Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered | The Foundation for Something Greater

spider-man is one of the most prominent fictional characters in my life from a young age i was obsessed with the character i had the bed sheets the action figures hell even to this day i'm a huge fan with some nice prints on my wall and i'm wearing a spiderman shirt as i'm recording this there's no other character that has held such a special place in my heart be that his depiction in the many live-action movies the children's cartoons or the even more numerous video game appearances i already covered one of my favorite spider-man video games on this channel but there were a few issues first off i was a little too chunky to be wearing that plaid honestly and it was incredibly biased don't get me wrong i pride myself on presenting these reviews and opinions from the viewpoint of a casual but i also want to be as fair and unbiased as possible when i explain what i do and don't like about a game that's actually why i never bothered to touch marvel spider-man until now i knew that taking off those rose tinted goggles would be a challenge but i feel like my critical eyes opened a little wider now with that being said i want to give my thoughts on what i consider to be one of the greatest if not the greatest superhero games ever made i also want to remind you guys that this is my opinion and it's not fact and i'm okay if you guys disagree with me i'm totally open to having a discussion and we don't have to insult each other and each other's opinions in order to prove our points right right i hope so anyways let's move on i still remember the hype i had leading up to the release of this game and i remember handing in two of my college essays early just so i could have the week off to binge the game and boy did i binge it i've played this game start to finish on over 10 occasions now however i haven't gone back to it in a little bit i found that the gameplay is still fun the story still has its emotional impact and while the game definitely stumbles in my eyes it is ultimately the most spectacular rendition of spider-man the video game medium has ever seen up to that point to give us some context of the release of this game we should rewind a little bit and remember all the great comic book superhero games of years past the arkham series had a monopoly and was the superhero game juggernaut essentially since arkham asylum first dropped it wasn't perfect but it was so good that it raised the bar for what an action-adventure superhero game could be and more importantly what a superhero game should be now the upside to this in my eyes is that developers knew they couldn't just put something out half-baked and of course we were blessed with three more of these beautiful pieces of batman art but the downside is that every superhero game and a lot of action games were going to be unnecessarily compared to it games like sleeping dogs had a really neat combat system and despite having many differences in the combat it was compared to arkham's quite a bit the sentiment rings true for marvel spider-man even before its release a lot of people that i talked to before the game's release had mentioned that they were worried it was going to be an arkham clone and while the games do share some characteristics i think the game does enough to separate itself from its dark and brooding ancestors i won't try to compare this game to the arkham series too much but i do want to at least acknowledge these comparisons and i will bring them up at some point in the video the original release was met with great reviews essentially across the board and insomniac had to deal with a few controversies surrounding the quality of puddles man the internet will get mad about literally anything they can and i think it speaks to the quality of this game that the amount of puddles inside a building was the center of controversy i could go more in depth into this quote-unquote graphics downgrade but so many others have done it better than i ever could regardless myself and a few others were quite pleased to hear that the game was being remastered for the playstation 5. and when that was released there was paralleling criticism relating to downgrades but this time it had to do with peter's face i need to bring this up now because it's easily the most prominent change in this remaster and it's still pretty controversial so here's my take on the new peter parker face and from this point forward i'll be spoiling literally everything so consider this your one and only spoiler warning the original peter's face was really good it didn't fall into the uncanny valley and it honestly looked iconic the hair the eyes everything just screamed chad and he looked like spider-man what i mean by that is not that he explicitly looked like another portrayal of spider-man but that he looked exhausted he always looked like he barely got any sleep and he was always stressed out about something else he really looked like he wasn't always there mentally the heavy wrinkles and bags under his eyes made him always look so burnt out and that to me is an accurate look for someone who spends the night taking down superhuman rhinos and old men in bird suits emotional scenes convey what peter was thinking perfectly and by the time the game was finished when i heard spider-man i thought of this hunk the new peter looks different he looks much younger and looks like a tom hall and stunt double this isn't a bad thing necessarily but it immediately gave me a flashback to the avengers game which had these characters that looked like it was trying too hard to give you those iconic depictions of the avengers scene in the mcu i theorized that this change was made not only to fit the voice actor's face which insomniac did clarify but i also think it was done to make spider-man fit in with a potential marvel video game universe i imagine that spider-man would look out of place if he was placed with these avengers lookalikes now of course they could just give each adventure their own unique design but that's my own personal theory as to why the face was changed and i'm gonna stop myself from going any further because i think we're missing the point here peter's face looks less exhausted in the context of the games peter's been spider-man for eight years and as such has probably had a ton of battles and stresses and that's not even considering the stresses in peter parker's life we don't see that as much here peter looks weirdly perfect what i mean is that the old peter had imperfections that made him seem more human the wrinkles on his forehead the buggy eyes the laugh lines his eyebrows are a little too bushy and his hair always had a strand or two in the wrong spot the new one doesn't have many imperfections at all and while that's not a bad thing it certainly looks less believable in my eyes it's not like the old one was ugly though he also looks younger than miles and while it doesn't look bad like at all i prefer the old face more it's not like it ruins the game at all too it's just the first few cutscenes i'll throw you off but by the time you get to the more emotional scenes you'll totally forget about the old face and these scenes have the same impact as before you know i was actually going to send a death threat to insomniac for changing peter's face but i ended up not doing it because i'm not an entitled monkey and my brain cell count exceeds the single digit requirement anywho while we're on the topic of the faces and whatnot let's look at the touch ups to other characters here characters look much the same but with more detail as i'm sure a lot of you expect from a remaster faces have more texture to them where in some cutscenes you can see the character's pores like ew but nice the many suits in the game are absolutely gorgeous too including the advanced suit the suit you'll be using for the majority of the game it fits like you'd imagine but it has folds and crevices when performing the dive you can see the ripples in the suit around his back and it really makes you feel like there's a person under the suit something new that reinforces that feeling in the remaster is a definitive separation between spider-man's mask and his suit i also really like that within the game the suit's design is explained a little for example a white spider while being a bold choice on insomniac's part has a reason to be there as supposedly the contrast between the colors can affect a person's reaction time this isn't the only suit you wear of course as there are so many other suits in this game that's actually insane every possible spider-man suit i could think of is in here barring the black suit and they all look spectacular some of my favorites are the raimi suit the anti-ox suit and the homemade suit and i never thought i'd say this but i think the advanced suit is probably my favorite suit thus far i could seriously go on for pages about how much i like these suits and how much i like the new suits they added specifically for this remaster but i'll save you all the hassle the point is the game suits are fan service in its purest form and they look even better thanks to the changes that this remaster brings the biggest change that you're gonna see is that ray tracing is here and it looks sick and the game runs at 60 frames per second which looks slick seeing the gameplay in the cutscenes at 60 beautiful frames per second is out of this world and god i just can't get over it how did insomniac manage to make one of the better looking games on ps4 look this bad in comparison the lighting looks even better and honestly i'm just gonna let the footage speak for itself i should also let you know that the game has a few different graphics modes there's fidelity which is 30 fps ray tracing in 4k all the bells and whistles you can ask for then there's performance which runs at 60 frames per second and a 4k resolution but without the ray tracing finally there is performance rt which lowers the resolution to 1080p and messes with the density of crowds and whatnot to provide you 1080p textures 60 frames per second and retracing this mode is obviously my favorite since as some of you may know i only this year upgraded from a 720p 30hz tv to a 1080p 60hz monitor and being able to get all the next-gen features at a lower resolution makes this game drop dead gorgeous and really convenient for me the only issue i have with the performance is the handful of times it completely crashed my playstation 5. i had it crash about five ish times on my two and a half playthroughs and the game rarely failed to hit at 60fps goal so i'm not sure what the issue here is i do want to talk about the animations in this game because i swear to god it gives me a half chub everything from the facial expressions to the acrobatics looks immaculate this doesn't mean that's all perfect there were a few that threw me off and i'll provide these as quick examples they both have to do with momentum and impact the first is an early game cut scene that takes place during the boss battle against wilson fisk you can see here that he throws spider-man into a wall yet the wall seems to shatter at the exact frame in which spider-man touches it his momentum is not impacted by the wall either so it just looked a little wonky another is seen when first encountering silver sable's militia we see spider-man do this really neat front flip kick but the guy's head drops down before spider-man's foot connects with it so it looks super out of place and it really just feels like it lacks impact a bonus one i'll throw in here is when fist men are shooting at the police at the beginning of the game the muzzle flashes look like a png taken from a quick google search and it's just again jarring these are however the only instances i saw across my entire playthrough and i appreciated how well crafted these cutscenes were which saw spider-man and some iconic poses and the fantastic scenery surrounding them made it that much better in-game animations are on the same level as they have such a beautiful level of fluidity each animation seamlessly blends together with one another and this is best seen in the swinging which sees spider-man flawlessly transitioning from a front flip to a web zip into a point launch down into a dive and finally clearing a city block with his momentum before even hitting the apex of his swing combat sees you hitting your opponent with a flurry of kicks and flips and the dodgers look just as stylish as the web strikes and the finishing moves you perform these finisher moves look so good and there are unique animations for when you're in the air or on the ground and again it speaks for itself the stealth animations are not as varied but still look good and i seriously have to stop myself from going on a tangent about this stuff let's instead take a look at what is arguably the most prominent figure in the game new york city the different iconic real-life buildings like the empire state building and even the chrysler building are here and there's even some great fictional structures here like the avengers tower which for the longest time was what i thought to be the largest building fun fact though myself and nam from nam's compendium oh sorry one sec oh yeah yeah there's a link in the description to his channel where he also makes in-depth reviews oh okay yeah i got you all right bye sorry anywho there's a particular mission where you have to perform a dive of over 250 meters the game gives you a hand with a nice counter in the corner that tells you how high up you are and here's what we found avengers tower despite being what seems the tallest is actually clocking in at 425 meters at its peak empire state stands much taller at 442 meters and barely scratching ahead is the world trade center which comes in at 449 meters it's funny because even from the peak of this building the avengers tower looks a lot bigger but either way it was a fun experiment the city isn't a perfect representation of new york but it does achieve a nice blend of the actual city and the romanticized version that's often seen in movies or television it's also littered with references and easter eggs to different spider-man related properties we even see the roxon building and as some of you know roxon plays a huge role in the story of miles morales you can find things like uncle ben's gravestone and vials of sand that belong to flynn marco also known as the sandman and it helps make this world feel lived in our story takes place at a point where spider-man has been around for a while so having so many things that are just a part of the world's history really reinforce that i obviously can't talk about the world without talking about the amazing soundtrack and sound design everything from the sound of shooting a web to the triumphant music that swells as you begin swinging really instills this epic cinematic feeling even while swinging around new york you can listen into the jay jonah jameson podcast called just the facts which recounts the many things you've done in the story and in classic jameson fashion puts the blame on you and makes you out to be the bad guy to be rounded up the remaining demons and wilson fisk's men are fighting over scraps but funny how spider-man has faced no repercussions well sure you might say he saved us but should saving all our lives really give him a mulligan on his long history of reckless behavior tune in after this message for my answer spoiler no having a large world to fart around in is nice and all but especially with the character like spider-man the way you traverse such a city is a major part of what makes a game like this appealing and thankfully insomniac much like everything else in this game pretty much nailed it in what was and still is the most popular video on my channel in defense of assassin's creed unity i talked about how fluidity in a traversal system is extremely important to me and that's a huge reason as to why i hold unity's parkour in such high regard for a good comparison let's take a look at one of my favorite titles from the past few years spider-man the traversal in this game was [ __ ] nuts and i'll let you take a guess why it's because of the fluidity of the movement you swing from one line to the next and the game adapts to where you let go of your line and where you are when you shoot at the next line funny enough another asset that unity had which added to the enjoyment of traversal was the animations are you noticing a trend here anywho i brought up spider-man specifically because it's one of my favorite traversal systems in recent memory it's beyond satisfying to chain together these different flips and dives with the exaggerated swagger of a half-man half spider even during the swinging spider-man strikes these iconic poses and the way you let go of a line is dictated by your speed positioning and whether you press the jump button or not i appreciate the swinging a lot because it's accessible if you just hold the r2 button then spider-man will throw out a line and upon reaching the apex of his swing he'll automatically let go and throw out another line your continual forward momentum is limited by how jagged the transition is from one pendulum to another but ultimately if this kind of thing isn't your forte you can still get by now if you learn the system and put in some practice you'll be able to pull off some really cool looking combos and on top of that they'll be even more efficient than you were before the first habit you should get into would be to tap x to jump off your web rather than let go of r2 this gives you a huge boost forward and can add a lot of height or distance to your swing another way to build momentum is by diving which can be achieved by clicking the left stick this functions similarly to the dive in the arkham games and looks just as stylish as it is useful as a dive can give you a ton of momentum and swinging out of a dive can give incredible height and distance the r2 button is also mapped to your more grounded traversal abilities pressing it allows you to sprint and if you approach a scalable object such as a vent or a car you'll perform some fancy parkour to get over the obstacle but holding r2 will also allow you to run up a wall as you may notice by now r2 is mapped to a lot of your actions but it never gets in the way in fact it actually helps you keep your momentum and your fluid motion insomniac has made it clear that a big goal for them was to make spider-man's movement feel like it was all intentional what i mean by that is if you accidentally swing into a wall rather than awkwardly slamming into the wall and killing your momentum as long as r2 is still being held you'll seamlessly transition into a wall run you won't get stuck on a vent or a chimney very often because spider-man will just do a nice flip over it when while running along the side of a building if you reach the end of it spider-man will automatically perform a jump off the side you can also press x to launch and eject away from the wall at any point and if you hold circle when you reach the end of the wall spider-man will throw out a short web that'll allow him to take a tight corner when running straight up a building you can press the x button to launch yourself through the use of your webs up the wall increasing momentum if you hit x when you're near the top spider-man will slingshot himself over the top of the building increasing your forward momentum you could also just continue running and he'll just get launched upwards there's of course the web zip which sees spider-man using his webs to pull himself forward and it's useful for covering ground when there isn't really anything to directly swing on and it's helpful when trying to clear a large gap you can only web zip properly once and any further zips will yield less force until you perform another move i know it may seem trivial to focus on these little details but they all add together to give us a traversal system that is greater than the sum of its parts despite these mechanics being easy to perform there are a multitude of things that you can do to give yourself more control while performing the more complex movements is no challenge i often found myself forgetting about a particular ability and finding ways to work in these moves was a lot of fun there are also plenty of upgrades to these traversal abilities such as an extra web zip meaning you can perform two of them in a row before losing your momentum you can give your point launch a boost with an upgrade and you can activate this boost by pressing x when getting close to your point its timing is very forgiving however you can also launch yourself through tight spaces such as through some construction pipes and they never fail to give you some momentum and style the point i'm trying to make here is that it might be one of the most accessible yet complex movement systems i've seen in a superhero game and i absolutely love the way spider-man adapts to your inputs and adapts your mistakes on the fly since we already made the comparison to unity's traversal because i can never escape this franchise let's compare them again but with the knowledge of what really makes spider-man's traversal rewarding unity nailed fluidity arno moved with so much finesse and his animations blended together so well but it lacked a deeper level of control and complexity yes it innovated in how much control you had as you had much more control on where you traversed on the y-axis but someone who was playing it for a year wouldn't be that much more efficient than a new player it wasn't a deep understanding of the controls and the moves at your disposal that made the biggest difference it was likely just the knowledge of the map that's because the system wasn't that deep and it really didn't need to be but regardless spider-man doesn't have some revolutionary traversal system but it does have some different mechanics and moves that can be used to give you a greater sense of control and allow you to swing the way you want to i think that's what makes this reversal so good to me there's so many different ways to traverse the map and it allows you to express yourself more than most traversal systems and it's my favorite swinging system compared to any other spider-man game at the time i'd also like to mention that in this remaster they have used the adaptive triggers in possibly the most useless way they give the trigger a little bit of resistance that you really have to push the trigger down to throw out a web but you don't a line is thrown out once you hit the halfway point of the trigger and the resistance only begins at around two thirds of the way through so the adaptive triggers while i can appreciate what they're going for just get in the way more than anything the combat and stealth is where a majority of these comparisons between this game and the arkham series stem so we should tackle those promptly starting with combat the combat in this game sees you punching kicking flipping throwing countering and of course using your webs to take down your many foes you have your basic attack with square and if you press triangle you perform a web strike which sees you pulling yourself towards an enemy with a web and booping them as you make contact you can press circle to dodge and you can also press r1 to shoot a web or any of your other web related gadgets but i'll get to them later the combat itself is much like traversal easy to pick up and it also rewards players for getting to know it being able to dodge efficiently and knowing what enemies to take out first will assist you in battle just as much as gadgets will knowing what combinations of gadgets work best with each other was always fun and finding new combos was rewarding a feature that i really enjoy is the focus meter essentially you fill your focus meter by dodging doing damage and in some cases taking damage once the bar is filled you can perform a finisher on an enemy or heal yourself a little bit both of which burn a bar i enjoyed this a lot because there would be certain scenarios in which i was really close to completing a battle or a boss fight and i wasn't sure if i want to use my finisher to do some extra damage or play it safe and try and heal up it's also integral to note that the damage done in the air gives you more adrenaline not only can spider-man put the beat down on thugs on the ground but in the air too fighting foes in the air is quite tactical as you get more adrenaline as mentioned but it's also harder for enemies to hit you in the air assuming they don't have guns which a few of them definitely will if you want a ranged attack that doesn't involve your webs you could throw some debris at them this could range from some cement blocks to drain lids to even ripping the door off of a car and using that there are a few different enemy types here the basic ones just come up and hit you which can be taken down in a handful of ways ranging from your fists and feet to your gadgets the bulky enemies that can be taken down by stunning them and giving them a couple punches and kicks and they can be sung by throwing some debris at them or using some gadgets to web them up you can perform a finisher on them but these guys take two full bars to shut down some enemies will be rocking some sort of shield and they can easily be taken down through sliding under them and hitting them from behind there are also some specialty enemies that wield swords and will deflect any webs thrown at them these specialists can also hit you with some whips which are really fun to fight as they can pull you down when you try to jump away you do damage these guys by dodging behind them and throwing debris at them opening them up for a few punches these different enemies help mix up combat every now and then and while it's not like the game was too difficult it was certainly challenging enough to keep it fun there are like with traversal a ton of upgrades that allow you to expand your arsenal and fight with some more expression you can unlock the ability to pull enemies towards you when in the air and you can unlock the ability to slam them down when in the air too if an enemy hits a surface when webbed up they'll stick to that surface so throwing an enemy up in the air with an uppercut then webbing him and throwing him down will serve as an invaluable combo especially on harder difficulties with further upgrades you'll be able to throw the larger enemies too making these once time-consuming enemies a thing of the past your damage output is also tied with your level and every few levels you'll see a small damage boost along with the different enemies you'll also come across different factions of enemies that all have an extra layer of challenge the fisk enemies along with the thug scene during most of the petty crimes in the game are the most basic enemies in the game and there isn't really anything special about them thankfully they are sort of forgotten about very quickly and are replaced by the inner demons the inner demons are these dapper-suited men that are a little tougher than regular fisk enemies because of their elevated damage output in their specialist enemies which are gradually introduced the next group you'll run into will be the silver sable militia most of these bad boys have a special anti-web armor and must have their armor broken through a certain gadget being thrown into a wall or having some debris thrown at them these guys also have the largest health bar and their weapons do the most damage the final group you'll be introduced to are the prisoners at the raft most of them fight like basic enemies with some having specialist weapons they don't do much to separate themselves from the other factions and they just feel like some gimped inner demons i felt like combat evolved quite well in the game the beginning fisk enemies are really basic and so you get used some quite quickly i believe that's why they introduce the heavy enemies in the very next mission upon getting comfortable with those enemies the game throws some inner demons at you they don't introduce the specialist enemies and the heavy inner demons until the end of act 1 and finally the stable enemies are introduced last the enemies here were introduced at a great pace and it always kept you on your toes i also like that coupled with the new enemies being introduced you're consistently getting dps boosts and different upgrades to help you take down these tougher foes some upgrades such as being able to perform two finishers for the price of one bar completely changed the game and upgrades such as the critical hits which reward you for precise and rhythmic button presses with more focus and damage do much the same it just felt like the progression for combat was spot on and i appreciated it a lot of course spouting quips and snapping ribs is only half of this radioactive coin as stealth plays a relatively large role here too the stealthier is a little limited as it's not always an option when it really should be firstly stealth enemy wise doesn't really have any depth every enemy goes down the same and that's fine though i would have enjoyed a little bit more for example you could have had a bulky enemy that's too big for spider-man to take down quietly the struggle would make a fair bit of noise so you would have to avoid the heavy while taking down his surrounding lackeys i'm not a game designer so i'm not sure that this is a perfect idea but i think it could potentially work thankfully the sable enemies deliver this to an extent as their anti-web armor doesn't allow them to be taken down with gadgets meaning you'll have to put them to sleep the old-fashioned way as far as spider-man's different takedowns go they're pretty basic you can web an enemy out while perched on a beam or something of the swords and take them out of commission however i gotta admit that some of these are not very quiet as the sound of a guard's face hitting a steel beam echoes through the room [Music] spider-man can also perform a takedown from the ground and of course they look amazing you can pull off this very situational move where you pull the enemy into a vent with you and despite it being really cool you only do it two or three times it was so situational and only during the scripted segments of the game that i found myself wondering why it was even here i found it strange that you couldn't perform takedowns from walls or ceilings too as they were staples in other games the game also has a neat ui function that tells you if an enemy is safe to take out unfortunately i didn't really enjoy this addition that much as it made stealth a little too easy i would find myself not surveying an area at all but rather just stalking an enemy and waiting for the game to tell me it was safe i would much rather have something like detective vision or just no indicator at all i understand that this game gets enough comparisons to the arkham series as it is so i get why adding a spider sense that functions similarly to detective vision is entirely out of the question but removing this indicator in future games would in my eyes make stealth more challenging as i mostly ran through stealth sections i also wish there was more stealth in this game there were few stealth sections in the main story and even less in side quests fortunately you do get a little bit of stealth during the different hideouts around the map but after taking out about five or so enemies the next wave will come in and they'll automatically know where you are i'm not sure why they forced this on you because maybe they knew that stealth was too easy and people would cheese these hideouts insomnia could have made these enemies pop out of an elevator or door like they usually do but just make them search the room instead of immediately knowing your location the final major tool in spider-man's arsenal is his gadgets he has a myriad of gadgets i assume he stores up his ass or something and they're a little broken if i'm being honest the first gadget you get your hands on is the impact web this is a web that is so thick and is shot at such a high velocity that one shot upon impacting with the target will send them flying back and if they happen to go flying into a hard surface they'll be stuck to it this is just one of the many gadgets that just deletes an enemy with the next one being the web mine this mine activates when an enemy enters its proximity and when activated it'll shoot out a web attaching itself to the target and pull them in the electric web stuns an enemy and any other enemies within close proximity this gadget is invaluable when going against disabled enemies as it destroys their anti-web armor the web bomb is pretty self-explanatory as it webs anyone in its radius the next is a concussion blast which shoots a powerful blast of air i think regardless it sends enemies flying back and it's a ton of fun there's a spider drone which is a little bot they'll fight with you and finally there's the suspension matrix which will leave all enemies in the gadgets radius suspended in the air for a short amount of time leaving them open for air attacks the best part of these gadgets is mixing them together finding new combos that wipe out entire squads was always fun one that i found when playing was the web bomb and concussive blast combo when approaching an area throw a web bomb down and drop in right after and make sure you position yourself in a way that you're facing the enemies and that they have a wall behind them when you drop in and they notice you the web bomb will go off leaving them all webbed switch your concussive blasts and you can send them all flying backwards towards the wall and leaving them stuck there finishing the encounter in literal seconds my only criticism with the gadgets is just how good they are there are a lot of them that immediately incapacitate a few such as the trip mine and the many combos like the web bomb concussive blast combo and they can take out a bunch of thugs very quickly i found myself just spamming a few gadgets while in combat and watching half the enemy's forces get slammed you refill your gadgets too by taking down thugs and when you spam a few gadgets you can then perform a few finishers which will refill some of your gadgets and then you can throw out a few more i think the gadgets would be better off if they instead only refilled after every encounter which could prevent the player from using them too much this issue would also apply to stealth if the stealth encounters were not longer than fighting about 10 enemies there's also a ton of suits that you can craft in the game that come with different abilities the special abilities are charged over a period of time and their cooldown is lessened based on how much damage you do the first you'll have access to is combat focus which will rapidly increase the regeneration of your focus bar making it useful for taking out large groups of enemies quickly or healing yourself my personal favorite is the web blossom which is given to you upon repairing the classic suit it sees you shooting a flurry of impact webs in all directions and it absolutely obliterates the enemies as i'm sure you can imagine some abilities are really good like the web blossom or the resupply which refills your gadgets some of the less useful include low gravity which does exactly what the name implies and the blur projector which allows you to briefly go invisible i think each player will take a liking to a certain ability such as a quad damage ability which allows you to deal you guessed it quad damage to enemies upping the ante you can also upon unlocking the undies suit use the equalizer ability which allows you to one-shot any enemy however during the duration of this ability you can also be taken down in one hit a lot of these abilities i won't be able to touch on because there's just so many of them but trust me when i say that they're a lot of fun there's also suit mods that can be thrown on and you can have up to three of them going at once these function as active buffs more than anything and they can make some of the biggest differences gameplay-wise the ones i like to rock are the combat analyzer which gives you more xp from defeating enemies the discharge power cells which increase damage for a short period of time after executing a perfect dodge and the threat sensors which slow time after a perfect dodge for a short period these suit mods essentially allow me to wipe the floor with most bosses and enemies assuming my dodge timing is on point there are plenty of suit mods and abilities available and i wouldn't mind hearing what you guys use so let me know in the comments now before we move any further gameplay wise we have to mention that dark and brooding elephant in the room the game essentially since its first trailer was compared to the arkham games and comparing them is fine because those games are so good and have set the bar for what a superhero game should be the thing i always had a problem with was the quote unquote arkham clone criticism which was thrown at this game i understand that this comparison is hard to avoid but i don't really think it has any grounds and if any of you are still under the impression that this is an arkham clone then i'll try to explain to the best of my ability why i respectfully disagree for starters the traversal is very different i won't stay on this too long but it's true the swinging requires much more thought and has more complexity than gliding that's not to say that gliding was boring or that it was not complex but that i think the traversal scene here has a few more layers to it the biggest comparisons are with stealth and combat stealth while being certainly similar as it sees our protagonist sticking to the shadows and picking off our foes with increasing tension and fear as the numbers get lower and lower has by no means the same complexity that arkham does with itself and i don't think that's what it was going for in arkham the satisfaction of the stealth primarily comes from seeing the rest of the guards freak out and taking out the room with swiftness and brutality and spider-man is much more primitive and i think it's more gadget-reliant than arkham now gadgets can be a huge comparison between the two because a lot of the fun in the arkham games came from using the different gadgets on batman's belt while it may be easy to say that spider-man is trying to achieve that same satisfaction i think it's just a product of the developers who made a ton of games that are very gadget and weapon focused i also think the reason a lot of people will make the comparison to arkham stealth is because there's a lot of perching i'm sure most of you know that the arkham series sees you hanging from gargoyles and other vantage points quite a bit in spider-man you often jump down on an enemy and perform a takedown from behind or you can take them out from whatever vantage point you were perched on i think this doesn't really take advantage of spider-man's moveset one of the first powers that comes to mind when you think about spider-man is his ability to stick to walls we can't take down an enemy while on the ceiling or on the side of a wall and it's disappointing too because in the grand central station mission as mj we see a handful of different ceiling takedown animations i think this would help separate spider-man from his arkham counterpart i also think that spider-sense should be heavily limited in stealth as i already mentioned that i would think it would make it more challenging but it would further separate it from the arkham series as well when it comes to the combat i can kind of see why people compare the two because on the surface it focuses primarily on two buttons being the attack button and the dodge button i think the adrenaline system separates the combat enough as the arkham series doesn't really have anything similar but the major difference in my eyes is not the abilities at your disposal but rather how you use those abilities in spider-man the combat sees you taking down one enemy at a time usually knocking them out and moving on to the next while the arkham series sees you snorting a rail of cocaine g-fuel and adderall and bouncing around like you're in a pinball machine jumping inhuman distances at inhuman speeds from one target to the next the way i see it spider-man specializes in one-on-one fights while batman specializes in crowd control and while they have skills to cover both i think that's what separates the combat the most i won't bother to compare the stories or the worlds of these games as i feel it's pretty easy to see that the tone and characters are wildly different and people don't compare the stories or tones between these games like at all now i understand that these comparisons are unavoidable and i have no problem with the comparison the arkham games are beyond kick ass and any new superhero game should be compared to what is essentially the gold standard but calling one a clone of the other is just not fair to both games in my eyes both games have unique and deep systems within its gameplay and while it's important to acknowledge that they are both superhero action games and that there will be some overlap it's equally important to not let that overlap define these games another thing that separates this game even more is the gameplay loop which we can talk about next the typical gameplay loop in the game will see you running around getting into stealth and combat scenarios but the game mixes it up really well there are a number of boss fights that add some climax and other general mix-ups that make the gameplay interesting you'll notice across the game that there are a fair amount of quick time events some have argued essentially that quick time events are hot ass and shouldn't be in a video game especially one like spider-man take this scene for example where there is a quick time event for spider-man to web this tale of a helicopter some have said that it should all be gameplay to make you feel more like spider-man i personally feel like since the game's base mechanics cannot support that kind of movement it shouldn't be left strictly to gameplay and i'd argue that the more cinematic qte we get here is much better i also feel like it would be too much pressure on insomniac to ask them to allow you to do something like this in real time gameplay fortunately since i know for some people qtes can be a deal breaker you can turn them off completely or turn the button taps to just button holds making it as accessible as possible qtes are not the only way marvel spider-man spices up gameplay some missions see you encountering classic villains from spider-man's rogues gallery such as the shocker the mission sees you chasing him across the streets of new york and upon encountering him a little bit later on you have an epic boss fight which i will go into more detail on soon others see you fighting enemies on top of a moving truck and a lot of the missions here have some mind-blowing set pieces like the one at the raft a super prison that upon falling into chaos sees you swinging around the outside chasing electro and pummeling prisoners on the inside all while the rain slams against the concrete another saw you having an encounter with the scorpion at the beginning of the mission he nips you with some of his hallucinogenic poison at the tip of his tail and it sends our radioactive superhero on a drug trip that sees new york being flooded with mountain dew our goal is to try and manufacture a cure in order to do so we have to swing from one end of new york to the other while dodging giant scorpion tails upon getting to the lab we move through this distorted version of the lab fighting these apparitions of the scorpion and talking with the now evil otto the mission ends with you finding said cure and once a trip is finished you end up in your undies i appreciate that there were few main story missions that were simply go here punch x and it makes the game brutally replayable as i've clocked in over 10 playthroughs the game also has a few puzzles to break up your time as spider-man there are three types of puzzles the first sees you getting pieces to form a circuit of sorts and they get more difficult as you have to factor in the kind of charge required for the circuit to work they were pretty fun though they never felt too challenging the next easy lining up some well lines and these were a lot of fun especially when multiple layers are thrown in there finally there's a small puzzle associated with the radio towers where through rotating the sticks you can line up a frequency and it was by far the most boring puzzle this is because it was mostly just trial and error and you never really had to put any thought into it on top of that because they were so easy they took at times less than a second to complete which made me question why they were here at all i'm all for having a puzzle tied to the towers around the map but when the puzzle is so simple it feels like it's just wasting your time it's only wasting a few seconds but i'd much rather just have another circuit puzzle there are also a few points in which you have to look around a crime scene of sorts and inspect some items to further the mission but they were never too engaging and didn't show up very often they just felt pretty overall these puzzles were not too bad and much like the qtes you can enable the option to skip these puzzles and it made multiple playthroughs a lot of fun since i wouldn't be stuck doing the same circuit puzzle for the fifth time it's really nice that there are some certain non-spider-man things that you can skip however one thing i really wish you could skip would be the mjn miles portions of the game in some cases you'll play a segment of the game as mary jane or miles morales most of these sections however are boring as hell looking at mj first her sections see you sneaking around and the first one for example sees you at an art exhibit you're forced to walk around with this lady taking pictures of some art until eventually you're tasked with sneaking around her in order to get to a room now the fun part of this mission or at least the actual gameplay part of this mission is where you need to sneak around and get in the room the issue is that you spend a few minutes taking pictures and chatting and less than a minute actually doing stealth it was just super boring in my eyes and it doesn't help that the ai in these missions is drop dead blind this mostly applies to the second mj mission 2 which gives her the ability to knock things over baiting a guard to come over and check out the sound and giving her ample opportunity to sneak by in this mission you're sinking into the hideout of tombstone a popular spidey villain and again it's over in under a minute this mission does at least introduce cardboard boxes which if you run into them will make a ton of sound and look hilarious the third mj mission is a bit harder and longer wink and introduces these noisemakers all drawn enemies attention this one was actually pretty fun in my eyes and i don't mind it the fourth sees you in grand central station during a hostage situation hosted by the inner demons you work with spider-man to take out some of the guards so mj can defuse a bomb and again it was a lot of fun the final mission sees you invading norman osborne's penthouse to find out more about devil's breath i enjoyed this mission a lot because it gave mj a taser and it saw you sneaking around stable guards taking them down when necessary it also held a lot of plot significance too the miles morales missions were a little more enjoyable and didn't take nearly as long the first takes place during a bombing at a norman osborn rally and sees you searching for your father who was rewarded for his service to the city as a police officer it sees you hopping over some obstacles and sneaking around some inner demons before it ends it has some great atmosphere and holds a special place in my heart because you can snag this awesome photo of peter while he's out of commission the second sees you using your epic hacking app on your tablet to distract some sable guards and it was over pretty quickly hence why i have little to say about it the third and final mission sees miles looking for some medication to help some of the people out at the feast shelter and in his efforts to find some he encounters the rhino the section was really neat and i enjoyed how tense it was it thankfully is over quite quickly once you know the route you're supposed to take but regardless it's pretty decent and that's how i feel about these non-peter missions as a whole it was just decent they weren't too long especially on multiple playthroughs as i was able to speed through most of them but i think we're better off without them or at least slamming them down heavily in the next game they broke the pace of the game far too often and even if i could appreciate what they were it didn't mean that i wasn't thinking to myself a lot of the time damn i kind of wish i was playing a spider-man right now boss fights are thankfully a lot of fun and they see you fighting a surprisingly large number of spider-man's most popular villains the first that you'll come against is wilson fisk and he functions a lot like a regular heavy enemy and while he doesn't have a whole lot of depth he doesn't really need to since you fight him about 15 minutes into the game i actually appreciate his fight a lot as it gets you familiarized with the heavy enemies since he functions the exact same as a heavy you do damage to him by throwing concrete at him and webbing him up when you do get introduced to the heavy enemies in the game you'll already be comfortable with them since you fought fisk which was really nice i also enjoyed the little cinematics in his fight which saw an environment change and a flashy qte to end the battle next up is the shocker and i appreciated his fight a lot because it was over pretty quickly if you had proper timing essentially the shocker will attack you three or four times and after his final attack he'll be left vulnerable to a counter-attack you attack him by throwing an object at him when he's vulnerable and getting a few hits in the thing is though if your timing is good you can actually throw something at him in between his attacks neglecting the need to wait for him to tucker himself out the same goes for when he's attacking you in his second phase i also wanted to point out a strange discrepancy i have with the fight's ending cutscene spider-man states you brought this on yourself literally but spider-man was most definitely the person who brought the ceiling down on this guy he slowly took out the supports threw the supports at the shocker and then brought the entire structure on him so if anything you did it you'll eventually come across both the vulture and electro and fighting the two of these guys is awesome it's pure chaos and seeing the lights on the building flicker as electro draws power almost distracts you from the multiple swoops dives and throwing knives that the vulture will keep throwing at you electro will hook himself up to these generators which will pulse electricity and vulture will also be trying to come at you as quickly as possible this whole fight was just pure chaos as you have two enemies to keep track of and you have to keep swinging around and you have to worry about your health and you have to worry about your gadgets it was so good and unfortunately it was followed up by the rhino and scorpion fight which just wasn't as good in my eyes in comparison fighting rhino was really simple as you just bait him into charging at you and then pull a heavy object down on him leaving him open for some attacks or a finisher what's arguably easier is scorpion who just perches on top of random objects and taking him down is as easy as webbing him up and giving him the old one too this fight wasn't boring but it just felt like you were dealing with them one at a time in stark contrast to the previous fight which felt more like a juggling act throughout the story you'll come across martin lee aka mr negative and his boss fights all function similarly to one another the first sees you fighting these waves of shadow people that all go down in one hit and eventually giving lee's massive shadow doom and a bit of a beatdown next time you face him is in the trains from grand central station and this fight was pretty cool as it saw you sticking to the walls and sealing of the carts dodging these negative vibes i can't believe i just said that i'm sorry the final time you face him his attacks are a hybrid of the sorts from the fight in the train and on the truck however there are way more shadow people and we have to dodge some more attacks from his massive demon i found these fights to be a lot of fun and they were pretty engaging i also appreciated that lee's moves from previous fights were incorporated in his final battle finally there's the fight against otto octavius or doc ock despite incredible set pieces and heavy story implications the fight itself was ultimately pretty fun and dodging his rapid tentacle stabs and swipes was rewarding you essentially just web up his arms until he's stunned and then you put the beat down on him it's pretty basic if we're being honest but the climactic feeling of the fight alone is enough for it to be good after doing some damage he'll perch at the top of an antenna and start throwing a huge amount of debris at you the floor also somehow becomes lava not sure how but it doesn't matter regardless this function similarly to the shocker fighters you have to wait for him to tire himself out before you can get some hits in however if you time it right you can sneak in an attack which skips the whole let him tire himself out thing after some more damage is done you move on to the third phase of the fight where there are no webs no gadgets half of a mask and it's just a flat out duel dodging his attacks while on the side of a building and putting a ton of force into those right hooks was something i never thought we would get in a spider-man game and yet i'm so glad we did this fight is easily my favorite in the game purely due to how climactic it is and i have to admit that i like doc the most out of the villains present here so it only makes sense i enjoy his fight the most overall i think the boss fights were a lot of fun if sometimes on the simple side i wouldn't have minded seeing some more depth with villains like rhino and scorpion but i could not be happier with other fights such as those against vulture and electro since we've talked about nearly everything else gameplay-wise we should at least cover the many side quests in the game firstly let's start with the radio towers these bad boys are littered around the map and upon being activated it'll fill out your map and also serve as a fast travel point i don't really mind activating these towers but the little mini game is pretty lame considering how quickly you can complete it next up are the landmarks we'll see you taking pictures of the many attractions of new york and a few easter eggs taking the pictures is as easy as pressing up on the d-pad and pulling the triggers but it can be easy to take pride in the many photos around new york what's easier is losing the motivation to put any sort of effort into these shots once you realize that you can't view these photos later on i understand that the point of this side quest is to help the player get familiarized with the setting as it sees you snapping pictures of all the major landmarks in each photo you take prompts a fact about the place from peter but it feels like such a missed opportunity for the game to not save these photos while we're on the topic we can talk about the secret side quest in the game that sees you snapping photos of a bunch of lesser-known landmarks such as uncle ben's grave shooting all of these secrets will reward you with a spider-man wearing casual peter's outfit except with his signature mask i wish the mask wasn't there but i understand that they would have to reanimate a bunch of cutscenes to make it work so i get why he has to wear it moving on we have the backpacks littered around new york which contain a bunch of trinkets from spider-man's many years of crime fighting and for those wondering there is an explanation as to why spider-man has all these backpacks my wilson fisk science prize trophy and check i couldn't turn it down without a rousing suspicion but no way was i going to take his money even though we could have used it i did accept the lifetime supply of backpacks though these little lore bits help flesh out the world and help the player really feel like they're in the middle of a spider-man story for more collectible missions we should talk about the black cat stakeouts around the map they see you finding a little station with the camera and once you peep through the camera you have to locate a little cat statue and when you do you send them to the police department upon finding all of them you can piece together black cat's hideout once in there you can see all the little things she's stolen and find that all those statues that you gave to the police all have trackers meaning it gave black cat the exact location of the police station's lockup meaning you essentially helped her break in and steal from the police to numb the paint a little though we get a snazzy new suit that looks like peter's spin on the iconic miles morales suit equipped with little claws and a large red spider i enjoyed hearing felicia's audio logs that play whenever you nab a statue and the twist at the end was pretty satisfying as you make your way through the main story you'll find yourself encountering a box of sorts that has a video message from taskmaster he's set up some bombs around the immediate vicinity and it's our goal to take care of them as quickly as possible this isn't the only task he has for us as the others include races around the map combat trials and stealth trials the bomb trials and races are quite similar as it's all dependent on how fast you complete them i found the bombs to be pretty basic and easy to complete but the races took a little more skill in my eyes and it helped me refine my traversal abilities combat challenges are dependent on how quickly you can complete them but it's not a matter of spamming the square button instead it's more about spamming gadgets and finishers stealth follows suit as gadgets are going to be the most efficient way to finish these challenges with a gold medal the layouts were fine but i found them to be generally simple and they didn't test my skills much at all when you complete a few of these challenges you'll be captured while swinging around and we wake up and see that our capture is none other than taskmaster we'll get into a little scuffle with him and he serves as a pretty complex enemy he can only be stunned by throwing debris at him and he does a metric ass ton of damage he blocks almost all attacks and blocks webs too i appreciate that while taking him down isn't too difficult the surprise of the fight and the novelty of it is enough for me you'll probably get your ass kicked the first few times you meet but when all the tasks are completed you'll fight him again and by now you've likely mastered the combat system so putting the beat down on him isn't a difficult task a series of side quests that you'll also come across during the story is the hideouts and bases they see you dropping in on a base held by either sable international wilson fisk the inner demons or from some raft escapees when you enter you're undetected and can pick off some of the guards by using stealth and i think you all know where i'm going with this you can't use exclusively stealth to finish these hideouts after you pick off say four or five of these guys the next wave will advance and when the next wave comes in you're immediately detected and i found it pretty stupid if i'm being honest and while it's not a huge deal when looking at the bigger picture it's a very shocking oversight aside from that each area has its own aesthetics to separate them and while different locales were fun they never made much of a difference gameplay-wise sure it was fun getting to flex my combat abilities but i mean we've been sort of doing that for the whole game now and the fact that there are over 16 of these bases i'd say it can get pretty repetitive there are a handful of research stations run by harry osborne which peter can maintain while harry is away on his europe trip a lot of these were really unique and i appreciated these mini side missions a lot such as the one mentioned earlier which saw you activating a chemical formula by performing a dive for more than 250 meters some saw you doing things as simple as finding a clog in the sewers pipes and others saw you connecting a series of satellites during a thunderstorm having to cover a huge portion of the map while also avoiding the thunder and lightning raining down upon you there's a good amount of variety here and i like them a lot i don't really have any criticisms for them they were just fun as you're swinging around you may stumble upon a young fellow from esu he gives you a series of tasks i see you locating some missing esu students and these were pretty fun and brain wracking completing this mission after you've done the landmark mission will be helpful as you'll need a decent amount of knowledge about the map in order to track these guys down as all you have is a slight clue about the district that they're in and an obscure photo finding these students actually results in some inner demon hijinks and doing things like stopping a tanker from blowing up and taking down an entire football team and some change were a lot of fun there were four missions in this side arc and while they were relatively fun i found myself fatigued after the third otherwise it's good stuff if you talk to a man on the roof in the financial district he'll let you know that there are some towers that are being jammed after running around fixing a few towers and taking out the thugs surrounding those towers we get reports of movement at the docks by fisk's men take them out and it's mission completed this rings true for a lot of missions though such as the next one storming the castle which sees us stopping some thugs that are up to no good we find a usb that'll help us stop them but a bird snatches it and we run around for a bit chasing down those birds upon retrieving it we give the beat down to some more thugs and it's over like that the next tiled spider-man pi is a lot of fun because it sees you tailing someone which isn't really something you do in the game you have to go around tailing suspicious looking people and photographing them and upon photographing their big meeting that sees them planning a heist you reign on their parade while they're on road it was a really neat distraction and while not the most riveting gameplay i can appreciate the change of pace next up is spider-man which sees you tracking down a fake spider-man and eventually helping him in battle pretty basic stuff but ultimately entertaining helping howard as aquesta sees you helping a homeless lad named howard track down his pigeons that have escaped there's quite a few of these guys but i feel like catching them is tied to keeping within their vicinity for their time rather than actually getting close enough to catch them i had a few moments where i was borderline right next to the bird but i just wouldn't receive the prompt to catch him until much later even when i was quite far away i enjoyed learning more about howard and the tragic death of his wife and the side quest as a whole was pretty decent if it was a little on the monotonous side internet famous begins with a lady asking you to scan a qr code upon doing so we're patched into the live stream of an internet sensation screwball who's essentially baiting spider-man into saving people for the sake of content we eventually track her down and with that it's quest completed i like screwball she annoyed the living [ __ ] out of me and i'm pretty sure that was the point god is that what insomniac thinks youtubers are yeah i don't blame them we're pretty insufferable snipe hunt in my eyes is one of the weaker side missions as you just run around taking out some snipers stationed all over the financial district they also have some lackeys guarding them so you have to take them out quietly so as to not alert the sniper in my opinion it was one of the weaker side quests because there just wasn't much to it both story and gameplay wise the south portions were really easy and i just felt bored during this error filed not found is a pretty basic side mission that tasks you with finding a stolen hard drive for a lovely officer on the roof of a police station there's a pretty fun stealth section here and we return to find the police station under attack we take out the thugs and it's mission completed you've probably noticed that we have yet to cover what is arguably the best side quest in the game which surrounds the side villain named tombstone the first mission begins actually in the main story where as mj you go through tombstone's hideout and secure some intel for peter while also leaving behind a tracking device quick side note tombstone's introductory cutscene might be one of the coolest intros to a villain in the entire game tombstone you're right rick ah won't notice ah cousin won't be there goddammit accent i'll fix it you got some stones rick let's see if they break such a disappointment we pick up later on as spider-man and track down a truck that has the tracking device upon taking them down we move to a chemical plant that the thugs are on their way to and upon getting there and taking out some thugs reinforcements are called these guys however inhale some chemicals and their skin turns white and crusty just like tombstone taking these guys out is pretty tough since they can't be damaged outside of finishers sure they are gimmick enemies but they aren't used enough to get annoying or old we then make a chemical formula that'll reverse tombstone's invulnerability we track him down and his boss fight was a lot of fun he begins to fight invulnerable but as the fight goes on we give him the formula and take him on from that point eventually fire spills into the arena and keeping up with this while also juggling the enemy surrounding you is a ton of fun he eventually also brings out a chain and uses that to fight you it was so much better than the wilson fisk fight despite functionally being the same i wonder if this tombstone quest was actually going to be a part of the main campaign since it was so much longer and had more depth than any other side quest in the game regardless it was really fun and by far the best side quest i realize that the fun of a lot of them are basically carried by the gameplay taking down snipers isn't the most interesting task but having another excuse to get into combat is good enough so while the side quests are easily the weakest part of the game i think it's still pretty fun and worth playing through i wish they were a little more intricate and switched up the gameplay like the main story did but overall it's just fine and that's kind of why it might seem like i don't enjoy them i do enjoy them really but when everything in a game like this is so consistently good having side quests are just okay for the most part make them stick out quite a bit the final thing to touch on with the game is the story and characters now typically i begin with a story summary then an analysis of sorts but i want to try something different where i sort of mismash them together to prevent myself from repeating things and to make it flow a little better so let me know if you like this style more and less than the way we typically do things our story begins with a lovely next-gen spider crawling down its web and right off the bat i have to request that we chill with all the hairs the ps4 version looked perfectly fine but this is just straight up terrifying we pan across the room and see what looks like a playstation along with a bunch of other easter eggs in peter's room these reference villains he's defeated other characters in marvel and give us a good idea about his financial state which as we see isn't great we also see a magazine with norman osborne on it and in big letters we see the word secrets nice foreshadowing this opening cutscene is one of my favorites as it tells you everything you need to know about the game and its characters judging from peter's broken technology and filthy clothes on the floor we know that his alter-ego spider-man is clearly leaving peter parker's life malnourished and his balance between work and life is all out of whack we also know that this version of peter is older as shown by his empire state university diploma on his wall as peter puts on the mask he leaps through the window and we hear the infectious alive by the warbly jets kick in it symbolizes the chaotic nature of the double life peter lives nothing could ever live up to the exhilarating experience of being spider-man and it's as if that side of peter comes alive as he jumps out the window from what i've gathered from the song it seems that the theme is about the challenges of life and that those challenging and stressful moments in your life are what make you feel the most quote unquote alive i think it's obvious to say that this is something that peter would be able to relate to as his life is constantly in shambles his room is covered in dirty laundry eviction notices and chinese food that looks like it might have started moving on its own he's in a constant state of juggling and while it doesn't give him a lot of peaceful downtime he's always feeling quote unquote the most alive we're given some dialogue while on the way to the fifth grade which introduces captain yuri wantanabe of the nypd to our small spider team and we take down wilson fisk fisk explains to spider-man that he essentially keeps the city together and that in only one month he'll wish that they had him back this ends up ringing true as fist's arrest leads to a power vacuum and seeing where the story takes us i'm sure peter would much rather go back to the fisk days we then head to peter's other job where we serve as an assistant for dr otto octavius otto's introduction is anything but subtle as he's immediately shown with four tubes coming out of his back similar to his final doc aesthetic his downward spiral is portrayed very well in both his emotions and through the state of his lab at the beginning of the game his lab is cluttered and his whiteboard is filled with vision statements and plans for his company we also see a whiteboard with what seems like the doctor's brain scans on it and a ton of magazines that hint to some sort of neurological disorder by the second time we come into the lab we see the evolution and the whiteboards he lets peter keep some of the things in his lap there's newspaper clippings for some of spider-man's greatest foes and i can't help but theorize that those newspaper clippings could have inspired the doctor's roster for the sinister six on another whiteboard we can see a sketch of the raft where a majority of the wall crawler's villains are imprisoned this replaces the previous company ambitions that were drawn up on the whiteboard before his vision statement has now been decided on and he's trying out different logos after oscor pulls their funding otto seems to turn to aim a popular villainous company who i assume is now funding his efforts after entering the lab later in the story again we see the new arm design and it seems more crazed as the whiteboard has smudge marks all over it and it shows the concepts for the neural interface we also see his welding suit hanging up which as we know is his iconic dock suit unfortunately the final time you enter his labs when otto's completed his wicked transformation the whiteboard is now a crazed sketch of the final arms and it's honestly pretty unsettling his whiteboard which previously said that otto's company needed to compete with ozcorp now has an heavy marker the word destroy written instead his raft whiteboard is completed too with meeting points and exact locations of where some of the greatest supervillains are held the lab generally speaking is also destroyed with broken monitors and trash alerted everywhere i really wanted to take a close look at doc's lab here and the evolution of his lab because not only is it a cool detail that i don't believe a lot of people took note of but also because it tells doc's story without really saying anything we get to see his mental state change and his aggression become more and more unhinged until it's just too late the best part of this in my eyes is that i didn't notice this for ages of course i knew otto was going to turn into doc ock not only from my former knowledge of the character but because someone who got the game early decided to leak the final boss fight against him thanks internet but didn't change the fact that this transformation was so beautifully told to the player and it wasn't some snap that set him off he had these evil intentions inside him but just didn't have the catalyst to fully act on them i enjoyed the scene where otto finds out that peter is spider-man notice otto's raincoat that he's wearing it bears a very striking resemblance to his welding suit that he wears as doc ock i feel like this scene just showed two people trying to hide their other selves and peter didn't hide his well enough i like that otto pretended that peter was just spider-man's assistant as it gave the ending reveal a lot of weight and i appreciated that the ending reveal was just the inverse of this scene instead of two individuals trying to hide their alter egos as two alter egos trying to hide their true selves otto's arms are corrupting his mind making him think that what he's doing is right and peter is still trying to hide his true identity but i think this is challenged by otto's final lines to peter he explains essentially that he and peter need to protect those beneath him he also gives a very sinister tone when explaining that peter's secret is always going to be safe with him this shows that even when the arms are disconnected he still has those malicious and deceiving intentions it made me question if maybe doc ock is otto's true self but without any moral or physical restrictions he clearly still has some kind of morals as he explicitly tells the other villains not to kill peter i apologize i don't really have a point with this it's just some stuff that i thought about and the food for thought that auto provides is why i like him as a character a lot rapping back around to the story we eventually run into an old villain called the shocker and after chasing him down we send him to the raft a maximum security super prison we then get a report there's a break-in at the fisk art exhibit and while investigating a new type of enemy gets to drop on us but we're saved by mary jane we then have a flashback as mj and we see that she's investigating fisk's gallery as it's suspected of being a money laundering scheme and a place to store stolen goods i enjoy that mj and peter clearly have a lot of history together and it's seen from their first interaction peter seems to get awkward and distracted while talking to her and mj seems like she hasn't gotten over peter yet she still has a spider-man themed camera strap and everything she comments on in the museum relates to peter in some way this cut peter opened like a pork sausage with this the first time they fought pete got away collapsed in my yard half dead and i had to steal my dad's car to drive him to the er the first of many nurse mj moments mj actually has a really neat line here that sums up your character really well on my eyes when inspecting some of the art you'll come across some masks on the wall i get why peter does it but i never totally loved the heroes hiding behind masks thing feels like part of being a hero is standing behind your actions being willing to say yeah that was me that's the sort of hero i'd want to be at least i really like this because it perfectly explains mary jane's career choice and it also summarizes a large theme in her relationship with peter mj wants to be a hero but unfortunately she's not shooting webs and sticking to walls anytime soon by writing her articles especially with her real name and face visible she's doing exactly what she said of course i think her sentiment doesn't work so much when it comes to peter's case as he's wearing a mask to protect his friends and his family rather than himself peter and mj's relationship from what i see struggles from peter's over-reliance on himself he doesn't trust mj to take care of herself and he doesn't want her to get involved with these dangerous criminals seeing the way their relationship evolves throughout the game was satisfying and it was a mature story that touched on the themes of trust baggage and independence after clearing out the room of spider-man we then have to track down shocker again and it's told to us that he was led out by a security guard with glowing eyes who we later find out is under the influence of martin lee martin lee is one of the main antagonists in the game and runs the feast shelter that aunt may volunteers at feast is a homeless shelter and is the crux of martin lee's legacy lee seems on the surface to be quite positive but he lives a double life of his own where he takes on the moniker of mr negative mr negative has the ability to control and absorb negative energy and the game doesn't really go into any specific details on how it works these powers were supposedly given to him through a failed experiment done by otto octavius and norman osborne and that's nearly everything we get from martin lee and from what i've gathered the negative energy seems to come out in episodes according to some of the audio logs but every time we see him he seems in full control of his power so i'm not sure what's going on there if someone does know how it works i'd love it if you could let me know in the comments i do like that as seen in his letter to aunt may martin seems to know that what he's doing is wrong but lets the revenge get the best of him he explains that he doesn't want his actions to negatively affect feasts and that feast wasn't a front or a cover-up but what he truly wanted to do and that he hopes that may can continue that mission unburdened by his actions we fight him on multiple occasions and try to get through to him and in our final confrontation we get interrupted by otto and martin lee just kind of pisses off after that we don't really see a conclusion with his story i understand that his only motivation was to get revenge on norman but i found it strange that in the end he just seemed tossed aside i was a little disappointed they didn't have more of a fleshed-out backstory that was center stage and instead just serves as more of a basic adversary similar to the other members of the sinister six when the shocker is apprehended again we then investigate an old fisc warehouse with officer jefferson davis while in there we find that the inner demons have been seizing a lot of fisk's weapons for some evil business of their own after jefferson saves us we hear a word that he'll be getting an award from norman osborne at a rally the next day at the rally peter is there with mj but the inner demons show up and bomb the place with jefferson davis being at the center of one of those bombs we then switch characters and begin playing as miles morales as peter is out of commission we move through this destroyed city block and rescue mazel's mother rio after that we try to find jefferson who is unfortunately dead we then attend the funeral for jefferson davis give some kind words to miles and continue our search for martin lee miles is a really neat character and gives us our fill of a superhero origin story i believe the reason that insomniac chose to set a spider-man story so far into his career was because it was just something a lot of games had not done before the story of peter getting his powers and losing uncle ben has been told so many times in so many different forms of media that we don't really need to see it again fortunately this is where miles comes in he acts as an origin story as he hits all the major spider-man origin beats being radioactive bites a dead parent and knack for helping others and his father even gives a similar speech that while not being as strong as the iconic with great power comes great responsibility is still good enough to get the job done and it stuck with me more than i thought it's the idea that being a hero was not about the powers that you have but the will that you have and for miles he shows that he has the will to do whatever it takes to protect his family be that sneaking around ground zero looking for his parents despite armed gunman still patrolling or outrunning a human rhino when miles finally does get his powers he nearly immediately shows it to peter and now we have a scenario where we can answer the question of what if spider-man had a mentor maz's character arc isn't completed in this game because it's clearly meant for a sequel which i will talk about at some point but i really like the way it was handled here and it made me fanboy my ass off he has some big shoes to fill and i'm excited to see where his character goes in the future as we investigate martin lee's properties we run into silver sable sable isn't much of a presence in the main story and seeing her arc from not liking spider-man to at least respecting him is nice but she doesn't do more than that she gets her loose ends tied up in a dlc for the game and let me know if you want to see that my feelings on her are just eh there are so many characters in here and i don't care if one or two of them don't get a ton of attention she does eventually leave new york because she realizes her wrongdoings but her men are still employed by osborne so they unfortunately don't leave at this point we're in act 2 of the story and it's essentially a hunt for martin lee and the devil's breath virus until eventually intercepting a convoy which leads to a conflict with martin lee and then tracking him and the devil's breath down again at grand central station only for spider-man to save the day and for martin lee to be apprehended by the police and the devil's breath is handed off to sable international it's unfortunately intercepted again and at the same time there's a breakout at the raft and we have to go stop it while there we run into the scorpion chase elektra around the raft run into vulture lee and the rhino as well and as all these villains are beating the hell out of you we get the reveal of the sixes leader which is otto octavius i never thought that the sinister six could be in a spider-man game and on top of that pulled off so well this is also where the third act of the game starts and it sees us essentially taking down the sinister six and tying up the rest of the plot before we do that though we investigate the devil's breath outbreak that was caused by otto and we find his secret lair fun fact this hideous at the top of the skyrise and has signs on the outside of it that says crow's nest and that's about as on the nose as it gets once in there we get a good backstory on all the villains and find out why they're teaming up with otto it seems that otto's found a way to help all of these individuals and is using it as a way to get them on his side the rhino made a suit that is bonded to a skin which otto can fix otto has improved elektro's gear allowing him to use his powers in a much more efficient manner vulture has upgraded his wings and integrated them into his body which gave him spinal cancer and the good doctor is supposedly going to help with that too scorpion just wants his criminal record clear and martin lee already hates osborne so he doesn't really need any convincing otto's goal is just to get revenge it may seem contrived or stupid but all he wants is to put norman through hell and destroy both him and his brand we take them down and after dealing with lee and getting a cure for the new virus spreading around we get nearly killed by otto who now has the cure and norman we build a brand new anti-aux suit which looks so damn good and my god the suit up scene for this is just top notch we then take down awk in this battle is filled with so much emotion and it's so good but i've already talked about it enough when not goes down he begs peter to not let him rot in his soon to be useless body but peter delivers this great line that really encapsulates the decision he makes and the gut-wrenching decisions he's going to make quite soon you do what you think is best doc it's all any of us can you do it even when it hurts like hell you know where are you going [Music] here upon returning back to fees he sees may in critical condition now from the devil's breath virus and he has to make the decision to either use a cure on her or give it to the doctor who can use it to manufacture more of the cure the issue is there isn't enough of the cure or enough time to do both aunt may throughout the game has been one of if not the biggest supporter for peter and despite not knowing his true identity her advice seems to apply to his many superhero situations there's one point where peter even comes to her asking for advice on mj and may asks if she knows the quote-unquote real peter it's lines like this and plenty others that make mae's reveal so much better of course she would say some vague stuff like that and of course she doesn't question when peter disappears on a dime hell she even looks more annoyed than anything and of course she would because she knows going through the scenes with her is truly a lot of fun when you know the full context and you know what she knows back to the scene with her in the hospital bed it's easily one of the most emotional scenes in any video game in recent memory it's more of a testament to the game's voice acting but regardless it was well done peter makes a choice to let may die in order to save everyone else we're then shown new york being slowly cured of the plague and that's essentially where our story ends while the story was not the most complex it was told excellently and the different characters were interesting from start to finish i feel that it parallels a lot of other aspects of this game and that it's not the best i've ever seen but it's so consistently good the character arc's present all had a satisfying conclusion aside from a few with the most major being martin lee but it was easy for me to overlook i also appreciated how many little details were thrown into the main plot such as when you're looking for things during the mission where you're evicted at this point you've only recently crafted the new advanced suit and when a group of thugs tries to jump you they exclaim look it's that guy spiderman i thought this was pretty cool because of course there would be a few people assuming the new costume is the product of some copycat earlier in the game you help a homeless woman and advisor to seek shelter at feast at first she declines however later in the game you can see her in one of the cutscenes i feast in a much later mission when entering norman osborne's secret lab you as mj can find these purple grenade-like objects sitting on a desk which could be hinting at norman potentially turning into the green goblin who has an iconic green and purple color scheme all of these examples and the many more throughout the game highlight to me at least how well crafted this world is overall i really really enjoyed marvel spider-man and i felt like it was the best spider-man game we've ever been blessed with it wasn't perfect as some of the crashes dampened my experience and the side quests left a little more to be desired but that doesn't stop the gameplay mechanics and the story from being a great time and worthy of more than one playthrough peter's new face rubbed me the wrong way at first but i eventually got used to it and while i still prefer the old face i'm perfectly fine with this new one the gameplay while seeming a little primitive compared to the fantastic half sequel miles morales is still a great time and kept me engaged all the way through the swinging had fluidity and style not seen in any other spider-man game and while the combat and south were not as innovative they definitely had a spider-man twist on them and it did enough to separate itself from its contemporaries the best part about this game is that there are improvements to be made and it's clear from this game pseudo sequel that insomniac is listening there are a lot of spider-man games out there and leading up to spider-man ps4 we've been given the pretty decent amazing spider-man and then the borderline atrocious amazing spider-man 2. so my hopes for a new spider-man game were low however it's clear to me now that insomniac was the perfect developer for a series like this and while the game isn't perfect i think it's the best spider-man game we have as of its release and it truly is the foundation for something greater howdy everyone i've just spent the last three-ish weeks slaving away at this video and i want to thank you for watching i'm sorry if my microphone quality sounds a little different i'm not at the same recording place that i was um because i switch houses between my mother's house my father's house and my mother's house i'm able to throw my entire blanket over my desk which uh is pretty good as far as soundproofing goes i just wanted to give a quick shout out to our patrons um the gold tier patrons being a beat beck bossian 22 christopher moreno francis pop predica pyrite slatty and our silver tier patrons dr nannard and jacob douglas and chief and uh finally our bronze tier patron denzel ritesh um i want to thank you guys so much for supporting the channel especially because if i'm being honest you know um my earnings like my cpm and [ __ ] literally the first day of january got cut in half so your boy's hurting um i'm joking i'm not like actually like in any financial trouble i'm just saying you know it helps i appreciate it um as far as the next video i don't know man i'm probably gonna do like infamous 2 or arkham asylum um and then i want to get to the dlc's for this video at some point if people are interested in it otherwise i might just move straight on to miles morales and um i guess maybe i'll get back to assassin's creed at some point i want to make sure my next video isn't an hour long because that's kind of a pain in the ass if i'm being honest with you so yeah i mean if you guys have any suggestions obviously leave them below and um i apologize i don't have much of an update i'm sorry i haven't streamed as much i have a minor medical issue going on and i'm just trying to kind of work through that before i get back to streaming on a consistent basis so um yeah anyways i um appreciate you all a lot go check out nam's compendium you can follow me on twitter if you have not um i don't know if you didn't know about that as far as my analytics go only like five percent of the people who see this are going to be here so if you are here look at you congrats um yeah so um happy new year i wish you all the best i'll see you hopefully not a month from now maybe like one or two weeks and uh yeah okay bye guys i forgot to say it i'm coming back um love you guys okay all right now i'll go bye [Music] you

Channel: That Boy Aqua

Views: 478,493

Keywords: marvel's spider-man, spider-man, spider-man ps4, spider-man remastered, marvel's spider-man dlc suits, the amazing spider-man, marvels spider-man, remastered, spider-man ps4 dlc, spider-man ps4 the city that never sleeps, spider-man ps4 dlc suits, amazing spider-man, spider-man game news, spider-man ps4 sequel, marvel's spiderman, marvel's spider man, Spider-man Miles Morales, marvels spiderman critique, marvels spiderman analysis, marvels spiderman review

Id: i7xlrhrsLcc

Length: 71min 21sec (4281 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021

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[u/[deleted]]

Yes! I love this type of video essay! Thanks for sharing :)

[u/Mr-Rocafella]

Spot-on with the new Peter, although I'm sorta used to it now I still miss the OG