Recently, our editor JUN (that is what I’m gonna call you from now on, because a) it’s shorter than your full name and b) June is the sixth month of the year. Get it? Sixth month, and we’re called Rule of Six. If you’re not laughing it’s because you don’t get it yet) rather unfavorably reviewed Ultimate Spiderman for the original Xbox. Yet, despite their many, many faults, I love these games to death, and I only want what’s best for everybody’s favorite wall crawler. That’s why I made this, a list of 5 things the developers can do to make Spiderman games suck just a wee bit less. Oh, and fyi, I haven't played the newest entry in the franchise, Shattered Dimensions, so I don’t actually know what this game does first hand and am preemptively admitting that I am full of shit.
1: Combat
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| Spiderman, as ineffectual against a human-sand Monster as a real spider... |
Let’s get the most glaring problem of these games out of the way, the combat. Most recent Spiderman games are generally split up into two primary gameplay sections; web-swinging and fighting. Web-swinging has generally been the highlight of these games, allowing for fun, fluid and an all-around fantastic way to get around the city. You can just web around the city, do races, or seek out to collect hundreds of tokens hidden around the city. Fighting, on the other hand, stinks worse than a rotting sack of horse balls (see: every episode of Fear Factor ever produced). Since the first Spiderman game of the recent series released on the xbox/ps2/GameCube, the fighting system has been revamped with each new entry of the series, as of yet never culminating in what would be called “good.”
The problems: Spiderman seems to have tons of trouble reliably connecting his hits, Spiderman seems to have trouble reliably not getting hit, Spiderman has trouble making his webs fucking useful, Spiderman tries very hard to make his webs fucking useless, Spiderman is as easy to break as a fat teenager’s self-esteem, and so on. For some more gameplay problems, see Jun’s review of Ultimate Spiderman. Now, when I think of a good combat system, I think of games like God of War, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and other games of their ilk. The great thing about Spiderman, though, is that his very character allows for some really unique and stylish fighting, but the developers have never been able to actually make it as great as it should be.
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| Web, how does he shot it? |
One problem is that Spiderman’s webbing is absurdly pathetic, being so weak that any random street thug can break free of its snare after a few seconds unless they’re unconscious. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that? That shit is supposed to be stronger than motherfucking steel! When did New York City street rats become so damned powerful? Then again, the game would be as boring as a round of League of Legends if the player just ran around webbing all the street thugs and then leaving (even though that’s what Spidey does…a lot), so why not introduce a webbing gauge, one that only measure webbing used in combat? That way, a player could just web dudes up to a point, or would have to strategically web up his/her victims. Or, give the web attacks more utility in a fight, so that the player is incentivized to use them. Spiderman: Web of Shadows was on the right track with this, combing web-slinging maneuvers into attacks that made for some really cool to watch exchanges. I mean really, there’s a lot that could be done, and in the right creative hands would make for one of the most exciting gameplay systems to date.
I haven’t even started talking about the hand-to-hand systems, dodging, spider-sense and enemy types, and a discussion to that end would literally fill an entire design document (not the apparent sticky-note it’s seemingly filled for all the other games they’ve made). All’s that I’m saying is that if you’re gonna make Spidey fight every thug and crazed villain this side of the Negative Zone, might as well make it fun. Which brings me to my next point…
2. I am fucking sick of Mysterio/Rhino/Shocker/etc.
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| Dammit Rhino...Webhead literally cannot hurt you. Best strategy for victory: be less ass-backwards retarded. |
Why do the developers have to stick every villain they can into all these games? Does the caliber of Mysterio, the villain, the genius, the enigma, really qualify putting him into so many of these games? Does each iteration really need the minor characters just for the sake of having them? Fair enough, I do like seeing some of the bit characters in the games, and the games would feel somewhat hollow and colorless without the extra flair that these characters contribute. But having Rhino as a throwaway boss in every game seems so…meaningless. How about putting in fewer of these enemies and making their roles in the story more meaningful. Spend more time writing them into the story, giving them better lines, and altogether making them more meaningful. How about you repeatedly catch, say, Shocker, trying to rob a bank, and eventually you catch him stealing something more important, and blow his story up from there, rather than catch him randomly stealing from random places in between dealing with the important guy like Doctor Octopus.
2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum has got it’s spread right. Its cast isn’t bloated with villains, replacing some of their presences with clever references instead. The villains that are included are well thought out (maybe except for Killer Croc, which is kind of a letdown), and as such the pacing of the game never seems to skip a beat, also due in part to the developers absolutely nailing what it should feel like to control the Batman, something the Spidey teams have never been able to do. And I know that the Spiderman universe has its share of compelling enemies, villains that have caused immeasurable turmoil to befall the Wall-Crawler, and some of them (Venom/Symbiotes, Kingpin) have hardly been given a fair shake in these games, Ultimate Spiderman excluded, because screw the Ultimate Spiderman universe. The point of all this is to say, narrow down the cast of villains please.
3. My Balloooooon!
I care less about the random crimes happening in the city of New York than I do about the AIDS epidemic; which is to say, very little.
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| I specifically sought a red balloon, to better fit my crude AIDS joke above. |
Catching a kid’s balloon, stopping a robbery, intercepting a car theft and fighting off gang wars, saving people from falling off of buildings are examples of some of the crimes Spidey has to stop, and even though some of them sound promising, all are about as much fun, and more tedious, than an hour in a doctor’s waiting room. Indeed, one could glean more interest and insight from a 2006 issue of Cosmopolitan than anything these random odd jobs have to offer.
For one, the variety is just awful. It’s an issue developers have been promising to address with every entry, and, like the combat, is still unaddressed. One important fix is to just put in an arseload of tasks, so many that it should take hours before having to recycle tasks. I mentioned above how catching a random supervillain could evolve into an important plot point. Or, they could take this chance to improve a morality/city-crime system that was introduced in Spiderman 3: the Video Game. In Spiderman3, there were 3 major gangs that had control over parts of the city, and as Spidey fought them off, their control of territory slowly dwindled into nothing. Thankfully, this meant you would have to fight them less when you were in their territory, and since fighting in these games is so “meh,” this is actually quite the handsome reward. But, why not introduce a notoriety meter to the game? The more crime Spidey fights off, the more the people love him, and perhaps the less-scathing the Daily Bugle’s articles will be. Vice-versa, if Spidey stops fighting crime, JJ might start getting a bit nastier, and you could see scandalous copies of New York’s favorite print rag become more popular. Maybe then the story could branch off, with various supervillains, like the Kingpin, using Spidey’s unpopularity to their advantage.
Now, I ain’t to fancy, highfalutin game writer/designer, but I honestly think there are some good ideas out there, and if someone who actually knew what they were doing would put some effort into making the random crimes more interesting (and not mandatory, *ahem* Ultimate Spiderman) and involving, then maybe they won’t be so unbearably frustrating.
4. Let’s keep away from movie plots…
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| CINEMA....GOLD.... |
The old trope that movie-based video games always suck holds true for Spidey as well as it does for anyone else. So let’s continue to shy away from that, eh? Web of Shadows and Shattered Dimensions have done well to follow this advice, and so should future games. Perhaps take advantage of the rich comic lore, or get the geniuses (actual geniuses, not sarcastic geniuses) doing the Spectacular Spiderman tv show to start working on the scripts for these games. For real, those guys know how to make an interesting Spiderman product. Again, look to Batman: Arkham Asylum, an original story about the Joker taking over Arkham Asylum, and one that proved spectacularly amazing.
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| ABSOLUTE...GOLD... |
5. Just copy Batman: Arkham Asylum
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| GENUINE ABSOLUTE GOLD! |
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| Pictured: Me and all my girls. Not Pictured: The truth... |
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