Amazing Spider-man Game Mini-review

The Amazing Spider-Man: The Game, is based on the new movie of the same name. It’s not a typical remake of the movie in game form either, it actually serves as a sequel. The events are tied to the events of the movie, and takes place a few months after the movie.

I will say, right out the door, that this game was better than the movie(Although, to be fair, it kinda would have to be right?) and is currently the best spider-man game I have ever played(taking the title away from Ultimate Spider-man game)

The first thing you are going to notice is that the graphics are eye explodingly beautiful! The attention to detail cannot be praised enough, and it feels more like a movie, than the actual movie!

Everything from the lens flares, to the window reflections, to the level of shine on cars! Even the water reflects so perfectly! I haven’t seen a game achieve this level of awesomeness in their graphics, since the last Uncharted game.

The controls are also top notch, and works well! They kind of have to, since the entire control mechanics is taken right from the much praised Arkham BATMAN games. In fact, much of the entire game plays like an Arkham game, with Spiderman instead of batman. Translation: Kick ass!

The DLC is where the game is lacking. I would love to have seen some campaign DLC. Mini-missions and so forth. Instead, I got Stan Lee swinging around gathering Pages, a few different “Be the bad guy and tear shit up” and of course, a spider-man inspired game of  Snake.

I would much rather have gotten a “Rhino is rampaging through time Square: Save the citizens and stop his carnage!” mission, or a “Vulture has been spotted above the city!” or some more Black Cat!

On the upside, while I am not looking forward to the movie Amazing Spider-Man 2, I am anxiously awaiting its game!

 

Related articles

• ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ coming to Wii U next spring (theverge.com)
• ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’: Shailene Woodley Confirmed As Mary Jane For Next Two Sequels (screencrave.com)
• Mary Jane Confirmed for ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’? (comicvine.com)

Ultimate Spider-man for PS2 – Retro Review

In my last blog entry, I gave a Retro Review of Spider-man: The Game, in honor of the recently released movie. In keeping with that id, I decided to dig into the crate-o-games yet again, and pull out another PS2 classic based on your favorite web-head: Ultimate Spider-Man!

To begin with, this game has aged REALLY well. The game is 7 years old, and plays really well!

One of the first things you will notice about the game, is the graphics. They are amazing! However, to be honest, Cell shaded graphics are always going to look amazing. Cell shaded games from 7 years ago, are going to look as good as cell shaded games from today. Still, the Cell Shading style fits well with the game, since it’s based on a comic series, and not any type of movie.

So, since I was impressed with the graphics, I tackled the controls. To my surprise, the controls were actually quite responsive. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and could definitely use a little refining, but compared to the controls in Spider-Man: The game, they were a work of art. Sure, it needed some work, but I was able to play it with minimal frustration toward the controls.

The sound too was great! Everything from the voice acting to the sound effects helped add the comic feel to the game experience.

One thing that was nice, was the fact that your webs had to catch onto buildings in order to swing. This might not seem like a big thing in todays age, but the Spider-man games were notorious for just letting your webs stick to the clouds. You could swing all over the city, even if you were higher than any of the other buildings in the vicinity.

When all is said and done, this game is a treasure! It’s aged well, and upon replaying it, was actually better than I remembered it being!

Spider-Man: The Game – PS2 Retro Review

Cover art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the recent release of the Amazing Spider-Man movie, and the subsequent release of its video-game Tie-in, I decided to dig into my old game chest. This time around I dusted off an old Classic, Spider-Man: The Game. It’s based on the movie with Tobey Maguire.

When I originally played this game, I remember thinking how badly it sucked, and how horrible the controls were. However, over time I told myself, how I must have been mistaken. How could the game be as bad as I remember it, when everyone in the gaming community loved this game to pieces! Clearly, I was mistaken! Years have passed, and I never broke it out again, until now!

First, let me just say, that for an early PS2 game release, the graphics are astounding! It’s has lens flares, and isn’t even very choppy, which is unusual for a PS2 game as well. Overall, in terms of graphics, this game was incredible! True, the models weren’t that great, but they were passable.

The sound was great! How could it not be? Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe lend their voice talents to the game, to help give it that authentic spidey movie feel. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, they tossed in Bruce Campbell as the Narrator/tour guide, just to bump the game up to cult status. The music and sound effects were brilliant, and quite realistic. However, it was slightly dated, but again, I can’t stress this enough: It’s from the PS2 and is 10 years old!

That was the good stuff.

The controls were just as bad as I remember. I mean horrible! However, it should be noted, that most games released during that video game era had horrible controls. Still, this is worse than most of those. It could have been a much smoother experience, especially since the PS2 controller is virtually identical to the PS3 controller. I see no reason, why they couldn’t take the time to make a smooth control scheme like games have today!

In terms of difficulty, it wasn’t as hard as I remember it being, however the game is by no means a cakewalk. It is difficult, and at time frustratingly so, although I feel a lot of that has to do with the controls. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I would find myself stuck to a wall, clinging there, while being shot at.

Still, the game has some level of fun factor, especially if you are an avid spidey fan, and with the new spider-man reboot being out, it might be fun to flash back to the original.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions – Review

Image via Wikipedia

Marvel is my all time favorite Comic company. I also love most of the newer movies and games that have been released and based on Marvel properties. So, when I heard about the release of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, that was going to give you the ability to play, not just one spider-man, but 4 different spider-men from 4 different established marvel realities. Unfortunately, Zombie Spider-Man wasn’t one of the characters.

In any event, I picked the game up for the PS3, because I wanted to try and build my trophy list on that system. What kind of differences are their between the games on different platforms? Couldn’t tell you, but this review will be regarding the PS3 version.

The first thing I noticed was that the cutscenes were boring. They weren’t very animated, and I suppose this was done to reflect the Comic book history of the characters, but to me it was just a humdrum experience. Other than the cutscenes however, the games graphics were beatiful! The cartoony look gave just the right tone to the game, and helped put me in the proper mind set for the game.

One thing I found disappointing was, how different it was from previous Spider-Man titles. It wasn’t the same style or gameplay that I have grown to love and expect from a spidey game. Instead of the world being free-roam and sandbox, it has become very linear, and is broken down into “Levels”. Each level requires you to play a different spider-man, and battle baddies in a different location within their universe.

Maybe the gameplay format isn’t a big deal, but it’s what I have grown to expect, and to be honest; I am not thrilled with linear level based gameplay anymore, unless it gives you some sort of freedom.

I sincerely hope, that this isn’t what we can expect from future Spider-man titles. I hope, that after this release they will return to the normal sandbox style of gameplay and leave the linear level based gameplay behind.

Related Articles

• Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions Web-Slings Into Retailers (cinemablend.com)
• Shattered Dimensions’ Spidey swings in 4 worlds (sfgate.com)
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (guardian.co.uk)

Villains Spotlight

Hollywood has created some incredible things. It has bestowed upon the masses everyting from historic recreations to epic end of the world disasters(And of course let’s not forget several zombie plagues) but in the end their villains seem to always lack something. They just aren’t effective!

I mean, correct me if I am wrong here, but I always got the impression that hollywood badguys were supposed to be the ultimate criminals? I mean why else would James Bond, MacGyver or Spider-Man have to be the one to throw down with these Maestros of crime? If so, If they are considered to be Top of the Food chain in the underworld criminal empire, then why do they always suck so badly when it comes to killing their nemesis? Why after managing to knock their enemy out, do they decide to strap their foe into some time delayed killing device? Something like a Car crushing machine, a burning rope hanging over a container of molten liquid or a time bomb strapped to a chair? Why in the name of crime do they do that? Then, to make matters worse, apparently their schedule is so busy that they have to leave the goodguy there alone, because CLEARLY their plan is so fool proof that the hero will die!

Of course in the end, the hero of the tale does manage to get free(Surprise!) and then foil mister baddies plans.

Does any of that sound like something that someone who is supposed to be considered the ultimate evil would do? Seriously? They are top shelf bad guys, yet their method for killing sucks! I mean, the common thug has a better kill ratio than the super dudes. I mean thugs will just shoot the good guy in the face. See? Problem solved, not much chance of him freeing himself, and it’s much quicker, which would give the evil dude more time to make his rounds and reach his appointments, cause as we all know, bad guys always have appointments and are very very busy!

Marvel Geek

I have never denied the fact that I love comic books, in particular Marvel comics! Yes, I am a “Marvel Geek” and proud of it! Comic books allow you to enter an ongoing world of pure fantasy, but not so far removed as to be totally unfamiliar to the reader. It’s a world where ANYTHING can happen, and you can associate with it, because the towns, the buildings and all that are things you already know. On top of that, Marvel(As well as DC) have been around so long, that the universe of their comic books has such a rich history, that goes back farther than my existance!

So, why Marvel over DC? Well, several reasons! One is that I think the Marvel Comics universe is more realistic. Yes I know, that doesnt even make sense! People swinging from weblines? Gods chilling at the corner Starbucks? How can that even be remotely realistic? What I mean, is in comparison to DC. The cities in Marvel Comics are REAL Cities, the president is our president! It’s exactly our world, with one small difference….Super Powered entities(And the occasional alien invasion, interdimensional shifting, Time warp and near death catastrophies that happen on nearly an hourly basis)!

Plus, Marvel characters are more “Human”, and the comics focus on that humanity. It’s not just a guy in a mask doing remarkable good, with the occasional glimpse at a face behind the mask! No! Not only do we get to watch our favorite hero’s thwart an alien invasion, but also watch him figure out how he’s gonna pay his electric bill, or the damage that his heroic deeds does to his homelife.

Now, that out of the way..The main point of this post is to inform everyone about Digital Marvel Comics! A service from Marvel, that allows you to subscribe for a very small ammount, and read THOUSANDS of their comics on-line! Past as well as present! Plus, even if you manage to read all of the titles, Marvel adds new titles EVERY week! You don’t ever have to worry about running out! Plus, it’s a good way to get caught up with your favorite heros, or just check out some of the amazing story arcs that shook the Marvel universe to it’s core..Like my personal favorite: “The Others” Spider-man Story Arc!

If you enjoy comics, do yourself a favor and check it out!