Spider-Man - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Spider-Man is a better game than it is a story. It may be because I've immersed myself in good comics lately, but I was expecting more from a non-adaptation video game of New York City's favorite webslinger. Thankfully you don't need to have a strong plot to have fun—Insomniac's forte has always been delivering a colorful city for the player to feel like an empowered god in, and it's no different here. And while the combat system wears its Arkham Asylum inspiration on its sleeve, the pendulum-based traversal is the freshest, most exciting way to explore an open world game to date.

Spider-Man ends on a whimper. That's about as spoilery as I'll get for this article. It includes a lot of interesting villains from the series but focuses on two of them, telling a surprisingly somber story about betrayal... which would be right down my alley, except that it doesn't say anything meaningful. I came away from the plot thinking "wow Spider-Man did not have fun" rather than "wow, what an amazing tale!" A greater contrast could've been drawn between the villains, or better yet, a redemptive arc added to the most sympathetic of the two. It could just be that I was expecting more literary analysis out of a story concerned first and foremost with high-stakes drama, but that doesn't stop me from feeling like I was told a video game story from the early 2000s.

Thankfully that's the only truly outdated aspect of the Spider-Man. The biggest surprise for me was how nice it felt being able to swing around a realistic portrayal of Manhattan—or as realistic as a yokel like me could decipher. It's great being able to gawk at the breadth of architectural variety as you zoom between buildings, down congested streets, and fly over roofs hundreds of feet in the air. Like with Assassin's Creed, being able to vertically scale a digitally rendered version of a city is fun in and of itself, without any combat, objectives, or skill trees to meddle with. Occasionally I'd linger over a ledge, spinning the camera around, wondering how both humanity and Insomniac made all of this. And including multiple times of day is the icing on top of this beautiful cake.

But the web slinging! What a cool system! It takes a while to get comfortable with, but once you become familiar with Spider-Man's physics, it's a surprisingly deft mode of travel. The way you can masterfully weave around buildings and rocket from zip points to maintain speed is riveting; slinging around the city keeps the player constantly engaged, even when they're not on a mission. I never played Spider-Man 2 on PS2 so you can only imagine how impressive I found all of this. Not once was I impelled to use fast travel, simply because it was so fun and freeing to be this fast, this nimble, this graceful.

The combat—while fun—is noticeably less impressive. While the "press button when light above head goes off" is straight from Batman's playbook, what I didn't expect was how fundamental the gadgets would be to Spider-Man's repertoire. I was slow to adapt to the combat because I paid little mind to my toolkit in the beginning, earning myself a good butt-whoopin' most of the time. When I finally decided to buckle down and rotate through abilities, I was alarmed at how easy the game became. Spider-Man carries with him multiple tools to disable swarms of goons, and even well-armed foes are no match for a morally questionable kick off a roof (which, no joke, nearly made me laugh every time). In a way there's almost too many tools, making the hardest part about the combat determining how next you'd like to dispose of your enemies.

That may not be a bad thing however; at its heart, Spider-Man is all about empowerment. Every side mission grants a different type of currency upon completion, of which you'll need multiple to unlock improvements for your gadgets and new suits (there's also a skill tree but it isn't really worth mentioning). The side-missions vary in type and rarely repeat, which is a delight (well, barring the active crimes, which are everywheeere). One moment you'll be clogging up holes on water towers, another you'll be taking on waves of enemies in a melee arena, and sometimes you'll pivot away from an armed robbery just to chase after a pigeon. The abundance of side missions with no fighting or timer adds a chill buffer to the main story's combat & stealth focus. And speaking of which: the stealth sections are joyless—their only upside is that it shows you how much it sucks to not be Spider-Man.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that pairing Insomniac up with the world's most popular super hero would produce a damn good game. It probably won't blow your socks off unless you're a big fan of Peter Parker, but it does a good job of showcasing why it's so fun to don the blue and red and go crime fighting. The missions are rarely stale, the combat is decent, and being able to leap off of a roof and swing through a narrow alleyway, your toes skimming across the hot concrete, provides a thrill I haven't experienced before. If the story was stronger, I'd be more star-struck with Spider-Man—as it stands, I'm mostly walking away pleased I played it.

(Oh, and making J. Jonah Jameson a Glenn Beck-esque fear peddler is a brilliant touch.)

Nioh DLC - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

I am no stranger to difficulty. Nor am I unacquainted with Team Ninja challenges—I often enjoy them for the most part. I think they lean too hard on absurd multi-boss fights (eat your heart out Dark Souls 2) but I appreciate how high they set the hurdle. Team Ninja not only asks you to play perfectly, but to do so in fights where you're hopelessly outmatched for an extended period of time. They make masochistic encounters that only Platinum Games can rival, and even then PG has the foreknowledge not to make the "normal" playthrough of a game as soul-crushingly harsh as Team Ninja frequently does.

Which leads me to the agony of Nioh's DLC triple threat.

This was not an easy endeavor to overcome. Having bested the Souls games numerous times, I can say without hesitation that the Nioh DLC is the hardest Souls-like challenge I've faced*. Each pack contains 6-8 merciless missions that get progressively harder, eclipsing whatever gear you may have scraped together in NG+. I went in knowing I would struggle somewhat, but didn't realize I'd practically have to best most of the bosses suffering less than ten hits (and in some cases, nearly none). The main campaign of Nioh was formidable, but it often gave me the gear I needed to press on and overcome. But here? Maria was a brick wall the likes of which I've rarely seen.

I mean—just—uh—what? I was doing no damage to this boss while she could grab me in the blink of an eye, killing me instantly. I shuffled into heavy gear so that I could survive the grab, but then she would teleport around, break my guard, and kill me instantly that way. The previous two boss fights were lengthy and vicious, but this was a new dimension of cruelty; did I really have to play perfectly for over five minutes? Was this what was really expected of me?

And were the other two DLC areas going to be even harder?

Thus, I finally started engaging with two things I didn't really care about or utilize before: Reforging & Soul Matching. Most of the time if gear I acquired had a better attack or defensive stat than what I had equipped, it was the better choice. Getting minor buffs like "Wind +10" felt like a nice, not necessary, bonus. But now I had to reframe my thinking: what were the weapons I was really using? What was the stance I fought in most of the time? What were the non-attack attributes I needed? It definitely got overwhelming at times (is Break +12 better than Proficiency +13%????), especially when I was juggling multiple weapons and comparing all of their stats to one another. But gradually I honed two swords, a spear, and an odachi that I would use to shake the heavens.

It also helped that I learned slamming two weapons of the same level together resulted in a better weapon (ie two +3 swords can be used to make a single +4 blade). All of the Divine weapons I had horded from various side missions and NG+ could now be used to provide my main weapon with a little extra damage, which helped push me through the rest of the DLC. I still ran into a couple of road blocks along the way—the elite enemies in the second DLC are a nightmare for someone that doesn't parry—but I managed to finish the DLC campaign and most of the side missions solo.

Relief washed over me when I finally completed it, if only for the fact that I didn't let Team Ninja best me. There was some fun to be had in meticulously combing over my weapons in search of improvements, but I'm miffed that the DLC was so punishing—on the base NG no less! I wanted to finish the damn game and move on to other titles in my backlog (I've been sitting on Hollow Knight for over a year), and I couldn't help but wonder if I was wasting my time. A part of me knew I probably was, my personal stubbornness the only anchor keeping the game installed. But the struggle is over now, and even if it's a meaningless accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, there's a small, perhaps puerile joy in the fact that I didn't give up.

I appreciate that the Nioh DLC forces you to examine your equipment. I also like the timed arrows volleys at the start of the second DLC. But... that's about where my praise ends. Nioh's main story is difficult and occasionally unfair, but you can coast through it learning a handful of combos and utilizing your spirit buddy at key instances. The DLC, on the other hand, is a raw challenge befitting of experts. And even though I finished it, I definitely walked away realizing that I am no Nioh expert—and nor am I willing to put in anymore time to become one.


*The Defiled Chalice & Lud & Zallen CoC NG+ excluded.

God of War (2018) - Thoughts

It's a common misconception—if you're an adolescent male—to correlate maturity with "mature themes" meant for adults. Nudity, swearing, and excessive violence can feel like good markers for a "grown-up" story (just look how well it works for HBO shows), but this correlation gradually breaks down over time, especially when you expose yourself to heavy material wrapped in an innocent veneer (Inside Out, Marley & Me, etc.) Likewise, a lot of gritty, edgy media that you might've enjoyed as a teen for how "real" it was (Wanted, Wizard's First Rule, etc.) quickly loses its luster when you realize just how ugly glorified violence and gross sexual encounters can be.

2018's God of War displays a maturity that the series always lacked. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to create material that revels in its own juvenile themes, but the austere, self-serious plot of the original God of War trilogy was hard to buy into. It wanted to be mature—the first game opens with Kratos attempting suicide—but you had to suspend your empathy for a number of ghoulish events. Over the course of three games, the series never really attempted to analyze its gnarly penchant for bloodlust, at least it any significant way beyond pleas from doomed NPCs. It was a revenge story for revenge's sake, and while that's fine, PS4's quasi-reboot God of War is a massive step up that I never knew I wanted.

When the title was first revealed at Sony's 2016 E3 press conference, I was hesitant. First impressions told me it was a step in the wrong direction: an over the shoulder cam, slow walking segments, no blades of chaos, and your... son is along for the ride? It was a bold shake-up from what fans might expect, but it didn't really feel like God of War—at least from the footage I watched. Fast forward to when I played it several months after its release and it... still doesn't feel quite like God of War... but that's okay! What's important is that it feels good.

Well, maybe not at first; the game took a while—a long while—to get into. There's a lot of new systems to familiarize yourself with and a completely new control scheme that obliterates old habits (RIP Square Square Triangle). Usually it doesn't take too much time for a game to click with me—even something as bizarre as Final Fantasy XV falls into place after a couple of hours—but I basically got to the end of God of War before I felt like I knew what I was doing. Your mileage may vary here, but the game's tendency to over-complicate things with its wealth of upgradeable materials, sockets, runes, and stats can be pretty off-putting, especially if you're wary of ineffectual RPG creep in modern games. I wasn't keen on the amount of random pick-ups in Horizon: Zero Dawn, and God of War only exacerbated that problem.

Thankfully, the length of time it takes to familiarize yourself with God of War's systems and equipment is probably the worst part about the title. Kratos's journey into Norse mythology is a beautiful, immersive, and sizable adventure that rarely gets tedious (unless you're running through Niflheim). The open world structure is a massive boon to the series, giving the player a land sprinkled with mystery without the typical Ubisoft side quests confetti everywhere. Even during obvious fetch quest segments of the main story, there's plenty of dialogue to keep the player invested. And it's largely thanks to the new heart of the series: Atreus, Kratos's son.

The father-son dynamic is a fantastic inclusion. Games are still knee-deep in their "disgruntled dad" phase, but what's special here is that Atreus doesn't get damseled early on or killed off for tragedy; he's your reluctant partner in crime the whole adventure. You start God of War with an affinity for Kratos simply due to all the time you've spent with him (murdering people), but Atreus is the one with genuine curiosity, growth, and a sympathetic ear for the world around him. The franchise's lean into mythology has always been one of its best selling points, but the premise benefits greatly if it has a character like Atreus interested in all this deep, aggrandized lore. Plus some of the smaller, gentler moments between the father and son can certainly pull at your heartstrings... assuming you find Kratos's ornery nature forgivable.

Truth be told, Kratos is probably the second worst thing about the game, but his terribleness is very purposeful. It's placed in juxtaposition to all the characters around him: paralleling the Stranger, contrasting with the Witch of the Woods, and conflicting with his son. While comparisons between Kratos and others could be made in the older games, it was largely with manipulative antagonists that the player held no sympathy for—meaning the they'd side with the Spartan even as he brutalized women. God of War turns the lens on Kratos more frequently, every terse conversation with Atreus changing him bit by bit. Also, if it wasn't apparently already, I really have a soft spot for stories that condemn the morally questionable actions of their main character.

I haven't really discussed the combat outside of "it was confusing at first", and while I don't have a lot to say about it, I appreciated most of the changes. Enemies are diverse, there's a great assortment of special abilities, and the impact of your weapons is better than its ever been. Sound effects are chunky, animations have a visceral weight, and you're guaranteed to find at least a couple attacks that you'll obsessively fit into every other combo (Executioner's Cleave babyyyy!) It does suffer from having a wealth of button combinations that are easily mixed up (good luck remembering that your son can shoot arrows), and the leveling system is a real fickle mistress—if an enemy you hate shows up with a red number next to their health bar, prepare to restart. But those issues are minor blemishes in a system that works astounding well; never did I think I'd play a satisfying character action game with an over the shoulder camera.

God of War may not have become one of my favorite franchises, but the PS4 title makes the best case for the series yet. It grants Kratos ample room to grow, both in its plot and gameplay, and gives him a much-needed conscience in the form of his lovably naive son. It presents the player with a world so fascinating and fun that I did nearly every quest I could (besides the grueling challenges in Muspelheim), long after the credits had rolled. It may take a while to get into, but God of War has evolved well beyond what it once was, arguably becoming the most robust and engrossing title on the PS4. Even with games I love I'm usually not clamoring for a sequel, but I'll happily dip my toes back into Midgar's chilly waters whenever Santa Monica Studios should decide to return.

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Title image obtained from: softpedia.com