Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man

Games
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LTTP but I just wrapped the Remastered edition up tonight, and my gosh was this a fun game! I let myself give up on it early because I felt the controls were to complex, but this time I got sucked into the visuals and the story and played on Easy (I never had to dip into Story Mode but I liked having the option) and had a fun and occasionally challenging experience (some enemies, on easy even, were real fucking bastards, like guys in whips or guys with jet packs - the entire Act 3 was rough but in a good way, given my characters power level by then). Also, I came to really enjoy the combat - the movement, the controls that made logical sense after maybe an hour or so of practice and use. The upgrades, gadgets, suit powers, new abilities, fun challenges and side content, even the QTE stuff was logical and led some incredible moments. I really did feel like Spiderman, and it was so well done!

I have to say, this story. Wow - some really good stuff. I think this is my favorite take on more than a few of these characters, from both a design and writing point of view, and the tale this tells in three acts is masterful, better than many comics in fact. You can tell the folks that worked on this are huge fans that really wanted to show the source material respect.

This game also made me consider a Marvel subscription to catch up on my titles - I haven’t read comics since around 2017 and I miss them now quite a lot.

Anyway, my son tells me to check out the DLC as it’s short and cool, so I’ll do that, and then onto Miles, which (especially given the events at the end of the main game), I’m incredibly pumped for!

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Miles is a shorter tighter experience but is also very good with an excellent story. I think they even improved on the feel of the web swinging slightly which was also very good in the first game.

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Controls that are too complex? That doesn’t sound great. I’m usually a gameplay first, story second guy, which is why I never really liked the Uncharted games even though I like the story-telling in there.

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They are, at least for the first hour or so, as it’s almost a meme how every few minutes they layer in new things, I laughed out loud both times I tried to get into the game.

“Okay, press Square to punch!” Sure, no big deal.
“Okay, now press Circle to dodge!” Okay, I got this.
“Now press R1+L1 to grab stuff in the environments with your webs!” Oh… uh, okay, sure.
“Okay, doing great! Now, press and hold Triangle to web yourself to an enemy, then Hold Square to air launch them, then use R2+L2 to web launch to this, okay, great, hey why are you still just punching?!”

That said.

The UI gives you reminder cues all the time, and it starts to become very logical. If you know that Circle is dodge because you are using it all the time, then when during a cut scene the game asks you to QTE and dodge an incoming rocket, guess what button you’ll be pushing? Circle. R2 and L2 combined let you web pull yourself to a location, so if you need to web pull yourself through an open helicopter during a cut scene, guess what you QTE there, as well? It starts to make logical sense as you play and after even just a few hours of actually giving it a real try, it became second nature.

You are spending level up points to learn new moves from time to time though most upgrades just improve how an existing move works, and there is a “move list” you can review if you just can’t remember or missed a tutorial pop up, but I found I could do what I was comfortable with and would run into my favorite moves, favorite gadgets, and favorite suit powers and I never got tired of using that stuff.

Also, I played on Easy and only maybe died/reloaded like half a dozen times in 20 hours. There is also Story Mode, but I’d try Easy first. It wasn’t easy for me, but it provided just enough challenge while learning the controls that I felt like how I spent my points and what level and upgrades I had were meaningful, and it was fun for some enemies that seemed hard at first to feel trivial later.

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Or you can be lazy like me and turn the QTE setting to ‘Auto’ and not push anything!

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I looked for such an option but didn’t see it! I looked twice! Ack. Well, if I had known it did exist (I should have Googled it to confirm) I would have for sure turned it to Auto because it was the only part of the game I actively disliked. Some missions were like “oh, here we go” but those tended to (in every case) turn into something really cool, so no real issues there. But QTE? Fuck QTE, I just wanted to enjoy the show!

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There’s also an option to skip those stupid puzzles.

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I recently finished God of War 3 Remastered (it’s a terrible game, don’t play it, it’s a waste of time), and one neat thing they did with their QTEs is that if it’s a Triangle, it’s at the top of the screen, if it’s Circle it’s on the right end of the screen, Square on the left, and Cross at the bottom. So just by screen position you know what to press. But I still failed it all the time, of course.

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Those didn’t bother me so much, I was pretty fast with them and when it looked like I might not want to deal I just looked up the solutions online (IGN had a decent Wiki page for them).

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Yeah, QTE is right below unskippable cut scenes for me.

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I’d also add un-pausable to that, too.

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Oh no kidding. I was playing Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and this long-ass cutscene started, and right then my aging (and unfortunately in the early stages of cognitive decline) mother calls me to ask me some IT Support type question that I’ve gone over with her a number of times already, and I missed the whole damned thing. I looked in the game folders to try to watch it later with no luck. Hope someone has uploaded the story cutscenes to YouTube or something by now.

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Hey all, I just started playing this a bit after a long hiatus. I’m at the story mission where you end up fighting dudes on Riker’s Island and you end up chasing Electro but you’ve run into a lot of named villains by then.

At some point you’re swept up by someone named Vulture but you get rid of him and are falling toward the water. Every time I got to this part the other night I just fell in the water and failed the mission. What’s the solution? Do I have to hit the R2 (swing) button at just the right moment or something to continue the pursuit? The game doesn’t prompt me or give me any hints here.

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Wish I could remember, but it’s been so long I can’t. Maybe it’s that, yeah?

I never ended up finishing the game (made the mistake of downloading RDR2 and well, that was that for any games for the next 6 months). Now that I picked it back up, I have lost all skills. So I’m starting back over and remembering just how darn good this game really is. It’s incredibly well done. I’m still on PS4 and not sure if I’ll stick with it, but it’s a great revisit.

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I think you may want the double-web/jump pull to something (maybe a buoy in the water)? Memory is funky, but I seem to recall that that portion may be the end of the chase sequence there before you move on.

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Thanks for the tip. Now if I can figure out what buttons those are again. :D

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double bumper, I think.

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I replayed the whole thing and this time I finished it, as well as the first DLC (The Heist).

I absolutely loved it. There’s a bit more repetition in some of the tasks, which I guess is par for the course for open world games. But the narrative, the voice acting, the gameplay, controls, and overall story were great. For me this is the best exclusive on the system (sorry, Ghosts of T). And the best superhero game of all time (sorry Batman: AA).

I rarely play games twice, but I had no issue starting back from scratch (in spite of my save being at 94% completion, with about 5 missions to go (in hindsight)). I loved everything about this game (minus the Taskmaster challenges. F that guy).

Two more DLCs to play and I’m hoping I can get a PS5 in the near future, to end my PS4 on the high note of this game.

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I have only the base game. What do the DLC add and are they worth it?

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I’ve only played through the first one, but I’d say they appear short and add additional costumes and missions. They don’t appear to change the gameplay, or at least the first one didn’t. It was more of the same, albeit with a back-to-normal city if you last finished with all the escaped criminals and Sable running loose.

The first DLC took me about 4 hours to get to 100% completion. All three are an overarching story about Hammerhead and the mob. Since I finished the main game at level 50, there isn’t additional progression to make and I feel pretty overpowered, though that’s the kinda the point when playing the tail end of a superhero game. The was a new enemy to keep me at least a little bit challenged.

I didn’t choose to buy them, they came with the complete edition I bought back in 2019, so YMMV whether they’re worth it.