Oh I’m sorry I forgot Nick Robinson was a creep!
oh no i can’t unblood potion it
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The Heist was a pretty decent little campaign!
It’s also a good chance to get a few more Challenge Tokens, especially if you’re like me and can only muster silver performances at best.
I"ve heard good things about the DLC but it just feels like it was cut out of the game.
Eh, it doesn’t really fit with the vibe of the main story, though.
That said, I more or less 100%'d it in about three hours, so it’s a brisk experience.
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started this last night
the opening mission reminds me a lot of the half hour of arkham city I played once except every element of it has been made actually pretty decent and likable rather than dreck
I like how few interrupts and iframes there are in the combat, it’s a bold move and it actually makes this work. I’m finding it genuinely tough early in the game on hard mode and that’s usually because I’m not being conservative enough about when and how I need to dodge in large groups, unlike every other game along these lines you can’t just ignore positioning in favour of timing.
the presentation is successful as everyone said though my wife was laughing from the other room at the conniption I was having over all the different upgrade doodads the game was explaining to me
the balance between “playing well” and “feeling like you’re playing well” is in a very good spot
think they carried it off yeah
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I think I’m well into the middle of it by now and while I wish the writing were slightly sharper, it doesn’t fail to be sweet and on point, and the mysteries are all just telegraphed enough to work.
there were only a couple of “find the switch!” missions that I felt were genuinely wasting my time (less than 20 minutes all together probably), still only Witcher can get away with those. the combat continues to be quite good within the model they’re operating under – it’s never easy but I’m not dying so much anymore, though I’m concerned that I’ve just about gotten all the upgrades I want at this point. the city is comically overstuffed with bonus markers and about 80% of the side doodads are sufficiently compelling; shame about the other 20%. I think the time trials are introduced too late for how undemanding the movement is for the whole first half of the game, but they in particular are great.
the stealth sections are maybe a little too uninspired even for something as mainstream as this, and in spite of the obvious scope problems it would’ve presented I wish they’d found a way for spiderman to go to Fort Greene or Coney Island, but otherwise it’s about as pleasant a mindless thing as I can see myself playing.
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also of all the casting choices they made for this Nth version of spiderman it turns out I am weirdly attached to James Franco as Harry Osborn and having a hard time with that one
It’s very strange to me that this safe a production actually works for me when applies to Spider-Man, a property I only care about a handful of games I fondly remember from fifteen years ago. But it totally works, and Pete’s such a sweetie he’s the only banter-prone game protagonist that can get away with it (I think I feared the Uncharted future forecast by 2011 more than the 3rd-person shooter future of 2009).
The only thing that gets me about the (non-MJ/Miles) stealth is how much the game wants you to play it steathily, right up til when it doesn’t want you to anymore.
You can pretty much take out the first wave of any base entirely through stealth, but once it gets down to the last guy or two, the game suddenly alerts every guard that, whoa hey look it’s Spider-Man.
Which I guess is better than the alternative? Having wave after wave of goons incapable of looking up not notice the dozens of bodies strung from the rafters?
The newest DLC adds a somewhat new type of enemy that’s just kinda awful to fight. They’re not so bad one on one, but the game likes to dump two or three of them at you at once, and gives you very little time to react to their charge attacks. Pretty easy to get stuck in a hitstun loop and die, or come close to it.
At least they finally got me to use the electric webbing outside of puzzles.
It does still keep making me think about how criminally underappreciated just cause 3 was, and how I wish just cause 4 had had longer to cook
this game would’ve been much better if Norman was literally just Cuomo
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anyway I finished it with like 75% completion and I have a ton of complaints really, this is definitely one of the most big conservative games I’ve played in recent memory, but peter and the city are extremely charming and beyond that no part of it really outstays its welcome (though the stealth parts are never more than insultingly easy and the writing is depressingly uncritical even for a marvel property)
I feel like if I couldn’t compel myself to play horizon or god of war or the new assassin’s creed then at least I got away with the lovingly, extensively modeled NYC
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it’s funny that they somehow wound up with the exact midpoint of arkham and bayonetta combat and it really only falls down for the final boss fights
idk I’m just on the cusp of being annoyed I played this and it’s very rare that I even take anything that far, I think the last time I felt this way was like dragon age inquisition which I put down halfway
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the last act is actually a bit of a mess with the exception of the 2-on-1 boss fights, they really overextended themselves thematically to make those happen.
and it’s weird to me that the witcher 3 has been so influential in how to scaffold an open world game given the extent to which it succeeds on its writing and scoping and budgeting and how little of those are replicable. I really felt beaten over the head during the parts of this game where you zero-stakes chase the villains through their memories in the dream sequences as they talk at you, like “oh, I guess that’s how storytelling works in these now, gotta include some bare minimum abstract imagery.” such strange things to make formulaic. but that’s videogame for you
oh I guess I put down gravity rush 2 halfway too so credit to these folks.
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and like I’m all for playing with the canon but this version of norman osborn is … not at all sympathetic? and they hang every other villain’s motivation off of him? that part is like, a total failure given how much they made the tone work for the first half.
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You almost almost kinda feel for him, post credits.
The double boss encounters were pretty fun, and it kinda bums me out that they sit on some of the game’s best fights and moments and then shove them through in an incredibly crowded final act.
That said, for dialogue alone, I think the Taskmaster fight is probably my favorite.
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I haven’t read Spidey comics in many years but was Normal Osborn ever really portrayed as sympathetic? Harry sure, but I only ever recall Norman being a true dick.
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Right, but the last third of this game is written in a way that… doesn’t get along with that
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