let’s play as spider-man in SPIDER-MAN, insomniac’s game about spider-man starring spider-man

dont say that, reach for your draems

uuugh fine, i'll buy this like a chump

hell yeah, let’s all play as spider-man in SPIDER-MAN

in case you needed more encouragement

here is little reason to use fast travel in Marvel's Spider-Man. Manhattan, as Insomniac Games draws it, is a sparkling but compact metropolis: no two points are far apart. More importantly, getting from A to B is an authentic delight for this particular Spider-Man. The web-swinging is endlessly enjoyable with its lullaby see-sawing between the city streets and the wild blue sky. Why would you want to skip all that just to get to your destination a few seconds sooner?

If you do use fast travel, however, you'll realise afresh just what a charming outfit Insomniac Games truly seems to be. Fast travel is handled with a loading screen, sure, but what a screen! Here's Spidey on the subway, in full costume, checking his phone, arm hanging from an overhead strap, swaying gently with the shuffle of the carriage. There are several takes on this idea, inevitably. In one of them he nods along with a stereo that's been propped on a seat next to him. In another, a man is asleep and resting his head on Spider-Man's shoulder. There is something brilliant about Spider-Man, in costume, amongst the disinterested crush of fellow travellers. Batman would never ride the tube like this.
Marvel_s_Spider_Man_20180906152227

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-07-the-fast-travel-in-marvels-spider-man-is-touched-with-genius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pHh-ONsuxQ

Please tell me that's actual gameplay footage, please.

I wish. but to be Batman *and* Spiderman is to fly too close to the sun.

This game is a joy.

First time in ages I've gone to a game shop and paid full price on release day. The shop was queued from the counter to the door with people buying Spider-Man.

Played an hour so far and loved every minute. I seem to be shit at Spideying my way out of getting shot.

is there a button to say his famous catch phrase, "i am the spider-man"?

i don't think i'll be playing it, but this is really cool

The architecture in Spider-Man is some M.C. Escher shit.https://t.co/AKhtZUdtvQ pic.twitter.com/yvKSfowiHV

— chris person (@Papapishu) September 8, 2018

god this game is so much fun

unlocking some aerial moves and swinging through ny pulling off stunts at the apex of every mighty swing is worth the price of entry on its own

I love this game already pic.twitter.com/EorWtzSeBm

— Jamie McKelvie (@McKelvie) September 8, 2018

Ok should I buy a ps4 for this

yeah

i mean if you like spidey i dunno what else you’d want from a game, it pretty much nails it

there’s even a mission where you have to chase down the garbage truck where peter’s stuff has been dumped after he gets evicted for non-payment of rent, which is kinda the distilled essence of spider-man imo

Yeah this game is real fun.

holy shit the combat in this is so so so so fun. far more fun than the arkham games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1SpVYmcTGM

Poor kid, has an Xbox.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, September 6, 2018 6:12 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me, every year since 2001.

The game looks like a blast.

finished. good stuff, Spidey!

...and I Platinum'd it. Thankfully you don't need to 3* all the challenges, you just need enough medals to buy the suits (no trophies for buying all the suit powers / upgrading your gadgets all the way). I don't think I'll ever perfect those drone and bomb challenges, but the combat and stealth ones are pretty doable with the right tricks. Also, you don't need to get the hidden suit for getting all the hidden photos, but i did it anyway. Boy that took a while even with a guide.

there are two trophies that are basically the kind you have to stumble upon if you don't know them in advance (the "pay respects" and "high five" ones) but the rest can be gotten fairly organically

burned through this so fast, kinda tempted to buy the DLC though i generally don't like supporting those at full price

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/9il92t/playing_spiderman_when_i_found_a_building_that/

Nice video about how the little things contribute to the joy of playing this game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQvR5M4_FQ

anybody played the DLC yet?
I'm short of finishing the taskmaster bullshit to get all the costumes (never gonna happen) and curious to see if it's worth jumping back in.

also curious. frankly most games i'm willing to wait a year for the DLC pass to go on sale but this one juuuuust had me hungry enough to keep going and pay for more.

btw you don't have to 3* ALL the Taskmaster stuff to get all the costumes (thank God), just make sure you buy all the suits and suit powers, you DON'T have to max out the gadget powers

spider-man and spider-man pay tribute to the ‘spider-man points at spider-man’ meme in SPIDER-MAN, insomniac’s game about spider-man starring spider-man

https://66.media.tumblr.com/aac0881b40905ae69f560a3296e3986f/tumblr_pgv0w8FfPQ1qfz9cf_500.jpg

this game is the bomb. i'm all in. so so satisfying crushing fools.

it's funny when you get a new skill and then you forget you have it for a few days and then you're like ahhhh fuck why am i not doing that and then you do it! and it works like a dream!

i just met taskmaster and dudes sorta hard. i guess i need to dust off my throwables. i hardly ever use anything but electric webs and the normal webs. i bought the little spider-bot which i never use. as for the suits i only use the one which stuns everyone with electricity for awhile. i can't see the advantages of the other ones really.

anyway SPIDER-MAN

Heh, my wife threatened to rewrap this and regift it to me for my birthday if I don't play it soon. Today!

i did not actually like it for the first day or two. felt too much like an arkham rip-off, i didn't have the knack for webslinging yet, and the story felt lame. but now when i play it's like, i don't even think about it. i just strap in. and suddenly it's 1:30am

I think the controls are more straightforward than the arkham games, or they at least do hinting in a way that I've caught on to much better.

I didn't hit the top tier on all the challenges but found most of the battles relatively surmountable. The most recently released DLC has at least one warehouse that's just *difficult* if you try to fight in a straighforward way without doing a lot of evasion and separating goons.

battles where every bad guy has either a Sable gun, jetpack, armor, or is one of the heavies really makes you work for it

i am currently addicted to web-swing kicks. takes out the bullys and the shield guys too.

it was a revelation when i realised i don't just have to stay ON THE GROUND - i can zip up, away, anywhere!

most definitely

I forget it after playing other games and coming back, but it's rigged such that the more you're in the air, the more effective you are!

big fan of doing the launch punch followed by yanking a second dude into the air with webs, it's a hilarious use of implausible spider-physics

there's a challenge in one of the dlc chapters where you're supposed to do gadget-only takedowns and it's all a combo of the gadget that levitates a group of enemies followed by tossing the web tripmines at them

Web Blossom is my favourite feels-like-cheating power. You can take out a whole rooftop of bad guys in one move.

wait.. they stay webbed?? i bought it but (as i detail above) still haven't used it yet

It works well on roofs and near walls as the baddies stick to anything they're close to.

Like this

https://youtu.be/m1jyAQ7nc98

quite ready to deploy that shit. i just started encountering the sable-suited dudes.

i'm just now post-prison break

its’s like throwing a bunch of web bombs around you at once

the electrify gloves one is necessary in the “zap ten at once” challenges

I have officially played 1% of this! It's a blast, but I feel like I already need to start over and learn the controls. I'm so bad at remembering these things, and it all goes by so fast.

i felt the same way but eventually things start clicking into place

why are these games always so goddamn long though?? i mean it's good but sheesh

I thought the main plot was pretty concise! You really should do some side stuff before getting there, though

we’re in a much difference place now compared to the jrpg days when my roommate was playing dragon quest and was like “i’m only 80 hours in!!”

by modern open world standards Spidey's pretty brisk, I think I completed it in like 25 hrs or so

I mean the other answer, I assume, is that games have a pretty hefty lead up time in production, just to get to the point where you can start making content - so if the game was half as long it would still cost 80% as much. And a lot of loud video games fans have opinions on value for money.

ya down with dlc?

love this game, not sure I'm willing to pay £6.49 for another "chapter"

waiting for a discount on the pass myself

me too.

just beat the game, very much enjoyed it, but deleted it about 20 mins later to make room. too much to play, sorry dlc!

Bought this Sunday, actually got dizzy swinging to the first mission, and was overwhelmed with all the button prompts during the combat. #lolold

I recently played through the 'city that never sleeps' DLC stories for the last game as it was v cheap in a sale. I really got into the game again as the cannon fodder had better cannons and all the difficulty felt tweaked up just enough to make it more interesting but not too much to put an old gamer off

fuck an 'MJ sneaking around' mission forever btw

lol. very “dragonlance” those scenes.

the MJ stuff was the most gaming broccoli of gender equality ever
if you really want to even the field a bit just give us an option where I can play as Spectacular Spider Jane and my intrepid reporter boyfriend Peter is in all the cutscenes.

Idk if I'll ever be able to shake the term gaming broccoli from my mind now

sorry?

No it's very good

i think we could make a pretty solid list of gaming broccoli.
Final Fantasy character customization screens come to mind immediately.
maybe worth a thread?

I'm 100% in on that thread once I process it fully and have examples. It's def a vibe I know well

any and all escort missions

i'm defining it in my head as "necessary and unavoidable play activity included by designers for [fullness of experience / game balance / inclusivity / customization / anticipation for the next climax / lore building] that is, nevertheless, not fun"

i'm not sure you can avoid adding some broccoli in almost any game
like you wouldn't think Mortal Kombat has any but then you remember
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfwTG1EvL2c

gaming broccoli is a great term. especially as a category it generates some interesting onward thinking (is the way kojima serves his broccoli the main part of what makes his games distinctive? because *so much broccoli* you could even argue he made a virtue of it in death stranding).

but yeah, how do we get the action/character from a-b, i suppose we’d better make this mission an escort mission, let’s send the character here before they can encounter x boss or get y upgrade, or *time for a laborious info dump to explain stoopid premise of the next mission. all classics of their genre.

I'm not sure that I'd find the term that useful (sorry forks) - I mean FFVII arguably is a materia management sim with some very large mini games - is the story broccoli?

And most stealth sections levered in are less "we should do this" and more "we have to expand this sequel, what are the kids into".

So I'd see (keeping on that kind of example) the Spyro sequels where the charging around and head butting / flaming things is interspersed with dull levels where you have to play other characters - I'd see a line separating that from the Starcraft missions where there's no new resources, you have a small team in an enemy base and you'll get reinforcements at specific points. The latter seems a lot more like "what does our toolkit allow us to do?"

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe Insomniac had a burning desire for more Sheila the Kangaroo, and Blizzard had to be forced at gunpoint to make soloish levels so that the players had heroes to 'identify with'.

I've probably mentioned before but I was overjoyed to get to the bottom of the high-up dungeon on the home island in Wind Waker, because the game gave me the thing I went in there for, and a portal out, AND an entrance to more levels!

Which yeah, you like a game if you like the gameplay, but the concept of gameplay isn't a monolith. After I finished Ico, I hipped a friend to it, and she came round to play it. She really loved it - apart from the bits where you whacked at the shadow kids with your sword, where she'd hand the controller back to me. But the fighting parts are still part of the game, and contribute to the tone (and mounting horror), right?

I'm hesitant to push this theory too far, as the end point may be the claim that watching a progress bar fill is protected gameplay, which is basically the Anti-Life Equation.

i dont think story/cutscenes are ever broccoli unless they're interrupting a good gameplay sequence and breaking up your flow

Spidey But Better is like Spidey, but better!

I really like the new supercharge not-stolen-from-infamous power but not had much fun with my invisibility cloak yet.

Early days yet so I have lots to work out with gadgets and upgrades and skill trees.

Looks nuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrPZSq5YXqc

did they remember to put spider-man in this one?

goddamn it now i have to get a PS5

i for one am excited to play as play as spider-man 2 in SPIDER-MAN 2, insomniac’s game about spider-man 2 starring two spider-men

Look Who's Spider-Man Too!

Spider-Man all symbiote'd out fighting Kraven? Sure, why not

lol the story and cut-scenes in this are so shit

so glad they inserted a walking simulator section where you clean the kitchen

The first game or the second (or Miles)? I think I read that the sequel cost significantly more than the first game, like triple, and also that the game, despite strong sales, hasn't come close to breaking even. But I've also heard that it looks and plays more or less the same, or at least as more of the same, which is fine by me. I liked Spider-man, but I think I have low game standards.

oh all the fighting and swinging is great. i'm not a huge fan of the tag-team dynamic, the main effect of which is to make you forget which button to mash as they have one shared abilities tree, as well as separate ability trees. it's just astonishing how much attention they can put into like a million dolby atmos sand droplet effects but none into making the faces look like they're actually talking human words

just so much stupid sub-sitcom stuff like peter’s nervous that MJ won’t like the clutter in his house so you have to make him throw the “old” fruit away yet the bananas are still yellow and the apples are fine. his mortgage is more than 4k per month on his aunt’s huge place and he doesn’t have the money and MJ’s like “i’ll pay for it!” and peter’s like “i don’t deserve you! *snuggles*” like what

feels like they’re trying to take a few pages from naughty dog’s book but it’s harder to make this stuff work than it looks.

at one point miles, as spider-man, says “i gotta go tell spider-man!” uh you are spider-man bud

just playing now, noticed peter can apparently stick to foam tile drop ceilings. how does the physics work here

peter’s shooting hoops with his old school friend. now, if you’re going to do a basketball minigame, could it at least be fun? if not, could you at least mimic the shot mechanic of 2k, which is how millions of people all over the world play video game basketball? anyway, they’re just trading shots in street clothes as they reminisce and bro down, and say one point pete’s friend says “hey what’s the score?” the score? you are just trading shots. there’s no score. it’s not a game. it’s not even horse. every bit of non-action gameplay and scripting appears to have been written by an ai

oh and i’m piissed i didn’t get a trophy for swishing every shot

Who's laughing now?

early on spidey is talking to a fellow nerd on some kind of comm as he swings around the city and his friend is like “the city’s communication grid is down! but i have an idea.. maybe we can set up our own network to communicate!” and spidey says back “ok great idea” except with more wisecracking obviously, and then his friend is like “get to the top of that building and find a launcher, that’ll send up a drone which will form the first node of the network, then we can communicate” and spidey says back, into his comms device, “that’s brilliant”

It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Like, literally.

i did like the underwater nightmare sequence tbf