Backlog Beatdown: Doing Whatever a Spider Can with Spider Man

I’d had no concrete information about Spiderman when I bought it. My principle reason for buying it was that if it was a popular enough game for Sainsburys to be selling it, it must at least be passable! So I saved up some Nectar points and bought the game.

I mean who wouldn't want to do this?

And I’m happy to say this is one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. It’s an open-world action adventure, where you play as Spiderman trying to deal with the enemies that threaten New York. While it doesn’t follow the plot of any of the recent films, it recognises that most people know enough about Spider Man to know his origins and who the principle characters are. We join Peter Parker well in to his 20s; he’s been Spiderman for roughly eight years and works for Doctor Octavius as a research scientist. He and Mary Jane have broken up, and he is often found to be helping Aunt May do charity work. The same is the case with the villains; the game picks a few of them and tells its own story, including giving a lot of limelight to one relatively-recent supervillain, which I’m not going to spoil but it’s nice to see a change in the principle villains from time to time.

The two crucial elements of any game are an engaging process and a satisfying payoff, and Spiderman has plenty of both. There are many open world games on the market, but Spiderman shines in three main areas: Firstly, the in-game activities are mostly contextually accurate and a tonne of fun to play out. The campaign drives the game, but there is plenty to do on the side; beating up gangs of thugs, eliminating ‘bases’ of criminals, doing some research tasks for Octavius or Harry Osborne, they are all things that it would make sense for Spiderman or Peter Parker to be doing and don’t feel like pointless busy work. The second is that you’re Spiderman, and therefore getting around the city is an absolute joy; swinging, stunts and developing abilities all contribute to even the most mundane experience in the game. Finally, the game is neither too big nor too long, and is paced well enough that the range of tasks never feels like it’s getting on top of you.

An odd stance...

Spiderman handles very well, with a decent control system that pays more than a little respect to the Arkham games but adapts very well here. There’s plenty of things you can do with your webs when fighting enemies, for example, but none of them amount to much more than pressing the Triangle button in the right place. You have a nice selection of gadgets to use, your spider sense tells you when to dodge, and your basic attacks work as your principle means of damaging enemies. Then there are stealth sections, some of which need to be handled without anybody seeing you, and others are optional. The latter is great, as you can be stealthy if you wish (and wrapping enemies up in a web is a very satisfying move,) but Spiderman is good enough in combat that you never feel like you’ve ruined it by making a mistake with your sneaking.

The game is very well presented. The graphics are great, particularly in the cut scenes, and while the sound won’t surprise anybody it is thematic enough and does the job. The format of the video game gives the plot enough space to develop some of the characters beyond what a film would allow, and enhances the experience as a result. We all know Otto Octavius will eventually become Dr Octopus, for example, but having Peter Parker working closely with him in the first section of the game shows a gradual descent into an egomaniacal madman born out of desperation and betrayal, rather than the result of a tragic accident that usually ends up with the afflicted party becoming a Supervillain. The plot is genuinely sad in places, amusing in others, and the ending fits the tone of what the Marvel Universe has become in the last two decades.

All in all, a fantastic game that I have no difficulty in recommending to anybody.

Final Score: 5/5. Beyond excellent.

Last Week's Games: Cluckles' Adventure, Spiderman, and making DnD characters.

After getting nearly half way through the year and only beating one game, suddenly I find I’ve beaten two games in one week!

Chickens can stick to walls, who knew?

The first was Cluckles’ Adventure, which I beat early on in the week with all the stars and wrote a review for it later in the week. You can read it here! I’ve talked about Cluckles often enough in the blog, but I have a few additional points I’d like to make here First, I think it’s absolutely brilliant that the game is simple enough that anyone can pick it up and play. It’s not a hard core game, far from it, but it’s also not a cow clicker that relies on micro-transactions. Gamers can play the game, partners can play the game, children can play the game, parents can play the game – there aren’t enough games like this these days, and it’s great that not only does Cluckles’ Adventure have the potential to engage a wider audience than core gamers, but does it with a refreshingly simple idea.

That being said, I was hoping to get all the achievement tokens for this game and was a little disappointed when I didn’t get the achievement for collecting all the stars, which is the last one. I left this out of the review as it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of playing the game, but apparently I’m not the only one whose achievements have bugged out so, if you’re in to that sort of thing, keep it in mind.

(Incidentally, I only usually think about achievements if I’ve got a hope of getting them all. If some of them are tied up in multiplayer I’m probably not going to worry too much about it!)

I did most of the last half of the game in this suit.

The second was Spiderman on the PS4. As some of you who have been following my blog for a while will know, I’ve had a lot of fun with this game, and while it’s ended at the right time and not outstayed its welcome, I was very pleased to have reached the end of it. I’ve written the review for this one as well; I shall check it over in the next few days and hopefully have it out on Friday. There’s more to do in the game – I can replay the game in New Game + mode and aim to beat it on Ultimate Difficultly, and then there’s the DLC as well – but for now I’m happy to put Spiderman to bed and play another game.

Also when I’ve had some time in the week I created a new Dungeons and Dragons 5e character: Patrin of the Great Church of Torm. This is a Dragonborn Tempest Cleric. Am I going to use him in a game? I hope to be able to at some point but there aren’t many games around at the moment and I doubt I’d have time to play them even if they are!

He probably looks like this.

I’m mentioning it because I’ve got a way of building characters that makes the process in itself quite fun: I roll randomly for the Character Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I’ve also been using the tables in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything that you can use to randomly determine some specifics of your background, i.e. your parents and your reasons for taking up your career or class. Rolling for these characteristics can often lead to stiff little sentences on your character sheet, but what I like to do is treat them as raw data, from which I can process a story that makes sense.

I don’t usually bother with this when I’m creating a character for 5e, simply because the bulk of my experience in playing it has come from the Black Country Roleplaying Society, and things like traits, bonds and flaws tend to come out during the course of the game which you’re only usually in for about eight weeks anyway. But what I’ve got with Patrin is a character whose background I’ve created before the fact, and can implement as much or little of it as required into the game, with only a minor tweak for settings if necessary.

I’m not expecting a huge amount of free time next week, so we’ll see what happens.

Last Week's Games: Spiderman, Reigns, Bubble Bath Bunny and Roleplaying Speculation

Spins a web, any size...

I find myself at a point I knew I was going to run into when I started the blog again – not picking up a new game every week means that sometimes I have to search to find something interesting to say! I’ve been playing Spiderman a lot, of course, but that’s been the case for weeks now. I’m getting quite close to the end-game, and I want to make sure I’ve at least done everything else I need to do before I get there. I also researched the trophies available for the game to find out what the hidden ones were, as I don’t want to get bogged down by having to look for them. One of them requires you to visit Uncle Ben’s grave, I’d never have thought of that! It’s looking like I’m going to need at least one more play-through to 100% clear the game, because I need to beat it on New Game + mode at maximum difficulty, but it appears as though all your unlocks, suits etc. are carried over into the new game so I only need to focus on the story elements; less of the faff that comes with open world games!

Looks basic, but surprisingly addictive...

I also had a go with Reigns, a whimsical game which I must have talked about in the past at some point but I don’t know when. (I usually name the text documents I write these blogs on after the games I’ve been playing in the week; that combined with the date stamp on the file usually gives me a useful clue but I don’t always write all the games down!) It’s a game where you are the king, and every year you have to make a decision based on what an advisor or character has told you. Each decision affects your kingdom in four different ways: Religion, People, Military and Money, and if one of those indicators reaches the bottom, you die. You are then replaced by a different king and you start all over again. I usually play this when I’ve got half an hour or so to spare at work; it appears to be an unlock-fest rather than any particularly-driven plot, but it’s fun for a while, even if the interface and control method lends itself better to a mobile game (which it is.)

During her first game...

When my daughter stayed with me over the weekend we played Bubble Bath Bunny, a board game I bought at the UK Games Expo. I won’t say too much about it as I want to do a full review of it at some point, but it’s a memory game aimed at very young children; ages 2 and up. You roll a lovely big dice and try to pick up a face-down token that matches colour or symbol. We have a lot of fun playing it, and even though Jessie can only really manage one round before she starts to lose concentration, she is equally happy playing, winning or losing. That’s the mark of a good game, I think!

Mad as a fish. And so is Xanathar,

I’ve been reading a lot of the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, and watching a lot of Taking20 videos about Dungeons and Dragons while wishing I had time to play it. While I still run Pathfinder for some friends from time to time (and indeed will be doing so next week so I might actually have something interesting to say about it,) I do miss playing on a weekly basis; work and family commitments got in the way of my regular group so I don’t go anymore. I’m particularly enjoying Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, mainly for the little remarks Xanathar makes throughout the book which are amusing but also a salient representation of how a monster might react to human-level conventions! I also discovered through the videos the potential for Multi-classing, which is something I’ve been against up until now but I’m starting to recognise some of it’s potential for combining effects! It will be a long time, if ever, before I return to playing role-playing games on a regular basis but I hope that when I do, I can bring some of those mechanical concepts to life while my character remains a convincing-enough entity to role-play.

 

Last Week's Games: Kingdoms of Amalur, Spiderman, UK Games Expo

I’ve been surprisingly busy over the last few weeks, and for this reason I haven’t managed to get a blog out in a while. Today’s post covers roughly three weeks.

Feyblades. That Ettin had better watch out!

I had a go on the Xbox 360 with a game I hadn’t played for a long time: Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning. This is a Role Playing Game set in a somewhat typical fantasy setting, where your player character has died. They are brought back to life, and they now have to discover the mystery of how that happened and the extent of their power – to interfere with people’s fates. It is a good game with a strong combat system, with some bugs and uninspired enemy design, and I enjoy coming back to it every now and then. There’s a lot to do, though, and like many RPGs I wonder if I will ever see it through to the end!

This is a fun costume to unlock!

I’ve also played Spiderman on the PlayStation 4. This was a fairly recent purchase for me, bought with some saved-up Nectar Points from Sainsburys, and will probably be the most up-to-date game I buy for a long while! Now, I have fond memories of Spiderman 2 on the PS2, and from what I understand, no Spiderman game has surpassed it yet. However, this iteration of the game has done a pretty good job so far, with an improved combat system and voice acting. It includes a lot of features included in modern open world games, such as skill progression trees and side activities to do alongside the main campaign. Where Spiderman trumps almost all other open world games is that getting around is an absolute joy. Swinging through New York is a crucial element to any Spiderman game, and once you get used to how it is implemented in this version, you can cover vast distances and pull all sorts of tricks and stunts to keep the movement flowing and rapid. Almost all of the missions involve doing this to a certain extent, but because it is so much fun to swing around New York, it rarely feels like pointless busy work. I’m a little over 60% of the way through it so far, and this is one of the very few games I feel I have a hope of 100% completing, so I’m going for that.

You’ll remember last month I made some remarks about doing some videos for Youtube. I’m now putting those plans into fruition, since XSplit Gamecaster seems to be a lot friendlier on the file size when recording these videos! At the moment I’m capable of recording some raw footage with microphone commentary. Due to work and family commitments and lack of video editing software I wouldn’t suggest expecting anything substantial yet, but I’m working on a few scripts and concepts that I’m hoping to bring to life in the short-term future.

Also last weekend I went to the UK Games Expo. Some of you may remember from last year that this is very much a highlight of my year, and this year was the best one yet. I played loads of games, made some new friends and generally had a great time. It is my intention to write about what I got up to there but I’m going to divide my coverage of it into three categories:

Tournaments and Tribulations: A brief return for the series I intended to start last year, where I talk about the games I played as part of tournaments and how I got on.

First Impressions: My friend Tom and I participated in several demo games across the Expo, so I’ll write about what we thought of each one. Some of these are still in the final stages of development and have not been released yet.

Games We Played: On the Saturday Night we met up with some folks I’d never met before and played a whole load of games I’d not had the chance to play for a long time, if ever. This will be similar in format to the first impressions with the added fact that these games have already been published and released.

That’s a lot of writing to do, I hope I have time!