Spider-Man PS4 Critique | An Imperfect Marvel

we tried to make our characters have feet of clay now poor spider-man i mean okay he's pretty good at catching bad guys but he's apt to get an allergy attack while he's fighting he worries about dandruff he'll have an ingrown toenail tears his costume his aunt may won't let him go out to save the world because he's not wearing his galoshes and it's snowing out and the funny thing is i started doing that as a gag and really to keep myself awake you know and and i found that the readers are as crazy as i am they started enjoying this sort of thing [Music] i love spyro the dragon the colours the sound design the music and yeah the traversal system the simplicity insomniac games brought to holding the square button to have a satisfying cartoonish sprint propel spiral towards enemies made the game both accessible for kids as a platformer and visually pleasing all these years later maybe it's just nostalgia but i will defend that original trilogy to the death well maybe year of the dragon less so but ripto's rage was a goddamn masterpiece so when it was announced that the same company behind spyro was making the spider-man game i was as pumped about it as anybody else after all my voice joins the cacophony of white mid-20s youtubers who spout off about how spidey is their favorite superhero and how much they relate to peter parker's struggles because spider-man is my favorite superhero and i do relate to peter parker's troubles i too struggle with white sticky stuff while battling a many tentacled monster what it's been two years since spider-man arrived on the ps4 and collectively made a million consoles scream and creak under its weight and with miles morales just around the corner and this terrifying new version of peter cynically announced by insomniac i figured i'd return to the game and critique the good the bad and the dlc to see if it still holds up and whether or not it deserves a spot in my games of the generation list we'll be walking through everything here treat this as more of a commentary than a straight up critique as we'll be exploring parts of the story in almost excruciating detail so don't say i haven't warned you spoilers ahead what makes a good spider-man story the web swinging the villains the quips oh yeah yeah i was cleaning the chimney because some of the worst adaptions of the web head have had a plethora of these to the point where you could argue the story's drowned in them i've seen some bizarre hot takes that we need a spider-man who works alone and doesn't get help or always stays light-hearted no matter what or is stuck in poverty for some reason look i'd be the first guy to argue that comrade spider-man is clearly a socialist but no these are all way too specific i'd say that a good spider-man story often has just three common stamps number one clear duality between peter parker and spider-man number two by the end of the story peter needs to understand a new dimension to with great power comes great responsibility and number three an interesting villain which reflects this back now not every spider-man story has these three things in fact in my favorites by the arc peter parker is barely even in the story but i think it's a solid foundation to build from see ultimately peter parker didn't ask for these powers of his he's not iron man or captain america they were thrust upon him and more than any other superhero except for the hulk bless him people always forget about the hulk his powers come at a price for every success of spider-man there's often a failure for peter parker sometimes it's easier to think of them as two separate characters to the point where a couple of years ago pete literally had his wisecracking crime-fighting self ripped out of him and given sentience however despite this duality despite this inner turmoil of pete and spidey everyone still knows that spider-man's crime fighting is influenced by a tragedy which struck peter parker uncle ben's death gave him the mantra of with great power comes great responsibility even if the mcu movies won't acknowledge it explicitly every spider-man story in one way or another harbors this if we think of the mantra as a great stoic thematic tree that the spider always holds to each new story should add a leaf to that tree a message related to uncle ben's parting lesson and of course a villain directly tied to whichever lesson peter's going to need to chew over is vital to success as well for example in spider-man 2 pete's feeling lost his life as peter parker is unravelling and he's looking to auto octavius as an example of the sort of man he believes he could be if he gave up his powers a charming intelligent successful scientist married to the woman he loves the next time you're watching a spider-man movie or playing a spider-man game even ask yourself what the main villain's inclusion in the story says about the web head if you struggle with the answer like i do with say electro in amazing spider-man 2 it's likely it's a mediocre spider-man tail forgive me for the long-winded chat before even getting into the game but i thought it was important to establish this before assessing if spider-man ps4 lives up to our memory all these years later and we'll be reassessing these rules when looking at miles morales all right let's talk about the actual game now shall we prepare yourselves this is a beast of an analysis spider-man ps4 has a pacing problem but the first 10 minutes are absolutely marvelous sorry in their presentation and setup the game's opening is visceral and exciting and immediately tells us everything we need to know about this version of our hero game fades in with a single solitary spider dangling precariously but confidently by a web insomniac spider-man theme bleeds in from somewhere far away and of course insomniac have gone the brassy route here the next time you watch a superhero movie or play a superhero game take a moment to acknowledge how brass is used you'll often find that some of the most emotionally resonant superhero themes use brass front and center just look at how hans zimmer uses in the dark knight this is all because brass at least in the language of film is used to emulate war and war heroes the western vision of tragic brave figures fighting for the good of all stems from our idea of world war ii and you don't need to be a ranting nationalist to feel connection to this idea of the brave soldier a superhero panning over the first picture we see is uncle ben the source of peter's moral code followed by pictures of mj harry and aunt may cluttered on a desk with a police scanner lying active between them a dead plant and a scientific model if you've seen my outer wilds video you'll know i couldn't tell you what model exactly the static of the scanner is the first real sound that we hear highlighting the importance of spider-man's duties in peter's life but the focus on peter parker in these opening moments rather than spider-man is obvious the pictures of his friends the scientist within the neglected plant shamefully ignored because peter's too busy with his wing to focus on something as simple as watering a plant instead he's been too busy sketching and designing gadgets for spider-man we see norman osborne on the front cover of a magazine promoting ozcorp's importance in this version of new york and the foam darts lying atop his face shows us that peter doesn't exactly have time for the mayor two savings jars lie empty the one for a new laptop has some pennies in it's not exactly enough for new tech i know that feeling and the one for a vacation is completely barren peter does not have time for a break he's ready to work himself to death if he needs to his laptop has a cracked screen the place is a mess and as insomniac's heroic tune changes we pan up away from the world of peter parker and into the world of spider-man newspaper clippings from the daily bugle scorpion rhino and electro are pinned to pete's cork board this is a spider-man in his heyday he's already battled many of his famous foes but it's the picture of fisk which probably captures our immediate attention he seems to be the one that got away for the web head crusader or criminal tells us that his famous man of the people front is probably working for the new york population but pete has put his picture up with his other villains so clearly doesn't trust him despite the serious state of the apartment we get a glimpse into peter's jovial mind in the post-it notes we only get a brief glimpse at these but if you pause there's a wealth of information here need new catchphrase one says another is playful with male jjj a dozen roses from secret admirer peter's money troubles however are front and center here two of these post-it notes are screaming about needing to pay the rent but before we the audience just like peter can think about these real human problems for too long the scanner rings off today is the day we are going to take down fisk we're a minute and 12 seconds in and the game has already set us up for a boss fight with one of spidey's heavy hitters this snaps a snoozing peter awakened with a single minor sentence fisk the song alive by warbly jets kicks in at full gear over the distorted sound of an immediate electric guitar pete tosses some bread into a toaster he's specifically engineered to quickly make his breakfast in case of emergencies he sniffs the suit and it reeks he's been so overcome with his work-life balance that he hasn't even had time to clean the suit he gears up grabs his breakfast and we get our hero shot [Music] this has to be one of the freshest hero shots we have ever seen of the web head it's not spider-man punching an enemy in the face or swinging through the city it's him stretching in the middle of this ramshackle apartment it's cluttered there are stains on the walls in the oven the calendar just off from center reminds us again that he's behind on his rent spider-man's career is going extremely well look at how badass this poses he's ready for anything but he's framed by the downhill spiral of peter parker's life and just so the moment really hits home as he calibrates his suit a final notice is posted through his door and the ui organically flashes up just like it will during gameplay his mission objective here is to pay his bills the very fact we're calibrating our suit up shows us that this is a spidey who has developed his own and relies upon his own gear gadgets and spider technology not only that but we see the first of many moments in the game where our hero needs to make a choice spider-man or peter parker pay his bills but let fisk get away or take down fisk and face eviction he takes a couple of steps towards the envelope and for a split second it looks like he's going to pick it up but then he turns and it's clear he was just making room for a running jump out of the window and he blasts off into the city i'm not going to spoil exactly what happens later in the story here but anyone who's played the game knows that this scene with the bills is paralleled at the very end where the webhead needs to make one large choice once again between peter parker and spider-man except with much greater stakes as the chorus of alive kicks in we see one of those famous swing through the city scenes spider-man doesn't use any animations here which we the player won't be able to make him do ourselves and nothing solidifies this more than how organically we transition from the cutscene into controlling spider-man swinging through the city and ah this gets me every time i start up a new playthrough it's hard not to feel giddy but let's not get carried away because before we can even start swinging there's one more thing to acknowledge the route outside of pete's window has one more vital piece of scenery for us to notice and that is the re-elect osborne sign on the building opposite stark and blue and clean so that we definitely can't miss it highlighting that norbern osborne is currently the mayor of new york we are two minutes into the game and we already know where peter and me spider-man and norman osborne are in relation to this version of new york and that it's straight into the web swinging from the get-go we're given full control over spidey and an uncomplicated straight run to fisk tower for us to experiment and explore how the web swinging feels with this version of the web head following a police chopper this is how the game tutorializes the web swinging to us as we muscle forth to wilson fisk spidey calls his contact in the nypd yuri watanabe who will be our source of crime crime-solving info as the story progresses spider-man asks her permission to get involved in the fisk takedown showing that he's working with the police and there's clearly an explicit power dynamic between the two spidey respects yuri he also tells her that he's been waiting eight years to take fist down so we learn immediately that he's been doing this for a while he also comments that he needs to wrap this up and get to my real job and purely because of how confidently the opening moments have been presented to us this peaks the player's interest what career path has this version of peter followed is he working at the bugle something else it's a mystery to us for now the first stop is where else time square for a quick punch-up the game could have taken us anywhere for a quick tutorial but this is new york city we're [ __ ] spider-man starting the game without spidey in a famous new york landmark keeps new york feeling alive we see pedestrians race away from the chaos and here surrounded by huge screens of advertising fictional products we enter into a combat tutorial with some of fisk's guns and the use of the truck here to show off the importance of webbing enemies to surfaces during battles is a neat if not subtle way of highlighting how the majority of our combat encounters are going to play out finishing them off we see an explosion a block away and race over alongside some cop cars heightening the sense of danger and fluidity to how the city will respond to events during our playtime we see yuri undercover clearly the situation has gotten out of hand and spider-man offers his assistance one more time she finally gives him permission to go in there and take fisk down and again we see an organic transition from cut scene to gameplay as spidey grabs an enemy and smashes through the great front window of fisk tower into the entrance hall now note how the webhead's animation works here he grabs the henchman by the scruff of his neck and rather than splat him through the window potentially killing him the game is careful to position him behind spider-man while our hero stretches his legs out the rest of the game goes to painstaking lengths most of the time to paint spidey as a non-lethal superhero and it's here again seven minutes in that the game firmly establishes this before throwing us into honestly one of the best designed areas of the story there are plenty of levels here it's wide open so crowd control gets to be the main focus and fighting alongside the nypd reinforces the sense of a siege on a super villain's headquarters the cops constantly comment that they don't need us here that they've got the situation under control that will mess everything up despite the fact it's very very clear that they don't they really really don't facing off against a few waves of these goons introduces us to how the base missions will play out later we have tutorialized on how the focus gauge works how finishers are a key part of our strategy and to top it all off we even get a cheeky call from aunt may introducing her nice and early adorably asking us if we're still on for dinner later tonight and making us care about her early on so the stakes of the final act are front and center in our mind sneaking into the server room we even get a hint of how stealth will work later nabbing one of the guns and webbing him up inside the vent system and to keep the pace up we even need to wipe out all of the henchmen before the server empties itself of evidence and we're rewarded with our first look at wilson fisk presented on a massive screen contrasting spidey's small size with fisk's sprawling reach and massive power throughout the city our 10-minute sequence finishes with spidey using his brain rather than his brawn against fisk managing to hack into the crime lord server and downloading imperative evidence which will be used to put the big bald bastard away for good in the space of a simple 600 second section of the game we've learned so much about our player character and the world insomniac has created peter has been spider-man for at least eight years putting him at about 23. he's older but he's not necessarily wise and this is pinpointed again in these first 10 minutes when fisk highlights that he's still just a child even after all these years pete's got a lot of growing up to do and if you've already played the game you'll know that before all of this is over he will now i promise we won't be going this in depth with every scene of the game here but this is legitimately one of the strongest 10 minute openings of this generation and i wouldn't want to do the disservice by skirting over it i'm also going to make a point of discussing combat stealth and traversal separately in their own sections but for now let's look at kingpin i really appreciate how the game ties kingpin tonally to the main campaign through the east asian suits of armor littering his complex linking him directly to martin lee through some interesting foreshadowing the revelation that some of the cops we've been working with are under fisk's thumb bring some new context the beginning of the mission when they were yelling that spider-man's going to ruin everything as well writing your memoirs don't forget the hyphen between spider and man ah someone's been reading dan slot's twitter haven't they i adore how done with spidey [ __ ] fisk is in this scene as far as boss fights go he's fine as an introductory boss spider-man ps4 speaking generously fails to stick the landing on a lot of its boss fights but as far as fisk is being used here it feels appropriate he brings in henchmen to fight alongside him which is usually indicative of lazy boss design but fisk is more of an introduction to the typical meaty grunts we have to face off against in standard combat from this point onwards using his charge attack to barrel through his own men never gets old but this battle also highlights the one-size-fits-all approach to spidey's rogues gallery with the exception of like taskmaster every single boss in the base game follows the same formula we can't punch them so we need to throw objects at them or use our gadgets to web them up first we then zip in for a couple of smacks or maybe a finisher and then dart away again rinse and repeat some bosses are more fluid with this approach than others but it's the game's presentation which truly makes its bosses not the mechanics themselves in this case fighting fisk also provides our first bombastic qte experience so let's just address those now there are a fair few moments where the game will funnel you into a tunnel of button-mashing goodness now look i understand that there are a few sections where things are happening which would be almost impossible to replicate through pure gameplay and i'm in the camp where i don't mind quick time events and my high energy action cutscenes but these need work and with miles morales just around the corner i hope they feel more organic it's almost impossible to fail these and a simple way to fix them would be to strip a lot of the button mashing out and use the analog sticks instead to make your efforts a little more complex just look at the work amazing lucas did where he upgraded the qtes from the crane scene to see how cool this would look instead anyway we defeat king bin by basically smashing him through every single floor of a skyscraper and web him up so he lands nice and safe non-lethal baby our prologue ends with some fateful words from fisk as well idiot i'm the one who kept order in their city one month in one month you wish you had me back and oh boy if only we knew how true that would be spider-man is a hero who constantly feels alone and needs to be reminded that this couldn't be further from the truth so let's walk through the first quarter of the game and look at how pete and his pals are portrayed to us after taking down fisk we get to discover where this game's version of peter is currently working it's clear insomniac were really proud of this reveal to the point where they transparently tried to keep the mystery alive by labeling an incoming call from his boss otto octavius as simply work at the start of the game and then from every point on his alliterative name shows up with glorious clarity it's not the most intriguing way of keeping a card close to one's chest but we almost immediately learn who pete works for a few moments later so i'm not gonna rail in the game too much for this i'm sorry i'm late [Music] now look i might be the only person in the world who didn't think for one second that octavius was going to become the final boss in this game and i'll wear that badge proudly all of the marketing materials presented mr negative as the big bad helped along by the sinister six but i clearly missed a trick here the way they frame our first look at otto he looks like the monster he would later become dressed in his distinct green color with the wiring spiraling out of his back like his famous tentacles otto just like pete is a guy who is constantly beaten down by the world around him the grant directors norman osborne his physical body he's peter's boss yet peter is his only friend and he constantly reminds us of that when reviewers first harped on about how the game makes you feel like spider-man sections like this were part of what they meant we play as both pete and spidey throughout the game and whilst pete sections are slowed right down the world is so intriguing and there are plenty of easter eggs scattered throughout that these sections just strengthen the tone rather than take anything away to feel like spider-man is to feel all of the complications and difficulties which pete faces in and out of the suit in these slower sections as pete it's clear insomniac felt like they had to break up these story beats with gameplay so thus the science puzzles were born the god damn science puzzles there are way too many of these in the game and i know i'm not alone when i say i'd rather have nothing than these dull mini-games for the peter parker sections like i understand the idea pizza genius so we need to showcase that through gameplay but to go from this to this is jarring to say the least a visual change wouldn't solve the issue with the plotting design but the dull gray color palette makes these sections so visually unappealing that on my second playthrough i almost immediately selected the skip signs puzzles option insomniac if you have to put an option into your game to skip some of the gameplay maybe that gameplay shouldn't be in your game in the first place now the nature of the beast with a spider-man game is that it really probably should be open world we want to swing about to city have the ability to stop random crimes games like edge of time have their place in the webhead's anthology but if you have the option between an open world spider-man or a level by level spider-man we'd all take the former every single time so when we're swinging about and peter mentions gotta love doc's enthusiasm but sometimes it gets him into trouble better get there before he hurts himself there's a dilemma presented to the player as far as the story is concerned this sounds like we should make it our utmost priority but i'd rather flex my muscles and fight some goons instead or maybe clear out a fisk base and spider-man ps4 lets me do that otto might very well tell me that he needs me asap but i could spend two three four hours fighting henchmen and engaging in side missions peter needs to constantly make the hard choices choose between going to auto or saving a mugging but by giving the player that option with zero consequences it's not a hard choice at all we can go and see otto whenever the hell we want if the game really wanted to make us feel like spider-man it would fade to black after our call with otto and just zap us over to the next story beat but that would frustratingly wrench some freedom from the player and nobody wants that it's a catch-22 and i'm glad insomniac sacrificed immersion for freedom in this case speaking of things we're going to do instead of fulfilling our responsibilities let's talk about some of the collectibles spider-man ps4 falls into the ubisoft camp of having towers to unlock to reveal parts of the map which in turn reveals side content and collectibles we have backpacks landmarks black cats stakeouts random crimes task master challenges research stations site missions secret landmarks and a whole variety of bases for combat challenges all of the site content is threaded together with silly narrative details that ultimately makes them less boring than they actually would be i'm not four years old anymore i'm not incentivized just because gems are pretty colors and they make fun noises so for example as we unlock more and more of the towers across the map we get snippets of dialogue between yuri and spider cop and you know what this is silly and i don't mind this stuff at all i don't understand why my contemporaries on youtube have it in for these collectathons as far as optional site content is concerned i know i'd rather be finding spider-man's backpacks across the city than generic riddler trophies and whilst finding the backpacks themselves aren't particularly challenging they're not harmful to the experience you have with the game they're simple and charming for every backpack we find we get a token as part of our upgrade currency which i will get to and also a little story related to the spider-man comics each snippet of information informs the history of this version of spider-man what's he been up to in the eight years he's been in the suit well he battled kingpin on the night of his prom he had a close call with electro when he nearly blinded him and so on it adds to the atmosphere of the game and a lot of these inform much of our understanding of the dynamic between peter and mary jane we find dumpling recipes and the menu from their first date which brings their past rushing forward to the present long before we meet her but for now pete's next stop after meeting otto is the feast center currently being managed by aunt may and owned by the mysterious martin lee may is as hard working as ever and seeing feast in a spider-man adaption is really quite lovely not only does feast give may something to do it becomes the central location for a lot of the game's story may works there martin lee owns it miles works there to grieve peter ends up living there and it's where miles gets his powers and when everything goes to hell it evolves into a pandemic center and the location of may's final lesson to peter copying feast's origins from the comics is a natural way to introduce martin lee to the story his proximity to aunt may makes him a more threatening villain than if he was just some guy looking to take down osborne and portrays him as a good charitable decent man who truly believes in the good work the organization does locked in this internal struggle between his true self and his alter ego makes him a natural reflection for peter we'll talk about this in more depth later but i want you to take note of it for now now as far as mj is concerned all we know by this point of the story is that pete and her have taken an extended break from each other but we don't quite know why luckily for us moments after mae mentions her mj decides to give pete a call looks like she's in hot water well okay then time to go and save look around and familiarize the hell is this so yes the mj missions have been widely criticized and i'm going to be joining that crowd there are simply too many mary jane watson missions in the game i'd argue that a third of these missions are pretty decent but the rest and this one included they suck this version of mary jane works for the daily bugle as an investigative reporter and it's a fresh angle to take making her immediately relevant to spider-man's story if not making her essentially lois lane it's fantastic that mj becomes a source of information for our missions and incorporating her into the likes of the demon bases keeps her relevant and gives her agency in the story and this comes into conflict with peter who naturally just wants to protect her from the perils he faces every day this is great i don't have a problem with any of this the issue is in the mission designs so mj has gone undercover at the fisk estate sale she explores displays of the east asian memorabilia that we noticed back in the opening mission but it ultimately goes to hell when a new gang the demons stormed the place this mission prior to the demons arriving is fine sneaking around rose roseman great name acts as a tutorial for mj stealth missions but honestly there's not much to tutorialize mj has next to no stealth mechanics until the last 10 of the game i'm getting ahead of myself we'll talk about mg stuff once we get to miles morales the two go hand in hand but for now let me make the bold claim that one of spider-man ps4's failings is in how it handles stealth pete shows up kick some demon ass and ultimately he and mj have a very cute scene at their local diner the relationship between the two is one of the most finely crafted parts of spider-man ps4 story there are numerous points which are so relatable to your average relationship and picking up their romance post breakup rather than focusing on the how they got together portion we often see in spider-man stories and in some cases have to suffer through keeps a dynamic we've seen 1 000 times much more interesting and hot damn laura bailey works her ass off in this game to make mj likeable so much so that despite the poor stealth missions she might very well embody my favorite mary jane watson on screen and i haven't been so invested in a will they won't they in a long time and mate if you didn't or the stan lee cameo you're barely human love seeing you two together again you always were my favorites oh that hurts my heart but there's no time to think too long about it spider-man happily bathes in the classic superhero trope of emotional moment is interrupted by bad guy shocker's tearing up the town so we head on after him now the reason spider-man gets away with interrupting these scenes and another superhero game that i promise i wouldn't talk about doesn't is twofold see the game regularly takes a breather so we can check in on our characters and they can discuss the story's events and how it affects them and the second is the radio conversations these things are constant missions are regularly broken up by characters arguing over the radio informing us of what they've been up to flirting joking and yes occasionally spouting some exposition to keep us in the loop the game never relents from its character writing even when spidey's launching himself across the city hot on shockers trail chase scenes like these are a staple of many an open world spider-man game right back to spider-man on ps1 i remember the thrill of chasing venom across the rooftops and they're such a fun engaging part of the character's action scenes if done right that i'm heartbroken we only get this once or twice in the base game and to add insult to injury this is very on rails it doesn't matter how upgraded your spider-man is how many of the web swinging upgrades you've unlocked you will always catch herman schultz when the game wants you to rather than organically anyway webbing shocker up beat takes the mask he and mj uncovered at the fisk exhibit to martin lee who is immediately rattled and unnerved by the fact pete has it by the time the game released we'd all seen the scenes with mr negative so it's pretty obvious that martin lee will soon turn out to be our big bad watching pete hand over the mask to someone who will soon become one of his villains is slightly frustrating but spider-man's always been a scientific genius rather than an emotional one so seeing the darkness in lee's heart is hardly a given for him what immediately follows afterwards is a call from otto and we're faced with easily one of my favorite scenes in the game octavius has had a radical breakthrough and the robotic prosthetic he and pete have been working on is finally ready for their veteran patient otto octavius has been determined to make good for his past mistakes by helping others the arm is working everything looks like it's going to be okay and then suddenly boom norman osborne arrives this is a fantastic introduction to osborne he's smarmy charming feigning that he's trying to help octavius but is ultimately abusing his powers as mayor to defund him and peter he's smooth not threatening at all it's an effortless show of power clad in the colors of his alter ego the green goblin this version of norman doesn't need his costume to be dangerous octavius's defeat here is heartbreaking up until this point he's been a beacon of optimism that pete has looked up to and all it took was a two-minute scene with osborne to utterly deflate him worst of all the funding's gone pete might have just lost his job don't forget that the game opened with a major win for spider-man wilson fisk is finally behind bars spidey's kicking ass but peter parker is on the ropes the towing and throwing of the two halves of our hero are beginning to cause some cracks luckily ish shocker's broken out of jail and is on the run again so the webhead's got an outlet for some of that aggression this will have been pent up now everyone's favorite d-lister has appeared in almost every single spider-man game so i would have been shocked uh if we didn't get a proper one-on-one with this angry boy i also actually really really enjoy this boss fight even if it is a silly one the wide open space encourages us to swing around rather than remain on the ground shocker blasts away at us and we have to keep dodging him whilst throwing debris his weed to stun him does that sound like another boss we fought a few hours earlier but shocker shakes things up a bit by having a second stage in a third stage whoa herman don't put yourself out for our sake and no quick time events stop it insomniac you're spoiling us reeling from our shocker boss fight spidey gets a call telling us that he needs to go and help another member of the nypd jefferson davis you'll notice a bit of a trend as we further the story this peter works with numerous members of new york's finest over the course of the game yuri jefferson a small handful of other cops and detectives even in the dlc he works with a grey mustachio detective from the past sort of there's nothing really worth analyzing here i just think it's interesting spidey's been going strong for eight years now it makes sense that the police would start to embrace his existence rather than fight against it it turns out that he got a tip that the demons were going to ambush a fisk warehouse it's smart for insomniac to put us alongside jefferson for a battle against the demons investigating the warehouse and uncovering some of fisk's secrets with him is fun ultimately the reason why we're even here is because insomniac wanted to endear us to jefferson and they succeed we don't learn anything imperative to the plot in this mission some throw away details about fisk's crime operation and that the demons are invested in it see when people say that spider-man ps4's main story has a lot of filler this is what they mean a lot of the in-betweeny missions you know the ones that make you go oh god yeah i forgot that happens as we walk through the game are there purely for character development very little else spider-man ps4 throws a lot of balls into the air in its opening hours a victim of how fleshed out its world feels and bless them they try their damnedest to keep juggling them at the risk of harming the pacing battling the demons with jefferson brings a new dimension to combat as well having an npc who can actually do damage against enemies is like a breath of fresh air jefferson can fire on and stun enemies for us to finish and it makes us care about him a lot despite just being a character from one mission why couldn't we get more stuff like this a mission with yuri later perhaps the closest is working with black cat in the dlc and silver sable and we'll talk about them when we get to them towards the end of the mission jefferson saves us in a cutscene reinforcing him one final time as everybody's absolute fave sure hope nothing bad happens to him later [Music] there's quite a bit which happens between jefferson davis saving us and the end of act one our favorite cop is going to be awarded a medal of honor for his heroism black cat returns and we unlock her stakeout missions as side content pete gets evicted and has to track down his gear in one of the best missions in the game i'm not kidding but we'll talk about that in depth in the next section for now just know that pete is officially homeless and will be for the rest of the game so he has to hunker down at feast for the rest of our playtime camping out on aunt may's couch despite a successful stakeout with jefferson davis as spider-man peter has now lost something yet again for every one of spider-man's wins pete loses something this also means that he's living in martin lee's territory right under the thumb of our villain speaking of which it's act one finale time meaning it's time to talk about spider-man's combat jefferson davis is busy preparing for his award ceremony but he asks the web head to do him a favor and investigate a nearby fist construction site as he got a tip off the demons are converging there we swing on over fight some goons and relive the infamous 2017 e3 demo this time with less puddles this battle is indicative of combat in the rest of the game first things first meet the triangle button your new god worship it praise it it will dictate the flow and tide of each of spider-man's fight so the two of you better get acquainted and fast as a hero spidey is both a crowd control combatant as well as a reactive fighter meaning you need to be aware particularly in this iteration where enemies are and what they're doing at all times encounters in spider-man ps4 throw waves of enemies at you to the point where later battles with the tougher stable enemies can start to feel overwhelming brian intahar the game's creative director stated that as far as game feel was concerned insomniac wanted players to feel improvisational during combat pulling from a vast array of options as spider-man you have a standard melee attack web attack environmental attacks and of course the massive allotment of gadgets but as we've discussed on this channel previously not all options are created equal and the key to good combat design especially in a beat-em-up like this one is how the player is forced into using these options despite having a variety of factions the enemy types are all at a core level very similar a brute who works for kingpin for example isn't that mechanically different from a brute that works for the demons all in all the main campaign has nine enemy types standard grunts gunmen rocket launchers shield enemies stumbaton enemies brutes jetpack enemies whip enemies and tombstones pals who can make themselves momentarily invulnerable this may sound like a small number and it is variety is the spice of life after all but each enemy requires a specific strategy to take them down for example you can't just button mash a shield enemy or a stumbaton enemy these henchmen require you to use environmental objects or pull a weapon out of their grasp it's inevitable that comparisons will be made to batman arkham's combat but honestly every time i hear spider-man and batman discuss side by side my insides dry up and crust like an overcooked pizza so let's do that batman's combat has a very particular rhythm to it he flies across each arena like a heat-seeking missile with no input from the player once an enemy is taken down it looks great it feels badass but challenging combat it is not with spider-man we have to keep being aware of enemy positions and using that triangle button the web head manually zips to whichever enemy the player is targeting this won't happen without us thinking about it in the arkham games the sound design and animation embodies a rigidness to the combat like it's written in a 4-4 time signature and that's great i love the arkham games the combat is very satisfying as a result of this rhythm square triangle square square triangle but spider-man doesn't have the same rhythm not even close in my cuphead video i discussed how that gameplay embodies jazz to reinforce motifs in the soundtrack if cuphead's combat is influenced by jazz spider-man's is influenced by swing oh my god that's another pun it's too late now i'm not changing it there is an energetic sense of randomness and improvisation to spider-man's combat because of how each enemy requires a specific strategy to take them down at first triangle x trigger buttons triangle square square square square because once the player unlocks the ability to wrench weapons and shields away from an enemy a lot of our previous strategies vanish now instead we just hold down the triangle button rip a gun shield stumbaton or rocket launcher away from an enemy and basically demote this enemy from being a little tricky and different to just being a standard grunt it's part of our initial decision making that we can either use our speed agility and gadgets against an enemy or rip a weapon out of their grips and make them piecemeal for our spider strength as far as the counter system is concerned spider-man's spidey sense will reliably let us know if an attack is incoming but spidey can't counter like batman can so again any comparisons claiming that insomniac just ripped off the arkham combat are at best shallow analysis not only this but the dodge windows whilst generous have an intrinsic layer of skill to them if we want to make the most of a dodge the perfect dodge mechanic means that if we time our dodge just right we can momentarily stun an enemy with a projectile whilst we dodge out of the way hell in the late game you can even open up an armed enemy to an instant takedown if you perfect dodge meaning the player is incentivized into timing their dodges just right it's not a necessary option but it's one which will make the player's life much easier now apparently one of the strengths insomniac used when they pitched sony for the spider-man ip was their history with gadgets you just need to look at ratchet and clank to see that yeah they certainly had a leg on to stand here and with peter parker being the big old nerd that he is of course gadgets could factor into his combat style but some of these gadgets are ultimately useless in the long run see with a battle you have one very reliable takedown method webbing enemies to surfaces it's the reason why we had to battle some grunts alongside a large lorry in the opening 10 minutes this is one of the best ways for spider-man to take down his foes trip mines impact webs and web bombs are your three best friends and if you need a breather sure the electro web is also pretty useful if i'm getting along just fine with these four gadgets why in the hell do i need the concussion blast or the suspension matrix best case scenario i might just toss this down throw some enemies into the air and then web them up while they're suspended but but insomniac i can do that already without the suspension matrix look problem solved why would i add an unnecessary step in my web takedown strategy speaking of webs one really nice touch is how the game goes to painstaking lengths as we mentioned earlier to make spider-man's animations non-lethal kicking an enemy off of a rooftop leads to an automatic flip of spidey's wrist so the enemy is webbed to the side of a building rather than lying dead on the ground taskmaster even gives an in-universe excuse for spidey's super strength not breaking necks when we punch an enemy in the face although i'm not sure swinging an exploding motorcycle into a bad guy's face is necessarily non-lethal wait how is he getting up from that spider-man's combat has plenty of strategy and does require the player 2 using insomniac's words here improvise but there's a lot which could be improved upon in the next game it's not a bad combat design by any stretch of the imagination in fact it's pretty riveting and satisfying in my book but yeah more inventiveness could go a long way here despite being a crowd control hero i have a real problem with spider-man's lack of aoe attacks some major upgrades are needed because currently swinging something around to knock enemies down just isn't enough and often our attacks will be focused on one enemy at a time despite clearly kicking through other enemies anyway we've discussed the combat at length and in that time spidey has chased and ridden a helicopter across the city it's no wonder this was the section insomniac continued to use to demo the game as it's fast-paced action-packed and shows an agile site to spider-man's adventure as far as our hero is concerned here the threat of the demons has been neutralized capitalizing on his cockiness from the earlier scene with mg when he waved this gang away is barely a threat the next mission is about to change all of that at osborne's campaign rally jefferson davis steps up to receive his award and in slow motion we witness what can only be described as a terrorist attack ah this is one of the strongest parts of the game the framing of rio over miles and mj over peter hints at the parallel path our two spider-men will soon find themselves on jefferson davis is our first counted first death in the game up until now our story has been very pg with webs and goons and quips but no corpses act one of the game ends with a lot of death spider-man is out of the fight so we're placed in the shoes of miles numbly stumbling through the chaos in search of his father the world literally crashing down around him as his familial life does the same deep depowering us and forcing us to play as miles keeps the seriousness of this scene as well there's no excitement here no flips no kicks none of spider-man's jokes it's perfectly framed to retain this deathly macabre tone and imagery has seen norman osborne's big dumb grinning face and pompous capitalized name hints that he's the source of all of this if he hadn't experimented on martin lee as a child an attack like this never would have happened in the first place as miles comes to find his father the section ends with martin lee revealing himself as the mastermind of the attack spider-man's cockiness got the better of him the demons are a real threat and the fight isn't over all of this ends with peter miles mj rio and ant-may standing by a grave site mourning the loss of a character who the game effectively built up as sympathetic and likable the visible fear on jefferson's face when he has to step up to make a speech is adorable he helped us out in a fight against the demons he gave us our electric webs for god's sake the weight of this loss is perfectly handled making miles a core part of this world tying his story directly to peter's eases us into the idea that one day we might be playing as him hell the reaction when spider-man miles morales dropped a trailer for us was one of the highlights of sony's playstation 5 reveal people are excited about miles and it's because of how he and his family are introduced here i know what you're going through uh that's what you were gonna say right or it all gets easier with time don't worry it's it's part of god's plan i'm sorry i was just trying to help i know act 2 opens with the news that norman osborne has hired sable international a fascistic militia group to disperse some protesters from a nearby church so he can have a photo opportunity what's that no you're thinking of donald trump oh whoops sorry i got my fascists mix up uh sable's here to investigate and clamp down on demon activity across the city in keeping with the game's greatest strength the presentation of his world it's really fun how he can learn he's bringing in silver sable if you listen to jay jonah jameson's radio show before she even shows up actually while spidey investigates the demons and learns that they're targeting norman osborn directly let's talk about the world building a wise youtuber once said that if gameplay is king then story is queen and if both of those are true then atmosphere is a jack spider-man ps4's atmosphere is above and beyond what everyone initially expected and whether you realize it or not it's certainly one of the reasons why the game received such great reviews insomniac really didn't hold back with trying to make new york city feel alive here this isn't just a sandbox with some skyscrapers for us to fight guns in there are some great details which give manhattan a sense of depth and movement that we haven't seen in a spider-man game before npcs play basketball give spider-man high fives comment on a new suit as we'd swing through the streets and considering the player isn't exactly going to spend hours jogging around the city it certainly feels like insomniac wants you to when the game enters into its third and final act the city evolves as well feast turns into a pandemic center shanty towns appear across parks and greenery the sidewalks end up being littered with trash and bin bags where once we loved swinging through the goldenly lit city that never sleeps by the end of the game it can feel like a dystopian nightmare ready to eat you up the side missions and even some of the story missions fill the city with people rather than blank npcs we even get access to a fictional twitter to track what individuals think about the wall crawlers antics as the story progresses even the fast travel loading screens bring dimension and character to new york people sleep on spidey shoulder in the subway pizza places and restaurants are costly referenced and recommended quest givers have character and personality i'm immediately reminded of being assisted by a dorky bird watcher who's spotted some hooligans up to no good in central park or the imposter spider-man mission where some goofball in a suit just like ours is preventing muggings and we have to help him face off a gang of thugs that he's not ready for and yes jay jonah jameson's radio show is half of the reason i enjoyed swinging about so much including the dlc there is an hour and a half's worth of just the facts with j jonah jameson and each one is funny and one of the best versions of this character we have ever seen new yorkers call in to agree with him or tell him he's a jackass i mean one of my favorites by far is when well i'll just play the clip for you you might have heard about the robbery at roseman's auction house what you probably didn't hear but my sources confirm is that the perpetrators were wearing masks horrible demonic faces yet another example of the explosion in mass criminals since spider-man came on the scene let's hear your thoughts here on with jay jonah jameson yeah i see your point but spider-man stopped those guys today saying he's like them because he wears a mask it's fair it's like prejudice wrong here's a little lesson in the english language my friend prejudice means to pre-judge someone before you know anything about them i know all i need to about spider-man he runs around causing chaos wearing a mask who doesn't have to answer for his shenanigans and a flashy costume so he gets attention to feed his gigantic insatiable ego if i'm a mentally unstable person and i see him getting all this coverage what am i going to do it's called copycat behavior people and it's ruining new york appreciate that insomniac gives you the option of unsubscribing from jonah but like who would evolving jonah to an alex jones-esque conspiracy talk show host feels like a natural next step for the character though comparing jonah to alex jones is doing the guy a disservice at least jjj has some good qualities i openly awed when i heard him unironically state that new yorkers in the final act of the game need to stick together look out for one another with zero punchline during the devil's breath pandemic i haven't seen alex jones say anything like that to rewind our story back in our let's look at in my opinion one of the most underrated missions in the game home sweet home one of the greatest things about the sam raimi spider-man movies is how involved in the city peter was in those films the new yorker montages are one of the best parts of the trilogy from grabbing a drink at a bar or guest delivering pizzas it felt like he had a finger on the pulse of manhattan in home sweet home the game puts this front and center pete gets evicted from his apartment and has to go on a journey across the city to find his stuff he has to work directly with eddie in sanitation and keeps calling him up to pester him while he basically roots through new york's garbage the two of them use reference points like pizza joints that have been replaced by different pizza joints with the same name using new york landmarks to guide spidey through the city basically a bin man helps spider-man out rather than the other way around it's a real breath of fresh air as far as pacing and variety is concerned so all of this is at the front of our minds when silver sable appears and locks horns with us disabled checkpoints that suddenly erupt around the city are a damn eyesore meaning we want nothing more than to tear them down and rid new york of sable international in an effort to help him grieve pete gets miles a job working at feast a project to focus on will do him some good like it did pete when uncle ben died and once mae agrees to take miles on absolute gem that she is we investigate lee's villain room what we learn here is that lee has an obsession with norman osborne and that he's after something called the devil's breath we also learn that martin lee has no interest in harming aunt may presenting the dichotomy of our villain to us pretty plainly mr negative has two sides to him just like peter does and he's wrapped up in an internal struggle just like peter is but it doesn't mean he'll suffer fools gladly peter was there he was very lucky and an osborne rally i didn't know you were a fan well what matters is you are both safe amen but the bombers are still out there who knows what they've planned next i don't think you or may have anything to worry about as long as you stay away from places you're not supposed to be this is about the time when harry osborne's research stations are unlocked for us to explore as part of some of the site content these are fine to be honest the actual challenges themselves are interesting because they require us to use our web swinging to solve each problem but they certainly feel like the slowest of the side content in order to activate each one we have to walk inside the research station watch the same footage of a panning shot to some skyscrapers and listen to what could ultimately be some copy-pasted dialogue from harry about how his mom's dead and his research lab was important to her as all the others and allscorp's going to shut it down so anyway the excuses for these existing are flimsy at best i understand that insomniac wanted to keep harry relevant but honestly i could take them or leave them even if the final research lab mission is absolutely [ __ ] fantastic see once you reach the final research lab mission you have to swing a full loop of the city connecting satellites while using your speed mobility and web swinging abilities to dodge imminent strikes of lightning through a thunderstorm there's a real challenge here often you have to change directions swiftly spidey's spider sense goes off because the lightning strikes quickly and the mission ends with us reaching the very top of oscorp tower trying to make the lightning strike the antenna using the side content to guide us to the location where we'll eventually fight dr octopus in a few hours makes the final clash quite invigorating it also ends with spidey commenting that harry hasn't been answering calls texts or anything while he's away in quote-unquote europe but he doesn't seem to give a webbed shite why doesn't this bother him speaking of the research stations and traversal challenges let's talk about the web swinging the research stations aren't the only site content focused on slinging ourselves across the cityscape we also have to catch pigeons i have very little to say about these they're absolutely harmless i'm glad they're there because i love a good chase mission but they fall into the same camp as every other chase mission it all feels very on rails like you can't catch the pigeon until the game is ready for you to a decent web swinging mechanic is key to a good spider-man game it's the reason spider-man 2 is still so lauded all of these years later despite those systems seem archaic in hindsight there is a lot that this system gets very very right it's accessible for a start insomniac were determined to keep spider-man moving across the city so with our chubby fingers firmly jammed in the r2 button the plan is that spider-man will travel over rooftops no matter what rather than slamming into a wall he'll just run right up it if we skim along the side of a skyscraper he'll sprint along the side before leaping off into another whip with a simple tap of the x button you'll leap into the next swing this will carry us through the majority of the game some visually impressive yet easy to execute options pop up as this game progresses for example with the l2 and r2 button we can cinematically dash to services through water tanks and cranes but realistically you have to go out of your way to find these more complex options would be very welcome pressing x midair will zip us a little bit further and if we time our release during swings we can trade height for momentum and vice versa like i said it's accessible the swinging feels satisfying but the primary reason that it feels that way is because of your dual shock 4 not because of the mechanics themselves yeah you heard me right unfortunately i can't display that to you in this video but the next time you pick up the game pay real attention to your undervalued vibration system in your controller the little buzzes triggered by your swinging and release do give a cohesive sense of having the web shooters popping out some of the white stuff if all of a sudden somebody turned off the vibration function in your controller you would lose some of that satisfaction look i know i love swinging about in this game doing sweet fa as much as the next guy and swinging is fun but this is a 30 hour game and by hour 15 you start noticing some kinks in the traversal system take the parkour for example there are distinct moments where spidey needs to leap over and through some debris and these boil down to the r2 button look at the footage on screen look at the sweet leaps and spins that the web head is doing i'm not doing that spider-man is i'm just holding down the trigger button leaving a distinct disconnect to pete's movement and the action the player is taking same goes for wall crawling it's nigh impossible for you to stand at a ledge and start climbing up a wall in fact scaling walls has to be the most confounding system in the game the tutorial tries to teach you to use the trigger buttons to flip over to a wall by simply aiming and shooting yourself at it but you can only do this when the game allows you to and the game doesn't always let you presumably because spider-man's so far away using the same aiming system as shooting gadgets the distance on these needs to be increased at the risk of sounding hyperbolic it's [ __ ] inexcusable for the wall zip to use the same aim distance as the web shooters we get xp for a specific traversal as well for example using the point launch system 500 times awards 50 xp 50 xp you heard that right let me say one more time 50 xp for context completing a simple campaign objective like speaking to doc ock awards at least a thousand xp tricks award like 2xp per trick and we need to unlock this in the skill tree rather than it being achievable from the beginning the rewards here for creatively exploring traversal options are so minimal that there's not much of an incentive to play with these systems as far as recommendations go giving the traversal system its own currency like backpack tokens or crime tokens in future games would increase our determination as a player to engage with the traversal rather than passively use r2 and x just to swing about the city speaking of dockhawk he's got something for us to see so let's swing by the lab to check in on him you ready [Music] everything okay damn it so aim has started to fund octavius's work so pete's got a job again hooray it is intriguing that aim was introduced into insomniac spider-verse considering the role they play in marvel's avengers and come to think of it pete does comment that the avengers are currently on the west coast in 2018 so are are the two games connected actually wait one sec let me check no oh thank god i think we can all agree that the last thing any of us want is for crystal dynamics to get their hands on insomniac spider-man phew it's revealed osborne and octavius went to college and have formed ozcorp together giving otto some solid motivation for his film turn later having norman osborne be the catalyst for both mr negative and dr octopus's nefarious deeds has been widely criticized but honestly i really really like this when you look at spider-man ps4 as a whole package it's clear that octavius was always insomniac's goal mr negative was a red herring for us to focus on and we'll get to why that is so clever later but for now connecting martin lee auto octavius and norman osborne makes the story feel like a cohesive whole rather than the final third of the game being tacked on to a mr negative story i'm just planting that seed and letting it sit for now we've got a date and some side missions to tackle [Music] pacing wise the next mission falls into a widespread issue with spider-man ps4 it squeezes the player into playing side content as part of the main campaign our first meeting with taskmaster is a main mission same with the research stations the black cat stakeouts and so on pete's adorable date night with mj is lovingly foreshadowed in the backpack collectibles we find dumpling recipes and so on again strengthening our understanding of where the relationship was and where it now is here our golden boy is cooking dinner for mj while she fills him in on what she's been up to turns out she's been sneaking around tombstone's headquarters what a rascal again i'm not ready to talk about the mjn miles missions yet don't worry we'll get there i promise but as i mentioned this whole mission is indicative of spider-man's pacing problem we've just witnessed a terrorist attack mr negative is out there we don't care about what mj's been up to with her day i understand that insomniac are trying to naturally introduce their most substantial side mission into the main narrative by bringing it up as a story during date night but this is unnecessary we don't need mj to be involved in the tombstone subplot we can tackle him in our own time his story can arguably even wait until the end game as a little bonus for the player to engage with and to elaborate to my point earlier this is a catch-22 with an open world spider-man game by its very nature there should be side missions and collectibles for us to web up as we battle through the main story it's a necessary evil that the pacing of the story will be impacted by the open world structure in place this is the best video game spider-man story we've ever gotten hell it's one of the best spider-man adaptations we've ever gotten despite the pacing issues but i'd be amiss if i didn't comment on it here and this mj mission captures a lot of those issues flash to the present and mj suggests her and peter team up but the chat is interrupted by a residential break-in it seems some rich guy charles standish is being raided by the demons you don't think this has anything to do with lee do you sorry to cook and run did you just leave your clothes on the kitchen floor standish has been taken hostage in his apartment the demons are wanting financial records of oscorp scientists it seems they're trying to track down one particular nerd dr isaac delaney there's some fun level variety here i particularly enjoy the section where we need to run up elevator shafts dodging firebombs teaching us how to master a section like this before it's repeated in the raft as we chase electro after kicking some ass and taking some names we save standish and swing off to find isaac delaney who luckily for the level designers works at the nearby university oh and it's halloween oh look this mission is just an excuse to have a set piece full of easter eggs but a superhero game without a costume party is not a superhero game worth playing we have to take down professors dressed as three of our old enemies mysterio lizard and vulture personal take but i especially love the mysterio moment in the fun house it's a cute reference but hot damn if we don't see mysterio in either miles morales or spider-man 2 i'm gonna snap a disc the seed has now been planted that spidey has battled both mysterio and the lizard in his past so they could easily re-emerge in spider-man 2. the game introduces an excellent hallucinatory sequence later with scorpion and it would be all too easy to replicate a sequence like this with mysterio in a future story making it into the university spider-man sees mr negative for the first time and how his powers can corrupt people he brainwashes isaac delaney into telling him the location of a scientist called dr michael and this was the moment i realized that whilst the set pieces of the university or a penthouse face were certainly unique and interesting much of our play time for the past two hours have just been some wild goose chase as spider-man runs to rescue three scientists it feels like padding but again because the game is juggling so many balls it doesn't need padding the story is almost over packed like a greg's steak bake and some of the gravy is beginning to fall out once delaney has revealed the location of dr michaels lee uses his abilities to force the scientist into shooting himself if the terrorist attack at the end of act one hadn't set lee up enough as a distinct threat witnessing the grotesque way he just murders someone in cold blood certainly solidifies this before we can truly stop plea he infects the partying students with his corruption and this highlights a real missed opportunity with the combat because spidey openly quips that he needs to take down the corrupted students safely without really hurting them but as far as gameplay is concerned all this does is make the students easier to fight as an enemy type they reappear a few times over the course of the game but we don't need to do anything special to take them down for example by just using our gadgets or webs to neutralize them as efficiently and painlessly as possible instead as spider-man we just punch them the game waves this away with taskmaster telling us that pete pulls his punches speaking of which let's talk about the old skull face in his side missions now seeing as it's after the university mission that he appears to taunt us the taskmaster challenges are excellent an example of side content done right there are four varieties bombs drones combat and stealth and using these smaller targets to influence our reward was a smart play by insomniac for both these the active crimes and the base missions i didn't think i'd ever say this but including an insta fail in the taskmaster stealth challenges was a welcome change to the lackluster inclusion of stealth in standard missions the drone challenges let me scratch that spidey chase mission itch as well however sometimes it was a little bit vague on how your allocated points what does webbing mean in the bomb challenges how do i improve my score there ultimately rewarding us with a boss fight for completing all of the challenges increases our incentive to complete them all as well and teasing us with a quick one-on-one before the challenges unlock plants deceived that perhaps we'll get to tackle this cocky git if we beat his tasks the immersive way that we're interrupted while just swinging around by taskmaster grabbing us and pulling us over to a rooftop made me wish insomniac had taken a leaf out of arkham knight's book with how random events would appear i think we all remember that man bat moment whilst climbing over a ledge and a couple more of these would have strengthened the sense of busyness about the city and the side missions in direct contrast to task master we have the black cat stakeout missions these are not engaging falling into the half of missions which like the research stations slow you right down spider-man is a momentum hero so swinging to a rooftop listening to felicia flirt with us via voicemail for 10 seconds and then looking through a camera is dull to say the least to top it all off the reward for this is a new suit which is a little bland and doesn't have a suit power tied to it and some sequel bait we'll get back to this when we jump into the dlc and despite getting off to a rocky start with a forced mj mission the tombstone side content seems to be a cut above the rest considering it has fully voiced well well-shot cut scenes and a legitimate boss fight set in its own arena rather than taskmaster's random rooftop battle we also get a new enemy faction in the form of tombstone's gang the implementation of these thugs being able to take a drug to make themselves momentarily invulnerable doesn't exactly make them unique as far as enemy types go but it certainly gives us pause for thought as far as tombstone's battle is concerned it's a fun reward for following the side story and the way he's presented is this huge imposing indestructible shadow at the start of his tale hypes us up for a monstrous encounter but much like with kingpin or shocker before him tombstone falls into the camp of an enemy we can't punch until we've used a gadget or chucked an environmental object at him i know i keep harping on about this and for some of you you may not mind it but it's like boris johnson's tiny tiny eyes once you notice it you can't stop seeing that each boss fight falls into this trap and again on the other side of the spectrum we have the side mission everyone's favorite spider-man villain is here in full force and fun fact during the superior spider-man run the webhead literally breaks every bone in screwball's body fun racing across the city because she's apparently taking someone hostage and is live streaming our response and if you hate her characterization have i introduced you to literally every big twitch streamer or you have hours of time to watch me and not five dollars i don't know what are you doing with your life where you have hours of time to watch twitch and not five dollars to provide for the content that you're watching the greatest letdown of what ultimately should be a fun mission is we don't get a boss fight with her in the main game like i'm not expecting much here insomniac but even throwing her in as part of some thugs to fight would have been better than nothing at all oh she's so irritating that all we want to do is punch her in the face and you hold that chance back just to sell it off in the dlc donkey already made the joke but when spider-man breaks into ozcorp tower we learned that osborne is in bed with fisk and yes through a powerpoint presentation it's revealed to us what devil's breath actually is it could be the cure to many diseases but in its current form it's a bio weapon dr michaels has it on his person at all times which explains why negative wants to find him we're still locked in this weird hunt for the right scientist and this is analogous of some real stumbles and falls with the game's exposition and it's probably one of the laziest things about insomniac storytelling i don't just mean the powerpoint either at three separate points in the game we find a villain room i'd hesitate to call them layers where pete just wanders about examines some objects and we essentially get our villain's motivation laid out to us through some gear lying on a table we don't have long to mull over this new discovery of the devil's breath though as we've got a quick call from doc ock coming up he's finally designed the famous appendages but his success is short-lived as he needs help to take the headset off otto the neural web isn't isolating your motor neurons it could be affecting other parts of your brain your your inhibitions your mood i just think we need some more for the first time i don't feel like a failure god and giving octavius a neurological disorder his body slowly breaking down over time insomniac have pulled from the best rendition of doctor octopus in the comics i've referenced him already but for those of you who don't know a few years ago dan slott diagnosed octavius with terminal cancer leading to his most nefarious crime yet yes even more nefarious than marrying aunt may he swapped bodies with peter parker meaning pete died cold and alone in the body of doc ock whilst octavius himself leaped into a fantastic run of comics known as the superior spider-man honestly i've written about 2000 words worth of notes on why this comics run is so fantastic and whilst it's not video game related i might just make a separate video talking about why octavius is my favorite spidey but for now the fact that insomniac's peter parker directly assists in creating one of his most interesting villains is a clever way to work ox evolution into this game bonding the player with peter through forcing us to complete a couple of science puzzles really makes us empathize with him later when our scientific assistance causes awk to be such a powerful threat whilst i despise truly i do despise them the science minigames as much as the next guy this moment of fixing ox headset almost makes them all worthwhile almost once we leave octavius the game throws us once more into one of its downtime sections these pop up about six or seven times over the course of the campaign pete makes a roundabout comment on how he's ignoring the city or needs to fight some muggers to clear his head so let's talk about the muggers let's talk about the active crimes here's a riddle for you you are spider-man swinging about the city the police radio in that there's a disturbance happening in say harlem you swing over and find some bad guys you beat them up is this crime a a mugging b a drug deal c assault or d police under fire if you guessed any of those answers you are wrong it's actually armed robbery stupid because when you rip away the differently skinned enemies there are actually only three different types of crimes in the game fighting a group of bad guys stopping a speeding car or bomb disposal and look i don't care what anybody says the active crimes in spider-man ps4 lack any of the creativity we've seen so far in this game no burning buildings no z-list villains to chase down and honestly sometimes what the game tells you is an active crime isn't really an active crime some burly men just chilling on a rooftop well apparently that's a crime but we have no evidence that they've done anything i know this is a nitpick but it was hard not to start questioning the validity of some of these muggings quote unquote we were stopping on top of a skyscraper often you can just sit and watch the crimes as well and nothing will happen without your intervention nothing will happen here the nypd are absolutely useless they can't even thin the numbers of criminals without spider-man's direct help and the game even tries to keep up this facade that it contains numerous different types of crimes by segmenting them in your menu as demon crimes or sable crimes but aside from the types of enemies you fight they often just boil down to land in the street fight wave of bad guys and swing away while a tiny bit of xp pops into your bar speaking of which it seems that even the most basic thugs scale with your levelling up i would argue that spider-man with his super strength should be able to take down a standard grunt in four or maximum five punches by the time you cap at level 50 but whether you're at the start of the game or swinging around in the end game spider-man never feels that much stronger despite the game telling us that we've had plus 10 added to our strength however the currency system is pretty great by completing site content bases crimes backpack photos or research stations we get a corresponding token combining these tokens allows you to create suits upgrade your gear or even design new mods which could help in combat some of these mods are extremely useful like increasing a chance to shock an enemy to get a hit in and some of them not so much like the long range scanner which is supposed to be used for stealth missions but you will never ever need this the same goes for suits spider-man ps4 isn't stingy with its unlockables and most of these aren't purely cosmetic either each new suit has a power attached to it for example the noir suit naturally gives you the ability to prevent enemies calling for backup or the iron spider suit bringing out four metallic arms which a changes the animation style of attacks and b doubles your strength and as fun as it is to play around with these different suit types often you'll find yourself reverting back to the first suit power you get the web blossom which quickly eliminates all of the enemies in your close vicinity and again because the triangle button is your new god any remaining bad guys can just be webbed to cars and walls as fantastic as this look it's a little bit overpowered and whilst almost all of the suits look fantastic seriously some of the attention to detail here is awe inspiring some suits are definitely better than others the fear itself suit looks weirdly bulbous and bloated and what is it about white suits in this game having this strange sheen to them that looks almost blinding ultimately the coolest costume in the game is the one doc awk designs for us at the start of the story the sleek white spider suit really makes it feel like insomniac staying true to peter parker's standard look while putting their own iconic recognizable spin on it and to give credit where it's due remember the hype that built up around the reveal of the sam raimi suit not only did insomniac release it for free but we also got night monkey and the new far from home costume as well just for the hell of it far from home came out a year after spider-man ps4 did insomniac didn't need to revisit the game and bring in a couple of new suits but they did anyway for free asking nothing new of the player that's pretty [ __ ] badass anyway once we've solved a couple of active crimes spidey comes across miles getting mugged and saves him sharing a bonding moment pete teaches miles one of the most important tactics he'll use as the latest spider-man if the other guy's bigger you gotta be quicker all right put them up seriously yeah come on first thing don't let the adrenaline get to you breathe slow breathe deep relax hips square to your opponent let them make the first move now use your feet when they go off balance look for an opening boom like that yeah yeah that's it okay only this time just let me have it right on the jock okay okay the way this organically transitions into a section of miles gameplay sneaking past disabled checkpoint to get to feast is pretty darn masterful and i'm looking forward to insomniac bringing more moments like this to miles's own story even if the gameplay section is dull as dishwater yes i know i know settle down we'll get to the mj miles missions next don't think about that focus for now on how peter parker's duality is presented to us in the structuring of this section as spider-man he teaches miles what makes an effective combatant how to throw a punch how to carry himself and then moments later as pete he teaches this scared nervous teenager how to be an effective citizen how to be helpful and useful at feast again some of the character work is just mwah and no wonder one of the lead writers was christos gage who worked on some of the strongest episodes of daredevil a show all about its characters above its spectacle and he was the guy who brought superior octopus to marvel's pages continuing on from dan slott's earlier work the guy's talented is what i'm saying and the scene where miles overhears a homeless man blindly bad-mouthing his dead father mustering the courage to say something to a grouchy potentially violent potentially racist old-timer just for peter to step in and save him from needing to is one of the best scenes in the game don't forget unbeknownst to miles he's now working through his grief by working for the man who killed his father miles's uncertainty his nerves are now watching his face twist in conflict and pain before pete steps in solidifies the two as a real pairing setting them up as mentor and student in life as well as heroing speaking of heroin pete gets a call from yuri to inform him that sable are escorting the mysterious doctor michaels to a safe house we fall from a distance but the demons have another idea a massive truck barrels through wiping out the sable convoy and allowing mr negative to kidnap both dr michaels and the devil's breath not good this is another fantastic spectacle mission battling demons on top of the moving truck webbing them up onto passing buildings is a real high bringing us back up to the fast-paced tense action after a few slower missions of just getting our bearings again but before we can take the devil's breath back lee corrupts spidey lulling us into a psychological battle inside the webhead's mind here we follow lee through peter parker's dark grizzled memory of the osborne rally attack showing us that this moment this failure of spider-man's is still playing at the edges of his mind mr negative is a bastard of a villain he's been ruthless up until this point straight up murdered people he's not the cartoonish rampaging nut jobs that spider-man's fought before he's more deadly and the game uses this mission to show us how that's affected pete's sense of heroism lee mocks pete for failing to save everyone that day and spider-man states plainly for us which leaf on that tree of with great power comes great responsibility insomniac's story cares about i can't save everyone at numerous points throughout this story pete needs to remind himself of that he can't save everyone he can't be too hard on himself for his failings he's doing what he can to help people but when you come up against a foreboding threat like martin lee sometimes failure is just part of the deal because the terrorist attack was the first of four major failures peter experiences in this story as for gameplay we have a mini boss fight with lee he summons spectral shadows that we fight more than punching negative himself and ultimately our bad guy defeats spider-man and escapes with the devil's breath i'm gone so-called superhero you think you save people but you just make it worse and just in case you're keeping score this is failure number two [Music] while pete licks his wounds we cut away to mary jane watson and get to experience the one legitimately good mj mission in the game as she muscles around the train station we get to see a few of the things oscorp are designing tech of the future invisibility medical drones etc perhaps teasing its stuff that will appear in a future game now this is fine but it isn't until lee and his guns arrive and take the station hostage that this mission really takes off this has to be one of my favorite missions in the game i'm not kidding as mary jane we get to see spider-man from a civilian perspective this is when the game's miles and mj moments are at their very best spidey wants to get mj out of there but she refuses to remaining courageous until the very end the mechanic of separating lee's henchmen so that spidey can stealthily take them down feels fresh at this the 20-hour mark though once spidey takes a gun out he disappears like just glitches out of existence surely a player is going to want to witness his agile takedowns so this seems like a really strange oversight on insomniac's part the mission ends with mj deactivating the bomb under the guidance of peter working against the timer and frustratingly it's how good and tense this section is which highlights all of the problems with the other mj and miles missions the way mj has been revitalized for this interpretation of spidey has been polarizing to say the least players get frustrated by her bullishness insisting on sneaking into places she has no business being in because she's not a superhero and this is a superhero game she gets annoyed with pete for being overprotective but anybody playing this is going to align themselves more with spider-man than mj in these arguments of course pete is protective mj just snuck into tombstone's headquarters and the guy is [ __ ] invulnerable if she gets caught she's dead spider-man fights deadly strong foes on a day-to-day basis and barely makes it out alive even then despite having super strength mary jane watson doesn't have any of his abilities if pete barely makes it out alive what the hell will happen to mj if she's caught but despite being frustrated with her i really like this characterization of mj a lot she's flawed she's dating a superhero she's a vigorous investigative journalist of course she's not going to stand on the sidelines while the web head investigates super villains of course on the flip side what gets me annoyed with mj is how she's mechanically portrayed to us in gameplay spider-man ps4 stealth system needs a complete revamp for the next game for the majority of it all mj can do is creep around push over boxes with the triangle button and occasionally throw lures to move enemies out of the way there are no options here no freedom or creativity in the stealth mechanics even the objective markers are only a few feet ahead of us at all times funneling and directly guiding us despite the fact we get a stun gun for mj later this inclusion happens much too late in the game for it to be included in her options for these sections so it's not just that when we play as mj or miles we feel disempowered it's also because the transition is so jarring because these sections are some of the most unreal moments of the entire game we go from swinging about choosing from a plethora of gadgets and choices during spider-man sections to pushing up on the left analog stick and occasionally joking allure about oh and also these seem to be a little bit buggy as well it's boring it's dull and i think a lot of players would have swallowed this version of mary jane a lot easier if we didn't have to experience these dull mechanics as her so often as a result it's hard to empathize with mj when she's ranting about how she wants to be included in taking down the bad guys more when we experience how useless she would be in these situations firsthand with the single exception of this train station mission the rest of the time mj is as useful to spider-man as a wet towel in a thunderstorm i could waste your time specifically talking about miles as well but everything i've just said about mj applies to him too he's just as disenfranchised during his sections so it makes playing as him equally as frustrating every single time with one exception but we will get to that later instead let's look at pete's stealth mechanics spider-man's stealth system is miles better than mgs but it's still rough my dudes using vantage points the wall crawler can web enemies up to perches quietly or swing down to take out an enemy with a swift kick to the head before darting back into the shadows we also have the impact web everyone's favorite overpowered gadget which can just web guns to nearby surfaces immediately it's basically an insta kill and of course the tripwire webs by far the most entertaining gadget in spidey's arsenal and your best friend during stealth mode but that's it four options enemies all have the standard alert systems above their heads to tell you if it's safe or not to go in for a takedown meaning stealth is basically the game's easy mode during combat encounters the ai of enemies is essentially in the gutter if they come across one of their pals all webbed up they'll shout that do spiders probably here but that's it their behaviors won't change they won't start looking for you or specifically aiming at vantage points you're likely to be hanging out in during base missions you can wipe out the entirety of the first wave in stealth without a single gun even smelling you but as soon as the second way starts every enemy in the tri-state area knows exactly where you are at all times it's impossible to lose enemies once they've locked onto you meaning there isn't much in the way of strategy of maneuvering around these foes and honestly the main issue here is with the level design for encounters let's take the base missions for example all of them are in wide open spaces warehouses construction sites and so on one room with a few ledges and a couple of staircases you can stand in one corner of the room and immediately see everything that's going on there's no complexity here despite the fact spider-man can for example crawl through events we never use this to get the drop on enemies organically during gameplay only during scripted moments in the main campaign and it's a bloody shame the design of these spaces need more complex machinations security cameras trip wires for us to watch out for little extra rooms for us to play around in rather than just one large entrance hall to tackle bad guys okay rant over where are we in the story um okay so we swing into the underground and chase mr negative onto a nearby subway train what plays out here is one of the most mechanically underwhelming moments of the game and it's only saved by the fact we get a real boss fight with martin lee later on visually battling negative in a train carriage looks fantastic the camera closes in making this battle feel more claustrophobic than any of the others so far spider-man is trapped in a metal can with a very dangerous villain but gameplay-wise all we're doing is watching lee telegraph two attack types we either jump to the roof or jump to the side and then press the triangle button when it appears to throw some punches his way on your first playthrough it's almost inevitable that when the fight ends you'll be pretty disappointed by how lee's story comes to an end especially if like me you thought this was the climax of the story and all of the doc stuff was being saved for the sequel for full context i didn't see the raft demo because i didn't want anything else spoiled for me our hero is still determined to help martin lee here there's no animosity peter still sees the good within mr negative constantly begging to just let him help this guy has murdered tons of people up to this point he's putting numerous new yorkers in danger right now he almost blew up peter parker's love interest and despite all of this spidey still sees the good potential within no problem that totally worked last time yuri they still doing construction on 42nd first street's why defeating negative we ship him off to the raft and act two comes to a close crisis averted and the monochrome man is locked away the plot seems to be resolved but there's still some loose ends weird [Music] act three opens with the world's most awkward conversation between mj and pete even though spider-man has again won the day this tug of war between pete and his webby counterpart is front and center his relationship with his ex has suffered as a direct result of his efforts as spider-man please say no please say no okay okay you might be thinking that it's strange the story still seems to be going at this point and then we go to see octavius he's officially designed his octopus arms doc highlights that peter's work in the neural web was the key peter parker has finally created doctor octopus now doc's villain turn officially launches us into the final act he's our true big bad to not martin lee and this is peter's third major failure he's been so focused on his alter ego on succeeding as spider-man on taking down martin lee that he hasn't paid enough detention to otto completely missing his descent into madness and the outcome is as effective and impactful as it is tragic otto is the third character in this tale which embodies a duality of personalities peter parker and spider-man martin lee's pure soul vs mr negative's darkness and now auto octavius the man who just wanted to help people has been twisted and malformed into a being of pure hatred and madness this immediately climaxes with the famous raft mission this is 20 minutes of pure unbridled spectacle battling through our newest enemy faction the raft prisoners note that i stated enemy faction here rather than enemy types because ultimately all of these enemies are just the thugs and demons we've battled already with orange jumpsuits and occasionally for some reason blue skin the framing of a prison breakout is a violent high octane race against time and this is one hell of a way to start a final act we chase electro around the outskirts of the raft and eventually meet the rest of the sinister five scorpion rhino electro vulture and mr negative kick spidey into the dirt it seems that he might just be able to fight back until the team's sixth member steps out of the darkness and everything goes to hell [Applause] [Music] first and finals stay out of our way [Music] okay let's talk about the sinister six we've already covered doctor octopus but seeing him in times square fulfilling mr negative's failed goal to release the devil's breath is a simple visual way to portray him as a bigger badder version of our previous main antagonist in the space of ours awk has achieved what has taken martin lee weeks to plot and plan his genius is front and center here and the ultimate irony to truly showcase his cruelty is that the first people he gasses are people protesting norman osborne it's been effectively built up that the release of this thing is terrifying and as och puts on a gas mask officially forming his comic book villain luke we realize that this is it our hero has lost all because peter was too focused with his spider-man ing he didn't see the madness right under his own nose as for mr negative there's not much to comment on in this sequence he's essentially been cucked by octavius's ascension we'll return to him when we get to his boss fight in the next section with regards to the other four one of the greatest criticisms levied against spider-man ps4 is that suddenly all of the really really good stuff is held captive until the final act electro vulture scorpion and rhino suddenly appear with very little in the way of introduction and yes the pacing does feel off here but i disagree that the four villains don't get much in the way of introduction our first seconds of the game showcase spidey's old villains they are constantly referenced if you listen to just the facts and almost all of the villains get just enough time to breathe before we take them down with the single unfortunate exception of vulture see spidey goes to times square to track down octavius and we enter into our third and final thankfully section where we wander into a villain lair and get their motivation explained to us getting a run down on how he's recruited each member of the sinister six such as wiping scorpion's debts is at least development but it's as shame-faced as the powerpoint on devil's breath we saw earlier again a lot of the early development for the sinister six is there if you're looking for it a little detail in the environment such as the new tech in octavius's lab earlier in the game but making this a tad more explicit in the main storyline would have gone a long way the entirety of act 3 is focused on taking on these villains one by one opening with a fantastic mission where we essentially need to swing around new york cleaning up the destruction left in the wake of electro and rhino's respective rampages electro section is solid as it feels specific to him we need to neutralize junction boxes at least in keeping with the feel of him as a villain rhino section is less so it just boils down to fighting standard goons in the street or on rooftops there's nothing rhino specific about this our boss fights however are sculpted by each villain's feel if you've watched my video rewriting marvel's avengers you know i love a good doubling up of bosses so seeing our nasty boys paired off was very satisfying the aerial battle against vulture and electro is one of the most entertaining moments of the game it's just a shame that this is the first time spider-man gets a basic conversation with vulture in the entire story a brief chase mission where maybe i don't know vulture breaks out of the raft and we have to chase him down in act two would have mitigated this sense of homelessness when it comes to spider-man's relationship with vulture but hey at least the aerial combat is fun swinging around the oscorp power plant dodging electro's lightning of vultures um actually what are these well it's fun anyway even if it does showcase that some further depth in the aerial combat is needed here remember dodge triangle square square square dodge hell if you want perhaps a finisher could be used too again much like the rest of the game it's the presentation and the tone which saves this fight and makes it feel great and of course the uniqueness of not being on the ground for this battle rhino and scorpion are more expertly handled both get some serious screen time before we finally take them down scorpion poisons us and we have to swing through a hallucinatory city with tails rising ominously out of the mist dodging them as they lash out at us and hot damn again i'm reminded of how fun mysterio will be as a villain in the sequel whilst scorpion's mission works as a solid introduction to him as a boss he's the easiest member of the sinister six to battle you chuck an impact web at him he falls over you hit him a bit rinse and repeat it's clear that the dream sequence's purpose is less to have fun with scorpion as a villain and more to reinforce pete's internal conflict after creating doctor octopus visions of our old mentor haunt us blaming us for his transformation and descent into madness but through it all pete is clinging to this sense that octavius is sick and that he intends to help him but we know because we've seen this before that spider-man can't save everyone scorpion section ends with pete standing in his boxers in octavius's lab a light-hearted breather after watching spidey suffer pretty intensely but this is the game's final act and it's about to get all kinds of stressful pete goes to check in on may she's sick she's clearly caught the devil's breath illness she says she's fine and if you're anything like me during your first playthrough you might just believe her i'm okay didn't you tell me something once about accepting that i'm human just like everyone else you and bad masters at turning my own words against me aunt may's in danger please this is just an artificial way to braise the stakes come on insomniac you're better than that you really want me to think you'd kill aunt may yeah i know but this is legitimately what i thought please tell me i wasn't alone out of our four raft villains rhino gets by far the best introduction just like with mj's train station mission and how that effectively portrays spider-man from the perspective of a civilian miles's mission creeping through the ship containers sincerely grounds how monstrous some of spidey's villains look from the perspective of everyday citizens the camera angle is closed in on miles and whilst there is absolutely zero creativity for us here the lack of freedom just plays into how terrifying the sequence truly is miles doesn't have much at his fingertips to take on this hulking beast we know that spider-man is miles away pun intended at the feast center we feel exposed this is juxtaposed by the rhino scorpion boss fight later not only is this battle [ __ ] hilarious in how rhino and scorpion are just ribbing each other the entire fight calling each other thick weak or puny but spider-man's environmental options have been upgraded a tad for this fight swinging heavy containers at rhino to take him out it would have been all too easy to fall into the classic battle of make big guy run into wall big guy stuns themselves here insomniac make this a more active battle where we have to actively interrupt rhinos charge attack rather than just dodging out of the way and i respect that as for scorpion he again unfortunately isn't given much more in the way of intricacies here he's more of a nuisance while we challenge rhino if it wasn't for the attention devoted to scorpion in his hallucinatory sequence i would have argued that this is cheap but well you know i i just said it they devoted attention to scorpion in his lucid notorious sequence so it doesn't feel cheap i don't really know how to end this argument the final hour of the game begins with the weirdest [ __ ] call between spidey and mj i've been through the city it's off the books the only other place i can think to look is i've already been through his office computer are you thinking his penthouse that building's full of staples man if they spot me other residents could get hurt in a firefight i know but i might be this entire mission grinds the pacing to a halt we've just spent a couple of hours battling some of spider-man's greatest villains we want to go and take down mr negative and doctor octopus not sneak around norman osborne's penthouses mary jane friggin watson the reasoning behind this is at best inane as well some of the weakest writing of the game happens during this phone call spider-man claims that he can't go to osborne's penthouse because if he gets caught people could get hurt in the fire fight what the hell makes mj any less likely to be caught by disabled men surely the guy who can crawl through vents and along a rooftop is better suited for stealth than a reporter with zero powers stupid seriously if insomniac just raised the ceiling a little further to handle spider-man's camera this could have been one of the best stealth moments of the whole game there are two large rooms some smaller areas which could have been connected via vents but instead we're stuck with mj it's a damn shame as mary jane we explore osborne's penthouse sneaking around sable guards while they hunt for us we learn that harry osborne isn't in europe he's actually sick with the same illness which killed his mother devil's breath was being developed to cure him there's a gorgeous emotional moment where we learn how badly norman misses his wife and that he makes a point of speaking to the memory of her every single year adding further dimensions to him as a villain and contributing some solid setup for a sequel however the layers added to norman osborne are momentarily stripped away when we see precisely why martin lee hates him so much both osborne and octavius experimented on lee years ago granting him powers but also killing his parents in the process the most interesting facet of this is the inclusion of otto up until now we've seen him as a purely benevolent character who has descended into evil but this clip shows us that otto was always capable of cruelty perhaps his efforts to create a new robotic prosthetic for veterans was his way of trying to make amends for the horrors he inflicted when working alongside osborne it's also here that mj accidentally catches a stowaway an oscorp spider which carries a similar power set to peter once mj escapes the penthouse pete finally gives in and acknowledges he should treat her as an equal partner in their saving the day antics and whilst this felt inevitable for their relationship to be strengthened again i just wish the mission leading into this was stronger because after sneaking around osbourne's home and getting killed by sable guards i do not think mj is as valuable in taking down the bad guys as pete there's an inevitable power dynamic here and again i wouldn't feel this strongly about it if the game hand forced me to actually experience this power dynamic there isn't much time for pete and mj to make kissy faces though because this is where the end game officially begins martin lee has captured norman osborne so we need to go and stop him we finally get a real boss fight with mr negative and it's pretty great all things considered it magnanimously makes up for the naf train battle earlier lee questions why spider-man wants to save scum like osbourne and spidey doesn't answer but we know why it's because spider-man tries to save everyone no matter who they are and this is reinforced through how the webhead keeps yelling that he's trying to save lee from the darkness within him the reason why this boss fight stands out is actually primarily because mr negative isn't completely invulnerable to our basic attacks rather us not being able to hurt him at all until we've stunned him with gadgets and environmental objects if our dodge game is on point we can use that against him to get a fair few blows in this fight feels a lot more natural a lot more fair but also pretty damn challenging as well lee summons some lesser enemies again to try and ambush us but spidey can take each one down in one hit so they're more set dressing than a distraction from the battle itself when all is said and done mr negative is one of the strongest boss fights in the game which feels pretty darn appropriate considering we technically face off against him three times and he's touted for most of the game as our greatest foe taking him down doesn't feel satisfying for very long though because it's not long before dockhawk arrives brutally knocks spider-man out and steals osbourne and the devil's breath cure to take miles away spidey falls unconscious and silver sable saves the day by carrying him to feast where dr michaels works to save him at any point any of these people could remove spider-man's mask but they don't it's not quite as powerful as sam raimi's train scene but it's still nice to have it clearly acknowledged that new york cares about spider-man the good people of feast our new friend sable the doctors working on spidey none of them even think about removing the mask of exposing peter parker however pacing again is an issue here i honestly should have like a buzzer or something this entire scene could be and i would argue should be removed the only reason it's here is so we can see that aunt may is officially dying which could have been introduced before the martin lee boss fight realistically our boss battle with lee should have been followed up with an immediate boss battle with doc hawk instead the story slows down again and plods along before our characters feel like they're ready to end the tale go get em tiger however i've said it before and i will say it again a little bit of cheese goes a long way with a superhero story like this one so the simple edition of go get him tiger directly referencing the awkward date pete and mj had earlier is honestly enough to fill us with a badass sense of [ __ ] yeah we could do this before launching into the final fight with doctor octopus as preparation for this fight pete goes back to octavius's lab where this all started for the pair and uses his genius to design a new suit capable of taking on doc awk the story waves us away as being extremely durable made of similar material as doc's arms which is great but gameplay wise it regenerates our gadgets something which is very handy because we need our webbing to take down the octopus otto has taken osborne hostage at ozcorp tower trying saying that five times fast despite the fact that the game has many threads waiting to be resolved it all ends with a simple baddie takes the mayor hostage trope and i absolutely love this the setting of the battle tastes like a climax bleakly painted against the night sky the fact that this location will have more gameplay relevance for someone who is engaged with the research stations which teaches us it's basically one massive electricity conductor makes this final face-off intrinsically powerful for peter otto and the player oxboss fight is full of variety we have to swing from antenna to antenna we have to dodge missiles use our gadgets environmental attacks awk packs a powerful punch and just like with mr negative we can still smack him upside the head if he isn't stunned using our webs the goal here is to generally web up so he can face a few decent punches we can't stop to breathe and on my first playthrough i admit i died a couple of times here and what you're seeing on screen isn't selling the moment enough just listen to the theme music [Music] the use of the heavy brass really gives a sense of weight to the action like ox dangerous arms smashing down and interrupting the more agile spindly string section reminiscent of spider-man the use of the choir belting out to latin in the background is a tad melodramatic but considering insomniac is taking a lot of cues from the raimi films above all else it's fitting with the tone and the huge reveal that octavius knows spider-man and peter parker are one and the same feels inevitable once the immediate shock subsides pete is filled with rage it's in this climax of the duality between peter parker and spider-man becomes one with the revelation that also knew his identity all along the two sides align with each other as we enter into the third and final wave of the fight a good old-fashioned brawl along the side of oz court tower the pain and hurt in pete is effervescent he feels responsible he was so focused on mr negative that he didn't see octavius's villainous side begin to eek out and that pain and betrayal is reflected in otto as well as he says when the fight is over pete should be on his side they were friends partners auto design spider-man's new suit for the game for christ's sake i mean pete designed otto's neural transmitter it was all going so well for the two of them until devil's breath do everything i can i'll make sure you get the best help no if they put me away they'll take my arms i'll be trapped in this useless body [Music] please peter that wasn't me you said you'd never abandon me you promised remember and of course you rest easy knowing your secret is safe with me you do what you think is best doc it's all any of us can and as peter leaves otto behind the anti-serum in his hand a strange thought struck me not a single villain dies in this game it's all too common for spider-man villains to die by their own hand in spidey adaptations but in spider-man ps4 every single villain is just locked up the ultimate irony when the credits roll is that a lot of people die in this game a lot of good people but spider-man sticks to his code you can't save everyone but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and he weirdly succeeds with his villains but as we all know if you've played the game he fails with aunt may the death of me is one of the most perfectly executed scenes in the game and it brings a tear to my eye every single time the fact that peter has to make a choice very similar to at the start of the game in the opening few moments there pete had to decide between peter parker's life or spider-man's responsibilities his bills or the kingpin here he has to decide between may and new york and just like with his bills in those opening moments we get a split second where it looks like he'll choose peter parker's life but he holds himself back to quote the game he has to be the man who makes all the right decisions even if it hurts like hell i love as well that we second with mary jane in the doorway almost out of shot where she decides to give the two of them their last moments together i love that peter thinks he'll have to be with mate in her last moments as spider-man rather than her nephew but most of all i love that in her last moments may gives peter one last gift she takes that burden from him she confesses that she always knew he was spider-man side note if you want to peek behind the curtain here are what my notes look like for this scene i have a lot more to say about the death of ant-may but i think it can be summed up by the phrase aunt may is a [ __ ] icon circled like a thousand times so we'll leave it there fitting to black and ending our story here might have been a tad too dark peter has learned a new part of his mantra of with great power comes great responsibility the duality between he and spider-man has ended in the death of his mother figure and he's battled not one but two enemies which reflected this back to him but it's all a wee bit depressing so it's nice that our final moments got to three months later mj and pete meet up in their favorite cafe from earlier mj is now associate editor of the daily bugle and ultimately asks pete if he wants to move in with her and honestly thank god this scene exists we've just played an entire game where every win for spider-man is a blow to peter so it's nice that after all the loss and heartbreak peter gets to win one he gets to move in with mary jane watson the two seem to be healthy again the status quo has changed but it's in a stable place for now there are a lot of balls for insomniac to be fondling by the time the credits officially roll in the main game not to mention the dlc but i have confidence they'll be able to manage the future at least as well as they did with the writing of this game speaking of the dlc you seem to have a lot of women in your life lately and all of them challenging except for you of course i didn't really give yuri and sable the love they deserved while discussing the main game so i'm going to discuss their characters here alongside a wider overview of the dlc in retrospect i like the city that never sleeps dlc more now than i did when it first released as a season pass it launched for 20 pounds uk and there's quite a bit in the way of story and content here that i think justifies that price point however there is a lot which is set up in here for future games that i'm not sure whether or not it's fair such a crucial part of the world's story was sold as a separate item i'd go so far as to say that story-wise this is a must play if you care about the world characters and specifically this iteration of spider-man the dlc in total answers questions raised in the main campaign such as where the hell is black cat and divine retribution like a screwball boss fight was saved for this as well we're not going to walk through every inch of the dlc like we did with the main campaign but there are some interesting story beats that are worth discussing the opening moments of the heist has one of my favorite level designs of the entire game the crime families have all started to grow more confident now fisk and the demons are put away so spidey gets a call that there's a break-in at the museum of contemporary modern art it's an open area sure but it's segmented with walls blocking enemies away from each other so you can break down conflicts while also facing off against waves of these enemies web zipping through tactically placed vents in the walls allows us to leap through tackle four enemies leap back web up a few more and keep the battle feeling busy while not overwhelming us like you might end up feeling in for example the sable camps in the main game and tossing priceless pieces of art at thugs is a riot though it kind of undermines the side objective of trying to stop some goons from stealing some of these said art pieces yeah i am gonna have to call you right back why what's going on you look good been working out no i mean you know a little so you swinging solo now so back with your ex that's a lot of questions this is by far my favorite rendition of black cat ever the best pieces of music in the game are by far spidey's hero theme which harks back to the raimi era while still being unique doc ox boss theme which is foreboding and ominous and black cat's theme which is delicate and cheeky over the course of the heist we and peter are sucked into felicia's world her manipulation of spider-man by claiming she has a son and worse that peter's the father is pretty callous when you think about it and it's worth acknowledging that the way she treats pete in this story is borderline abusive she gaslights him lies to him stitches him up and at the end ghosts him in the extreme by faking her death she's as aloof here as her comic book counterpart and if you're a fan of femme fatales who boy let me tell you black cat is the most femme of them all the reveal that pete and felicia had an official sexual history is a neat twist and it gives the writers an opportunity to present pete and mj as extremely healthy in comparison it isn't long before pete bravely confesses everything to mg total honesty is important between these two and mg has natural reservations potentially dating the father of black cat's son but soon the two of them accept that this may just need to be another facet of their relationship and i really really love the intricate details that we notice in their conversations here but the city that never sleeps dlc also introduces a brand new mini arc for peter to follow through the three chapters the concept of fatherhood is introduced with felicia he begins to panic about having a son he and mj both consider the type of dad he would be after all pete can barely look after himself never mind a child this is reinforced through the side mission where we collect paintings across the city whilst learning about walter hardy felicia's father and the original black cat introducing this concept through felicia is clever because even though it all turns out to be [ __ ] the colour of peter as a father has been established to be capitalized on in his relationship with miles over the course of the dlc we have numerous conversations between pete and miles where the former is reluctantly mentoring the latter and this all coalesces at the end where the two of them begin to officially train whilst the plot of the city that never sleeps is all about hammerhead the story is actually all about our hero becoming the auto to miles's peter and as a result the dlc feels like a natural extension of the main campaign rather than its own self-contained story in saying that the dlc much like the main game is greater than the sum of its parts because again the pacing is a little bit of a mess here a lot of our main missions are introductions to the mediocre side content which comes with the game with its story the heist also introduces three new suits the walter hardy collect-a-thon a new enemy type in the minigun enemy and the screwball challenges i [ __ ] love the screwball challenges i do i'm sorry i don't even care there is good if not slightly better than the taskmaster ones for now we have beat em ups emp challenges drone challenges gadget challenges and with the later episodes stealth challenges are introduced as well the gadget challenges are specifically quite a bit of fun i wish there were a couple more of these if i'm being honest and i hope we get something like this more fleshed out in the sequel restricting us to just needing to use two particular gadgets to take down enemies is a lot of fun and forcing the player to start thinking about the environment more creatively is fan [ __ ] tastic a particular highlight is needing to use the suspension matrix to launch enemies into the air and then activating a tripwire to slap them to a surface made me see these gadgets in a brand new way that the main game never did and whilst everybody hates screwball it could be worse guys she could be bad bunny [Music] the whole gimmick of the photobombs brings a dynamic twist to typical challenges separating screwball's missions from taskmasters by making them feel quite unique and building her up as an irritating villain makes it all the more sweeter when we finally take her down later we also get a new active crime in the form of bomb defusal using the spiderbot yeah you probably forgot spiderbot existed until i mentioned it here didn't you at certain moments in the main game we jump into a first person view of a little robotic spider body to run around in these sections are about as forgettable as you'd imagine but at least it brings a legitimate new crime type to the table so i can't fault that too much even if there is barely any challenge to these i'll come back to spiderbot's best moment in a wee bit when i jump into the second episode towards the end of the heist the plot becomes crystal clear for us hammerhead has been forcing felicia to steal some digital drives which have the major assets of all the local crime families on them much like with the main game this isn't exactly a unique superhero plot but what we're really here for is the relationship between spidey and black cat and the dlc handles this very well in both story and gameplay we have a combat section and a stealth section with felicia pretty much back to back this is the first npc to help us in a fight since jefferson davis and i'm glad it's here but this is black cat guys she doesn't do much other than chuck down some flashbangs which often becomes more of an annoyance than anything else thankfully they solved this later with silver sable but for now this is a slight letdown the same applies to the stealth mission this essentially boils down to pressing the right directional button to ask her to take down some goons and the issue here is that you can't screw this up and just send her in to take someone down if it puts her into danger the option only ever appears if it's safe for her to leap down which kills some of the potential challenge we don't need to be aware of enemy placement here we just need to pan the camera until the little icon appears and about 10 minutes after this mission the game ends felicia betrays us we learn that her son is a load of [ __ ] and that she's about to die because hammerhead has rigged her penthouse to explode as revenge for crossing him as spidey we race across the city to warn her but before we get there she goes up in smoke and dies what's an abrupt ending and worst of all there was no black cat boss fight well there's kind of a boss fight i guess early in the game we have a fantastic chase through the city using three stages to structure it but it's all still a pretty weak ending thankfully the other dlcs only get better from there if the heist is all about felicia hardy turf wars is all about yuri watanabe the episode opens with a fantastic set piece laying siege to hammerhead's headquarters in the harlem sanitarium this is much more scripted than the heists museum level but fighting our way through the sanatorium alongside the nypd really solidifies this sense that in the days since new york was saved from devil's breath spider-man has fully embraced his role as spider cop meaning when hammerhead is introduced to us we don't feel like we are too big for a crime boss hands behind your head how about no captain i'm sorry do it now there it is there's the fear over the next two hours of gameplay we're going to witness firsthand the origin story of yuri watanabe's costumed alter ego wraith hammerhead is presented as a takes no prisoners type of villain he's remained quiet in the days since fisk went away but now he's popping his ugly massive head out of the window and shaking his ass at the people of new york essentially goading spidey into facing him or at least that's what he claims because he spends most of his time hiding underground watching his men do the dirty work for him and it's worth mentioning that a lot of time and energy clearly into making the hammerhead gang feel different from the other enemy factions in the game honestly it would have been all too easy to just throw some standard thugs our way or write it off as hammerhead hired some raft prisoners to work for him but insomniac wrote new dialogue got new voice actors with the typical mafioso accents and designed a few new looks for these standard enemies even if they are mechanically the same as the other factions turf wars also introduces a second enemy type for us to tackle insomniac saw that everyone loved the irritating jetpack enemies and the bothersome shield enemies and thought huh let's combine the two and ruin everyone's day and oh boy do they ruin everyone's day these guys can suck a dick you can't use the tried and true strategies for the shield enemies because their [ __ ] rush attack leaves behind a red energy field which hurts and staggers you so you've got to rethink your plan of attack with them they're not poorly designed on their own by any stretch but all too often you have to face four or five of them at the same time whilst also trying to handle the minigun enemy nowhere is this clearer than in the hammerhead fronts turf wars introduces a new base type for us to challenge ourselves in these are a welcome addition but hot damn if these aren't tough each wave has a plethora of high-end enemies but again the issues with stealth are front and center here as soon as you stealthily take down the first wave of enemies you have to contend with four more waves of like 50 goons now with miniguns jet packs shields whips and the like speaking of stealth screwball's stealth challenges are a most welcome addition as well seriously it's hard to really hate her as a villain when her in-game challenges are legitimately great fun screwball stealth missions introduce motion sensors into the mix if you're caught in them it's an insta fail and you can web them up to momentarily blind them and all i want please insomniac i'm not [ __ ] about here miles morales comes out days from now all i want is for these to be used in future stealth missions without the insta fail but for enemy ai to react to us being spotted in them please god please please i'm begging as far as the tone of turf wars is concerned spider cop is the name of the game the webhead spends a lot of the dlc tailing eavesdropping and following majia thugs and nowhere showcases that more than one of the best slow missions of the entire game the spiderbot mission in the bar with no name for those of you who don't know the bar with no name is a direct location often used in the comics it's not just a hidey hole for gangsters and thugs it's ultimately where a lot of spidey's big bads spend their nights off purely because of the detail in the location for example the kingpin arcade machine we have to hide beneath this mission is a standout and it's effective in setting up a location that's full of life and is actually pretty fun i mean i'd have a drink here before we return to it later and see the carnage yuri has exacted on the residence speaking of yuri the episode ends at a construction site we get a boss fight with hammerhead which honestly is barely worth commenting on he's dressed in some stable armor meaning his body is impenetrable but his head is exposed the problem is that big metal plate in his forehead meaning on the whole his outsides are pretty tough to put a dent in he basically acts as a tougher version of the shield jetpack enemies who have gotten on our nerves for the past two hours he summons lesser foes as well and whilst i'm glad this episode at least has a boss fight it's what comes after which is memorable rather than the battle with hammerhead himself last time we met you said something about fear how do you feel now just dandy yuri watanabe has been our person in the chair for the entirety of the main story and by the time this dlc comes to a close she can no longer be that i've seen some claims that her arc is rushed here funneling it into just the second episode rather than spreading it out over the entirety of the city that never sleeps i understand those claims yuri doesn't really have much of an arc in the base game other than you could argue lightening up a tad with her interactions with spider-man almost every conversation we have with yuri she sounds stressed and honestly when she finally does snap here at the climax of turf wars i get it the presentation of hammerhead's introduction at the start with the fractured lightning the murder of the cute dad who got a spider-man watch for his birthday makes him immediately terrifying so yuri's quest for revenge is not only understandable but impactful considering the events of this year and the fact that wraith is basically a vigilante cop who murders criminals i'm interested to know which direction insomniac takes her in the future and how they handle that evolution but of course hammerhead isn't dead which brings us to silver linings the climax of the dlc and the entirety of spider-man ps4's story [Music] if the title doesn't give it away the opening moments of silver linings make it clear that of course this is a silver sable story where spider-man's just along for the ride judging it purely as a climax of the city that never sleeps dlc it's 90 percent there elements are introduced to be capitalized on in future games felicia yuri sable hammerhead and miles are all given a next step in their respective journeys and the final battle with hammerhead is easily one of the strongest bosses in the entire game speaking of bosses we are barely 10 minutes in and we already have a much needed battle with silver sable she's returned to new york because she's gotten word that hammerhead has stolen her technology and weaponry and in typical sable fashion she thinks that spider-man's to blame somehow she's been listening too much to jameson's radio show in the base game sable is essentially just a threatening gun for hire who locks heads with the web head at a few random points where he stops her from killing someone as the story progresses she eventually helps spidey just before taking down lee and awkwardly admits that we've inspired her to rethink the work her mercenaries are doing across the world she returns to her country presumably never to be seen again but this time she's back and she's pissed insomniac have gone on the record as stating they had a lot of stable content originally planned but ultimately decided to cut it to avoid pacing issues and i can respect that to be honest the original campaign would have been just fine without silver sable's very presence but we needed a way to bring in tougher enemies in the final act somehow and seeing her was a solid bit of fan service even if she didn't have much in the way of personality until now you'd be forgiven as well for mistaking sable's boss fight for task masters i can't shake the feeling that perhaps this was crammed into the dlc at the last minute because so many were vocalizing how disappointed they were that we didn't get to fight her in the base game and as a result ended up flipping taskmaster and adding a couple of new mechanics to it if we get too close to sable during our fight and she isn't stunned she'll flip us with ease meaning we need to you guessed it focus on gadgets and throwing environmental objects her way to stun her before leaping in for a few attacks and then leaping away it's a shame we didn't get more from this but the later boss fight absolutely makes up for it but we will get there a new enemy type isn't introduced for the final episode but all of hammerhead's goons are now coated in sable armor for this final battle meaning every standard enemy is immediately 10 times more difficult to take down this is front and center in the olympus bases another base addition to the city that never sleeps and by far the most challenging so far their layouts are much more open and the game simply increases the number of high damage difficult to take down enemies to keep us on our toes i would go so far as to say that the olympus bases are some of the biggest challenges in the game our mpc assistant here is david obademi introduced with the sole purpose of humanizing sable he's on a mission to rescue the humanitarian supplies stolen by hammerhead's crew and our ultimate reward for conquering the three olympus bases is getting our new pal a work visa at a school in new york it's a lovely ending and whilst there isn't much in the way of a new gameplay reward the narrative reward is pretty fulfilling adding some gray disabled stark colour palette speaking of narrative rewards silver linings also gives us our long awaited showdown with screwball completing all of her challenges results in a city-wide chase across the rooftops and this is by far the best chase in the whole game well worth the wait again it's frustrating that this content wasn't in the base game but examining marvel's spider-man as a full package it's a great conclusion to the screwball story for a start this chase is not on rails it feels much freer than any of the other races against time and incorporates a lot of her earlier challenges feeling like a natural escalation we have to use her photobomb opportunities deactivating bombs flying through water tanks shooting down drones and so on so we can keep pace with screwball if the olympus bases are the ultimate test of our combat skills screwball's final mission is the ultimate test of our web swinging we also get a new collectathon here yuri watanabe leaves a set of recordings for us to find and sends spidey on a crime scene tour following the story of how she and a therapist tried to take down a magia enforcer which ultimately resulted in yuri's friend being shot and killed i love that the strings and ropes we follow are in the colours of wraith and our final call with yuri where she forlornly tells us to stay out of her way and she'll continue killing criminals is a great place to leave her tail still shrouded in mystery but with her evolution officially complete as for the story of silver linings a lot of it is weighed down by padding we are forced into engaging with this site content again as main missions rather than it being left as optional content things don't really ramp up until the last 30 minutes but when the story gets going it really gets going spidey and sable working together to tackle hammerhead is endearing and their relationship is believably developed to the point where they end the story as reluctant colleagues rather than friends carbon steel super strong pretty sensitive to heat i have an idea and whilst we get oh my god another goddamn villain lair with recorders and blueprints which just spell out our villains motivation and plans bringing our total count up to four by the way battling alongside sable in this section is by far the best use of an npc helping us in combat in the entire game sable does some real damage in this sequence actively kicking henchmen ass and if this is an inclination of where insomniac is going with missions of these types i'm excited for what comes next black cat gets a brief resolution as well she saves spider-man's life after hammerhead wipes the webhead and silver sable out arguably making amends for betraying pete in the heist dlc she also passes on some information which will make hammerhead particularly weak his skull can be damaged by extreme heat which sets us up nicely for hammerhead's boss fight battling a hammerhead at the end of silver linings is mechanically the best boss fight in the entire story dlc or otherwise whilst doc hawk has more of an emotional resonance and fighting rhino and scorpion in the docks has a lot of flavor to it neither of these fights come close to the challenge or the testing of your durability like this one does hammerhead in his exoskeleton is now a complete monstrosity he has a small handful of deadly moves he throws bombs into the air for area of effect damage meaning you need to be constantly moving swinging around the outskirts of sable's hovercraft he has a laser which can be activated faster than most armed enemies in the game there's only about half a second between him levelling attack to you and actually firing it for a good chunk of damage the fight follows two waves at first it's a simple sparring match between us and hammerhead we need to weaken his exoskeleton so we can hold him in place for sable to burn a hole into his face not only can we hurt him without webbing him up showing some real growth from insomniac's combat design from the base game but working together with silver sable really feels like spidey and his gruff pal have come to an understanding at last and this has continued into the second wave when sable drops bombs which we need to pick up and swing at hammerhead to reduce his shield whilst it falls into the camp of throwing an environmental object so we can harm them boss this one works because it's reacting disables contribution to the combat rather than picking up pieces of rubble the entirety of sable's ship is our playground but we can't just swing away from the mobster in the hopes that we can regenerate health because he can leap up to vantage points and snipe us from a distance we need to get in at hammerhead and focus our attention on dodging his attacks getting some fair wax in and dodging again it's all about our ability to read the space around us as well as marking how hammerhead telegraphs his moves it's a fantastic fight and i'm praying we see more stuff like this in the sequel speaking of sequels let's examine everything which is now waiting to be capitalized on in later games i just want to state for the record that now that insomniac has killed aunt may nobody is safe yuri mj black cat jay jonah jameson it doesn't matter who they are this spider-man universe has officially introduced real stakes for us to contend with in later stories we find some goblin grenades in norman osborne's penthouse and this combined with the oscorp technology mj found in the train expo earlier harbors the possibility for norman osborne to become the green goblin in a later game we also have the question of harry osborne dying from some strange illness but it's revealed to us in a post-credits scene that norman is using the venom symbiote to keep him alive so we ought to see venom in a sequel as well now while i'm as excited to see this unique twist on venom as the next guy and it's a great teaser to wet our appetite with in retrospect i kind of hate this reveal just imagine how cool a mystery would be in spider-man 2 venom has appeared for the first time in this canon who's wearing the suit is it eddie brock flash thompson someone else and then towards the end of the story bang pete tears some of the symbiote away to reveal harry osborne we've now had that mystery stolen from us and i'm worried it will put us at odds with peter in the sequel while he tries to figure out who this mysterious venom character is when we the player already know as for doc hawk he's now locked away in the raft his body crumbling around him much like with superior spider-man in the comics and he knows spider-man's true identity i will eat my own hat if we don't get a superior spider-man dlc one day as brave as it would be for insomniac to have an entire spidey game where we're playing as octavius and peter's body i think it's more likely they'll release it as a short self-contained story first following the release of spider-man 2. of course there's miles morales and his powers as well but we already have a sense of what insomniac are doing there in the dlc we get to see pete beginning to mentor miles formally and this should come to fruition in his own story releasing in a few days there we also get the evolution of yuri into her vigilante alter ego wraith i'd be surprised if we don't get a furthering of her story in spider-man miles morales giving us some effective setup for her to play a larger role in spider-man 2. and finally mj and pete by the time silver linings comes to a close they're heading to circovia together and we know from the miles morales trailers that this is where insomniac have placed pete so that miles gets the opportunity to go through his own trials and tribulations without the safety net of his mentor there are a lot of great narrative threads here but with great power comes great responsibility so it's insomniac's responsibility not to just snip these threads and forget about them in future games revisiting insomniac's take on the web head through an analytical lens i can firmly say that i think it's without a shadow of a doubt the best rendition of spider-man on a console and as far as the story goes i haven't been this emotionally invested in peter's world since well who am i i'm spider-man yeah there's a lot of room for insomniac to grow but like i said before this is a game which is greater than the sum of its parts and unfortunately for the dev team it means my expectations are perhaps a little too great for miles morales releasing in a few days but i know if they can capture the tone and the presentation and the attention to detail like they did with their first game i'll happily play it and replay it over and over again especially if they can fix the stealth in the meantime i'll be counting the hours until i can slip into a new spidey suit and face new york head on if you need me you know where i'll be okay i had my hero i had his power his name and then i figured just for fun i'm gonna give him personal problems this section was written on the 7th of november 2020. this will date the video but i don't care there's no thanks for watching section here or request for you to like and subscribe considering everything is happening in the presidential election right now i i swayed on even releasing this video but in the end [ __ ] it if you're a voting agent in the united states you've already cast your vote and you're probably sitting on a knife edge waiting to see what happens next so let me say this i'm scottish and a few years ago the same type of disillusionment mixed with disinformation gave my country our own version of donald trump in the form of brexit i'm not going to bore you with a full explanation but the outcome of this election does matter directly to me because well unfortunately for my country the united states of america will be one of our biggest if not the biggest trading partners we have after we leave the european union our jobs our food our trade and our economy never mind our international relations will be directly impacted by the final outcome of this election so we've been watching your election closely america closer than we ever have before and stephen colbert said it best so we all knew he would do this what i didn't know is that it would hurt so much if boris johnson had even sniffed a statement like what trump gave the other night i would be joining those people in the street fully massed up to make sure a monstrous fascist was removed from democratic office i would be taking the fight to the bad guys with my fists not with my vote but i'm not spider-man as much as i want to be and neither are you so you need to lower your fists and go the smart route the peter parker route now what does this have to do with spider-man why have i put this in this video well if you're a fan of donald trump you're not a fan of spider-man you're a fan of the kingpin of hammerhead and of norman osborne if donald trump appeared in spider-man story he would be the bad guy and the statement he made at midnight uk time or 6 30 p.m washington time on the 5th november where he tried to undermine the democratic process of the united states with like unsubstantiated claims calls to arms and outright lies is the sort of speech you would see on the final two or three pages of a spidey comic with the final panel being a close-up on his bloated cruel face that's why norman osborne is painted as a smarmy effortlessly controlling fascist over the course of insomniac's version you know when people ask me why i love superheroes so much why even at the age of 26 i cry at the death of spider-man's nan or openly gush about a dumb kid who swings from buildings it's moments like these in our global history which i will point to superheroes give us hope embody a healthy moral code for us to aspire to and face challenges every single day which whilst melodramatic remind us that when we see something wrong we stand up and speak out so americans who are frightened who are enraged right now first of all feel feel free to move to scotland it's beautiful we have free health care and the pattern's pretty great too but take a deep breath if it's late where you are go to sleep and trust in your historic systems to work because we are winning and trump's scared because he's cornered of course that's terrifying but it's invigorating as well because i guarantee that stan lee would be reminding us all of that one thing right now that he clung to the bad guy always loses eventually always take care

Channel: Monty Zander

Views: 89,074

Keywords: spider-man, Spider-Man PS4 Critique, Marvel's Spider-Man, Peter Parker, peter parker, spiderman ps4, marvels spiderman, spider-man ps4, miles morales, spider-man ps4 gameplay, spider-man ps4 commentary, spider-man -ps5 analysis, spider-man ps4 combat analysis, spider-man ps4 combat, spider-man ps4 story discussion, spider-man ps4 retrospective, spider-man ps4 review, spider-man ps4 dlc, spider-man the city that never sleeps, spider-man: miles morales, Insomniac Spider-Man

Id: tT7xXegJVCU

Length: 152min 17sec (9137 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020