T w e n t y S i d e d

People are dying of disease, six different supervillains are tearing apart the city infrastructure, violent escaped prisoners roam the streets, and fascist Sable thugs are oppressing the populace rather than doing anything about the situation.

Again, I kinda feel like this is too big of a failure for Spider-Man, particularly for his first game in a new franchise. But whatever. We’re here now so we might as well see what we can accomplish by punching people. Let’s do some boss fights…

You arrive to confront Scorpion, perhaps hoping you’ll get a proper boss fight. But instead he stings you in a cutscene and runs off. Why? Because Doctor Octopus wants to “torture” Spider-Man first.

That’s in direct conflict with the previous scene where he explicitly tried to kill Spider-Man. Given how vicious Doctor Octopus is towards Spider-Man, it’s somewhat perplexing that he doesn’t attempt to torture Norman Osborn when he gets the chance later on. Why does he want to torture his best friend but give his nemesis a quick death?

I know I keep harping on this, and I don’t want to give the impression that this is some all-encompassing flaw that ruins the story. I realize it’s not a huge problem and it amounts more to a missed opportunity than a an outright flaw, but for me this was an annoyance that ran throughout the game.

But whatever. The point is, Spider-Man is poisoned in a cutscene.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 21: Boss Fights”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

New York city is now filled with escaped convicts terrorizing the populace. Sable agents have declared martial law and are using their unchecked power to imprison civilians, beat them, and seize their property. The Sinister Six are loose in the city and causing even more destruction. Doctor Octopus has released Devil’s Breath, which is causing a pandemic that will certainly claim thousands of lives, and might even kill millions if we don’t find a cure.

The city is now screwed so bad I kind of stop caring. As far as I’m concerned, Spider-Man lost. This is the kind of cataclysm he’s supposed to prevent. This reminds me of the destructive brawl Superman had in Man of Steel. The fantasy of thwarting evil is gone. Sure, Spider-Man saves the city later, but that doesn’t fix the fact that so many people died under his watch.

Maybe a disaster of this scale might work as a dark turn in the second entry of a trilogy, but as the introduction of a new franchise it’s incredibly off-putting to me. I know how producers think and I know they feel compelled to constantly go “bigger” and “more epic” and to continually raise the stakes. I’m really not looking forward to the “more epic” version of a citywide pandemic + prison escape + brutalist police state + Sinister Six rampage in the eventual sequel.

This compulsion to constantly go bigger is what turned the final Arkham game into such a bloated mess. At least Batman started small-scale and worked up to ridiculous over the course of four games. Spider-Man is starting with a massive doomsday threat that kills thousands, so there isn’t a lot of room for them to scale up from here without getting into problems that are too big for Spider-Man’s world.

I realize this is a matter of taste and I’m sure lots of people will enjoy this “darker” take on a Spider-Man story, but for me the game has refused to deliver on the central thing I look for in Spider-Man: I want the hero to save the day. If I wanted to see the hero fail I’d turn to Watchmen, and if I wanted to see the quasi-hero avenge the fallen I’d turn to PunisherOkay, I can’t actually do that because they aren’t making Punisher games. But they should!. To me Spider-Man is a guy who saves the day at great cost to himself and with little thanks from the public. If you take away the “saving the day” aspect of the story then it’s just wallowing in misery. No thanks.

The next section of the game is going to have a lot of punching. We need to fight strongholds of prisoners, Sable bases, and six supervillains. So I guess now is a good time to talk about…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 20: The Pugilist Spider-Man”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.