What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Mustang]

Even though I finally settled on my character choice for SF5 (Ken, Kolin/Karin), I'll be taking a little break from it now. Having both Spiderman and Dragon Quest 11 to play for quite some time. If any changes come to SF5 of course I have to try them out so I don't get too far behind, but other than that my time will be occupied with those 2 games for perhaps the remainder on the year (with a sprinkle of SF5)

Also, I really hate that you have to wait till the game is installed on the ps4 in order to play any game. Especially when my internet sucks to begin with. Whatever happened to just pop in disc and just play?

[Dr. Insomniac]

[Mustang]

Spiderman
Fun game. The only problem I'm having is controls and that's more of getting used to it. Other than that I'm having a blast with it. I hope people pump the brakes when it comes to saying this should be game of the year though. Maybe I'll feel different when I get more abilities unlocked but at the moment, no. This game do take me back though. The days when you unlocked costumes and those costumes gave you powers, I've missed that. To me, that's more of an achievement than trophies and leader boards.

I want to say that this should've been Rocksteady's project more so than Insomiac. Spiderman is definitely an Arkham clone, but I think Rocksteady would've definitely had more polished controls. Anyway, with that being said, as I get used to combat I'm getting that feeling of this might be able to pull me out this funk.

[Mustang]

Spiderman
Can't help but draw comparison's to the Arkham series the further you get into the story. Where it lose at for me is combat, but I don't think there's much that could've been done in that department considering that Spider-Man's no martial arts expert. But I can't help but think that when you make a game that's very close to the Arkham games, Spiderman needs to do more than what he's doing in terms of hand-to-hand combat. Whatever on that though. The main part I hate about this game is chasing stuff. I just hate that aspect in all games. But here it's push me a few times because I'm not that great when it comes to swinging, not to mention I hit walls a lot.

If it weren't for the Batmobile, Arkham Knight would be a 10/10 game, but with it it's about 7-8/10 (for being forced), and while I don't think Spiderman lives up to the hype it's been getting I do think it's a great game. I'm not finished with it. I've been doing a lot of the street missions and stuff.

Spoiler

From what I've seen of the story, Miles and MJ are there for stealth. I hate that. I rather not have them playable if that's all they're going to do

[close]

There's quite a few directions I can see this going if this was going to be an ongoing series.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I actually find that I much prefer the combat in this game to any of the Arkham games. Mind you, this is no DMC, obviously, but it actually takes more from Spider-Man 2 in regard to combat than Arkham (a lot of people don't realize that it was Arkham that took several concepts from that game to begin with), though Arkham's influences can be felt in a number of other ways of course.

The combat in both this game and Arkham is incredibly shallow, of course, but where I have a bit more fun with this one is that Spider-Man is a far more agile character than Batman and thus doesn't have to be so grounded for combat. I watched some of TS17's videos on this game and he specifically mentions not to play it like an Arkham game and make sure to mix things up by moving/swinging around a lot in combat and using more of Spider-Man's web-based moves as it's both more fun and efficient (he's currently doing a no-damage run on Spectaculular difficulty). I find that this advice holds true and made all the difference for me. While the core combat itself is basically glorified button-mashing, there is at least some strategic element to movement in these scenarios provided that you're playing on hard mode.

While I do enjoy casually swinging around the city, I do agree with you about hating the chase missions. I especially dislike how finicky the responsiveness of the controls are when you get close enough to a vehicle and have to press triangle to latch onto it. There are times when I hit it and nothing happens despite the fact that the icon is clearly being displayed right in front of me to notify me that I'm close enough to make contact. It's just not fun under most circumstances and outright frustrating at worst.

I also find the stealth in this game to be laughably bad and it's somehow even more shallow than Arkham's with only about three takedown options and just one way of distracting enemies. I tend not to use it unless I'm in a segment where I'm forced to.

On the whole I do enjoy the core gameplay of this title enough to want to at least finish the main story, but in other ways it succumbs to many of the numerous issues that I find plague modern game design and that really holds it back from being something special to me.

[Mustang]

That's fair assessments. Admittedly, I do play Spider-Man like Arkham out of habit, and I'll also admit that the most fun parts of the combat is definitely when you don't play that way. It's been so long since I played Spider-Man 2 that I can only remember it in bits, but I think I see what you're saying when saying Arkham took parts from Spider-Man 2. There are times when I can't be bothered with TS17's vids (something about him rubs me the wrong way, but that's a story for a different day) but I should check out his Spider-Man vids to see how he handles combat. I'd love to see XCV or Zevik get their hands on the game though (no commentary = win)

I thought it might've been just me when it comes to how finicky the controls felt, especially during chases (I've felt it a couple times during combat where I thought I dodge but still got hit). Chasing birds and cars felt more like button mashing segments because of how finicky the controls are. Hitting buildings don't help either.

For me what also makes stealth not so good is that your "gadgets/abilities" are limited. But the recharge after battle. I don't mind the abilities being limited per use, but the gadgets, come on. The stealth could've been so much better if players could just let loose (Not to mention beams, light fixtures and whatnot are also limited to 1 per enemy)

I haven't played in a couple of days, but honestly I think I've played enough of it. My desire to finish the story is low right now. I'll probably boot it up come the weekend, but I'm tempted to just watch the remainder of it on YT. Not to mention I got Dragon Quest 11 to get to.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's fair assessments. Admittedly, I do play Spider-Man like Arkham out of habit, and I'll also admit that the most fun parts of the combat is definitely when you don't play that way. It's been so long since I played Spider-Man 2 that I can only remember it in bits, but I think I see what you're saying when saying Arkham took parts from Spider-Man 2. There are times when I can't be bothered with TS17's vids (something about him rubs me the wrong way, but that's a story for a different day) but I should check out his Spider-Man vids to see how he handles combat. I'd love to see XCV or Zevik get their hands on the game though (no commentary = win)

You aren't exactly alone. Quite a few people aren't a fan of TS17's personality and sense of humor. Personally, I'm OK with it as he tends to have the same taste in games that I do, and his commentary is pretty much spot-on when it comes to action games and their mechanics. Also, I heavily referred to his videos to get through games like Metal Gear Rising and DMC3 on their hardest difficulty settings, among others, and his commentary definitely came in handy on the toughest sections of those games.

I thought it might've been just me when it comes to how finicky the controls felt, especially during chases (I've felt it a couple times during combat where I thought I dodge but still got hit). Chasing birds and cars felt more like button mashing segments because of how finicky the controls are. Hitting buildings don't help either.

Yeah, it's a minor (but still very present) issue with the game. That said, the hitting building parts isn't so much of a problem if you tap "X" to zip forward in-between swings in order to keep yourself from losing altitude before you're next opportunity to latch and swing off of a ledge.

For me what also makes stealth not so good is that your "gadgets/abilities" are limited. But the recharge after battle. I don't mind the abilities being limited per use, but the gadgets, come on. The stealth could've been so much better if players could just let loose (Not to mention beams, light fixtures and whatnot are also limited to 1 per enemy)

It also kind of bothers me that enemies aren't instantly knocked out when you pull down heavy objects on top of them. That seems like a no-brainer, but no, you're only meant to use those for distractions. The last time I tried to knock a guy out by pulling a warehouse shelf on top of him, he only took some minor damage and I got instantly spotted. Obviously, it's not a big deal mechanically as once you know what can tip off enemies to your position you can just easily avoid doing it, but it just feels rather frustrating that some basic elements of good stealth gameplay don't seem to have been applied to those sections in this game. That said, I can at least tolerate the Spider-Man stealth sections. The MJ and Miles segments, though? Man do I hate those.

I haven't played in a couple of days, but honestly I think I've played enough of it. My desire to finish the story is low right now. I'll probably boot it up come the weekend, but I'm tempted to just watch the remainder of it on YT. Not to mention I got Dragon Quest 11 to get to.

Despite all of my complaints, I do still enjoy the game on a casual level. That said, much like Arkham City, it's the type of experience that I'll likely never come back to once I finish the main story. The core gameplay is just far too shallow and whereas other easy but fun games can keep me coming back to them with other well-designed elements that make them worth revisiting and exploring, this one feels like the type of experience where once you've reached the end of the first act, you've basically seen everything that it has to offer outside of the main story.

[Mustang]

Getting closer to the holiday's and my brother-in-law will be coming through so I'm preparing now (especially, seeing how there are no new games that I need to have day 1 for the remainder of the year)

I know for sure that his main game is Dragon Ball Fighterz. So for the most part I know we'll be playing that regularly. Now that Android 17 is out, I got a couple of teams in mind, but the main team, Bardock, Goku Black and Cell will see a lot of play for sure. I'm hoping my 17 will be developed (and me used to the game again) by the time he comes through

3rd Strike is also another game we play whenever he rolls through so we'll be firing that up (ps3 or x360 version though). Got the good ol Dudley and Yang ready for the rematch. I may bring out the Ryu as well.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 of course I could never put down permanently, but it's one I'm hoping he'll play with the nephew and my older brother.

I'd love to see if he'd be down to run a few games in Street Fighter x Tekken as well. That game gets very little love. I already know he's not going to bother with Marvel vs Capcom Infinite (nor Street Fighter 5 for that matter)

I'm looking into getting a landline in my room asap so I can start playing outta state folks soon.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh yeah, I did end up beating the main story of Spider-Man last week.

It was....pretty much an Arkham game with a Spider-Man skin. For what it's worth, it had been long enough since I last played an Arkham game (that was back whenever City released, I never bothered with Origins or Knight) that I wasn't as tired of the formula and ended up enjoying the experience. The story was also handled better than I expected, though the people who are raving about this being the best Spider-Man story ever are fucking nuts. I really can't get behind that sentiment at all.

I hate to sound like a broken record here, but once again TGBS pretty much nailed it with his brief review of this game. It's fun, it's fine, but it also limits itself a whole lot due to design philosophies that aren't really the best suited for crafting good action-based gameplay. What we have here is fine, but it never excels to being great due to certain factors that would make for more interesting and dynamic encounters in both combat and stealth. In essence, I basically feel about this game how a lot of critics of the MCU say they feel about those movies, in that it does a superb job of playing it safe and not being terrible by any stretch but also holding itself back from being truly spectacular (pun fully-intended, of course). That's not to say that I necessarily agree with all MCU movies being that way, but I definitely feel that way about this game.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Thanks for your review. It backs up my decision not to bother with it. I'm just done with Arkham style stuff.

I've mostly been playing old PC games off GOG. Stuff like the original Quake, Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon, Strife, and others. The modern game industry isn't putting out a whole lot that interests me. Not like I'm not going to play Smash like crazy (it'll probably be my last Smash game, though) but it feels like the industry is just reading water. Only a few good franchises and middle market stuff are really doing much to excite me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I figured that you'd also feel similarly to me if you played it for yourself. The thing about Arkham is, when Asylum came out, it was fresh enough to be interesting for what it was and it helped that everyone went into that game with low expectations due to the bad reputation of most licensed games (especially back then). I'll still give that game props for having fairly tight level design and being just long enough to show you all of the fun stuff that you could do and made collecting things actually feel worth it rather than trying to over-stuff itself with needlessly huge environments and lots of side content that only served to show how shallow and boring the game was at its core. That's where City lost me, personally, and Spider-Man has many of those same issues, even though it has parts that I enjoyed. Granted, I get why people enjoy it, which is fine, but I can't understand the insane level of praise it's getting when it hasn't really done anything new from Arkham or Spider-Man 2 other than slightly refining the gameplay mechanics from those games. Sure, the swinging mechanics are fun and well-designed, but that alone doesn't make for an interesting video game, and the game itself is sorely lacking in any meaningful variety or incentive to really delve deeper into its mechanics. I remember a game like Nioh got criticized for being rather repetitive with it's enemies, which is a fair knock against it, but even that game had really well-designed enemies and enough of them to create good variety for each given level even if those enemies ended up getting re-used a lot in later levels (again, though, they each had a lot of individual depth to their attacks and weaknesses, so I never personally got bored of fighting them). Comparatively, Spider-Man has the exact same enemy sets has Arkham games. There's normal guys who fight with fists, guys with guns/rifles/rocket launchers, guys with shields, guys with melee weapons, and bigger enemies that need to be stunned in some way before you can attack them or take them down. That's literally all of the enemy variety. The game tries to disguise this somewhat by creating different enemy factions, but it still doesn't change the fact that they all fight the exact same way no matter what skin they have on. It really negates a lot of potential for strategy and interesting use of the game's combat mechanics, and I felt the repetition a lot more here than in a game like Nioh or Devil May Cry.

And yes, I get that this is a different kind of game than titles like those, overall, but the point that I'm trying to make here is that I don't see why this game specifically gets a free-pass when it has numerous issues of its own. Again, I'm glad that a lot of people enjoyed the game, but the insane praise that it's getting just feels like a classic case of over-hyping something that is mostly pretty average with above average production values.

[Foggle]

Thankfully I never played Arkham Origins (despite owning it and all its DLC...) or Knight, so while I'm not a fan of the combat system, I should hopefully have a better time with Spider-Man than you did. As long as the web-swinging and story are good I'll probably enjoy it, since I played the hell out of the PS1/2 games as a kid. Nostalgia strikes again!

Right now I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic 2 with the restored content mods on Steam. These reinstate a lot of cut/bugged content, including an entire planet, and fix over 500 bugs! I can understand why people would have hated this game back when it came out due to it being released unfinished, but as this is my first playthrough in earnest, I'm really enjoying it. Like most Obsidian games, I find the combat uninteresting but the writing to be excellent. It's a very unique story for Star Wars, and I love that the player choices aren't as clear-cut good/evil as the ones in BioWare's game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Thankfully I never played Arkham Origins (despite owning it and all its DLC...) or Knight, so while I'm not a fan of the combat system, I should hopefully have a better time with Spider-Man than you did. As long as the web-swinging and story are good I'll probably enjoy it, since I played the hell out of the PS1/2 games as a kid. Nostalgia strikes again!

The story actually is pretty good, but I can't bring myself to agree with the sentiment that it's the best Spider-Man material outside of the comics (that honor belongs to TSSM and always will, in my book), and honestly I can't even say that it's better than all of the Spider-Man movies. I mean, better than TASM and Spider-Man 3 for sure, you could make a case for it being better than SM1 and Homecoming; though I'm kind of irritated at the recent backlash that the latter gets simply because it doesn't hammer home the tragedy of Peter Parker element that everyone says absolutely needs to be there for a Spider-Man movie to be good (Yeah, it's intrinsic to the character, but it's not like every good Spider-Man story ever is about beating down Peter). I definitely wouldn't put it above SM2, though, which, yeah, I know is weird since I used to call that movie overrated, but my opinion on it has completely 180'd over the years. Also, while on the subject of Spider-Man movies, I'm super excited for into the Spider-Verse (partly because I'm on the Miles Morales hype-train, and also the inclusion of Noir and Ham cinched the deal for me). And judging by the early reactions to Venom, Sony is going to need that movie to be a hit or they're pretty much screwed.

As for this game, the story pretty much goes like this for me: Act 1- Standard video game plot set-up shenanigans; Act 2- Fun middle-chapter antics but without any clear direction; Act 3- Incredibly exciting climactic encounters with genuinely emotional beats to the final few segments of the game. I think it's Act 3 that leaves everyone off with a strong impression of the game, and it's legitimately great material, but I do feel that the game's main plot kind of meandered at times in the first two acts. That said, I'll say that the J. Jonah Jameson radio antics legitimately contained some of the most fun and memorable dialogue that this game had to offer. It was genius having those segments play out when you are just swinging through the city, as you always have some form of entertainment going on rather than just awkwardly swinging in silence. That, and they recorded so many of these segments that I never heard one repeat once in my multiple hours playing through the game, and that includes the various side missions that I set out to complete.

[Foggle]

Sounds good. With everyone raving about the game, I've tried to temper my expectations before starting it, so knowing your thoughts on it helps! Personally, I've liked every Spider-Man movie (yes, even TASM 2) pretty well. Some of them are genuinely great, and the bad ones are at least funny to me. I'm actually really excited to see Venom since it sounds like a hilarious train wreck. I would agree that TSSM is the best adaptation of the character ever. Had it been allowed to continue and reach its conclusion it might have even ended up being the best take on the character period. I miss that show so much.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watching cutscenes from the game, I got the feeling the developers were trying to fix issues they had with the comics. Like having Miles show up earlier in Peter's life, or making Peter choose between saving Aunt May's life and saving the lives of others. Along with Stan saying he loved seeing MJ and Peter together.