So with the brand new release of Spidermans' most recent game, I decided to actually look into the history of Spiderman and video games. I was mildly surprised, Spiderman has a long list of games on most systems, plus he was the first superhero featured in a video game. So he's got the chops to sit with all the other superhero games. He's basically the grandaddy of them all.
And watching gameplay videos of this old game, it had solid gameplay even back then. Actually modeling web slinging physics for an Atari! Man, I love old games. Think about being the programmers, working out a completely new dynamic in gaming. I plan to get an emulator of it soon, I want to get back to the roots. Just for giggles, check out this YouTuber's thought on this classic game
Spiderman has an automatic potential for a dynamic inspiring game due to it's basic principal. Web-Slinging. Ladies love it, kids want to do it. And it's always a point of pride for all of these games to make the web-slinging as realistic and exciting as possible. Some hit it well, others not so much. Some you might have missed.
A great one I saw that I didn't have a privlege to play was the cel-shaded Ultimate Spiderman. And it looks like I really missed out. The graphics just brought life to the already awesome art that was already in the comic book. It drew me in just watching a playthrough, as its webswinging physics was beginning to get perfected and the fights were much more complicated and fun to watch than previous games.
It actually had really laid down the framework for the recent Spider-Man game. It also was one more geared towards the new crowd of spidey lovers. That might be the reason it wasn't given much fanfare about it mechanics and stories. The kids have all the luck. It was also a slight change in the norm to shift the age or overall story to direct it to a market audience. And it wasn't cheap or shabbily done, and its one the new game also does but in the opposite way.
This new Spiderman game has literally blown up on the market, I personally know two people who specifically bought PS4's to play this game. One of whom I interviewed as he is a super spiderman fan and has been playing the game non-stop every second he wasn't working. A man that would have a strong opinion if something was out of place or not canon. Whats follow is a summation of the game from fellow gamer young_picasso92.
He began with exclamation that it was the best game he had played since God of War and Batman Arkham City Knight, something I have heard quite a lot recently. I personally have been worried that the game is just a clone of those two with new mechanics. So what did they brinng that makes this game so awesome? Not really being a fan of third person fighters, makes my brain automatically become cynical. But he began on his feelings and I'll let you be the judge.
So his first obvious love is the WebSwinging (Copyright Pending), and explained it was more than just one thing that made it so exciting and cool. The controller uses it rumble feature to highlight certain parts of gripping the web. The video slows to a point where you can almost believe your really flowing from rooftop to rooftop, most people have just gotten stuck swinging around the city and enjoying the view. And thats something that draws people to this title and they did not disappoint.
Now there's two major differences in this Spiderman game and the other games in the genre, web swinging and actually, the story. That's right a game that actually shined not because it's "pretty", don't get me wrong this game is BEA-utiful, but it would seem cheap to go crazy because of that. So they began to make the effort to involve the player in the cinematics, to make a storyline that made you want to beat the next boss. Which at this point is honestly key to making one of these games great. The list of games that have used this method (Witcher 3, Fallout, God of War etc.) went on to be wildly sucessful.
So, how do you retell a tale that has been told a thousand times before? You don't. They actually decided to make Peter older and used to his powers, making the gameplay more involving because it expects you to know how to be Spiderman by now. And young_picasso made an excellent point with the fact that it would also make it more appealing to the older millenial crowd that would be on PlayStation console. Who would've thought we would actually be interested in Peter and Mary Janes trying to make it work again. Or feel sympathy for characters that the studio went above and beyond to render motion captured emotion. To a point where a particulary hard hitting scene happened on a live broadcast and the player got choked up and had to take a break. Wow, and believe me I was right with him in my feelings too. No game has ever dont that to me before.
So, it does have a few cons that are worth noting, namely the length of the story. It seems out of the box it comes with only 20 hours worth of story. And of course they have stated 3 more DLC's will be released in the future. Now without digressing back to my soap box, young_picasso said it right "I hate lazy studios that want to release content without fully investing into it first and giving us a good amount of content". While I agree with the general sentiment, from what I've seen its not what happened here. This is a physically huge game, and very highly rendered. It was a lot of work to make those web mechanics and overall cool fighting styles for this game.
It's one of the reasons why they only chose to release on one system. We forget how difficult and grand these AAA games are. I believe they gave us as much as was possible in this game, or we would have had to wait 2 more years to include all the DLC that they want to put out and still have to keep up to date with the hardware and any changes along the way. So I have begun to be forgiving of developers developing games this way. Can the system be abused to only worry about profits and not actually help add to the game in anyway? Absolutely. But I feel that these new DLC style expansions have been a main stay in gaming for a lot longer than just MicroTransactions. Using shareware or expansion packs.
There's a ton of potential left to this game and lots of villains left to fight, so there's no denying about the future playability to this game. I'm happy that this game has garnered so much attention and hooplah, Spiderman deserves nothing less than that. And also the steps it's taking in Story and character investment will be more emulated by other companies. When VR hits big, I want to believe I'm a Private Investigator. So, I won't repeat what every reviewer says about this game. If you like it, great. If you don't, well you got to admit it is a pretty cool kind of game. So check it out, it's worth a shot.