Insomniac's Spider-Man

Once you unlock the skill you can rapidly web up the bruisers and fling them into the walls or sides of vehicles to take them out of the fight pretty quickly. Works on the jetpacks too. A fully upgraded normal web shooter will let you quickly web up most enemies and then quickly fling them into a wall or vehicle. You can even launch them onto moving vehicles and watch the vehicle carry them off.

There is no “quickly” about it. The web throw animation leaves you completely open to attack, and other enemies WILL take advantage.

Yeah, there is quickly about it. It takes about 2 seconds at most to do the full attack from grab to launch and you can easily dodge or jump out of it as the bad guy is flying to impact. You don't have to do the full swing around by going from the web toss to more generic throw if you have it unlocked by hitting square at the right moment. Throw in the upgrades for the web toss and any vulnerability becomes almost trivial because the swinging enemy easily knocks anyone nearby to the ground or staggers them giving you both room and time. You can even upgrade it to swing them around for longer and throw them harder and smack around more enemies. You can also just as easily do the web toss while in the air. You can web up enemies in the air, snatch them up in a web toss and fling them into walls. All you have to do is practice a bit and it becomes pretty easy. Ranged enemies are a threat no matter what you choose to do though. You can also lean on your gadgets to keep enemies entangled or distracted. The shock web is great especially upgraded, spider drones are awesome as distractions, and the other gadgets can even help you out against pretty much any enemy. Throw the web bomb if you have it then drop in and either throw them around or if you have it nail them with a concussion blast to fling enemies into walls.

You have plenty of options at your disposal just find what works for you and find out how to work it in when needed. Honestly, I hate the brutes too. If you miss the perfect dodge window I hate getting pummeled and usually resort to jumping and web zipping away if I can.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Sep 22nd 2018 at 8:21:21 AM

I don't know, even I'm having some problems where throwing someone is letting enemies attack or throw things at me that I am unable to defend against.

Then again, it feels inconsistent because I swear I've seen enemies STOP throwing something because I started throwing an enemy.

I hate the Jetpack enemies since their airbomb attack tends to happen just as I'm using a finisher and the game stupidly drops me in the field. I wish the game could be smarter about those things, but I suppose that's a sequel thing.

And I am telling you, that in the time it takes to do the throw animation, I get shot every. Single. Time.

Sounds like the gun thugs are a bigger threat than the brutes, then. Maybe it'd be better to web the brutes and then go for the gunners.

Gun thugs will shoot you at any time they don't really care what you are in the middle of doing. Dodging, they will take a shot. Juggling a thug mid-air, take a shot. Just beating someone down, take a shot. Climbing a wall, take a shot. Literally, they will just sit there and shoot at you constantly regardless of what you are doing. If the gun thugs are busting your chops, bust theirs first. Prioritize them and keep as mobile as you can. Put something between you and them like other thugs or cars. I would make a drinking game of it but I would die inside of an hour from alcohol poisoning.

Ok, you’re completely missing my point.

In normal combat, none of this is particularly irritating. Getting hit out of your combo, or letting it end by keeping out of the way isn’t the end of the world when you’re just dealing with demons on a rooftop.

In a Taskmaster challenge, where you have an extremely narrow time margin to take out everyone without dropping your combo, brutes + guns = quitting the game for the night.

Because there are two options. Either focus on the brutes and get shot, or focus on the guns and get pummelled by the brutes. Combined with the shape of the arena and it’s just Fake Difficulty.

Like, I got it eventually, but it’s the only thing I’ve done in this game that wasn’t fun.

I'm just more frustrated that throwing grenades and shooting can occur at times when the player is incapable of doing anything. Or the player finishes and animation and is dumped in a location where they're likely to die.

I also have watched myself get hit during dodge animations. Which seems strange. Like, I don't want to say 'The game should let me cheat', but invincibility frames during dodge animations became a thing for a reason.

Just release all off your drones and the spider-bro ability at the beginning of the challenges, and keep releasing the drones when they become available. They take out the enemies quickly. That is what I did to get gold.

From what I can tell, invincibility during dodge works like this: when you dodge during a spider sense moment, you'll move and the person you dodged will immediately shoot or swing at where you were (and thus miss). If you perfect the timing, they'll immediately shoot and also subsequently get webbed in response, stunning them.

Either way, the dodge doesn't make you invincible, it makes them aim badly.

Because of this, if you're in a crossfire and dodge in a bad direction, you'll still get hit by the other guy. This also applies to if you're fighting a single minion and dodge towards or away from them (that is, still in the path of fire) rather than to the side. So you always have to be aware of exactly what you're doing.

The big reason combat can get so difficult in this game is because Mook Chivalry isn't a thing here. Enemies will not wait for other enemies to finish attacking to start attacking themselves. They will not wait for animations to conclude before attacking. Spidey can and will be interrupted out of anything, or comboed incessantly if the fates align badly (this is particularly dangerous against Sable mooks, because they have a lot of dakka that results in a lot of hitstun).

The most amusing example of this I remember is having an enemy start aiming for me during a finisher (during which you're actually invincible) and start firing as I was coming out of it, resulting in unavoidable damage after the finisher animation ended.

As for web throwing enemies, it's a pain, yeah. I've generally gotten good at both aiming them into walls and positioning so that it stuns/clears out enemies who would otherwise shoot at me (or at least taking out problem enemies first) but that was mostly through necessity. The game doesn't really have efficient options on its own.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 22nd 2018 at 11:22:36 AM

Right, and since it makes that ONE enemy aim badly, it means its not possible to dodge multiple enemies firing at once.

I've also had several times where I suddenly was surrounded on all sides with everyone's attack animations playing at the exact same time. That time... actually instantly downed me because I could neither dodge nor get an attack off.

I get the idea behind some of these choices, but it does mean that, when combat becomes a mess, it becomes a HOT mess.

My style leans way more heavily toward building focus and dishing out finishers. Battle Focus is a must. My suit mods are faster focus generation, bonus focus for gadget attacks, and bonus gadget refills for finishers.

Also, impact webbing is by far the best gadget.

Agreed with that last statement. Sometimes I rack up a 60+ combo, using almost every move at my disposal, and sometimes I flail around like a moron and wonder to myself how I’m this far into the game. Which I actually kind of like, in a weird way? Comparing it to Arkham is completely misleading because they’re really not THAT similar, but they’re similar enough where I can comfortably say that in the Arkham games by the time I had all the gadgets, I was getting perfect freeflow in pretty much every combat encounter without having to think about it, and I don’t feel that way in Spider-Man. I always feel like a colossal fuck-up is just around the corner if I let my guard down.

Edited by BadWolf21 on Sep 22nd 2018 at 1:49:31 PM

The combat challenges I found the simplest... after the Stealth ones. But it took a fair few tries at working out the best way to just zip around and maintaining the combo and the instant hit powers.

The drone ones I loath because when doing them, my ability to gracefully move around the city vanishes and I can't collect all the cameras.

Oh and the bomb ones. The bomb ones where you have to nail each landing and traverse super quick. Yeah I'm rubbish at them.

So anyone notice that Kraven is just not mentioned at all? We get references to Mysterio, Lizard, Sandman, and Chameleon, and obviously Green Goblin and Carnage wouldn’t exist yet. Which leaves only one major villain who is mysteriously completely absent.

The Arkham games didn't introduce a few core Batman baddies until City. I'm thinking the same thing is going to happen for Kraven.

battle focus? Bleh, TBH you should be generating enough focus without needing any buffs for that.

It makes sense kraven hasn't been mentioned yet. I feel he's being saved for next game and might fullfill taskmaster's role or something with various "hunts" you have to complete.

I was shocked at the lack of connors TBH.

Edited by Vertigo_High on Sep 23rd 2018 at 10:39:15 AM

Oh, I don't doubt it. It's just surprising that only one of Spidey's major foesm and a member of the ORIGINAL Sinister Six is completely absent from the game.

I assume he's not there because his most obvious role in the story is filled by Otto. Like, that's basically an early-game twist, when you show up at the lab and your boss is Otto Octavius instead of Curt Connors.

There are nods to the Lizard, at least.

Badwolf: Still applies to challenges, still combat, and you're still able to use all the tools in the toolbox. The challenges are pretty much the same every time you try them. Just keep up the practice till you get a working pattern down and figure out who to attack and when.

You know a bit through this game I was like... wow the Arkham Knight game sure seems to have inspired this game a lot. There are times when you have to be in Detective- err... Spidey (?) Mode and track glowing objects. An antagonistic military force led by someone with dual handguns starts occupying the city and establishes checkpoints and watch towers. An overarching villain teams up with a few others to take the hero down. I know the Sinister Six were a thing long before Arkham, but still.... Hell, there's a mission where the city is engulfed in fear- err... poison gas and you have to swing above it all the while suffering hallucinations. Granted, nowadays few ideas are 100% original and it all doesn't fit entirely, but come on. I'm not even mad, I was more bemused than anything while playing through it.

Edited by lara16 on Sep 23rd 2018 at 5:44:43 AM

I think its honestly more of a genre thing at this point. Arkham just happened to be the first game to really get a lot of that stuff right.

At the same time, its not like we got stuck on the RAFT or Ryker's for very long. And the gameplay mechanics here aren't exactly illogical for Spider-man, though I do think some things like guard AI need to get an intelligence upgrade.

Though, speaking of stealth, I HATE that taking out the first wave of guards stealthily means that the second wave INSTANTLY know where you are. Period. It... starts to feel like a 'fuck you' at a certain point. I should be rewarded for taking out all the guards without getting noticed not get a 'Nah, you got to do combat bro'.

I get that the games wants Spider-man to be a more direct combat player, but why not challenge that from what you're enemies are capable of rather than just forcing it? Arkham eventually allowed guards to search gargoyles and, even later, bombs were attached to them to keep Batman from staying complacent. Even an entire boss was built around learning your playstyle and stopping your usual tactics (something which could be applied to Taskmaster later?). Just saying 'Woop, guards know where you are! Fight!' feels ingenuine.

I did laugh during the Grand Central MJ sequence when I looked up and realized that Spidey isn't animated properly for the sequence. And that was also the moment I really realized just how terrible the guard intelligence is. Because its such a big space that there's no way Spider-man couldn't be seen in direct daylight like that. I kind of wish that they had just locked the camera so you couldn't look up. Would have preserved some of the sequence.

There was something else during that part that made me wonder if it was added later in development to cover something else that hadn't been working. I can't remember what it was that made me think that though.

The occupying army bit is a ginormous cliche at this point for games in this urban open world action platformer genre. Arkham City did it before Knight, and they both cribbed it from Prototype, who probably cribbed it from someone else.

It’s either “completely taken over by army dudes” or “completely taken over by the Zerg monsters” (which the Spider-Man games tend to prefer) or both.

I did like how in this game the occupation didn’t completely paint over New York like most games do. You can still interact with the city normally and see all the regular stuff, rather than everything being military buildings and empty streets.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 23rd 2018 at 7:04:25 AM

Vaguely reminds me of ASM 2 with Kingpin's dumb task force.

I mean, I'm pretty sure Web of Shadows did it earlier than Arkham ever did. The 'New York overrun with Villains and Soldier Task Force' stuff.