The Spider-Man Video Games thread!

[KurtW95]

Pretty crazy that the first movie tie-in was where Josh Keaton voiced the character. Still the best to voice him IMO. Though they had Maguire dub over him when they were able to get him. But they let him voice Harry and some of the lines where Harry is playable were recorded when he was doing Spider-Man. I like Lowenthal, but no one beats Keaton and I wish he could be welcomed back to voice the character in multiple formats the way Tatasciore does with Hulk and Blum does with Wolverine.

[Xenon]

Spider-Man 3
Platfomrs: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Released: May 4th, 2007
Notables: First appearance of Jean DeWolff
Rating: 5.5/10
Thoughts: Ah the much maligned Spider-Man 3. In all its forms. Like the last two I rewatched this before playing the game and have thoughts. The problem with this movie is Venom. Straight up. Sand Man and New Goblin have a thematic throughline about sins and forgiveness. If this was just about them and Peter's relationship problems, its a much better movie. The Sandman woudln't disappear for half the movie, he'd get more of a climatic fight, and half the cringiest scenes would be gone. Instead, with the whole black suit arc and Eddie to deal with this movie is out of time and you feel it right from teh beginning. Scene are happening because they need to happen with little connective tissue or proper set up. The meteor that has Venom just lands next to where Peter and MJ are hanging around, purely by chance is Peter snatched by it. The upside is that the movie does MOVE because it frankly has no choice, it has a lot to do and no time to do it in. The only thing that delayed my completion was me cringing too hard during the first half with Peter and Mary Jane's relationship troubles. I've said before that in the first two movies I don't mind Raimi MJ, she gets a bad rap. But she's really bad here. The only consolation prize is that Peter is too. Both of them are self-obsessed and far too reserved. The movie acts like they've been dating a while but they seem distant from each other. MJ doesn't confide in Peter and Peter doesn't confide in her. And when he tries to relate to her she shuts him down by accusing him making it about him, which he totally does later on, but not when she gets the bad review. Her running off to Harry's is particularly bad. It's true that Peter had been kind of distant there, but it shows a really unhealthy personality trait where she runs away at the first sign of struggle. She is pretty bad here, but like I said, Peter isn't any better in the first half of the movie. Even before the suit influences him, he's not really listening to her and is completely full of himself.. And the kiss scene with "Gwen" isn't really excusable as I remembered as he actively invites her to do it. Harry's scheming may have been what actually broke them up, but frankly they were almost on that path themselves. Peter probably would have patched it up with his interference, but they were on a bad path. Again, the Venom plot line I think is to blame here. The movie has no time to show how they make each other happy, so we get one scene of them laying in a web hammock and then we're into misunderstanding and unhealthy relationship. The Gwen relationship he has in this is way more positive at least until he gets the Black suit. Kind of funny I'm leaning Gwen even in this form, lol.

Honestly, despite like the others having not seen it since its release in 2007, I remembered this one the most. Also unlike the others I probably won't watch it again, at least not any time soon. I very rarely re-watch movies, but after the first two in my head I could recognize that I'd probably really enjoy them again pretty soon. This one...not so much. The first half is just pain watching Peter and MJ and Peter's ego, and unlike Spider-Man 2 which is all pain but with purpose, here the pay-off doesn't really ever come. Sure, she takes his hand at the end and they dance and they're clearly going to be together but there's no catharsis what comes with a real satisfying conclusion that all that pain was building to. It's just pain, and then it kinda ends. The other thing that I think makes it lag behind the other two movies is the lack of a really strong villain. Topher Grace, Thomas Haden Church, and James Franco all do a great job I think, but because they are all forced to share the plotline none of them have the time they need to truly shine. Harry has the best arc but he's the only one that doesn't' completely disappear for half the movie and has the advantage of being a previously established character. Thomas Haden Church does the best job with what he's given, but he disappears for I think 45 minutes and his final speech kind of comes out of nowhere and feels tacked on. There's definitley no Molina or Dafoe to really inject energy into the movie. Once again the Venom plotline sinks it. With that gone, the movie has more time to focus on Sandman and what he wants and why he does what he does, as well as give a proper resolution to the whole "murdered Uncle Ben" thing, maybe even give Peter additional perspective he can use going forward. And Harry's plotline interweaves with Sandman and Harry in that both are about people seeking somewhat misguided vengeance, though for different reasons. But all that conjecture is largely useless because that's not the movie we got. The movie we got has all three and all three suffer for it. In the end, I don't think this is a BAD movie, but it's clearly the weakest of the 3 and inessential comparatively. If you skip it and leave the series with MJ in that doorway in her wedding dress, I don't really think you're missing out on anything.

The GAME followed a somewhat similar train of hype. Much like the third movie, the third game had a ton of hype going into it based on how good the previous game was. I myself waited for the review with anticipation hoping for another hit, but sadly the reviews all trashed it, so I skipped it until now. Playing it now it feels very weird and not really what I was expected. Honestly it most reminds me Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is somewhat ironic that these two projects keep getting lnked but i think similar problems lead to similar outcomes. The moment to moment stuff is largely similar to Spider-Man 2 and definitely an evolution of it. There's now two attack buttons again and a lot of combos result from this, though many need to be unlocked. You also have a set of super moves now (again, they have to be unlocked) that can be activated when you fill up a gage in between your health and "reflex". "Reflex" is a new resources, which you activate by pressing LB, and it slows down time and makes Peter dodge most attacks. Besides being your main defensive tool, for tough enemies its also your main offensive one, as you'll need to dodge and then counter to break their defenses. On first pass I think this new combat feels really good. It's nice having a lot of different combos, and some of them are pretty cool. Even though there's two attack buttons both jump and the web button can be used for additional attacks while you're attacking, so you really do have a lot of options. But...they don't actually mean that much. While there are a few attacks that have a wide area of effect or hit a lot, for the most part all of the combos seemed to make little difference. It still feels nice having the options, and some do matter, but getting rid of some in favor of making what remains a little more noticeably different would be helpful. The other thing that holds the combat back is that the bosses tend to be damage sponges. I think I hit the kingpin a thousand times, no joke. It doesn't really add anything, it just makes the fights longer and more repetitive. The structure of the game is also a clear evolution from Spider-Man 2 and might be the best part of the whole game. After the first mission that the game throws you into, you can open the map and there are several icons that you can select from to decide what you want to do next. Whiel there are points that you have to do after others, the amount of freedom the game gives you here is commendable, and actually serves a purpose. Upgrades are no longer purchases (booooo) but are instead given in a set order after completing each mission. This means that you're getting stronger with each mission you complete, and so things that you find more difficult may be best saved for later. Swing Speed is upgraded as you travel, so you may want to save the MJ missions for after you've got a few levels to make them easier on you, for instance, but since her missions require no combat doing them as early as possible will make you stronger for the other missions that do require combat. I really liked the way the game was structured. I could do what I wanted in the order I wanted to do it for the most part and that just gave me a lot more agency.

[Xenon]

Of course, looking through the missions, there's an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed, which is that I'm not sure they knew what the movie was going to be before the game was nearly finished. I say this because the villains of the movie, New Goblin, Sandman, and Venom, each get one mission. The initial fight with New goblin is translated, the Black Suit fight with Sandman, and then the final battle with Venom. This wouldn't be notable but....Lizard has 3 missions. Kingpin has 2. THe Mad Bombers have 5, Scorpion has 3. Kraven is in the game and gets the same number of missions as Venom! And it's not just that they only get one mission, they get no story cutscenes to back them up really besides a couple with Eddie, and the motivation is completely changed. Like you beat the New Goblin, and then...that's it. You never see Harry again until the last mission when you all of sudden control him to fight Sandman. Sandman comes out of nowhere and then his motivation for fighting you in teh finale is that Venom has kidnapped his daughter (and afterwards he just walks off with her and the cops just let him go). MJ does sorta dump you, but not because of harry but because you swing around with her not caring about what she wants cause your in the black suit (to be fair he's a huge A-hole to her the whole trip it's quite funny). The side missions get way more development. Scorpion has a redemption arc! Kingpin comes in after you complete all the gang war missions like he should! It's just weird and, like I said before, it reminds me of Amazing Spider-Man 2. That game as well, it was clear they had no idea what the movie was going to do and so they had to wing it, and that's the feeling I get here. It seems like the script was in flux and they didn't really know what was going to happen, so they made sure the throw in what they could but spent most of their time just developing a Spider-Man game independent of the movie.

And you know, boss frustrations aside, I think it would have worked out fine, kind of enjoyable, even, if not for one fatal flaw. Quick Time Events. QTEs, as they're usually called, were probably first introduced by a game called Shenmue. As that was a game that didn't like having gameplay, for events that they wanted the main character to do more than what normal controls allowed, a button would flash on screen that you needed to press ASAP or fail the event. Press it and the character would do some cool thing and you'd continue. This concept was adapted into Resident Evil 4 where they used it as a way to add some participation into cutscenes that you would otherwise be passive in, but the concept really blew up after 2005's God of War, which used them for nearly everything, from cutscene participation to enemy killing finishers. The concept swept over the industry like a plague and would be treated as such for the next five years or so. It's far less prevalent now, though it still exists, but 2007 was right in the heart of everyone copying it and Spider-Man 3 suffers for it. There are random traversal QTEs where instead of juts webs wining you'll be forced to follow those button prompts like its Simon. Bosses are all defeated this way too. Once you depelete their health you'll have to also complete a QTE to finish them off or else you'll take damage and they'll get back a portion of health you'll need to whittle down again. The QTEs are not generous either, being often complex (every button is used including four directions on the control stick) and long. The traversal QTEs generally aren't so bad, since you can just retry them when you fail, but these end of boss ones can be brutal. The final boss particularly. Once you deplete Venom's health, you get into a life or death QTE with him. Succeed on all 11 prompts and you win, miss one and you die and have to retry and finish him off again. QTEs suck. The RE4 style where they're minimal and just meant to keep you engaged are fine, but these really extensive boss ending ones are just frustrating. It's not unique to Spider-Man 3, but Spider-Man 3 does suffer for them. The fact that some of the hardest are at the end of the game leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth as well.

Spider-Man 3 is notable in that this is the end of what I would call the "adaptation" era. The last 4 console games were all just adaptations of something, be it the Raimi movies or Ultimate Spider-Man. Even Battle for New York is a USM adaptation, really. There are still some adaptations though, two, kinda, but really just one Amazing Spider-Man 2. Amazing Spider-Man the game is a sequel, not an adapation. But it's five years away. Nowadays that'd be the next game released, but back in the day there are no less than Four Spider-Man releases in between, in what is essentially the original era. Friend of Foe, Web of Shadows, Shattered Dimensions, and Edge of Time. They're all their own thing, and I think that's why except for Friend or Foe they're all kind of remembered fondly. We're also entering into an era where I've played more of these before. Of the remaining solo Spider-Man games, only friend or Foe and Shattered Dimensions are unplayed by me.

Spider-Man 3 is not terrible. If given a choice i'd play it again over numerous 2-D games. Honestly with its continued refined controls I might even take it over something like Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro or the first movie game honestly. Like I think it's objectively a worse game than the first movie game, but I think on replay that loses more than this does, if that makes any sense. But it's also hard to justify playing this one more than once when later games like Amazing Spider-Man or Marvel's Spider-Man exist (honestly this one makes all the others hard to justify, lol). It's interesting enough that if you're a Spider-Man fan I'd play through it once, but once only.

Next up: Spider-Man; Friend or Foe.....maybe. Might Swerve and just do Avengers next so I get it done before teh Sept 30 date. Starfield is goign to eat at least two weeks of gaming time come the 6th, so I'm a little worried about getting to it if i stick in release order.

[Xenon]

Sorry about that.

In my experience it is a decent game that gave me countless hours of fun through the years, ranking the Treyarch games and the movie tie-in games bundle I easily rank it as better than both the first movie game and TASM2 (the latter is top notch in stealth takedowns, spider-sense, and costume variations and powers), but the numerous negative reviews for SM3 (some make plenty of positive remarks, and some pick on it for aspects I find common in other games) make me anxious.

At the same time, it seems kinda reasonable to recommend skipping it in case the blur effect, shaky camera, and inconsistent framerate might leave you feeling uncomfortable.

When it comes to sidescrollers though, Web of Shadows for the NDS is recommended. Combat and swinging are a lot of fun, score (music) is really nice at points, and stylus usage is simple and pleasant, doesn't hurt the fingers nearly anywhere like Shattered Dimensions does.

Web of Shadows on the PSP isn't bad either, it's dumb and confusing sidescroller when it comes to plot choices, but it can be a pleasant time from gameplay side of things

At one time I was going to play through some handheld versions as well, but Tears of the Kingdom took three times as long as I planned so I had to scrap something to reach my goal of getting through before Spider-Man 2 hits on October 20th. did you have Spider-Man 3 as a kid? Having completed it now I don't think it's terrible but you seem to have a very high opinion of it.

Pretty crazy that the first movie tie-in was where Josh Keaton voiced the character. Still the best to voice him IMO. Though they had Maguire dub over him when they were able to get him. But they let him voice Harry and some of the lines where Harry is playable were recorded when he was doing Spider-Man. I like Lowenthal, but no one beats Keaton and I wish he could be welcomed back to voice the character in multiple formats the way Tatasciore does with Hulk and Blum does with Wolverine.

Oh that's fascinating! I forgot to mention it in the write up but I felt like Tobey was putting forth a little more effort this time than he was in the first two games. It's still not....you know, good. But he seemed to have some energy at least.

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

Did you have Spider-Man 3 as a kid? Having completed it now I don't think it's terrible but you seem to have a very high opinion of it.

A college kid in his wee twenties when it was released, and Apocalypse boss fight made me enraged for dozens of tries, so did QTEs, but I kept playing cause this is a game that provided me with a good amount of requests and wishes for a Spidey game I wanted to see realized for quite some years, and to this day no other Spidey game satisfied these desires for me, most of them.

Swimming is one thing I needed, only WoS kept this mechanic after SM3 before Insomniac got the license to serve our entertainment.

Pulling thugs in the air, multi flagpole suspension, faster poleswinging, poleswing launch atracks, dropping people I save from falling in any altitude and letting them drop anywhere (can only do it in photo mission 5 with Spidey cosplay guy), holding on the camera with a zoom in function (ps2 game and TASM games maintained this at least), among other tactics make this game near and dear to my heart.

Also as someone who finds the need for storytelling quality in games overrated I really love the flexibility with choosing missions.


This game was a passion project for Treyarch, but development was troubled to quite a high degree and it shows, symbiote is an afterthought cause the news came late into development, and Matt McMuscle research reveals the team was removed from this to focus on shooter game No. 51 for the company at the time.

[Xenon]

The Avengers
Platforms: PS4, PS5 (for our purposes as this is about Spider-Man)
Released: September 4th, 2020
Notables: First Appearance of Liz Allan? I think? Kinda? First Appearance of Mark Raxton?
Rating: 7/10
Thoughts: Ok, so we're jumping ahead here. I wanted to knock this out before Starfield hit, and while I technically met that goal by finishing the main campaign on Tuesday, Expansions and then Spider-Man took me until yesterday to actually finish thanks to family and life obligations. This game is being delisted on September 30th, 2023, and while I've been led to believe they'll leave the servers up for a while I wasn't going to leave it to chance, and with an unknown amount of time to beat Starfield and at least 8 games between Spider-Man 3 and this, I decided I needed to knock it out now. But I needn't have bothered, really.

I had the same basic expectation trajectory for Avengers as most people. Hyped at the teaser, disappointed by the reveal, further disappointed as more information came out, annoyed that Spider-Man was an exclusive. That last one was important thought because mark that I am I still probably would have given the game a shot at release had Spider-Man been there or had he not been in the game at all. But with his announcement I skipped the game at launch, thinking I'd pick it up later when Spider-Man eventually came out. Thanks to its disastrous launch though, that was pushed back further, until I was able to get a PS4 version for $10. Since that came with a free upgrade to the PS5 version I was set to go, eventually, when I found time. And this little exercise was just the excuse I needed to make time. In fact it was one of the things that gave me the idea in the first place. Ah the naiveite. I didn't pay a ton of attention to the pre-release stuff, as i was familiar enough with Destiny that I felt like I knew how this was going to go. Each character was essentially a class, there would be missions and loot and it would be repetitive. All of that was true, but what I didn't count on what just how directed the campaign was going to be. Of course in Destiny (and Anthem, I guess too lol), you can be whichever class you want and complete the story. But this campaign story was not written like that, it couldn't be with all the Marvel characters. So the campaign is actually highly directed. After the initial stage where we play through eh five "main" Avengers, we switch to Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel. Now I must admit, I've never been a fan. Honestly I'm a lot less hostile to her now than I was four years ago when this announcement was made. But I still think this was a mistake. People wanting to play an Avengers game would likely want to play the Avengers that they're used to seeing (aka the movie ones). But in fact they're largely AWOL. Hawkeye, of course, was part of the DLC. Captain America isn't unlocked until the second to last mission in the game. Black Widow has one mission. No half the game is spent playing as Kamala. And the remaining half is like Half Iron Man or Hulk or Ms. Marvel (We'll get to Spidey in a second). I must admit this took me a bit by surprise. I figured we'd be forced to play as Kamala some after her initial appearance. But I figured that after a little bit the game would open up and we'd be able to pick anyone from our roster of heroes. But no.

So realizing this, I was a bit miffed. I was about 2/3rds of the way through the game when I realized that no, it wasn't going to let me ever pick Spider-Man Ok I thought, that's fine, there's three DLC campaigns, I'll just play as him through that. But then also no. The DLC campaigns are even more restrictive. You play as the new DLC character in all of these exclusively. Of course since the first two characters are both Hawkeye and both play very similarly, this creates the situation where like 50% of the game is Hawkeye, 25% Ms. Marvel, 15% Black Panther, and 10% every one else. If your favorite two heroes are both versions of Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel, I've got a game for you. But wait, you say, there's like three other DLC characters! Jane Foster Thor. The Winter Soldier! Spider-Man! Well kids let's talk exclusivity and failing games.

Square Enix, through their desire to make this a games as service game, lost a ton of money on Avengers. Winter Soldier and "Mighty Thor" were just dumped into the game with nothing but themselves really. Spider-Man was a little sooner though, and got a little more. Spider-Man's exclusivity deal always bothered me. As my favorite hero, I want him as many places as possible. I also wanted him soon, since he's literally advertised on the shrink wrap of the PS4 version. And you know if he had gotten a campaign like Black Panther i might have been forgiving still, but no. Because Spider-Man was an exclusive character, Crystal Dynamics didn't want to spend the effort to give him a full campaign since half (or more) of the users couldn't play it. So not only did the exclusivity deal hurt the game by limited the reach of one of its biggest draws, it meant that in the end he was worse for it. It's such a maddening thing how botched he was. No, all Spider-Man gets is an NPC in the "Ant Hill", one of the hubs, a series of Audio Logs, and some drawn intro and endings. You unlock the logs and reach the "ending" by completing the mission the game gives you in the endgame "games as service" part of the game. Because that was what they envisioned was the "real" part of the game. The series of repetitive missions where you would grind for gear and do the same thing over and over again as a group. And I don't hesitate calling it the "real" part of the game, because you'll finish the game around level 15 out of level 50. Not that level means much. No everything is tied to gear score, level is just the next skill point. Beating Spider-Man's content took like four hours. Just a bunch of missions that he was in, nothing special to them. So let's save you some time

[Xenon]

Spider-Man's The Avengers Story:

Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for six years. He works as a photographer for the Daily Bugle and was working as an intern with Liz Allan for AIM, which in the universe of The Avengers everyone likes and thinks isn't up to shady stuff. Peter thinks they are up to shady stuff and starts digging, causing AIM to fire him and Liz and her to stop speaking to him. He takes this information to the Avengers because he has a contact with an information broker. Over the course of the "story", Peter is able to discover a connection between Mark Raxton of Allen Chemical and Spencer Smythe of AIM, who hate the Avengers due to his son dying as a result of A-Day (the opening event in the game). Liz Allan, apparently a top Biochemist for Allan Chemical at 21 helps Spider-Man and Peter Parker uncover evidence of AIM's experiments on the Inhumans, Peter gets fired from the Bugle for hijacking the stream to broadcast the evidence, and Peter goes home to Aunt May who was worried about him cause he was gone a while. Spidey Agrees to help the Avengers "part time". Oh and at one point AIM threatens to blame all the experiments on Peter, because it's totally believable that a 21 year old intern was running clandestine human experiments at the megacorp without their knowledge. It's fine but there's a lot of weird choices made here. He's been Spider-Man for six years, and has kept his identity secret this whole time, which impresses Black Widow. But the only other Spider-Man characters we get are Liz Allan and Mark Raxton? It's an odd choice. There's just not that much here as a Spidey fan. No one cares about Liz Allan. Mark Raxton is lame if he's not the Molten Man. Because he has no official missions you don't really get any cool interactions with the Avengers. He can't even lift Mjolnir! Through the texts he does seem to strike up friendships with both Black Widow and Kamala. Kamala is friendly with everyone, of course, and being younger Peter is less intimidated by her. And with Black Widow he bonds over the double life stuff as he asks her for advice on how to deal with it, which I admit was the one like clever part of the story to me. I genuinely liked that part. It made sense and wasn't something I'd thought of before. By the end BW even tells him to call her Nat, so that's nice. They're friends! But that's basically it. As a playable character Spider-Man is fun but his webslinging sucked. Overall I'd say he was kind of in the middle of my character rankings. He's definitely not tuned to be the top, but his moves were cool enough. He has his web Wrecking Ball that he uses in Marvel Heroes, which was cool. He has a web bomb which is super effective, and he has a drone. It' s just again compared to his solo game effectiveness.......He also has a bunch of cool costumes, so that was nice. And even though I didn't love the story they gave him nor did they give us much, they at least respected the character, which is more than I can say for some Marvel Projects so I'll take it. But if you're thinking of trying the game out for Spider-Man, don't. There's just not enough there.

Is it worth playing otherwise though? This may be surprising considering most of my other thoughts have been complaints but yeah I think this game is really good actually. It'd definitely dragged down by it's Games as Service Elements and enhanced by everything being unlocked so I could put Captain America in his cool comic accurate outfit and BW in her White snowsuit from her movie and Iron Man in his Civil War Suit (tried out the Endgame suit and no I think the Civil War one is my favorite. CW, Endgame, then IM1 would be my top three from the movies I think, though they don't have his end movie IM2 suit). But overall this is a fun action RPG, especially as certain characters. This is, almost certainly, the best Iron Man game (well, besides the now dead Marvel Heroes 2015), only really competing with MUA and MUA2, but he's really cool here, though he highlights a serious balance issue. IM can hover, fly, shoot repulsors, lasers, and Rockets, His supers are an EMP, his Unibeam, and the Hulkbuster which appears to be the strongest thing in the game. Captain America can double jump. Like the gap between the two is massive. I played as IM as much as possible, and as a mild IM fan (I've read his whole Tales of Suspense run) I quite enjoyed it. The thing is while the game is ultimately repetitive, if you're just going through the main story you don't really feel it. Some maps are technically reused and some AIM Labs are the same, but for the most part it felt like a normal single player campaign for an action RPG, with the only real odd thing being you couldn't switch between the members of your fireteam. And they do all this without much in the way of heavy hitters for villains. Abomination, Taskmaster, Super Adaptoid, Klaw, Crossbones, Maestro, and MODOK are all they use villain wise, and it's still cool. The story line also further endeared me to Kamala. While I still think it's a mistake from a marketing position, because the storyline is so tied into the Inhumans, it makes a lot of sense that Kamala is the focus of the story. Of course, making the Inhumans and AIM the focus of the story is probably a questionable decision in the first place. In fact that highlights what really was this game's downfall, which is that too many corporate fingers were in the pie. Spider-Man being exclusive is a good example, but really this thing was being pulled in various directions to serve other goals for its whole existence. When you consider how long it takes to make games, this was probably conceived in 2015 or 2016, right in the middle of Marvel's big inhumans push. So on that side, Marvel is probably telling CD that they have to make a story with the Inhumans, tying them on the story to this one thing that would have, by the time the game came out, crashed and burned already and have been dead for years. Then on the gameplay side, Square Enix had dollar signs in their eyes and wanted to make gobs of money with a Destiny style game, and so they pushed the Games as Service angle on a concept hat ultimately doesn't really fit it. And even though I enjoyed the game it was definitely made worse because of all the stuff they just cribbed from Destiny. Levels and stats that actually mattered and weren't just gatekeeping tools would have made this a better game. More frequent ability usage would have changed some characters to be significantly better, for instance. But no, this is a tragic tale of a game lost due to corporate meddling and short sighted greed. Not even normal greed. Normal Greed would have been fine. If the game was tuned to be single player at launch with just some multiplayer, you could have sold expansions for years that people would have picked up to add their favorite characters. THey could sell costumes still and people would have bought them. But no, they went Games as Service Grind and dumb lootboxes. Such a waste.

Not that anyone asked, but my official how fun are these characters to play list.

1. Iron Man
2. Thor
3. Black Widow
4. Spider-Man
5. Hulk
6. Ms. Marvel
7. Black Panther
8. Hawkeye (Kate)
9. Hawkeye (Clint)
10. Captain America

I didn't touch Winter Soldier or Mighty Thor so....

Next Up: Spider-Man: Friend or Foe (but actually Starfield, so.....it might be a minute).

[Lukmendes]

I feel that costume got used in games more than it ever did in the comics.

It showed up all of one time in the comics I'm sure lol.

Other than (maybe) Batman, Spider-man has probabaly had a better history of videogame adaptions than any other single superhero, although the X-men have had quite a few good ones as well.

Didn't Batman have in general forgettable or bad games before Arkham series came around?

[hobnob]

Low key hoping Spider-Man 2 next month gives us a comic-faithful KLH moment of Peter climbing out of a grave saying 'Mary Jane, I love you.' Gotta get that brand synergy!

[Speed Force League Unlimited]

Friend or Foe is a very very formulaic game, I hope xenon enjoys the charming bits more than focusing on the boring formula.

The PSP game drops the charm and keeps the generic level play style. Boss fights don't have distinct styles at all from what I experienced, playing as other characters is less pleasant, and it overall sucks.

Didn't Batman have in general forgettable or bad games before Arkham series came around?

Batman on NES and Lego Batman are pretty good. But yeah, stinkers for him standout more.

[Xenon]

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
Platfoms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Released: October 2nd, 2007
Notables: Last Co-op Spider-Man At the time of this writing?
Rating: 6/10
Thoughts: I must admit this one made me nervous. I've considered myself a Spider-Man fan forever, but I didn't get nearly as deep into it until 2010 when I was reading the comic. But I still paid attention to Spider-Man stuff. I played Spider-Man 2 at launch. I anticipated the Spider-Man 3 release only to be disappointed. I paid attention when Shattered Dimensions was announced. But this game completely passed me by until years later. It just....didn't exist. When I was looking up Spider-Man games I found it and was confused. And it wasn't like this was some small handheld release! It was a full console release! It was made by Next Level Games! They made Punch-Out for the Wii and the 2nd and 3rd Luigi's Mansion games (I mean, later, but still). And things didn't start great either. I put the game in my 360 and it...just wouldn't start. Not sure what was going on there, but it was a persistent problem. I was eventually able to get around it by putting ANOTHER game in the 360 first (I used Web of Shadows), and then once that loaded opening the tray and launching Friend or Foe from the main menu. So I was pretty nervous this was some slapdash effort thrown together to make a quick buck and then forgotten about almost immediately. I mean, t came out the same year as Spider-Man 3 so....kinda nervous. But I was pleasantly surprised, Friend or Foe is...kinda good?

So the weirdness doesn't actually stop. After Spider-Man 3 I said we were done with the movie era of games, but that....wasn't really correct. Friend or Foe is a Movie licensed game. There's even a big logo that comes up at the start that says it's official movie merchandise. And what that amounts to is....they used the designs of Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and New Goblin. And that's it. It's not the same timeline because all those people are alive and that isn't a thing that would be true post those movies (Venom too, of course). But hey, we have here what I would have told you would be the last appearance of the Raimi Green Goblin ever but we live in a strange timeline where No Way Home means that isn't even true lol! But whatever. What IS this thing? Well it's a co-op level based 3D brawler. Nick Fury (old white Nick Fury as was the style at the time) takes Spider-Man and recruits him to go all over the world to recover other shards of the meteor that held Venom. SOMEONE has been using one of hhese shards along with hardlight holograms to create a hologram Symbiote army and it's your job to stop them. So go through five levels each with 4 stages, beat up bad guys, recruit friends, and save the day. It's rather simple and straight forward. No open world here, your web swinging is an after thought (though it is an attack). There are upgrades to both your stats, your partner's stats, and your web abilities, but they're rather minimal and will quickly be maxed out. Level design is nothing special either. You basically just run from one area to another , occasionally doing some platforming, where enemies will appear and you have to beat them up. Unfortunately there's only really four enemies besides the bosses in the whole game. While there are some variants within each type, it's not that noticeable nor does it change your approach. Combat on your end is pretty simple. You have one attack button, one web button, and one jump. You also have access to four consumable powerups at any time. A damage up, an invincibility, a heal, and a super move that will destroy any enemy on screen. Oh, and you can switch to your partner at any time. Yes this is the big gimmick in Spider-Man Friend or Foe. For the first time since I believe Seperation Anxiety this game is co-op. In fact the whole game is built around it. You always will have two characters on every mission. Spider-Man and one other. New characters are found from completely the levels, some other heroes along with the bosses that you beat over time. It's an odd choice for a Spider-Man game, honestly. Honestly, there's not really much about this game that says it was a Spider-Man game originally. It's kind of just a 3D brawler. It didn't have to be a Spider-Man game at all.

And yet....they really did put a lot of Spider-Man into this game. For one thing, it's...*****ny? Yeah, it's funny. Not hilariouis but jokes are made and I laughed. And the partner selection is shockingly in the know. I will never not complain about the arcade game 's use of Hawkeye and friggin' NAMOR. Friend or Foe suffers no such nonsense. The first two characters (at least on Xbox where SS is an exclusive) available to you are Prowler and Silver Sable. The first character that joins you is Black Cat. Over time you'll get Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Iron Fist, The Lizard, Sandman, Rhino, Blade, New Goblin, Scorpion, and Venom. That's...a pretty good and very spider-specific cast. The most afar out character is probably Iron Fist, another street level guy. And every character has unique voiced lines to respond to Spidey's jokes. This is clearly a game that had a limited budget, but it's also a game that I think the developers cared about. Unfortunately, the basicness of the game eventually catches up with it. I was really enjoying the first couple of levels but there just isn't enough to keep the game going from there. What you play through in the first level is basically all the game is. The bosses are unique and actually decently designed but also generally very simple. While I almost never died except from falling off a stage, the penalty for death is very minimal, just some upgrade currency. That said, I only died to one boss, and it was because again I fell off the edge (and even then I could have finished with Black Cat but I didn't want to so I had her jump off the edge and restarted.

Also, and this is SPOILERS, but the big bad of this game is Mysterio. Now, I'm cool with this. Mysterio is my favorite villain I think. But it's kind of amazing that I think he's the most common big bad, and consistently so. He's the big bad of the Amiga game, Spider-Man 2 on Game Boy, Mysterio's Menace for the GBA, this, and hey I already know he's the boss of Shattered Dimensions. It just confirms Mysterio Supremacy, as I've known all along. He's a great character for a video game boss. I just think it's wild that he has been the final boss probably most of all. It's him or Venom, but I've already forgotten too many of the games haha.

Spider-Man Friend or Foe is not a good game. But it's also not a bad one. I played through the whole game with Black Cat because I'm a sucker for romance (Fury references "Spider-Man's girl" but says nothing identifying. This IS the last game released before OMD though so.....) and I didn't have a bad time, but I was kinda ready for it to be over about a level before it was actually over. But I'm glad I played it. And because it's not just another open world game, it occupies a niche that means I think it holds whatever value it has. One of the problem with the last couple of games is that, while there's still some enjoyment to be had ,the whole time i was playing it I remembered how it was in the Insomniac game, which is just BETTER. But Friend or Foe does something that that game doesn't. And so if you want to play a co-op Spider-Man game where your buddy gets stuck as a sidekick, this is a fun little game to play through, even if it isn't that amazing.

Next Up: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

[Xenon]

It showed up all of one time in the comics I'm sure lol.



Didn't Batman have in general forgettable or bad games before Arkham series came around?

Batman on NES was the first NES game I ever got (obviously, the system came with SMB/Duck Hunt) and I legit think it's a top twenty NES game...probably, the top of that system is stacked. It's very good but until about five to ten years ago it was a hidden gem. These days it's generally recognized as a classic. The next few games are also not that bad, but after that his games get really bad and stay really bad until Batman Begins, which isn't good, but is kind of decent. And then of course Arkham just changed the game.

Low key hoping Spider-Man 2 next month gives us a comic-faithful KLH moment of Peter climbing out of a grave saying 'Mary Jane, I love you.' Gotta get that brand synergy!

You know that's not that crazy of an idea.

Friend or Foe is a very very formulaic game, I hope xenon enjoys the charming bits more than focusing on the boring formula.

The PSP game drops the charm and keeps the generic level play style. Boss fights don't have distinct styles at all from what I experienced, playing as other characters is less pleasant, and it overall sucks.

Batman on NES and Lego Batman are pretty good. But yeah, stinkers for him standout more.

I'd say overall I was pleasantly surprised by Friend or Foe. It's definitely light on content and depth, but what's there is good and entertaining. I liked it enough i got all the Achievements in it before I moved on, though the only hard part to that was beating the last boss a dozen times to get enough upgrade currency to upgrade all the sidekicks.

[Xenon]

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Released: October 1st,2008
Notables: Uh...MJ gets a Shotgun...that's cool.
Rating: 8/10
Thoughts: So this one I played before, 2011 again it seems. My reading of Spider-Man caused me to really go in on other media, including this. At the time it was a game that some people talked about as a hidden gem and honestly that crowd has only grown over time. Yet this game got bad reviews at launch. I remember liking it fine the first time around where I went full good, but nonetheless I was curious to see how I'd feel about it coming back now years later.

First, let's start with the one thing i only have effusive praise for, the character designer. Plenty of characters are pretty standard, like Spider-Man himself, Wolverine, Moon Knight, and Luke Cage. But some of these designs are just fire. Electro looks probably the best he ever has. He's still wearing a version of his original design but it's modernized and just looks less goofy. Vulture's floating wings may give him a tech edge he hasn't really earned but they just look SO COOL. And even though I know it's that way because hair is hard to animate, Felicia looks gorgeous and I love that long ponytail she's rocking. Not to be outdone, MJ looks great too. I don't know who the designer was on this thing but I want them designing more comic book characters because even with the limitations of mid-7th gen tech and an obviously limited budget they come out looking really good. It's a great first impression, and really the game doesn't stop there. As soon as you pick up the controller and start moving it just FEELS better than any game has in the past. Even though the swinging is probably a little worse than it was in the last two games, overall it just feels good to move Peter around and fight bad guys. Combat has received a ton of focus and it shows. attack have wide areas of effect to combat the inherent awkwardness of 3-D combat, there are lots of upgrades that are meaningful and useful, you have two combat styles you can switch between at will and both feel good and fun and useful in different situations, and in fact most of the game is devoted to combat. While there are still technically saving people optional missions, honestly it was hard to complete them because they spawned so rarely (usually it was the side effect of my actions, to be frank). No everything was go find this bad guy and beat him up. Fortunately the game is pretty smart about having multiple bad guys. This isn't Friend or Foe. The story is actually decently well designed. You start getting attacked by Venom and taking MJ to the hospital for a broken arm. That ropes you into a gang war which leads to Kingpin setting them up which leads to people acting strange which leads to Venom which leads to the entire city being taken over and cut off by Shield and Black Widow (ok, this is the one design that the designer missed on) to a massive bomb and fight with a super venom. Whew. But it all kinda makes sense. There are some parts of the story they fumble, and the choice makes some other scenes make MJ look kinda crazy because she's lecturing you about being bad and Peter is apologizing but this run I was in the normal suit so....what?

And that's the other big thing about Web of Shadows. It has a morality system. Along the way you'll have several choices represented by the red suit (good) and the black suit (evil), and of course each route has a corresponding love interest, with MJ telling you to get rid of the black suit and do the right thing, and Black Cat telling you to have fun and do what you want (I'm starting to understand why people like BC more lol). And in an idea that's kind of advanced for the genre, the choices you make along the way do kind of matter. Counterintuitively not really at the time. While they each cause slightly different scene to happen, the results don't actually change from what you pick. The bad guys that get away still get away, no one dies that shouldn't, even if you do rip Wolverine in half in one of the choices. No the choices influence your morality meter and your morality meter determines the choice Peter makes at the end of the game. That's right, you don't get to pick, because you already picked. And who you've made your Peter into determines what he does there. There's actually another choice after this that has some minor impact but it's mostly flavor. No the only choice that actually matters is the one right before the end, when Felicia is hurt and MJ is there after helping you beat Symbiote Black Cat with a Shotgun she got form Luke Cage I guess (as a side note, PEter and MJ have 100% exposed his secret identity between the two of them. With him being openly affectionate and concerned for her and her yelling PETER all over the place the man might as well take off the mask), and you have to pick between the two of them. Though this is kind of a fake choice as well. Kind of. It does matter. If you pick MJ and you get the good ending, you go off swinging with MJ at the end, the ending achievement is named after her. If you pick Black Cat and get the evil ending, she too is right there with you at the end. But If you mix it up Peter is left alone. In the good ending he's calling MJ (even though he picked Felicia?) to explain himself but mentions nothing about the "I NEED her" stuff with Felicia so....awkward.....and in the evil ending he says he's going to get MJ back and ominously says no one will ever say no to him again, which is....pretty evil. So yeah. It's also worth noting you can get Black and Red points from every day missions, though Red is much harder to get than black, I'm not certain if this can override the choices you've made but I think it can. I believe it's just judging you based on your alignment meter which you can see in the pause menu, and the choices just heavily influence that meter. In any case, it's a fairly standard morality system and it works. I think it's also a big reason why people remember this game so fondly.

One thing I was struck by this time around is how "of its time" Web of Shadows is. Unfortunately like Spider-Man 3 this game heavily involves quick time events, in fact I'm pretty sure every boss fight ends in one and many have them in the middle of the fight as well. They're more forgiving than in the last game but I still don't really love them. But that's what you did in 2008. And the morality system, even though it mostly works with this story,, again was a thing that people were really big on at the time (Fable, Mass Effect). That and the slightly cheap models (Peter never takes off the suit, that would require them to build another one lol) really make this a distinctively 2008 game. But that's....ok. It is interesting how the first post-OMD game so heavily features MJ, but I guess it does give you a choice so...kinda fits. I will say that while I've been pretty praise heavy in this there's a lot of....minor issues that kind of add up. Combat is fun but not immaculate, there's little mission variety, and the game is obviously padded at times when it sends you out kill specific enemy types late in the game. Spider-Man 2 also had these kinds of missions, but that game was all about the open world. Here the open world exists but it feels more like something they had to do than what they wanted to do (another thing of its time). So at the end of the day I don't think the video game reviewers were crazy. If I take off my Spider-Man fan hat, I can't say I'd recomend it on its own merits. Being better than the previous Spider-Man games doesn't really matter in that sense. But as a Spider-Man fan? Yeah this game is good. Like as a fan my biggest complaint is the VA for Peter. I think because he wants to do a deep voice for Evil Peter he is pitching up his normal voice and its just grates on me. Outside of that though this is a great game for Spider-Man fans, and probably the best one yet. I played it through twice and got all four endings this time and I didn't mind it (mostly some of the bosses were annoying). So on this board it gets a recommend. Worth your time if you havne't played it before.

Next Up: Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Techincally Ultimate Alliance 2 should be next, but we're out of time. In fifteen days Spider-Man 2 comes out and I need to go through 5 more games before then, just including the Spider-Man focused ones, and oh yeah the longest ones are the last two. And really I'd like a small break between them and 2 so.....gotta cut out the side games for now. I'll swing back around to Ultimate Alliance 2 and Midnight Suns at least, maybe even the Lego games.

[Xenon]

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC
Released: September 7th, 2010
Notables: First appearance of Spider-Man 2099, First appearance of Spider--- Man Noir
Rating: 8/10
Thoughts: This one is a bit of a milestone, because with this I have beaten every single Spider--Man released as of today that was released after 1990, I think. Whenever that Gameboy game came out. Ironically though, this was probably the first game I owned besides Maximum Carnage, Spider-Man for PS1/N64/DC and Spider-Man The movie game for Gamecube. 2010 is when I started reading comics and so when the new game came out I grabbed it. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, I didn't play it. I actually had read both Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Man 2099 by this point, mostly thanks to a shop near where I lived going out of business and discounting everything 75% and more over time. But I didn't want to play it until I had read ASM and USM, just in case they referenced things from those stories in their section. Which they kind of did, but frankly I needn't have bothered. In any case, due to this and my not reading USM until 2014 I just never actually got around to this one (in my defense, my xbox broke and I didn't replace it for several years). But now, finally, I've gotten around to playing it and man I was missing out.

Now in fairness this is a step down in story from both Web of Shadows and Edge of Time. The story is little more than an excuse to do the gameplay they wanted, which is a little disappointing. I'm a gameplay first kind of guy, but story absolutely enhances a game and my favorites are almost all my favorites in part due to story (combined with amazing gameplay, obviously). But whatever, to their credit, the game does a good job with Spider-Man's jokes. Particularly 2099. I liked his VA the least of the four, but he had the best lines I think, and I laughed several times throughout the game. But like I said, I'm a gameplay first kind of guy, and on that front Shattered Dimensions wins. It eschews the open world of the last several games outside of Friend or Foe, and instead goes with bespoke levels, each themed around a specific villain and Spider-Man. Each Spider-Man gets three levels and between the twelve almost all the biggest rogues are covered in one version or another, though not necessarily the most common, of course. Green Goblin, Vulture, Hobgoblin, Hammerhead, Sandman, Carnage, Eelctro, Doctor Octopus, Kraven, Scorpion, and a couple of non-traditional picks in Juggernaut and Deadpool. And of course, it all ends iwth Mysterio, which is no spoiler since he's in the game from the beginning. Mysterio is my favorite villain as I said before, so I'm totally here for all the love he gets int eh video games. I hope the third Insomniac game gives him a big part as well. Webswinging, and in fact webs in general are pretty unimportant but combat overall feels good and responsive. Each of the four Spider-Man play similarly but do have slight variations to make them feel different. 2099 and Ultimate also get a bit of an advantagein their accelerated vision (which slows everyone down) and rage (which powers him up) modes, while Amazing and Noir just kinda get nothing. Several moves are unlocked through collecting essense, which is obtained both from completeing challenges (which are necessary to unlock upgrades) and just by defeating enemies. Some of them also have kind of distinct game play segments. Noir is the big one. He's very focused on stealth and takedowns, having dedicated stealth sections with an alarm system if you're seen and a darkness system where the screen goes black and white when you're covered in teh darkness. He really does play different from the rest as a result, with much of his stages devoted to sneaking around and executing stealth takedowns on machine gun wielding enemies (to discourage you from trying to fight them in the open). 2099 doesn't have quite that distinct a section, but there are a couple of free falling segments in his stages where you have to dodge obstacles and catch up to the bad guy. But really I'd sayh that while all of them look kind of different It's really just the Noir stages and the rest of the stages.

The final boss is of course fought with all four, with each character getting their own unique section, again, kind of. Noir must sneak up on the super powered Mysterio, 2099 must catch him in a free fall, but both Ultimate and Amazing just have to beat up a bunch of bad guys. The result is that the game feels a tiny bit rushed, in that there are systems that really only apply to half the cast in a couple of instancesm, but overall is still quite satisfying. This was my favorite Spider-Man game so far, slightly edging out Web of Shadows. Though to be fair, I think because of the Insomniac game I don't appreciate the open world parts of games like Spider-Man 2 and Web of Shadows as much as I would without that superior version out there. Story may be weak, but this is a legitimately great game, and one you'll have a lot of fun with if you haven't played it. As a Spider-Man fan, it's a must play for sure.

Next Up: Spider-Man: Edge of Time

[Huntsman Spider]

Looking forward to your take on Edge of Time. Considering that one was actually written by Peter David, (co)creator of Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 himself, that might explain why the story was better compared to Shattered Dimensions.