that he can't even run down buildings he literally only runs left right or up this was in Spider-Man 2 from 2004 you could run in any direction up down left right it didn't matter it wasn't controlled yeah I also agree you should be able to run down walls is it some major feature that we would be missing is it something that I would do ever if all if at all probably not I mean I don't know I it's just that's it's pretty it's like a nothing Burger it's nothing when swinging near the ground in Insomniac Spider-Man 2 you still levitate over over the protected area this is the only thing they've added an optional fix for in the settings if you disable swing assist you can actually hit the ground now a step in the right direction but a short step when many fans were hoping for a leap also Spider-Man still magically floats off before his web actually connects to anything at all he even starts floating before he shot the web imagine how cool it would have been to still be falling during that brief moment where your web still hasn't yet connected to anything while you were falling giving you the momentum and the challenge of navigating the city more realistically I'm not even going to say anything here cuz you literally just you literally just debunked yourself in in the same sentence this is the only thing they've added an optional fix for in the settings if you disable swing assist you can actually hit the ground now are you are you stupid I've seen many people praise the wing suit in this game while the idea of bringing the wing suit into the sequel was a great one and the design looks great I feel like its addition with the way it was implemented kind of breaks the game a bit its implementation is counter intuitive because it detracts from the swinging in a game about Spider-Man the primary focus should be The Swinging swinging should be the fastest most satisfying most entertaining mode of traversing and any additional feature should only work to complement it that's not how in somniac implemented the wings suit that is exactly how they implemented the wings suit and where is this magical law written down in the pages of spider that say a Spider-Man system should only focus on swinging that has got to be the dumbest [ __ ] I've ever heard my life and as much as certain people like to act like Insomniac didn't innovate anything with the swinging or traversal they literally did this game's traversal system is now a Spider-Man game that no longer only focuses on web swinging you have the in-depth air trick system that you use as a risk reward system which I already went over earlier you have the boosts and web Wings you have Wall running parkour Point launching all these different things that the player can use to intertwine with their swinging to keep themselves moving forward fast and flashy the wing suit shine in a few areas for instance it allows you to Glide for long distances and reach places further out than swinging could it also lets you do more tricks and interesting Maneuvers in those ways the wing suit is great it serves a cool purpose but doesn't outdo or outshine the swinging in that context oh I wish you would have just stopped talking right there unfortunately due to the distracting looking wind tunnels that litter the map you can wing suit ridiculously long stretches with zero effort on most difficulties the game forces you to stay within the tunnel oh really that's interesting if it quote unquote forces you to stay in the tunnel and is pulling you in like you said right here and like you said earlier then why does your gameplay look like this and why'd you cut the clip as soon as you messed up it's almost like I said earlier it's almost like every single wind tunnel in the map isn't exactly the same and it's almost like it's not forcing you to stay in the tunnel and you can easily exit whenever you want but let's continue cuz I have a lot more to say about this while keeping you on track it also moves you through the route much faster than web swinging ever could making web swinging obsolete moves you through the the route much faster than web swinging ever could making web swinging obsolete okay so let's show a clip of me going through a wind tunnel and then let's show me going through the same route using all of the traversal abilities that I have on my hand get before I close out the point real quick I'm going to let his video play out to let him say what he just what he's going to say next and then I'm going to close out the point on this what's worse you can fly around the entire map without ever shooting a single web and you can fly that route much faster than swinging it the wing suit should only allow you to Glide if it did there would be absolutely no problem with it it really shouldn't allow you to just fly the game is called Marvel Spider-Man 2 not DC's Superman so now let's get on to the point as I showed in the little timer uh things that I showed getting through that route took me about the same amount of time using the wind tunnel as it did when I was using all of the traversal abilities you know the traversal abilities that they put in the game because that's how the game was intended to be played so that already disproves the moving through the route much faster point but to move on to an even bigger point you can fly across the map going through a route much faster only using web swinging than you can if you only use the wind tunnels and go through this little route but what if you don't want to use the wind tunnels what if you want to go to a different direction what if you want to go to a different place what if there's no wind tunnel in the area for for you to use can you answer any of those questions what if when you're going through this little route here and The Swinging the person on The Swinging side of the screen what if that person decides to you know go to the left side of the map instead of going through that little route The Swinging person and a person who is using all of the traversal abilities is going to reach the end of the route that the wing suit person is going on much faster and if someone likes to use the wind tunnels if they don't like to use the wind tunnels if they want to get somewhere faster if they want to get somewhere slower if they want to be more stylish with swinging and how they move throughout the city rather than getting there the fastest way possible then so what because they can do all of those things there is literally no issue here even ignoring ing those things I'm still confused that how people could think the handling of the Wings suit is good it's clunky it doesn't feel natural it just feels bad Just Cause 3 did it better 8 years ago just cause had weight to the flight and momentum could reach Peaks before falling back to the Earth he also moved smoothly it wasn't jittery Spider-Man 2 is the opposite it's very mechanical and rigid you can clearly feel that the game is forcing you forward and you are barely aiming it otherwise I don't care to talk about Just Cause 3 I've I've literally barely even played that game but again I think the [ __ ] that he's saying about the wing suit is literally just a [ __ ] skill issue and you're saying it forces you forward no the wings the the way the wing suit works is it carries the momentum in the way that you are going so if you are going forward you're going to be moving forward but you know what else you can do with the wings suit this it's so [ __ ] simple I like I oh my god dude this I don't want to lie and pretend that I liked the wings suit just because so many others have said it's good I think it takes away from The Swinging and I think it destroys the immersion the isolation that being stuck on Manhattan Island gives you because now we can just fly across the water in our wings suit or slide on it like we're surfers infinitely in Spider-Man 2 from 2004 you had to hit a ride on the helicopters to make it to the Statue of Liberty but now you could just web surf your way there because of these things the game now feels broken it feels like it's in perfect shape for an arcade game dude the pretentiousness is like actually killing me yeah bro cuz I really want to you know just sit on the bottom of a helicopter and wait for it to bring me to the Statue of Liberty dude cuz that is so much more fun than doing this but for a more mature story-driven game some of these features don't match the tone tone the story mode sets what the [ __ ] are you talking about all in all Insomniac played it safe this time around in their minds they left it untouched because they didn't want to fix what wasn't broken but I think it is broken yeah I skipped some parts of the video cuz I don't really feel like going through it anymore the rest of the video that I skipped is stuff that I disagree with and stuff that I do agree with if you want to watch the rest of this video again I'll leave it in the description I'm going to have my own traversal improvements video coming out like later down the line but yeah I really don't feel like going through the rest of this video this video is already way longer than I thought it was going to be I wish his video could have been so much shorter if it was literally just the good points he actually makes compared to all the stupid stuff he says but yeah thank you all for watching and uh yeah

Channel: Colin.

Views: 162,943

Keywords: Dark space, Spider-Man 2, Swinging, Traversal, Debunk

Id: S2B6mZPihAs

Length: 43min 40sec (2620 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023