Insomniac's Spider-Man

Really Peter having a kid with Felicia is a natural consequence of the hero having so many romantic/sexual partner.

Eventually that condom's 1% failure rate is gonna follow through.

True that. Or the adrenaline power up to insta takedown them.

A lot of the enemies in the DLC are like them, they either punish you for reflexes the game's put like 30+ hours drilling you in, or no-sell everything and use cheap tactic to present difficulty.

I found the DLC disappointing. Between Hammerhead being a rather shitty villain based on dodgy logic "Imma gonna start a war with the cops and use powered armor/Cyborg tech coz the mafia isn't respected and there's no way this wont cause an even larger force to come down on me", the terrible enemy design, the dangling plot threads that do little but act as sequel bait, and the whole Peter's Baby thing.

I actually felt they did Hammerhead right because he's exactly the sort of psychotic meathead who would think you could get away with murdering a bunch of cops and think it made you a big man versus bringing all manner of heat down on you. I kind of regret we didn't get Don Fortunato, the Owl, or Silvermane in the game because having all of the Maggia Bosses to contrast against Hammerhead would have made it work better.

I also felt Yuri taking Hammerhead out was the best ending for him. We also needed Spidey versus her at some point.

Remember that Mantlo pitched the story in early 80s pre-AIDS becoming this great crisis and awareness of protected sex. Felicia and others would have used the Pill then.

In any case Marvel eventually did a heroine fathering kid out of wedlock with Jessica Jones having Luke Cage's child before they got married. Spider-Man's corner is mandated to be a little sanitized

Mind you, I don't think it would have been a problem if Spider-Man was planning to become a permanent partner to Black Cat. He was dating her when Mary Jane was married to Spider-Man in the comic strips (thus necessitating Black Cat being written out).

Then again, Batman having a child out of wedlock has been a major controversy for editorial despite I think no fan minding it.

It warrants noting that another story infamously tried to give Peter kids out of wedlock too. Specifically, these kids were twins that he and Gwen Stacy had.

Marvel liked everything about the story except the part where Peter Parker is a father, so they made the writer change it so that Norman Osborn fathered the Stacy Twins.

This was actually the third attempt at giving Peter children. The Felicia story being the first. The second attempt was when Peter and MJ had a baby inside wedlock. The baby was kidnapped from the hospital, shoved into character limbo, and never heard from again.

There exists an alternate reality series called Spider-Girl where Mayday Parker was never abducted, but that's the only place the kid still exists. So far as Marvel's main line of comics are concerned, "PETER NEVER HAD KIDS SHUT THE F*CK UP WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT".

Marvel's problem with "Peter has kids outside of wedlock" isn't "outside of wedlock". Their problem is, and always has been, "Peter has kids". They don't want him to be a father or a husband or especially not a divorcee. They want him to be a swinging 22-year-old bachelor eating Aunt May's lasagna and trying to figure out his shitty job and shitty apartment forever.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 16th 2019 at 1:25:33 PM

And honestly 22 is pushing it. Marvel would be happy if they can dial him back to 18-ish.

Marvel was okay with Peter being a father with MJ and the clone saga was going to end with Peter as a father. The problem was that EIC Defalco who wanted to make it happen lost control when marketing and others got involved. It was still something that could have happened and it was cancelled at like the last minute when Bob Harras came in.

In any case in the PS 4 game Miles is basically like a son go Peter. He is Miles' father figure after his Dad's death. Peter even uses a dad voice when talking to him by phone in the DLC

Okay, finished with the CITY AT WAR DLC.

• They really do feel like one big expansion put into three separate little DLC and that's not necessarily a bad thing but I can't help thinking that it would have been better not to have them all have the same plot since it felt like Hammerhead's plot was stretched way-way too long.

• Hammerhead is not interesting enough to do the entire expansion around since the whole, "become an enormous robot with a human head" makes no damned sense even if it was a nod to Silvermane. He's rather one-dimensional and evil in a game with much better characters. Doc Ock, Norman Osbourne, Mr. Negative, and even Wilson Fisk have more characterization.

• I feel like Yuri killing Hammerhead was a much-much better storyline.

• I don't see why Yuri killing some random mafia goon is her big "Wraith" moment versus killing Hammerhead.

• I like Silver Sable but her Tsundere and Defrosting Ice Queen plot didn't feel very good compared to the interactions with Felicia Hardy. There's a reason the Heist is the best part and I really wish she'd ben a character throughout.

• I'm not sure I understand Mary Jane's aversion to Spiderman's overprotectiveness as a plot point. "I don't want to be treated like a damsel in distress!" Then maybe she shouldn't get in situations where Spider-Man constantly has to save her life?

• Am glad Peter relented on training Miles. The fact he didn't plan to was infuriating.

• I really wish Peter had told Felicia about her dad.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 18th 2019 at 8:16:49 AM

That's how DLC is. Obviously they are saving the really cool stuff for the sequels. It's a problem for all DLC really. Still this one is better than the DLC for the Arkham games. More substantial and much more fleshed out supporting characters like in the case of Yuri, who they might not be able to tackle again in the sequels (since the logic would dictate that you cycle in and cycle out new supporting characters).

Hammerhead for instance might not be a villain or major threat but he can work in DLC

You might want to check out Gerry Conway's Spiral, that's the comic that informed and influenced the entire DLC story. It's also quite good and well written.

She says she wants to be a partner which Spider-Man wasn't willing to consider. And if she wants to be a crime reporter and super-villain schemes happen then it's her job to get close to the action. I like that bit in the end of the DLC where she has to report on a warzone and she asks Peter if she trusts her, and he says yes, and they exchange I love yous.

Spider-Man Developer, Insomniac Games, Shares a Tour of Its Newly Redesigned Studio

Can we have the sequel yet?

The first game took four years to make. It was released in September of 2018.

I'd rather have the sequel be done well than done fast.

Sequels would invariably not take four full years, as you have all the work done on the first one to use as a base.

I would not be shocked if the sequel is to be an early Playstation 5 game. Not launch, and probably not even launch window. But it could very possibly be a big summer or holiday game in the system’s first or second year.

Yea, well I'm impatient.

Although, all things considered, yea I already know this kind of thing takes time to begin with.

I still don't think the game is this Magnum Opus everyone makes it out to be, even though I still pretty bummed that it didn't win as much as awards I wanted it to, I still really like the presentation of what this game has.

I went back to the Arkham games recently, and if there's one thing I commend this game for that those games didn't, it was in having the proverbial stones to put Spider-Man in an actually living, bustling world (at least for most of the game), instead of the Arkhamverse's "there's a convenient backstory event going on that results in every single citizen of Gotham being evacuated/in their homes/gone, so everyone is a criminal you can beat up" crud - which worked for exactly one game (City) and became progressively more exasperating in each subsequent one.

Though as I posted in the Arkham thread, I wish there was a bit more interaction with Spidey PS 4's world outside of missions and radiant crimes (though the game's use of radiant crimes is fantastic and something more games like this should do, even if I feel they could have had more substance). The only real evolving perspective in Spidey is the twitter feed, and stuff like Arkham letting you interact with people you rescue even a fair bit after is a fun touch more should do as well.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 16th 2020 at 8:38:12 AM

Yea, it would've nice to interact with that wannabe Spidey guy after that mission.

Thanks to PS Now I can finally enjoy this game on the PC too. But unfortunately without any DLC's :/

Arkham Knight needed that as the Batmobile just meant too many opportunitys for GTA levels of indiscriminate violence and I don't think they could reconcile it. Batman doesn't interact with Civvies much, whereas spidey does. But it does feel VERY forced in the Arkham games.

As for the DL Cs... they're ok. But they get a bit samey. And don't really expand things too much. But still, pretty enjoyable. Screwball' challenges are a PAIN.

Gotta say, the gameplay is very fun, but the side stuff gets repetitive quite quick. Guess this is like with Assassins Creed, this is the prototype of the series, the sequels will add more depth and variety.

Edited by Forenperser on Apr 24th 2020 at 1:40:01 PM

I feel like a lot of modern games especially superhero-ish ones have that issue with repetitive sidequests. Since modern gamers expect a kajillion hours of gameplay from any AAA game they're rife with a lot of "here's 100 collectibles" and repetitive side missions to fill out the game. Though in Spiderman's case that's been a thing since the Spider man 2 PS 2 game, and at least this game is a bit better than that one was in this regard.

Screw the balloon.

Now that you mention Spidey 2, one thing from that game which I definitely miss in this one is the ability to jump really high and far.

The jumping ability here is ridiculous.

Edit: And fall damage!

Edited by Forenperser on Apr 24th 2020 at 1:46:43 PM

Yeah jumping high was great when i needed to cover distance quickly. And it helped with the pizza missions last i recall.

As long as you didn't hit the ground, which squashed them :D

Also, catapulting with two weblines was fun too.

I'm replaying this game atm and I never knew Let's Go Sunnin was in the game! Fallout 3 memories...