Welcome. It's time to review a video game here on Giant Bomb. It's
Spider Man two season. Everybody's Marvel's Spider Man two is gonna be out here
at the end of the week. The review embargo is up. We've all
been playing it. We being I'm Jeff Grubb. I'm joined by Jeff Backlar,
Dan Riker, and Janet Choa. Boys, how are you doing?
Are you guys ready to talk about Spider Man? No? No, most
sort No, okay, I am. I can't wait to talk about spider
Just woke up in the suns of my eyes. I thought this was a
casual conversation amongst friends. And then you say the word review. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, you would give your review impressions. But I'm gonna need
a score and that's gonna be binding, and we're gonna hand that over to
Metacritic whatever. Jane Choa says, uh, let's see. So this this
is the sequel to Spider Man came out twenty eighteen. They all said,
Miles Morales to bring kind of both games together in this one. It is
PlayStation's big game for the fall kind of thing. Everything's lining up for this
to be a blockbuster. The original Spider Man, very successful game. I
really really liked Spider Man. I think I like Miles Morales even more,
not necessarily the story stuff, but the I think it was more concise,
more focused. Going into this one, I was like, I hope they
learned the lessons there, and I'll say overall, my my initial impressions are
that they did. It is a more focused game. It is not like
some sort of elaborate new take on it. But I don't think I was
ever expecting that. I think it's a pretty solid game overall. What's your
initial oppressions, Jeff Backlar, Yeah, I think I'm right there with you.
I am. I was not expecting any wild evolution from one in one
five I called Miles Morales one five. Sure, but yeah, it's you
know, I think they have really finessed and fine tuned the system that this
game kind of operates on. And I have absolutely been enjoying the hell out
of what I've played so far about eight hours or so, and I think
they've really zeroed in in storytelling in this one. I think the storytelling in
this game, opposed to the last two, is really like hit it stride,
and that's probably for me like pound for pound the biggest tangible evolution from
the other two. You know, this game just plays so effortlessly, and
I think that's a big part of what we're we kind of miss with with,
you know, critiquing stuff, where like I sometimes fight games, right,
Like, I sometimes fight games to have it play the way that,
like, I want to feel comfortable playing, and this game is not that.
I think they really fine tuned combat in a way that I found super
frustrating in the first Spider Man, I think they've done something really interesting with
your gadgetry, allowing you to spin all those plates in a more logical and
kind of sensible way for me out of the gate, that was probably that
in the storytelling is probably the first two things that I really found to be
vast improvements. You know, we could get into the combat overall as we
keep talking here, but yeah, I mean front to back. I'm absolutely
loving what I'm playing. How about you, Dan, What are you thinking
about the game? So I'm like, I played about twenty five hours of
it, I would say, and it was kind of a roller coaster for
me because I also really liked the first one. I like the old ones
too, The old Legs fighter in two that never saw stuff and everything.
I struggled with the beginning. I didn't like the beginning. I didn't think
it was the best first impression. A big I mean, this isn't a
big spoiler. It's literally the first thing that happens in the game. There's
a big Sandman fight, and it reminds me of remember in the God War
two, the first got of War two. It starts the big Colossus of
Rhodes thing. Yeah, and it's such a cool big It's definitely a gimmick,
but it works. It's like, oh, you've got this giant monster
rampaging, but you're fighting, You're taking it down. There's all these quick
time events, and I think this is before you know, obviously Got Horror,
you know, kind of made quick time events a little sale and we
kind of moved away from that. But even back then, it was you
were playing a lot of that. You were fighting the class as you know,
the hand was coming down, You're trying to get your combos in and
crowd control and all that. I feel like the first half hour to hour
of this game kind of plays itself in a way that I was like,
man, this feels very dated to me, and this field it's very big
and expensive and pretty yeah, and like if somebody walked in on this that
didn't play video games, and so they're like, holy shit, video games
have come far, and they're right. I mean, it looks absolutely incredible.
But I just felt like everything from the way I was swinging to the
the combat cues I was given, everything was just kind of waiting for that.
All right, our ones popping up on the screen, Square's popping up
on the screen. It's clearly making me swing in this direction towards this that
it all feels very very on rails, and so I was really not into
that beginning, and then once it opened up, I loved it. I
mean, is it is a really really great open world moving around was by
is like one of the best open world protagonists you can be. The swinging
feels better than ever. The switching between Miles and Peter is great. The
map has been blown out to have you know, Queens and Brooklyn, Mystoria,
all that stuff, the really good stuff there. And as I moved
on, I like the skill trees a lot. I like the open world
stuff, and I felt like it it struggled in the big moments, because
the big moments all kind of felt like the game was playing itself for me,
or like you know these flashback sequences where it's like, oh, we
got to we're back in high school and we got to sneak into the school
and get a USB drive. It's like it doesn't feel open at all.
It's like, here's the part where one's been a climb on the ceiling.
Here's the part where I'm supposed to dangle down from this particular thing and steal
a thing from a pocket. So I really learned to not like the big
story missions. I loved the open world mission stuff, and then there was
stuff like in these small little side moments that really, really I thought it
shined. There's a I won't spoil exactly what happened, but there's a side
mission called find Grandpa, and I don't know if you guys played this,
but it's uh, I'm not a Marvel guy, not a Spider Man guy,
and it generations that Grandpa. Yes, that's right. I'm just not
even like really a story guy. And I've talked before, I like games
don't really get to me or anything. I don't really get emotional or anything
like that. And I did catch myself at this like random side mission and
Spider Man two kind of like welling up a little bit. I was like,
holy shit, this is the last thing I expected from the Spider Man
game. Was this really sweet little side mission that caught me completely off guard
in a really great way. Like the game has a ton of heart in
these moments. Yes, I think, yeah, it's the big stuff that
turned me off, the storytelling, like the actual direction and everything of the
cut scenes in the way that like when you swing into an area and you
just you and your suit, you know, come right into the thing,
Like everything was just seamless. It's so incredibly well made. But I found
what you were doing in the story missions. I thought they were too long.
I thought they were too linear. Many of them, right, too
many. So that's the thing. Yeah, So that's that's my ultimate thing
with this game is I did like all the side stuff for the most part.
I did almost every side mission. I pretty much. I saw all
of the skill trees almost filled out all three of them. There's one for
both of them together in one breach for Antagonist's right, And you know,
I was really really and all that I bought all the suits, bought all
the extra suits tied to those, and then I got to twenty one out
of thirty one main missions, and I had pretty much done all the open
world stuff because I kept putting off all the story missions because I wasn't liking
him. And when I saw that that was kind of all I had left
was the story missions, and I started the next one. It was like
another one of those like I'm Mary Jane, and I got to sneak around
and I was just like, man, I can't do and I like,
I don't this might be an hour long mission. I don't like any of
these, and I did. I just put the game down at that point,
so I don't think I'm going back to it. But I really really
enjoyed a lot of that open part of the game. You know, Jim,
how does that sound to use that kind of echo? How you feel
did you have a different experience? Yeah, that Dan's Dan's take echoes a
lot of my own experience with it. I feel like the game really shines
and really helps display why Spider Man the character and not just Peter Parker,
but the character Spider Man Miles Morales as well. Highlight does really well in
those smaller moments and like those person and person like, oh, Spider Man
is just a dude. He isn't some all seeing God or anything, And
those bigger story moments do kind of take away from my enjoyment of the game.
I had a little bit of a problem with the beginning of it as
well. It felt like a little bit too on rails. But once yea,
like Dan said, once it got going, everything started clicking into place
and everything, and I kind of enjoyed how the story was In Spider Man
one, I enjoyed those story beats just because I enjoy those characters more so
than other people in Spider Man's rogues gallery. But as the story was progressing
and unfolding here, if you were at all a fan of any of the
comics from any of the Spider Man series, there's a lot of images.
There's a lot of little nods and like, hey, I know that guy.
This looks like this. Yeah. And it's really neat. The way
that they handle the switching is seamless and really fucking neat, and it's really
cool and it feels organic when you come across Miles or you come across Peter.
When you're playing as the other, and it really adds to the feeling
of like, oh, there are two Spider Men here, right. It
almost made me want like a mode or something where it's just the two of
you all the time and you're tackling stuff together. I really like how they
managed to add little story bits that felt insignificant at first, but start to
build on top of each other as you start accumulating and doing them. I
don't want to spoil the specific story bits, but there are different, let's
say, factions within the world that start building up and picking up momentum as
you take on the different story missions. Some of them feel very inconsequential at
first, because like, oh, just stop this robbery, stop these bad
guys, go to this point, go to that point, But as you
build up, it re feels like it actually matters in the greater world of
Spider Man. I didn't mind the Mary Jane sections as much. They kind
of give you They're not as bad as the first one. They are.
It is still like there's still a lot of that kind of stuff, but
I think it's better than it was in the first game, which I don't
know if that's saying much, but I know that's saying Mary Jane. It's
like there is stuff like that the high school wen I was talking about,
which might as well, like yeah, you've got Spider Man powers, but
you're very confined with like okay, you can zip to the ceiling when the
security guard comes to look for you, you know. Yeah. But I
think like the combat really sings. I think they have finally nailed down the
combat in a way that, in my head, has surpassed like the Arkham
Games. Where as Batman you kind of felt invincible as long as you're nailing
the timing. Here, it's not only nailing the timing of the combat and
everything, but like really utilizing all the tools that they give you, and
give you an obscene amount of tools, Like it all felt like each other,
right, they all flow into one another really well. Right. Yeah,
Like you know when you were playing Guitar Hero and you nail like like
a twenty thirty note combo. Yeah, it feels like that here. And
I was surprised. Sorry, sorry, interrupted ahead, Oh no, no,
no, go ahead, go ahead, dad, I was just gonna
say that, Like it when you look at those skill trees, especially when
there is one for each character and one for both and they all have these
different Okay, this one if you hold in try and go while you're in
the air, this will do this, and you can grab a gun from
this and throw it back at a guy. Like I kept thinking that,
like this is gonna be too much, and it's gonna I'm gonna forget all
this stuff. I don't have to keep going, right, Yeah, really
it's that much. Yeah, and just the language of just like okay,
so this one is all my web stuff. So yeah, there's a million
different webyank things you can do, but they're all kind of tied to try
and and they all build on top of one another, so it's like now
it's doing a little bit extra, so it's yeah, it's easy to learn.
Yeah. Yeah, it felt really cool with like, you know,
a lot of that crime in progress stuff is going on where it's like you
could just kind of swing in above it and I would just like fly over
them. I would hold in whiye to like zip down and be like what's
up, motherfickers and then immediately start killing them all in like really like stylish
cool ways. That was not you know, linear at all. It wasn't
one of those Simons says things. I was deciding like I'm gonna webyank you
now, I'm gonna throw the gadget down, suck all you guys together,
jump up then and punch the ground. It like all of it flowed together
really really well. Like the game's super shy. I never got tired of
the combat. Yeah, never got tired of the combat, except in those
big boss encounters because it's just the boss. Yeah. Yeah, I think
the boss some of the weakest part. I mean, I think the walk
it talk stuff is that that's the weakest part. There's too much of it.
I was like, there's a there's a Coney Island scene, and I'm
like, this is pretty good. I'm doing a bunch of like motion patrol
games. It looked really good. It was pretty good character development. I
could tell where it was going, and I was like I was along for
the ride, and I'm like, this is this is a good example of
PlayStation design ethos of we are we want things to look big and expensive.
We want you to have an emotional attachment to the characters, and we're gonna
do that through a kind of reduced gameplay. It is it is confined,
but you're still interacting. It's showing not telling. By the end of the
game, when when it's like the fifteenth one of those sequences, I'm like,
no, this still feels like telling not showing. It's like, yeah,
they're trying to have their cake and eat it too a little bit there.
I thought about that a lot, especially with like, uh, what
did Druckman say, Like a couple of years He's like, we got to
figure out how to like not do cut scenes anymore. Right. It was
basically like narrative exposition has to be like a thing you play, and like
you know what, it's kind of like almost fucking impossible, Like no one's
really being able to figure it out in a way that has moved the needle
forward right in a way, and storytelling it's kind of like the alternative there,
and if you want to feel like a very heavy narrative in something like
that totally. I mean, I think there's ways to do it, but
it's not going to feel the same. No, it's not going to feel
the same. And I don't think that's uh. I think like you do
enough like market research and you know, uh yeah testing and like no,
he was going to sell a lot exactly right, So like that, you
know, I maybe that's just my brain going into a game like this where
it's like I know I'm going to have to play slower missions that are simply
story beats. Like there are missions that are just story beats, right,
there are main missions that you have to check off if you want to progress
the main story, and you're not gonna you're not really going to play a
lot. You're gonna you're gonna watch a thing, or you're gonna like vaguely
interact with the thing. I think the Coney Island one is probably the best
example of that, where like there is a bit of a balance too,
because that sort of has like a finale in it that's pretty exciting. I
also think the way I'm playing this game, I'm playing this game to an
audience of two, and this is like family time, and we're like all
gathering around and we're like and we're like at the edge of our seat with
some of these really interesting plot t us like early on, and I think
it's dope. I think like this is a game that is a roller coaster
and you sort of like there's build ups, there's drops, and there's a
lot of you know, peaks and valleys, and that's sort of like how
it goes, right, there's always like an interlude episode in a season of
television, there's always an episode that it's like throwback, and I think as
a whole when you talk about, you know, all of the all of
the boxes that Insomniac is trying to check here, right, it's kind of
like, Wow, this too, me is a very impressive overall package.
I think, Uh, I think if you if you are expecting, if
you know what you're getting into going into it, I think you're gonna be
well served and uh impressed. And I also think like, uh, you're
just you're just not gonna be able to like watch this and be like,
well this isn't fucking incredible what I'm seeing right now. Yeah, You're just
not gonna be able to sit there and be like, well I'm bored,
right, Like, I think very entertaining. It's very very entertaining there.
I think my one the one thing that bugs me the most in this game,
and it's a very spiders. I get it nice, I'm scared of
them, guys. I there's there's it feels like there's been a significant amount
of time between Spider Man one and two, and I'm talking within the world
world of the actual game in your lifetime, and we see Miles grow,
Like the character model of Miles definitely has aged. I do not like this
little boy if a case of Peter Parker because I think like it lends more
to the character to see him age up as well, because it's like,
okay, you you have seen some ship. You have been seeing some ship.
Let's put let's put a little bit of I don't know, like wrinkles
on there. Like I think that's why the character of Peter B. Parker
in the Spider Verse movies plays so well because it's like, damn, man,
you've seen some stuff. Yeah, he's like middle aged. Right.
Even Toby a Wire in that in the in the Multiverse movie that they did,
it was like that it goes the best part of the man. He's
still Spider Man. He's still working at it. I like, I like
that a lot too. And and uh yes, some of that was lost
for me with the character model change. I'm like, I'm used to it.
But but again, I don't like the I don't know. I look
a lot of the character models. They're impressive in a lot of scenes,
and a lot of times they look pretty goofy too, I think. Yeah,
it also takes away from like the character arc that they're building for Peter
of like yours is like men Tour, Like you're you're his old you're his
father figure. Yeah, it's like his swim buddy, Yeah, right,
like when and there are moments where, like the character model for Miles looks
older and more mature than Peter, because Peter looks like Timothy Salome sometimes.
I definitely played his Miles more one because like a lot of his new powers
are a lot of fun. Yeah, and also he's just so much less
annoying than than Peter Peters is. I don't know if that's normal and like
just the series if he's like less of a dorky, equippy Spider Man,
but I definitely preferred him because of that. I could use a verbosity slider
on h on Peter Dan. So you said you're about two thirds the way
through the main story, Yeah, did you get the last sort of suit
for Spidy that unlocks powers? I mean I got about halfway through. There
was the one that like suddenly, oh okay, like here's it's a new
type of suit. Yeah, okay, Okay, I don't know if we're
talking about the same one. Yeah, right, okay, yes, I
think probably, If not, it's it's essentially the same thing. I How
do you guys feel about the we can't see this in the trailers, the
symbiote suit powers on Spidey. That was a nice surprise. I did not
know this was a big Venom game, and I remember from my little yeah,
oh yeah. When I saw I was like, oh right, I
guess they did like tweet that out or something, so I didn't know that
was a spoiler that Venom was in it. But then when I saw him,
I was like, oh, right, that guy. Like even though
someone who doesn't know comics, I just remember from playing the games that Venom's
a cool character and there are parts with him that I don't know if it's
people know who he the symbiotes tied to or what happens there. But even
to the first game, they tease it, but they we don't. People
are like, we don't know for sure if that's going to be him,
but right, yeah, okay, okay, yeah, it's it's it's kind
of a fun thing throughout the middle stretch of the game seeing what's going on
with that and how that's developing and then how that affects you. And I
thought, as far as the story stuff goes, that was the most intriguing
stuff to me, This stuff where it's just like I got to track down
this doctor and I gotta you know, like some of the stuff doesn't hit,
but the venom symbiotes stuff was pretty cool. Yeah, I was.
And like, you know, due to the story, you know, they
that Peter Parker is eventually gonna lose the symbiote suit, like he he can't
keep it because he becomes Sassy Peter Parker, which, by the way,
I'm over. I am so over Sassy Peter Parker because he's got a black
suit on. I just that story is so ancient. Now it's go ahead,
Jeff, is maybe the best Peter Parker like Spider Verse Peter Parker.
Yeah, yeah, totally right, like just like like new Dad, like
New Dad Peter. He's absolutely the best, all right, Yes, absolutely
supposed to be Peter Parker in that Peter Parker. I think it's Peter Parker.
Yeah, I think he's in the noir. Yeah, okay, the
best one. Yeah, his eleven words. But but I forget where I
was going with this, But basically, I just think that the game has
a lot going for it in the side quest Dan, you touched on this
earlier. The side quest are the kind of the meat and potatoes here where
it's like they really figured out how to make the feel interesting, like turning
them into their own mini campaigns. Essentially, they you know, it's not
just like the same little thing you're doing over and over again to fill up
or to mark things off a checklist. There is an aspect to it,
but they build up to something and they have a conclusion and then usually you
get some cool rewards at the end. And then there's the smaller side quest,
the ones where you like you found Grandpa I had won and this is
like such like a video game moment where it's like, hey, this guy
is like, hey, my my wife died. I have my birds here
that i've been taking care of their my family now, but I'm going on
an adventure. Can you take these birds for me? And I'm like,
yeah, sure, man, I'll take the birds to a park and like
let them send them free. He's all right, cool, all right,
And you're supposed to go back and find him, and of course he died
and it's like this touching moment. I thought, I found it very touching.
It was it's a cool little moment that makes you feel connected to New
York, which I think is important for a Spider Man game. And then
as soon as as soon as the mission ended, it was like level up,
but I just died and I leveled up this rule. So his soul
is what happens? What is the soul if not XP exactly souls have skill
points and then we all know that, but that's it's exactly that which highlights
the character of Spider Man is something like that lends itself so well to a
video game and a movie. It's like, yeah, even though Spider Man,
either of them have all these magnificent powers, it's like you're still having
these human interactions in a way that like Batman would never right, Like Batman
is not going to stop it helps one find their grandpa or like shovel grandpa,
Yeah, like he would. Like there's another side mission where, like
you know, Spider Man is to go look at people setting off fireworks,
right, Batman would punch both of those people. Today, you got to
beat the shit out of those kids, exactly. Is less of a cop
right. Yeah, but like Spider Man, it was like, oh cool,
this is why you're doing it all right, Okay, just just stop
guys. I do like that at that aspect. Like that like leads into
how he treats a lot of his villains, his his rogues Gallery, where
a lot of them are established, Like he is a little bit older.
That's he's supposed to be older's supposed to have been around for a while.
So he's dealt with a lot of these villains before, and most of you,
if they're not in jail, they are the reformed or trying to be
reformed. And so there's like this aspect of he's not just beating up guys
because they made a poor decision or because they did a science experiment that ruined
their brain. He's not gonna punish them eternally for that. It's like,
no, they can get better. These people aren't just coded as evil forever.
And I like that it Also they bring them all into the story in
an interesting way. So the set up here is Craven the Hunter is coming
to New York to hunt this this rogues, this rogue's gallery because he's like,
wow, this is way better than what I've been finding in the jungle.
So he comes and he's way better than panthers. So he's like he's
like dragging like Tombstone and all these guys out of retirement, so and the
Lizard and all these things. That's school. Like when you see Tombstone is
like he's a Carnie is like we're in a ferris wheel. It's like,
what the hell he's got god a uniform. It's a good bit And I'm
like, that's that's a cool thing to make it feel like the make the
world feel alive and make it like there's tears of these villains and we know
that from like reading the comics, Like that's a jobber. It's like,
well, no, yeah, that jobber is now just working a job like
it's Carney, So it's perfect for him. You're talking about they did a
mysterio dirty in this then, I mean the mysterio is the ultimate jobber though.
So yeah, he's the goober of the room. Yeah they did him
dirty, man boy dirty, and that that spot the mysterio, I think
the first one with the long DJ mini game and stuff that made me realize
that like there's a lot of mini game stuff in this, there's find the
crypt at him. There's a one DJ fair amount of basketball shots in this.
Yes, there's a lot of hold L two and R two spot to
make the thing sparked. There's a lot of fun. There's so much of
that, Yes, there is. There's two things I want to bring up
that you reminded me of. Grob. First off, mentioning New York.
I think it's almost impossible to like properly represent New York in a video game,
and I do think this game does arguably some of the best New York
stuff. It's it's really really good and I always appreciate that, so definitely
points in that category. And I do think, like you talk about with
the side missions, about developing its own narrative, I think that is something
really great that this game kind of borrows from the Batman the early Batman games,
where like those side things are not just these checkboxes, right, they
are little expositional sort of chapter marks that do tell a story. And I
think they they were able to like kind of translate that into this into the
Spider Man world, which is super dope as opposed to like how it kind
of went the first two games. Even stuff like the photo missions where you'll
just go to it yeah, and like they really flesh out like, oh,
this is New York. But then yeah, Robbie right, that's the
character's name from the from the Daily Bugle. I think, yeah, we'll
give a little bit of context, and some of some of the context is
really neat. It's like, oh, they're wear to New York. There's
like a wrestling thing talking about the history like wrestling in New York, and
so I was like, oh, this is fun and it's yeah. It
was like sa bona, Yeah, got meet. I wanted them to say
bone saw too. Uh. That stuff is also like not just thrown in
for as an afterthought. It feels like, no, that these the people
making this game are like, hey, if we're going to to use New
York City, if we're going to to try to like represent like Harlem because
Miles is from there, and they make a big deal about that. Like
the the one of the missions, one of the side quests, ends with
you going to like going to like you're collecting all these things. I won't
spoil the specific subit, but you're collecting all these things and the real world
objects. And then at the end it's like they're gonna put them in a
museum and you can walk up to them and you can actually read about them,
and it refers to the real people who actually use this stuff and how
that relates back to Harlem. It was like, I'm like, you know
what, this is pretty good. I think you know. I wasn't like
having a I'm like, oh man, I'm in a museum. This rules.
But I'm like, this is a nice much and it feels it feels
sincere from the development team, and it doesn't get like if you are not
interested in that. It's not like it's not like a stealth mission that you
have to do. Like I thought, the work that went into it in
the heart and the thought that went into I think we're talking about the same
side story with them when you're collecting these things, and it's like, wow,
this is a level of detail and thought that I'm not used to seeing
out of like collectibles or a side mission. And I also go I was
just saying, and that especially works because there isn't a ton of map barf.
It isn't like so many side things. This is a very manageably sized
game where it's like you're not gonna get lost if you're gonna find these interesting
side quests because they are the thing to do and they all lead to these
down these interesting paths. I'm sorry, I keep going down. I also
want to call out tremendous accessibility stuff going on here, and this is a
Sony Big Sony first party has always been very good about this. But there
were options and stuff here I had never seen before. Like you've got the
stuff where there's a huge variety of like you know, you can open up
the timing window and healing options and things like that, but also stuff we're
like mapping a bunch of shortcuts to the dpad. If you want to,
you can set like a game speed like seventy percent to a dpad button,
so like at any point in the game, if you want to, you
could like tap left on the dpad and it's going at thirty percent speed if
you need that or I did it as just like, man, this is
actually kind of cool. I'm just going to look cool dramatic mode anytime you
can adjust the physics assist on the web swinging. There is just like a
huge suite of accessibility options that I saw that I was like, wow,
this is another one of the things that a lot of a lot of big
games don't put the time into like this level of it, and uh,
there's so much here. I think that's that's awesome. It's it now.
I was gonna say, it really is like such a complete package, right,
Like. I think there's moments like that where you realize like, oh
wow, like the flexibility to customize that experience the way you want it.
I just think is an amazing thing that I never would have thought would be
a reality ten fifteen years ago. Uh. And I think that just leads
to like all these moments where I just found find myself like perched on top
of some you know, water well on top of the building, or you
know, on top of like a spire on a bridge, and you're just
sort of like, god, like, look at the light, especially at
night. This game at night is golden Golden hour is what really. I
was like that intro sequence that you guys were complaining about earlier with you,
I thought, I don't I don't like the intro, especially thought like the
swinging was broken. I was so worried, like, oh my god,
it feels like you're you're like, it's broken. What's happening? Yeah,
talking about Yeah, and so you guys, we're just on a roller coaster
and didn't realize you just had to stay buckets and that's that's correct. You
just like sit down, keep your heart and it's like, okay, no,
this this feels better. But then you start unlocking powers and like especially
Troversal power something like that. No, this actually feels incredible, fantastic,
And then you know the way the time works in the game. I don't
think it's like a real time clock. Like the scenes are set at different
times and it's progression a little bit, so you into the Golden Hour time
and it's just like the city looks so beautiful. And by this point you've
will watch so much Traversa that you feel really empowered and you're doing all these
cool moves and I think that the wrapping around the corner to like keep your
swing going in. And then the flying we haven't talked about it. This
is the best Superman game ever made. This is yeah, well literally flying
through rings. Yeah yeah, this is the evolution of the Super Mario Brothers
Cape. Yes, incredibly, it's the way to do flying in in a
in a game. I think it feels so good. You feel so cool,
and I think that's what you're if you're gonna be flying. I think
it's what you need to do. You need to just feel cool. Like
the extra boosts, like the extra air dash jump that you get as well
to like continue the momentum. Flying just really good. It's I was kind
of worried it was going to be like a Saints Row three to Saints Ro
four thing, where it's remember, like Saints Row three, you could do
a ton of stuff that made it, yes, so very mobile going around
the city. But then by four it was like, well, now I'm
just straight up Superman. I'm just flying around and there's no constraints, and
I feel like, why would I ever drive around? Why would I ever
engage with stuff on the ground. This somehow hits that sweet spot where it's
like I can basically fly, but there is some sort of physics involved and
you do have to kind of Mario World cape it a little bit or find
those little exhaust events and stuff like that, and it doesn't take you away
from like you still want to explore down in the buildings and on the ground
and things like that. It's uh, you know, Arkham City kind of
had a little bit of that where you could grapple up and we're a little
bit but this this is, yeah, like you said, by far,
the best version of that I've seen any It's because I think they really balance
the idea of like, well, it's still Spider Man, so we can't
like just give him like infinite flight, right right, No, yeah,
so that dance right, that wouldn't be as fun, Like it's fun like
to feel like, oh man, I'm about to skid on the ground.
What can I do here? Do I back to my swing? Do I
use my venom boost or whatever. There's a bunch of options available to you,
and you having that control over stuff makes it feel that much cool.
And that's the beauty of it, right because you are you are juggling,
you're spinning a bit of a plate. When it comes to like just keeping
your eye on like the most surface level like gravity issues, right, we're
just like all right, I don't I can't fly like a like Superman,
but I can at least understand like I'm probably gonna need to switch something up
right here and jump to a different way to traverse. It's it's so much
fun. You have so many different tools that like you could be flying and
then if you need this little boost or something, L three will make you
nose dive, and then there's an upgrade where if you go for a nose
dive and then you hold the swing full loop loop like inside out Boys situation,
you can sing yourself back so much speed that it's a really good thing
to do if you are trying to like fly somewhere really quick because you want
that speed. That really helps the flying or gliding I suppose. But yeah,
that loopy loop is a really cool move. All the stuff you in
lock it like makes it better. But like there's a you talked about the
skill trees, there's a couple other, like you know, there's the suit
upgrades as well, and those have powers link to like what you're capable of
doing. You people should focus on that because getting your traversal speed up really
unlocks more fun in this game, and it is just called traversal under suit
tech or whatever. Hut. Put your upgrade points into that, maybe not
first, but pretty early on because you want to be playing as much as
this game with your upgraded maximum swing velocity as fun as possible, because it
really does a lot. There we got, I'll go ahead, please jam.
Like I was gonna say that that suit Tech skill tree thing. I
thought it was really cool that like you would have a couple that are like
okay, ten percent boots, ten percent boost, and then there would be
a split. Yes, like you're saying in skill trees a million times,
but you unlock it, and but you can toggle between the two anytime you
want to. There's no cost or anything. You're not like the choice yes,
right right, like you got both of these, yes, yep,
exactly. It's like, okay, I'm going into combat, so let me,
you know, flip all these switches on. And now I'm traversing,
let me flip these So yeah, I love the fact that like you can
have a situation where you are not only uh, switching between like all the
gadgetry stuff, right, like the gadgetry situations where like you can balance,
like, oh, I know that I can get an extra shot in my
web slinger thing if I do a certain like style of like combinations and whatnot.
I just think, like like you said at the top, like when
you're when you're juggling all that and in the first couple of game where like
that was just like a thing that I never I probably played that entire game
and didn't use half of the gadgetry because I just didn't know it was there.
I wasn't directed from like a UI experience to like gravitate towards that.
So I think the fact that this game like very much probably realized that probably
had enough data to see like, oh, man, like players left shit
on the table, we need to make sure there's a way to like incorporate
that. So that's I love to see that stuff. And just even from
like the cosmetic point of view, like, man, they just went nuts
with suits, huh, they just went absolutely bananas. Like I'm having a
trouble. I'm having trouble like moving away from the Scarlet Spiders suit because I
just love Scarlet Spiders. That's gonna be the question that's silver Stricken chat asked,
what's your favorite suit? Is that your favorite one? I think Scarlet
Spider is like my favorite. I don't know if there's like more of that,
But what they do is they like you unlock a suit and then there's
like four subsuits below that, and you're like, yeah, for any of
them. I mean there must be two hundred suits in this game, like
it's not expensive to get. Like every single time I unlocked a suit,
I was like, okay, I'll hold square to spend ten tech points or
whatever, and then I've got, yeah, two hundred of them. Yeah,
those were awesome. And I don't even know like the story stuff like
some of that, like I recognize the Spider Verse suit or this or that,
but like just visually all these like Miles has a bunch of really cool
ones with like kind of an electronic face and stuff like that, and some
of your unlocking, but some of you are getting as part of the story.
Some you get at the end of quests. There's a lot you could
do get the end if you complete a quest chain, you get a reward
at the end of that. There's a lot of ways to get suit,
a lot of ways to get suit. It's a lot of variety there.
We're running low on time, so I got a couple of questions from the
chat. Let's see here. Xandrake ninety fourth says, does the map cover
more neighborhoods? It does? It has queens and stuff. How'd you guys
feel about that? I thought this is a pretty good addition. It's not
like it's not a game changer. But I'm glad that had the gliding because
it made it easy to get through those parts where there's not a lot of
a big, big buildings. But I thought that was a good addition.
How'd you guys feel about it. I'm trying to remember did fast travel work
the same, because I remember you could do the subway in the previous one,
but this one it's really cool where it's like, once you do a
certain amount of activities in an area of the city, you can just fast
travel to any point within it. So like you know, I thin guess
a while to get from like the Upper West Side to Astoria, but if
I've done enough stuff in Astoria, I can literally like point at the map
and be like, send me right there, and it works. And it's
like immedia too. It's just like seamles suddenly like it's cutting you flying in
through the air or doing setups on a building or something. It's so they've
they figured that part out. I don't know what kind of you know,
dark magic is happening under the hood there, but like that shit is,
you'll love to see it. They know how to make a video game.
Yeah, yes, did you guys have any bugs. I had a few
audio bugs a couple just nothing terrible stuff that I can live with with.
I audio cut out of a couple like just like the music bed fallout that
was before that day zero patch, so maybe that was addressed. There.
A couple of times clearing out like an enemy stronghold, there would be like
one enemy left and this you know idiot was like caught up in some like
glitchen on some lampposts that I couldn't find, and you know, it'd be
like the mission's not over. Where is this idiot? I gotta find him?
Had some of that. I had a boss fight I had to restart
because I went really hard with just like every one of my powers. I
was just like pumbling, pumbling, pumbling, and he kept like staggering back
until he like staggered into a rock and he was like inside it, and
it seemed like the character couldn't get out. So he had like this much
health left and he was in the rock and I couldn't get aim out,
and I was like, all right, I guess I gotta restart this.
But overall, it's like very few and farba in terms of that type of
stuff and the amount of times, I've just been in awe of what it's
pulling off technically far out weigh is that. Yeah, there's there's a specific
moment. It's kind of a chase sequence where they're definitely pulling all the tools
that they've shown you from like the Ration and Clank game, Like, oh,
you're doing that with Spider Man. That's sick as hell, Let's do
more of that. And it made me kind of want like or see the
possibilities of a game using the mechanics of that specific Marvel character. Yes,
I don't want to spoil anything, yep, yeah, I mean speaking of
spoilers, this is a game that is a sequel to a very successful game.
I think it's very likely they're going to make a third one. There
are some setups there, don't We won't talk about anything specific, but how
do you guys feel about the setup for a third game? And how do
you feel about the conclusion of this one? If you've beaten it, Dan,
you beat it? No, No, that's right, twenty one miss
then you guys thrust you guys have Okay, Well I'm I'm so. I
thought I was close to the end, but then I looked at that progress
and it read like fifty. Oh. Actually, if it's at fifty,
you're probably pretty close to the end of the story. If I was at
like sixty five seventy or something like that and I still had ten story missions,
yeah, but I had done like all of you were doing all the
other stuff. Yes, I think so if you've been doing a good mix,
you're probably pretty close to the end. Got it. I think the
the ending is very satisfying. Uh. The uh boss fight, Like I
don't I don't love the boss fights in this I think they're pretty samy.
They all have the same structure. There's gonna be multiple phases, and and
the phases are gonna be like you're gonna end with that cinematic sequence, and
then you're gonna jump to another part of the level, and then you're basically
gonna do the same fight again, and you're either gonna do that two or
three times. And that happens a lot. I think that's one of the
things with this game that is maybe its weakness is it has a lot of
good stuff, and then it has a lot of stuff that's maybe too much.
I like the combat. I think that being like the main thing you
do constantly combat that did get a little bit old for me. I kind
of wish that there would have been some platforming sequences mixed up in the in
the main stuff, but overall it's like, yeah, the combat's good,
but there's just too much of everything in some of these stuff. I think
the side question where they had that good balance for like, there's not too
much of that. But yes, I think this is part of the reason
that Miles Morales was such a welcome thing because we had all of the like
big budget, giant open world map stuff going on without any bloat. Really,
you know, like this is this is a really good game, but
it's pretty bloated in a few ways. And like, I think scaling it
back to that Miles Morales level was exactly what that game needed. I could
have gone for more on the Miles Morales length than this. I yes,
so totally. I think that if you play through the story, you're going
to know where this the third game is going to go pretty quickly. You're
gonna have a pretty good idea of who's going to be in there, who's
going to be the villain, how that's going to work, So that yes,
they definitely set up a third game finally, don't even talked too much
about it. I think we've all just been mostly been impressed the performance.
This is a next Gin only or current Gen only game. Uh, do
you guys feel like this takes advantage of the power of the PS five and
you're pretty happy with the performance. Yeah, the variable refresh rate stuff like
you know, I've gotta I've got a C two O led and I turned
on all that ship and you can tell it runs so so smooth, like
just no hiccups, doesn't matter how much crazy bullshit's happening on the screen.
It technically it's maybe like it's definitely the top three like PS five showcases.
Yeah, it's phenomenal. I mean, especially with those uh melee scenes where
you're tag teaming and you Yeah, I mean just the the chore choreography and
all that coming together. It is really wild. There's a whole well I
don't want to spoil the character that shows up, but this person is around
for a little bit with a little bit of like teleportation, and that ship
is just oh that phenomenal. Yeah, that scene very very good. That's
like because we're cool, that's the there's yeah, tele portals. That what
I was talking about. Yes, okay, Oh, it's very minister of
Ratchet and Clank with the rift apart. Oh, oh the site, Yes
there's worre suddenly. Okay, yes, that's the kind of thing they would
be like, we could do this in a Spider Man movie, but how
do we translate that to a game. No, it's perfect here. It's
better than it could ever be in a movie. It's so like you show
up in one spot for like ten seconds, you're just like, what the
fuck? So awesome? Ye, all right. The last thing I want
to say is like, God, Like, I was fearing that Insomniac would
feel the pressure of the popularity of the Spider Verse theories, that they'd have
to ham this something. There's something there. There are little bits and homages
to it. But I I really love that they stuck to their guns with
their versions of the Spider Man and not having to like fold to agree,
well, we've got to make everything the Spider Verse. The biggest strength of
the story of this game is the relationship between Peter Parker and Miles Morales.
That is, it's a really good dynamic. It's really I think it's really
smart because we've seen Peter like, oh, try to explain why has to
do stuff to MJ and to his aunt and all this stuff. And then
we've seen that that stuff where Miles has to explain it to all these other
Spider Man and that that's cool. But just having like the mentor student dynamic
and then have it become like, no, now we're kind of equals and
we're working together and be partners as like the Spider Team. It's really good
stuff. I really like that a lot. Okay, that's gonna do it
if you're if you're hearing this in the BombCast feed, we might do this
occasionally in the future where like, hey, if there's a big game coming
out, when we want to have a conversation about it, especially at an
embargo time, if it's kind of a little bit off from when we do
the show, Uh, we might do a little bit more of this in
the future. Let us know what you think. Otherwise, thanks for listening,
Thanks for watching everybody. Uh, we'll catch you. We'll catch you
next time. Thanks boys. Bye bye Whip Whip