T w e n t y S i d e d

Our first swing through the city takes us towards Fisk tower as we accompany the police on their way to arrest Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin. Swinging over the police cars is this wonderful moment that really sells the idea that we’re immersed in a city where things are happening, and not just cruising over static scenery.

Fisk’s men are defending the tower with automatic weapons and rocket launchers, trying to prevent their boss from being arrested. Spidey defends the cops and we get our first handful of combat tutorials out of the way.

We learn that this version of Spider-Man is allied with the police. Unlike the unappreciated Spider-Man I remember from my youth, this guy has an established contact in the NYPD. He has a working relationship with Captain Yuriko WatanabePeter calls her “Yuri”. Fun fact: The voice actor for Peter Parker is also named Yuri. That’s not important or anything. I just thought it was a fun bit of trivia., who does for Spidey what Commissioner Gordon does for Batman. She guides him and slightly legitimizes his actions, while making sure his super-heroics don’t  accidentally destroy evidence they’ll need once the bad guys are webbed up.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 3: Fisk Fight”

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.

For the record, I played through this game a total of four times back-to-back. I tried every difficulty level, and I’ve tried disabling some of the optional side elements like quicktime events and puzzles. I’ve fully cleared 100% of all objectives, obtained all the trophies, and I’ve spent endless hours swinging through the Manhattan playground that developer Insomniac Games has built for us. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the thing both mechanically and narratively, although I can’t claim I know this game as well as I know Batman: Arkham City.

Speaking of Batman: I’m going to spend a few words in this series contrasting Batman: Arkham Sequels and Spider-Man: No Subtitle. I anticipate the knee jerk reaction will be that they’re different games with a different focus and it’s not fair to expect Spider-Man’s game to simply copy Batman’s games. And just to be clear: I totally agree. Just because I compare the two doesn’t mean that I automatically think Batman did it better. On the other hand, it’s obvious Insomniac Games took a lot of cues from Rocksteady’s Batman formula when designing their Spider-Game. As the two standard bearers of the open world superhero brawler I think the occasional comparison is fair, as long as we remember that Batman: Arkham Whatever had six years and four mainline entries to refine the formula, while this is effectively the first outing for Insomniac’s version of Spider-Man.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 2: Meet Peter Parker”

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.