Insomniac's Spider-Man

In general Spider-Man villains haven't always been served well by later writers after the original run, and you have a number of characters who tend to have untapped potential. Mysterio is maybe the most prominent example and I think that video games have done more and better with him than comics and even cartoons have. Like The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon didn't do well with their take.

What was so bad about that version?

It wasn't bad so much as unmemorable. That cartoon is still excellent and it's got great takes on Green Goblin, Venom, Sandman, Hammerhead, and Tombstone (and few others) but I felt Mysterio was underserved there that's all.

I thought he was fine.

I mean, the dude used to work in Hollywood. Being a bit of a drama queen isn't so crazy.

Spectacular Mysterio was maybe my favorite version of him outside the comics, at least in terms of concept. I liked the gimmick that his actual personality was this uncouth guy with a New York accent (I like when Spider-Man characters have New York accents in general), but he put on a fake accent and a faux dignity in-persona.

The downside was he only had, like, two appearances, maybe three - at least as Mysterio - and all but one of them was a bit part, so they didn't do much with him. He didn't get to have as much interesting play as the 90's animated one.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 9th 2019 at 8:04:14 AM

Francis Krum only had teleportation powers, otherwise he has the exact special effects abilities as the other 2. Besides, Old Man Logan Mysterio is never explicitly Francis, it's only assumed because he was Mysterio in the mainstream comics at the time. For all we know, it could be Quintin Beck having never fought Daredevil and shot himself, it is an alternate universe after all.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Apr 9th 2019 at 8:11:00 AM

A while back I read this non-canon all-ages comic called Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil, a real fun miniseries where Dr. Doom gets a bunch of villains to do jobs for him. It's a 4 issue series and the first issue is Doom asking the Sinister Six to do a job for him. And Mysterio is basically the leader, the guy Doom treats with respect. So Mysterio gets an upgraded outfit that allows him to mask and disguise the Sinister 6, so at different times he dresses them as a punk bad, a rock band and I kid you not, as a Bishōnen and the other 5 as anime schoolgirls. And there's a cool scene where the 6 fight Dr. Strange and Tony Stark and Mysterio outfoxes them both.

And there's a lot of cool ways you can take that and make gameplay. Like suppose Spider-Man comes across a scene and has to see NPC behavior, or you as a gamer need to study NPC gamer and find the odd bits here and there to ferret out Mysterio, or you fight a bunch of mooks and ratchet XP and then they all turn out to be innocent civilians, and you lose XP and basically you have neat Psycho Mantis and Arkham Scarecrow Fission Mailed stuff.

Doctor Doom must love Hollywood then. Personally, I'd like a section in the sequel where you play as Spider-Man, but somethings off, then BOOM, you are actually Mysterio framing Spider Man.

Mysterio is again just bursting with potential. And games have been good to him.

Let's hope he doesn't turn Riddler on us. Any other rogues the sequel could use besides the obvious?

Well, besides Mysterio, the Goblins and the Symbioses, I think they covered most of the rogues.

Oh right. They missed Kraven. I'm sure there are some others I'm forgetting.

If you mean new villains only, because I imagine there will be returning ones. Yuri Lowenthal said in an interview that he likes Tarantula and the Spot and would like to see them, and while he's a voice actor and not a writer and developer and so on, he is a Spider-Man fan (since those two are "deep cuts" so to speak) and maybe those ideas could have been tossed in. He said that the Spot could work a la Portal, and he could bring something fun, interesting and weird.

If you look at the Arkham games, the developers in terms of villains tended to focus heavily on non-powered bad guys, and often found it hard to make the really super-powered villains work. In the first game you had Poison Ivy as the main one, the second game you had four major powered boss fights (Solomon Grundy, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, Clayface), and the last game basically had none. In the case of Spider-Man, you can't rely too much on that, because you have Spider-Man who's super-powered. So you need Sandman, you had Lizard, and others. And since apparently Marvel Games have don't have the rights issues the movies do, hence them using Taskmaster, an Avengers villain. Why not bring in the Juggernaut and recreate and homage one of the all greatest fights in superhero comics. Heck now that the X-Men are in the MCU, you can have the movie version of Spider-Man fight the Juggernaut.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Apr 9th 2019 at 9:46:16 AM

Oh right. I forgot about Sandman. Hydro Man too.

And the Lizard. I mean, he's a classic baddie. I don't know how I missed him.

A Juggernaut fight would be great. He's a nice puzzle boss. Like how you had to avoid the Rhino as Miles, only you still have to actually fight him too.

Spidey is one of the few guys to go up against the Juggernaut solo and win. This a guy who whole teams have (unsuccessfully) tackled, unless you're Thor or the Hulk...and even the former had some troubles due to being Eric Masterson Thor at the time. Needed to be bailed out by The New Warriors.

I wonder if he ever smugly talks about that time he beat up the Juggernaut by himself when he hangs out with the mutants.

He's all like what? You needed Colossus, Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Beast, Polaris and Storm to fight him? Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman just needed one construction site.

The Juggernaut fight should be epic. Maybe do it in a DLC so you can properly do the scope since if you put it in the main game there's a danger it could be take away from the story, so maybe you can do a big side-mission. In the comic, Juggernaut docks in New York around Battery Park (that's South End of the game map) and Peter basically tags and chases him across the city as he rampages through. So to do that right, what you need to do is follow Juggernaut, and manipulate him across the entire game map as he rampages from the South to the Midtown and so on. That's how you need to drive the whole "Nothing can stop the Juggernaut!" thing. It's something that would work best in games in my view since in games you really get that sense of space and distance especially any open world game, whereas in the movies you don't really get that. This should be a Shadow of the Colossus style thing.

Ideally even a Green Goblin and Vulture fight should be like that. In Spider-Man: The Movie the game, it's not open world, its all scripted but you basically followed and swung around and chased Vulture across an entire city space. In the Goblin's case you followed him on the glider through buildings and stuff and he'd drop bombs and attack places. I remember one cool moment and cool line where Goblin bombs a train bridge and says, "I've been burning bridges all day but I think I'll just knock this one down", it's an allusion to the comic character's connection to bridges, and of course they got Dafoe to voice that and it just sounds awesome. So you should have a Goblin fight be like that, he'll fly across Manhattan and you have to chase him across the open-world game map and so on.

The X-Men remember the time he creamed the entire team during Secret Wars (1984) (which man that would be an awesome game to do).

I'm about 90% complete with Spider-Man's main campaign and just got through the Mushroom Samba Scorpion mission. So, yeah, I'm almost done. I will say the final third of the game hasn't been as enjoyable as it could have been. The Sable forces and Rykers trash mobs are just sponges for damage with dozens of more enemies than I really think is necessary. I'm looking forward the DLC but am worried I'm going to get even more endless waves of foes.

The DLC is pretty good, a lot of variety and style, and new enemy types.

Have you done the side-missions in the game, a lot of that are cool, especially the Tombstone missions. Tombstone is my favorite villain from the game. He's like MCU Thanos, a bad guy you can hang out with.

Tombstone was easily the best part of the game so far for me. You can appreciate his enjoyment of a straight up brawl with someone who can actually hurt him.

Doing the DLC now.

A couple of things:

• Flat out ignoring Screwball Challenges.

• Unstoppable Rage means that the typical trash mobs and invulnerable goons are not an issue. Best power even more than Web Swarm.

• I wish Peter's kid with Black Cat was real.

• Norman Osbourne as a Mayor is more interesting than him as the Goblin, ditto Yuri as Jean Dewolff rather than Wraith.

• Hammerhead is not strong enough a character to base 3 DLC on.

• Silver Sable is a welcome return.

Yup

Also the a lot of the new mobs are kinda awful and break the flow of combat the game's been drilling into the player.

Minigun guys in particular.

The minigun guys are easy enough to deal with using Unstoppable Rage but they're impossible if you have anything else equipped with his suit. Making them almost invincible to everything else is just bad game design.

Full disclosure, I was livid when she turned out to be making it all up. For what it does to Felicia's character, for how it plays into the worst stereotypes about women in media, and for the abrupt decapitation of what was actually a compelling storyline about the complexities of adulting. That particular reveal is, in my opinion, the worst decision made in a Spider-Man game since Web of Shadows declared that a true hero would stand by and do nothing as Felicia's being murdered.

Felicia being shit on in Spider-Man media seems to have become the rule since the turn of the millennium.

The rest of the game was really good, though. Looking forward to see where they go with the next one.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 16th 2019 at 11:38:44 AM

It might interest you fellas to know that the Black Cat plot in the DLC is, probably, a very deep cut to a What Could Have Been story in The '80s. Writer Bill Mantlo who (along with Roger Stern) is My Real Daddy for Felicia (he wrote The Owl/Octopus War, possibly the best story with Spider-Man and Felicia teaming up, and Spectacular Spider-Man #87, where Peter reveals his identity to her) pitched a story for Felicia to father Peter's illegitimate child. The Spider-Man editor at the time Danny Fingeroth told him no, he then went over his head to EIC Jim Shooter, and Shooter told him point blank that it ain't happening, since it would damage Spider-Man's reputation as a brand and cost them revenue in merchandise for kids products and so on, since Marvel signed contracts with those licenses that the IP they use to sell kids products or family friendly stuff have a morality clause.

So even if writers wanted to, they probably can't have Peter father a child with Felicia out of wedlock. Getting married and having kids after that is not a problem but ixnay on Peter getting shotgunned. As it is, Insomniac got a lot more leeway than others have, since Marvel weren't all that keen on on Aunt May dying, and they had to wait until late in development until Marvel decided to sign off for it. That must have been Joe Quesada himself who dithered and had to be talked into saying yes since as Chief Creative Officer he has say on how Marvel properties are adapted into other media. And in any case, the Black Cat storyline is basically a sex comedy for Peter and MJ, and the fact that Peter and Felicia definitely did do the mattress mambo and he's currently doing it with MJ is quite clearly gotten past the radar there.

Mind you, I believe until stated otherwise that Felicia Hardy didn't deny having a child. It's just that he was never in any danger.

:)

Honestly, I'm confused why they would care about Aunt May dying. It's not like it's something that affects the main continuity.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 11:09:53 AM

Because Marvel is terrified of letting Peter grow up. They want him to be hip and young forever.

Same reason they had Mephisto use a Cosmic Retcon to delete his marriage instead of just divorcing him.

Recently, they took away his doctorate but have finally put him back together with MJ.

FYI - They didn't need to use the Devil or even a divorce. Mind control, LMD, alternate universe MJ, time travel.

:)

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 11:24:40 AM