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Spider-Man: The game! (x2)
Jan. 15th, 2011 01:09 pmYou know, one surefire way of getting me to see the Spider-Man reboot would be for them to continue the "street musician covering Spider-Man theme" gag from the Raimi films... with the incredibly catchy Spectacular Spider-Man song.
Speaking of Spider-Man, I've recently rented both the current-gen Spidey games, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, and since I'm never going to think of a better segue than that, I think I'll review them.
Both games suffer from a bit of repetition in level design, with a philosophy of "enjoy doing that? Then do it three more times!" instead of the more active game design you see in, say, God of War where beating a giant boss will involve cutting off his hand then poking out his eyes and so on and so on instead of cutting off four hands. That said, Shattered Dimensions is the clear winner. It just has more of a fun factor.
SD does have basically an excuse plot, with Spidey accidentally shattering a mystical tablet and then having to save the world from the cataclysm that unleashes. A bit disappointing, since instead of foiling some Big Bad's evil scheme, you're cleaning up after your own dumbass mistake, but I guess it would be too hard to have an overhanging story arc between the four separate worlds. Anyway, I played games back in the 16-bit era, so I'm cool with a simple plot that exists mainly to justify setting up continuities too uncommercial to have games exclusively set in them.
Then you have Web. It's a more traditional Spider-Man game, open-world, with a more linear narrative instead of a bunch of random missions. But even though I enjoyed the grander scope of the story, it's still brought down by a fatal combination of bad writing and incredibly bad voice-acting. To put it bluntly, Spider-Man's voice-actor is bad. Like "is English his first language?" bad. In Shattered Dimensions, they have four good voice actors playing Spider-Man, but here, they couldn't scrounge together one.
Take the opening moments of the game. Spider-Man is walking around, depressed, as the city goes to hell around him, then he hero's up and starts kicking ass. Okay, so far so good. Then he opens his mouth and starts asking where MJ is. Now, think back to a third of Harrison Ford's filmography. When he goes "Where's my wife!?", you can tell he's concerned, but he's also determined and heroic. If anyone's laid a finger on her, you damn sure don't want to be in his shoes.
When Peter says "Where's my wife!?", it's as if he's saying "If anyone's happened to her, I am going to watch like a million hours of Gossip Girl and eat Haagen Dazs and nobody gets to say shit!" Then we flashback to how this all started, with Spider-Man fighting Venom. Okay, you're thinking, since this is "normal," he'll be cracking jokes, dropping one-liners, mocking Venom. Right?
No... that would be the kind of hero you'd write a videogame about. Instead, he's cringing in fear as Venom is about to devour him, and is only saved when part of the symbiote detaches from Venom and costumes him. Given that the first few hours of the game focus on the Kingpin and some mysterious robberies of his, you'd think he'd have something to do with the eventual crisis, but no, it's all a big waste of time, forgotten once the symbiotes show up. The symbiote detached because Peter was so afraid. That's right... Spider-Man being a sniveling coward is a key plot point in this game.
( But wait, there's more! )
Speaking of Spider-Man, I've recently rented both the current-gen Spidey games, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, and since I'm never going to think of a better segue than that, I think I'll review them.
Both games suffer from a bit of repetition in level design, with a philosophy of "enjoy doing that? Then do it three more times!" instead of the more active game design you see in, say, God of War where beating a giant boss will involve cutting off his hand then poking out his eyes and so on and so on instead of cutting off four hands. That said, Shattered Dimensions is the clear winner. It just has more of a fun factor.
SD does have basically an excuse plot, with Spidey accidentally shattering a mystical tablet and then having to save the world from the cataclysm that unleashes. A bit disappointing, since instead of foiling some Big Bad's evil scheme, you're cleaning up after your own dumbass mistake, but I guess it would be too hard to have an overhanging story arc between the four separate worlds. Anyway, I played games back in the 16-bit era, so I'm cool with a simple plot that exists mainly to justify setting up continuities too uncommercial to have games exclusively set in them.
Then you have Web. It's a more traditional Spider-Man game, open-world, with a more linear narrative instead of a bunch of random missions. But even though I enjoyed the grander scope of the story, it's still brought down by a fatal combination of bad writing and incredibly bad voice-acting. To put it bluntly, Spider-Man's voice-actor is bad. Like "is English his first language?" bad. In Shattered Dimensions, they have four good voice actors playing Spider-Man, but here, they couldn't scrounge together one.
Take the opening moments of the game. Spider-Man is walking around, depressed, as the city goes to hell around him, then he hero's up and starts kicking ass. Okay, so far so good. Then he opens his mouth and starts asking where MJ is. Now, think back to a third of Harrison Ford's filmography. When he goes "Where's my wife!?", you can tell he's concerned, but he's also determined and heroic. If anyone's laid a finger on her, you damn sure don't want to be in his shoes.
When Peter says "Where's my wife!?", it's as if he's saying "If anyone's happened to her, I am going to watch like a million hours of Gossip Girl and eat Haagen Dazs and nobody gets to say shit!" Then we flashback to how this all started, with Spider-Man fighting Venom. Okay, you're thinking, since this is "normal," he'll be cracking jokes, dropping one-liners, mocking Venom. Right?
No... that would be the kind of hero you'd write a videogame about. Instead, he's cringing in fear as Venom is about to devour him, and is only saved when part of the symbiote detaches from Venom and costumes him. Given that the first few hours of the game focus on the Kingpin and some mysterious robberies of his, you'd think he'd have something to do with the eventual crisis, but no, it's all a big waste of time, forgotten once the symbiotes show up. The symbiote detached because Peter was so afraid. That's right... Spider-Man being a sniveling coward is a key plot point in this game.
( But wait, there's more! )
