Spider-Man WoS Production Stuff (Multiple thumbnails and many notes) (Patreon)

I'd recommend scrolling down to the notes for this one, I've got quite a bit of interesting stuff there.

Forgive deviations from the video in the script and any errors in grammar, I had to fly through the audio of this one!

Spiderman Web of Shadows is among my favourite games ever. And what better time to cover it than 10 years later, just before the release of the only Spiderman game since 2008 that might beat it. This was the second Spiderman game developed by Treyarch and Shaba games, but the only one that had an original story. Experience from Spiderman 3 meant Shaba knew what needed to be done. Web of Shadows features easily the best combat system in the entire franchise and among the best in the superhero genre. It’s got expertly tuned traversal and a story that’s gripping from beginning to end. The city and bosses are unique, the characters are beautifully rendered and awesome to interact with. What this game does well it nails. There’s nothing quite like revisiting one of your favourite games, and realizing it’s twice as good as you remember it. That’s why I’m making this video , because with Spiderman PS4 days away, or maybe far in the past for later viewers, this is the bar for insomniac. Other Spiderman games have done aspects better, but I don’t think any deliver an experience as consistently good as this. So for people watching on release, this is the game I believe and hope desperately Spiderman ps4 can beat, and for people watching after, this is the game Insomniac managed to top.. or maybe, they couldn’t pull it off.

Web of Shadows is probably famous for it’s beginning. The game immediately plays it’s best cards on the main menu, with it’s iconic theme tune. This is below only the Spectcular and the Raimi theme in my opinion, making it the best Video Game Spiderman track I’ve ever heard. It reflects the dark and light of the game. The destruction and the heroism, but also the spider. The initial notes create that spider-like creepy crawly feeling. Their sudden and quick movements. It also creates the idea that there’s something mysterious, something scary happening just out of the corner of your eye, which is exactly what happens in the story. The intro only gets better. Moonlight sonata backs a gruesome night time battlefield. Shield fight symbiotes, but it’s a losing battle. Spiderman walks to the edge of building and drops. The voices of other characters echo as he swings, picking off symbiotes in the city. “When all this is said and done, who will the people remember as their savior”. Which cuts into a front shot of Spiderman. This is where you take control. Basic swinging and combat are tutorialised effectively as the game shows you the extent of the invasion. The game shows the best aspects of the combat system by showing the wall combat, and lining up symbiotes like bowling pins for you to swing kick. The shield agents that you save can’t tell you where MJ and the search party are, but she soon shows up with Luke Cage. She asks for you come with her, but a dark figure is seen in the fire, and Spiderman can’t decide. A symbiote grabs you and you wake up somewhere else. It’s day, and the city isn’t in ruins anymore. But you’re about to be. Venom approaches, ready to kill you once and for all, until part of the venom symbiote latches on to you and you get this iconic line. The black suits ability to throw cars is demonstrated in your first fight with venom. You can do whatever you like here, but you’re clearly intended to throw cars as much as possible. The black suit quickly overwhelms venom, even as he attempts to kill Mary Jane. But he escapes in seemingly impossible speed, and MJ is rushed to hospital. This is where the game’s main story starts, in a relatively calm, afternoon set Harlem. You know this city is going to hell, you just don’t know when or how. So have fun! 

Web of Shadow’s was criticised for it’s graphics, which does confuse me. Spiderman 3 came out on the same generation, yet it was far less visually appealing. While 3 had a ps2 version as well, so did web of shadows, it was simply a different game. The wii version just downgraded the effects. Prototype came out a year later and was practically the same game, but even it couldn’t hold a candle to web of shadow’s. So I’m not entirely sold on the criticism. Admittedly, the game doesn’t have a distinct visual style from the get go. The trees, buildings and grass are just non stylised 2008 renders of trees, buildings and grass, nothing more. But the game’s visuals get a lot better when you factor in the character models, the effects and the skyboxes. The afternoon gleam is iconic for Spiderman, it’s the de facto time of day for him, and web of shadows captures that perfectly. Most of the trees have brown leaves which compliment the sun perfectly, and Harlem is of course made of brown bricks. At night, the skybox is simply immaculate. The symbiotes have always had a gothic element. In the comics and the movie, the church setting is practically iconic. So it’s great that the extremely powerful moonlight during the night gives a gothic element to city. It looks utterly beautiful. As night falls and the stakes grow, the visual style starts coming out. Kingpin’s tech mercenaries look unique and instantly recognizable. The symbiote invasion brings black biomass tendrils connected building to building, and streets littered with rubble. All the symbiote models are distinct and fit the style perfectly. The helicarrier, stark tower and the shield presence give web of shadow’s third and fourth acts a more than unique style, one showcased perfectly by the intro cinematic. The animation quality is frankly incredible, and works excellently to distinguish the black and red suit. In the red suit, Spiderman stands relaxed, but clearly ready for action. In the black suit, Spiderman cranes his neck and tenses his hands into claws, giving the camera a more aggressive, animalistic glare. A strike with the red suit is all comicey, and superhero like. A strike with the black suit makes Spiderman’s arm shake with tension. The basic combos convey this too. With, extremely simple but explosively powerful attacks like a stomp and an elbow hit for the black suit. The red suit has quicker flurries of much flashier blows, but they’re clearly not as impactful. And then of course there’s how good the heroes and villains look. Spiderman’s colours and shine is perfect, but what you might not’ve noticed is his eyes. They look extremely angry in comparison to any other Spiderman suit, and that’s because they look far more human than the big bug eyes you see usually. With the slightly downwards angle pointing towards the centre circle web on his face , it looks like a frown, and that’s reflected in the black suit as well. The symbiote skin looks stretched around the eyes, giving him a permanently enraged look. Keeping in with comic book style, all the spider suits are drawn nude, as in they’re rendered as Spiderman’s actual skin, with the suit adhering to every sinew and indentation of the muscles. The black suit’s skin like uhhh… skin only makes the model look more beastial. Venom doesn’t look quite like he did in the comics, probably to distinguish him from Spiderman, but the messed up white spider lines and blue skin work perfectly as substitute. Moon Knight, Wolverine and Luke Cage all look great, but the villains are even better. The sword feathers that make up Vultures wings are a unique and really interesting idea, especially given how well the game uses them in the boss fight. Black cat has fur on her arms and boots as usual, and a mask that doesn’t make her look like a muppet for once. Electro looks like a dark and gritty realization of the classic design, with the yellow crown looking like a metallic gold. 

New York’s buildings, discounting the tendrils are the only aspect of the game that don’t really sell me. Stark tower, Spector Industries, The Baxter building, black cat’s penthouse, and fisk tower all look great, but that’s about it. Other buildings look drab. I like the black and white window lighting because it compliments the skybox perfectly, but that’s about all the character buildings have, with roofs just being some passable grey concrete texture, and skyscrapers looking pretty much the same. It’s a big weakness, because in a free roaming Spiderman game, this is where you’ve got to knock it out the park. However, New York does have space up it’s sleeve. It’s actually fairly destructible. All the cars explode, 9/10 objects on rooves will be destructible, all storefronts can be shattered, bus stations, fences and stairs can all fall apart too. It gives battles some real spectacle. When it comes to knockback, this game doesn’t pull it’s punches. Literally. Getting hit hard in this game can send you so far back that the force alone can destroy cars and smash stores. Both web strike crushes cause explosions that will mess up the environment too, giving them that much more brutality. New York isn’t the best window dressing compared to other titles, but that’s never been it’s primary function. It’s the stage for you, your swinging, your traversal. This is probably even more controversial than the graphics. The traversal in this game is criticized for it’s simplicity. I think it’s excellent, and here’s why. It’s accessible, but it has a very large skill ceiling. As in, you can jump in and be competent just fine, you can swing around as fast as you like without having to worry about crashing into buildings. But if you want to make it look cool, if you want to be a lot more efficient, you can seriously push the limits. Along with your web swing, you’ve got a web zip that allows you to maintain height while going straight, very useful for flying over a building, but if you’re not holding a direction, the zip will shoot you in up in the air. If you land and then press jump immediately after, you get a big jump which looks cool and keeps up speed if you contact the ground. You can hold onto your web for as long as you please which allows you to swing around to redirect, maybe get higher, or even come back for another swing kick. You can pull yourself up on your web to gain height faster, you can jump in midair, you can also web run along the side of a building, then jump off in this cool animation. You can also turn round the side of a building quickly with it, and dismount walls with style. When you’re web running up a building, you can web yourself up it, which can sling you straight over the edge. If you press the right button on a lamppost or traffic light, you can swing around them, or perch, and you can instantly latch yourself to any wall you touch with the jump button. There’s two animations for that depending on how you meet the wall. If you press jump just before hitting the ground, Spiderman breaks his fall which is useless but cool all the same.If you hold the right direction while falling next to a building, Spiderman grinds a long it. If you press jump off a swing, it’s boosted giving you some breakneck momentum and very cool animations. If you hold jump during a swing, it completes it’s arc far faster and puts Spiderman into a one handed swing which looks very cool. Boosting is best when you’ve got a long swing, but it’s not as useful when it’s short, because you don’t want to reach the top of the arc in half a second if you’re looking to go forward. There is actually parkour in the game too. You can slide right over any parked car from any direction. It looks good. The problem is you have to push for an extended period of time, so you’re just walking into the car until the animation triggers. The only reason you’d want to do this is because it looks cool, otherwise you’d just web zip or jump. And it doesn’t look cool. So you don’t. This and the fact that the web running is a little hard to control are the only 2 problems I have the movement. I don’t really care that the webs don’t always stick to buildings. The traversal is easy to pick up, but it’s going to take you the entire game to master, and when you do, I truly believe it’s one of the best city traversal systems out there. The speed and the animations really do make you feel like Spiderman. You can see that just from the way that Spiderman only gains forward momentum when the tension form his weight hits the line. Comparing it to other Spiderman games is largely pointless. Nostalgia will always be the biggest factor, and I can’t say I’m free of that. They also have different goals. Spiderman 2 wants extremely large scale, heavily skill based swinging. Ultimate wants small scale, heavily skill based swinging. This wants accessible, large scale swinging with a high skill ceiling. It depends on what you like, and that in part depends on what you played first. Despite Web of Shadows having a deep, and extremely fun traversal system, it doesn’t incentivise it’s use like other Spiderman games. Instead, it goes for collectibles. In this game, they’re the spider tokens, or as I like to call them, crack cocaine. Seriously, these fuckers are so addictive that I’ve collected thousands. It’s the exact same concept as Crackdown’s orbs, and it’s also the exact same reward. Agility. You need to collect a certain amount to level up, and with each level, you get faster. There’s 11 levels, and each one requires a fair deal of spiders, so there’s a hell of a lot of collecting to do. It’s worth it though, a level 11 Spiderman who’s mastered the boost mechanic and web zips is faster than light, it’s like no speed any other Spiderman game has done before. Spiders are going to be love it or hate it, I imagine some people would rather have an experience bought upgrade for swing speed, but personally, I love it. Not only is it addicting, but that very addiction is what causes so much use of the traversal mechanics, and that will result in the player learning more about the traversal mechanics which means collecting more spiders, which means faster swinging, which means more enjoyable traversal,and so on. The longer you collect, the funner collecting is. The funner the game is. I think sourness to the system is rooted in the fact that they’re all the game has to offer with regards to mini side missions. The game has side missions, just none of the classic spidey stuff. Obviously pizza delivery would be horrendously inappropriate and there’s no point in combat challenges when you can’t move 5 feet without getting in a fight, but why are there no races? No time trials?. There’s not even any bomb disposal apart from one mission. Apparently, there was intended to be a black suit rampage mode, but it got cut before release. Why? This seems to me like a product of Shaba having all of 17 months to make this game, which is incredibly tight. I think spiders were the best substitute they could’ve come up with given the time constraint. You’ll spend the vast majority of your time playing web of shadows free roaming in new york city, and that’s due to mission structure. Many missions in the game are simply go out and do x number of things in the open world. It’s not got the cinematic flair of a cutscene rich narrative, but it is free, and it makes use of New York perfectly. Because this city is far from empty, it’s dynamic. Act 1 starts you in Harlem, and scattered around the city will be random crimes. Gang wars on rooves, in the streets. Gang vs police, gangs beating up citizens. They’re everywhere, and most missions in act 1 revolve around smacking them up in different ways. Side missions until Act 3 are simply beat up x thugs or save x amount of civilians. Basic stuff, but because of the combat, the gameplay carries the basic objectives. It’s not even an hour before the thugs bring out sub machine guns, heavy hitters with baseball bats and cars. Act 2 swaps the thugs for kingpin, with heists on the sides of walls, gliders, police fights, big ass mechs. And then deranged civilians start showing up as the symbiote affliction starts to take hold. At the height of the infection, the symbiotes roam the streets. You’ve got to rescue trapped civilians, escort shield operatives, destroy hives, and the list goes on. As the infection gets worse, the fledgeling symbiotes of the villain cast provide increasing threat. And all of the encounters in the open world are dynamic. The city can change states is half an hour of gameplay with more and more types of event popping up, and it’s entirely your choice as to how much time you spend there. You could do the kill 500 symbiote mission if you want to, if not, just blast ahead. For the most part, the game’s only as repetitive as you make it, outside of main story missions. I don’t think web striking 40 snipers was particularly gripping, and destroying 15 hives isn’t either. Repetition and boring gameplay is a recipe for disaster, but with combat this good, doing it all the time and whenever I want is a dream come true. I’ve talked this up for long enough, let’s get into what makes the combat so good. In a word, freedom. The game’s combat, works perfectly in, and flows freely between ground, air and walls. For each setting there are exclusive movesets, and two for each provided by the black and red suits. There’s trade offs between each one for each setting, and you’ve got to think about that with each setting transition. In air, the black suit can’t hold it’s weight, but on the ground, it’s a beast. With the freedom provided by every corner of new york being a possible combat setting, there needs to be something to tie them all together, to pull you from one enemy to another quickly in this massive setting, and that is the web strike. This was introduced here, and done best here too. It’s a single button press to begin a web strike, and the same button just before impact to connect it. The normal web strike bounces you off the target, but there’s also an AOE highly damaging crush, and a throw. These moves are necessary for this massive environment, and they’re incredibly powerful too, so much so that you can get by spamming nothing but. You’d have to be a sadist of course, but I wouldn’t put it past anyone. Some enemies are capable of countering the strike which is signified with the broken web, you have time to abort, or to over counter which cancels out their counter, though this is a damn risky move. With regards to efficiently taking out a group, the web strike can be the best move in the game, but not reliably due to the best versions of it having the tightest timing window. Really, once you’re up close and personal, the air, wall or ground attacks are far better, it’s simply how spread out enemies are that creates a repetitive reliance on web striking. It’s a necessary sacrifice, but I do wish Shaba had held off insane moves like the web strike crush until a bit later in the game. Insane moves early on is one of the most unintentionally comedic aspects of the game. Spiderman’s moveset is very clearly intended for taking down symbiotes and supervillains, not poor people who listened to fuck bitches get money one too many times. The black suit is capable of throwing a truck, so when you leap onto big G and hit him so much that his skull becomes 2 dimensional, it gets a little funny. After a couple upgrades, Spiderman can web strike throw people off buildings down 15 stories. The symbiote slam whips people back so hard that their brain stems should become soup, and then smacks them into the ground so hard that the bounce back sends them 3 feet into the air. The black suit can web strike grind people                                                             mid air or on the ground into buildings, cars, other people, then punch them across the street,making nearby cars can explode. You can pick up cars and throw them directly at thugs, even with civilians or other thugs inside. In act 2 that you get a few more abilities. A personal favourite was the one where you could tendril a guy into your grasp then crush their necks so hard that the blowback can knock cars into space. As the symbiotes start taking control, you’ll find yourself with bladed tendrils that can sweep in a huge cone in front of Spiderman, which you can then further upgrade with a couple more cracks of the whip and an explosion of tendrils from Spidermans chest. Don’t forget the red suit’s tornado which can hit an enemy a couple hundred times in the span of a few seconds. Bombasitc isn’t quite strong enough a word, but badass fits the bill perfectly. Symbiote Spiderman makes Kratos look like a pussy. With this much diversity is how you deal damage, combat is really hard to get bored of. There’s 10 ways to dispatch each enemy and they’re all gonna look good. Looking good might seem superficial but this is a superhero game, the audience aren’t looking for Devil may Cry, they’re looking to see Spiderman beat up bad guys in the coolest way possible. Timing and suit choice are where the skill potential shows up. I’ve talked about web strikes, which heavily reward perfect timing, but there’s also blocking and counters. This is essentially parrying. You block just before the hit lands, and you can then unleash a counter attack. For the black suit, it’s a highly damaging burst, for the red suit, it’s less damaging but it webs the target up which can be better on more dangerous enemies Then you have to account for comboes. The best example would be the black suit’s tendrils post Electro fight. The first black suit combo is the elbow spin, and that requires a simple spamming of the attack button, but you can get an upgrade that empowers your attacks if you pause between the first and second attacks. So if you have the time before an enemy hits you, it’s best to go for the empowered version. Then there’s the tendril whip. If you pause before the elbow spin, you instead whip these bladed tendrils which is essentially the most powerful attack in the game. It’s a real crutch late game where the symbiote numbers get overwhelming. The difficulty here is how hard it can be to get a window to initiate the whip, especially since the only time it’s worth using it is when you’re being swamped. So timing certainly plays into the skill of the game, but uniquely, there’s the added depth of two suits. Spiderman 3 had this too, but it was crap there, so I don’t count it. As we know, the suits have different movesets, but that means they also have different strengths. The red suit’s web strike twist is far better for single target damage than the web strike grind, though to be fair, I can’t see many enemies surviving a web strike grind. The red suit fires webs which is excellent for downsizing a threat, especially since you can fire them from pretty much anywhere. Against hives this is very useful as their big knockback attack is stopped by the webs. The web strike throw can be used to stick a webbed enemy to a wall. There’s not much utility in this, but it looks really cool. Webs also plays into the 3 special attacks. The first is the multi flurry, where you come at the enemy form all sides. Good for single target, but not as good as the beatdown, however, multi flurry webs them up which can be very useful on more dangerous enemies. The other two are big web bursts which is pretty much the best crowd control Spiderman has. If you combo that with a suit switch into the tendril whips, you’ve got a series of attacks that very few crowds are going to survive. Instead of webs, the black suit has tendrils. This is a perfect distance closer, providing a substitute for the web strike. If you’re dragged onto them, you can immediately begin smashing them up and if they’re dragged to you, you can either swing them behind you, and then back onto the ground with an AOE, or choke them out so hard that the blowback knocks other enemies out the way. The special attack tendril grasp also incorporates multiple tendrils to bring everyone close before coming down with a slam. The most major difference between the two suits though is the air attacks. Until very late game, the black suit’s air attacks are crap unless you can get right next to the enemy. The red suit however has a full flurry of comboes that track enemies from large distances. In the air, it’s by far the superior suit, contrasting to the ground where the black suit dominates. This encourages suit switching when you change setting, and more specifically, when it’s worth it. This game’s difficulty curve is very aggressive, by the end of the game, you’ll be fighting top level symbiote bruisers by the dozen, and they’re going to kick your ass. As the situation grows, the black suit grows with it. At the start of the game it’s portrayed as a more powerful combat suit that should only be used when necessary. Using the throw cars option gets you 2 black points, skewing your suit alignment. Near the end, the black suit’s upgrades begin getting better and better. The tendril whip is godly, you also get an air attack that extends the range on the basic swipes, and adds a highly damaging finisher. The web strike crush gets it’s final upgrade, making it more powerful than ever. It becomes better than the red suit all the time and in every way. Through this, the game sells the story through the gameplay because it wants you to experience the need to give in to the darkness to fight the darkness. Some players might have the willpower to stay clear of the black suit for the entire game, but that’s really tested in the last few missions. This is brilliant. It’s an awesome way of using the player to tell the story. But it’s only here that the game nails the difficulty curve. This is pretty much the combat’s biggest problem. There’s no way of changing difficulty in this game, so if you know what you’re doing early on, there’s no real way of making the game any harder, and when it’s too easy, whats the point in optimizing your attacks. The largest problem with difficulty lies with enemy design. Kingpin gliders are dispatched with a few web strikes, every time. Maybe you’ll throw in a tendril attack, maybe a few air swipes, but that’s it. Basic goons will die to anything. So these enemies provide practically no threat apart from in large groups. Bigger kingpin dudes however have stunning wall attacks that can deal a lot of damage fast, and they always come in packs. Heavy hitter thugs have bats so strong that they can knock you halfway down a street with a single swing, and they do this to counter web strikes, making them extremely dangerous. Basic thugs though, have nothing. Again, submachine guns can be overwhelming in large groups, but at a tap of a button, you’re out of there. Point is, early game, enemies are divided into two categories, useless fodder, and serious threats. You can either overwhelm with ease, or have to take a more cautious and efficient approach. In most games it’s supposed to be everything in the middle, balanced by group size and composition. Here, group composition is everything. 5 thugs are completely useless. Their shots don’t mean shit if they can’t even take half your health by the time you’ve destroyed all of them. But 4 thugs and a heavy hitter requires you to think. You might want to chuck a car at the heavy hitter or try to swing kick. And you definitely want to get rid of him first. Big tech guys aren’t much of an issue, but even having one in a group of gliders and goons changes things. So even having a single dangerous enemy in the group is a massive distinction. And the game always has these group divisions because of how the dynamic city is. Apart from Act 3, and the mechs, you don’t just find randomly strewn enemies, they’re all in their troops or gangs. So you judge each combat encounter in that way. An group of kingpin goons would be made far more interesting if you added gliders and big guy, but due to the division, you mostly find gliders on their own, where they’re completely defenseless. This manner of grouping also works into the mission structure and here, it’s well executed. Destroy 5 wall heists for example means you will always get the full experience of taking down a wall heist. There will never be no defence, or overwhelming defence of the drill, because the group ensures a set amount. In the same way, hives will always be defended by symbiotes, and fighting groups of deranged civilians seems more immersive because instead of just finding single targets on random rooftops, it seems like they’re congregating and planning something. This use of the dynamic city is one half of the missions you’ll undertake throughout the game, and I think it’s great. Because they’re not restrictive, the open world is essentially the mission. To complete it, you have to web swing from location to location however you please, and you’ll probably have plenty of non relevant combat encounters along the way, which makes free roaming a consistently alive and enjoyable experience. The game moves pretty quickly, so the state of city rapidly changes too, from thugs to kingpin, to deranged civilians, to symbiotes, to shield fighting symbiotes, to a full on shield counter operation. Within 5 hours if move pretty quickly. And for the kind of game this is, a combat heavy free roaming Spiderman game, it works perfectly, arguably better than a more cinematic story could’ve done. By Act 3, the invasion, the game steers away from groups of enemies so much, and more focuses on attempts to rescue civilians. Hovercraft extractions, APC extractions, planting bombs, saving civilians. It fits the setting far better, and fixes many of the problems with enemy design. Symbiotes are everywhere. And yes, these are one hitter quitters that fall into the useless fodder category, but you’re never asked to fight them. You’re focusing only on the cool symbiotes. The grabbers are the basic enemies, they rob civilians and attempt to infect them. They also have a grab attack and a web strike counter. The grey dudes are similar, but they jump after you and slash your face off. Gorilla looking enemies show up further in, and these have a ranged grab along with a hell of a lot of health. Electrolings are amazing looking symbiotes than teleport from post to post, firing electricity at you. Vulturelings fly and deal damage from headbutts and chucking knifes at you. There’s also the big carnage looking guys who deal huge damage, have loads of health, and are pretty much the most dangerous enemies in the game. There’s a lot of variety, they’re all dangerous, and while not all of them are hugely distinctive, or require specific strategies to beat, there’s enough so that you’re challenged consistently, and you can’t god mode your way through every threat.

Every time the city has a major change in state, there’s usually a boss fight or a very important mission to punctuate it. The game’s main missions do an incredible job at being memorable and that’s because the game only ever uses cinematics on important plot points. Very little time is wasted in this story, and that’s what we’re going to look at next. Act 1 starts right off with a boss. You and Venom in a street as we went through earlier. After MJ is admitted to hospital, gang members show up along with Luke Cage. This begins the focus of Act 1, cleaning up Harlem with Luke. He shows you the ropes of your abilities as Spiderman, the spider sense, the web strike and the swing kick, because why would Spiderman know that? He’s probably glad he didn’t, because I gotta say, the spider sense isn’t very good. It looks and sounds great. It does a good job at alerting you to danger, and a good job of detailing where enemies are on the xbox and ps3 versions. Where it fails however, is in the camera. Hitting the button might lock you onto the enemy immediately in front of you that you’re currently fighting, or it might lock you onto some random dickhead 3 blocks away, and then you’ll have to scroll all the way down to the right target while you’re being repurposed as wallpaper paste. Right stick moves the target, but that also controls the camera, and this is no dark souls, you really want free camera control in multi target battles. On PC it’s worse, even moving the mouse will change targets. When it does go onto the right guy, you’re golden, the camera works great, but if not, you can end up losing half your health through these basic ass issues. Simply having a marker over who you’re going to lock onto to, or better yet, locking you onto the closest enemy that’s near the centre of your screen, would fix all these issues. Web of Shadows has the freest and fastest combat not just in the Spiderman franchise, so I can forgive a few camera issues, but having lock on this unreliable is pretty bad. The city continually enters worse states as Act 1 goes on. Cage’s plan, other than beating up thugs of course, is to set up a parley between the gang leaders. The rolling 7’s agree after you save them from a drive by, and the park aves agree after you tell their leader to be there or be square. It seems to be going well until a round of 20 snipers come out and take aim. This is pretty much a massive web strike spam fest which can get pretty intense if you’re not particularly experienced with the system. Taking out the first wave reveals their motives. The gang war had been set up and the attempts at peace are not being allowed. After taking out the second wave of snipers, the leaders pull guns on one another. This is the point at which you make the first moral choice. Red or Black. The red suit option exposes the set up, leading to an agreement. The black suit option lets them kill one another, putting the gangs to rest. Either way, Spiderman decides to track down whoever could’ve hired those snipers, and Kingpin is at the top of the list. As soon as you make it to Fisk Tower, black cat is seen attempting an escape. Like many of the previous games, what follows is a high speed black cat chase sequence. This is backed by the score used for every other chase sequence, but it’s awesome nonetheless. The route chosen and the easily controllable traversal system makes the actual act of keeping up with her fun and good looking. The black cat fight is among the best boss fights in the franchise. Due to her agility, she can mess you up without issue, the entire city is at her disposal, air, walls or the ground, so it’s an incredibly open and fast paced fight. She’s got this whip thing that pulls you towards her, and knocks you about. She’s also capable of punking you into a kiss, jumping over you, and generally just beating the crap out of you. Black cat is only vulnerable to web strikes some of the time, at others you’ll have to abort. The black suits tendril will pull you in close, but the air attacks suck ass, so it’s better to be in the red suit for the damaging. Both special moves you have available are usable here, but the beatdown is better for damage. Once you get black cat low enough, she jumps onto kingpin’s glider dudes, and you’ve got to chase them down. When it’s next time to fight, they don’t go away, so she’s got backup most of the time. If you aren’t paying attention, she can kill you pretty easily. It’s a damn good fight, simply because of how free and open it is, and that she’s among the only extremely powerful agile enemies. It’s like fighting a true match, which seems almost appropriate. Black Cat gets pissed off at one point and kicks you in the face, which you respond to by booting her off a building. This imperils her, because it’s a cutscene, not as if we’ve just been smashing her skull inside out or anything. You save her, then she hits you yet again, and it’s off to her penthouse. I can’t even tell if that was intentional. Black Cat explains that she’s still in love with you, and your dumb ass messed up her plan to take kingpin from the inside. She proposes you stay with her, and that this city will be theirs. This is one of the hardest moral choices in the game. It’s a love triangle, kinda like the witcher 3, and every young adult book ever written. A pretty smart application of the system if you ask me. The problem stems from the fact that Mary Jane has had very little screen time thus far, she’s either been chewing your ass out, or being wheeled to hospital. She’s clearly Spiderman’s love, but from the player’s perspective, there’s no connection to the character. It’s the hardest choice on your first playthrough, because you don’t know what will actually happen if you select each option. But if you ever picked the red option here, I’d say the chances of doing that again are fairly low. Red option forces you to spend the next few missions with Moon Knight. Fucking Moon Knight. He’s cool and really needs a god damn netflix show, but he’s a total dork in this game, and you’re going to be getting your missions from whoever you pick for a while. Whoever you do pick will serve the same function as cage, they’ll tell you where to go, what to do, provide advice and chat about super hero stuff. Among the most remarkable things about the story is that this is a full on Marvel Universe, not just Spiderman. Iron Man, the rest of the avengers, and the fantastic four don’t seem to be available, but you will find luke cage, moon knight, black widow, wolverine, black cat, practically the entire shield force, and plenty of recognizable villains from the Spiderman universe too. Many of these characters will end up being your quest givers. They direct you through he story, give side quests and even have conversations with you about lore and stuff. All the voice acting here is immaculate. Best Black Cat voice ever. Moon Knight, Luke Cage, Black Widow are all great, but Wolverine really knocks it out the park. All dialogue is excellently written. Spiderman might be a twat, but the rest of the characters have funny and interesting lines. Black Cat’s explains how she sometimes wishes she was a superhero. You try to reassure her, but she sees through your lies. She even questions you about Spiderman and Peter Parker, wondering how you ever go from being a superhero to being a nerd so easily. It’s always fun to talk to these characters about anything, and  that connection is yet another way the game sells it’s world. As for the quests, Black Cat directs you around the city, beating up kingpins’ new thugs as you go. Wall heists, kingpin vs the police, gliders. They’re a hell of a lot more varied than the thugs, and far more dangerous too,

 with even the basic plums having a web strike counter. Soon, you hear word of a planned attack on the daily bugle, but it turns out to be smokescreening the real target, the courthouse. I hope you like memes because this mission is one. Oh yes, the spectacular bomb squad. Kingpin’s men chuck bombs at the building, and you’ve got to grab them, and get them too a disposal container before the timer runs out. If you’re good enough, you can mash up nearly every bomber before they even plant the bombs, but this is much harder to achieve on consoles. Soon after, Kingpin brings in his mech troopers. These are some of the most in depth enemies in the game. Ground attacks only work for so long before the pound sends you flying away. Air attacks have a similar problem. Swing kicks however are far more useful, knocking the mech back and dealing significant damage. You just have to be accurate enough to pull them off with missiles flying at you. If you get really good, you can time the come back for a sequence of kicks. Other pretty good damage sources are the special attacks, specifically the beatdown, the web strike, which needs to be timed just after impact, and the black suit’s car throwing ability. This stuns the mech and allows you to pull of it’s missile launcher after a quick time event. The button sequences are the same every time, so you can end up memorizing them, which I don’t like at all. I do like that if you pull it off a second time, you can fully disable it by getting into the cockpit and pressing buttons. With the courthouse defended, kingpin’s plan is in tatters. Black Cat tells you where you can find the guy who’s manufacturing kingpin’s gliders, and what do you know, it’s Vulture. Yeah, another boss already. The Vulture fight is proof of how well this game’s combat works in air. Initially, you can beat on Vulture as much as you like, the beatdown and web flurry are serious damage dealers here. Web strikes, especially web strike crush are extremely useful, but will only work some of the time. The black suit has the tendril which brings you in close to deal at least a couple of blows, but the red suit has far superior in air attacks, so switching depending on where you are is really important. As the fight progresses, kingpin gliders show up and you’ve got to use these as stepping stones to get to Vulture. Through bouncing off these guys and the odd web zip, the entire fight can be hosted in the sky. Similar tactics work well throughout, bouncing off glider guys, crushing Vulture, using special attacks at every opportunity, and switching suits depending on range from the boss. Vulture hasn’t got much in the way of attacks, just some blades and a couple counters so you can rely on spam, but if you want to have fun, you can try to optimise damage which does require a lot of button skill. Deciding what to do with Vulture is the moral choice here, and it’s a good example of how shallow this system can be. Red ties him up on a sign and says the police are going to get him, Black Suit ties him up on a sign and says that you’ll fuck him up if you see his bitch ass again. That’s it. With Vulture dealt with, Spiderman turns to kingpin. His base is apparently in this massive skyscraper, after you fight your way up the side, only a few troopers on the roof remain. But they’re attacked by these lunatics. The deranged civilians attack you too, and you have to defend yourself. Using the black suit against random joes is pretty hilarious here. But there’s the added issue of the news chopper. They capture everything you’ve done, including chucking civilians off the roof in plain view of police officers. The police is now against you in any fight you get into in the city. Black Cat tells you to beat up some of these deranged civilians, and then to go to hells kitchen. Daredevil? No actually, Wolverine. The Wolverine fight is the most unique in the game. He doesn’t believe you’re human anymore, and you have to balance the fight around getting him to believe you. That means red alignment, which means sticking to the red suit. Wolverine will utterly pancake you in hand to hand combat, it’s extremely difficult to get a hit in. Getting him airborne allows you to abuse the air attacks on the red suit, which Wolverine has trouble responding to. You can do that with a web strike crush or throw, but web striking is countered half the time. There’s a significant temptation to use the tendril which would allow you to get ground hits in every time, and I think this is intentional. Shaba knew only the black suit could counter wolverine on the ground, but they wanted that as a test of the player’s will. Throughout the fight, Wolverine will pounce onto a wall and ask you some Spiderman trivia. So button skill is only half the test, being a nerd is also important. Some of the questions are pretty easy. Stuff like who Peter’s parents are. But how I’m supposed to know whose killers they tracked in Berlin, I don’t know. Either way, this is a really creative way of turning Wolverine to your side. And it’s not the only way. At two points, waves of deranged civilians will show up, and Wolverine accuses you of summoning them. You get red points for every one you stop, black points for letting Wolverine kill them, and many black points for attacking Wolverine. This happens a couple times, until you finally convince Wolverine that you’re the real Spiderman. You and him walk through the city, finding just how many people who look normal are actually these creatures. He suggests that you use your black suit to pick them out from a crowd. If you hold spider sense, you activate symbiote sense which reveals civilians who aren’t what they seem. They also know if they’ve been detected and immediately go for you. You tell Wolverine that this probably has something to do with Venom. Your idea of seeking venom out seems to be walking through the street and hoping, which makes his stumbling upon a civilian being snatched into an alleyway a little bit ridiculous. Within the alley, symbiotes gather. And venom welcomes you. The second venom fight is one of the most difficult bosses in the game. And that’s because at any point you’re fighting him, you’re also fighting hordes of symbiotes and hives. Hives have a big knockback attack that can deal serious damage. They along with all the symbiotes and venom are capable of web strike countering, so you’ve got to be on the ball with that too. Hand to hand combat can be pretty punishing without properly distancing yourself, because of how many symbiotes there are. They’ll stunlock the life out of you, and without the uppercut, it can be extremely risky. Like most fights, both the black suit and red suit have utility, but you’re really going to need to use it here. The black suits tendril is invaluable. It’s uncounterable and picks enemies out from the crowd. It also allows you to get close to venom and the hives without relying on a webstrike. The red suit though has air attacks on it’s side, and a lot of this battle is airborne with how quick the symbiotes are. Between phase one and two, venom goes on a rampage throughout the city, turning random civilians into symbiotes. You’ve got to follow him, but you can also do a bit of damage with swing kicks, vehicles and the tendril. There’s not really a point to doing this though, because through eating civilians, he gets a lot of his health back. I don’t like this. Combat on the move is something web of shadows does exceptionally well, and pointlessness is punishing. It’s also worth noting this phase is buggy as fuck if venom gets off his set course, so it’s best to leave him to it for your sake. Phase 2 is the same as phase one but with two hives instead of one. This really ups the ante, as both hives can now do that highly damaging knockback attack, and you need to take those hives down to stop the symbiotes spawning. After you finally smack up venom, he runs away, and you don’t follow for some unfathomable reason. This was pretty dumb, but overall, even with the bugs and lack of polish in the middle, It’s a good fight. It incorporates venom’s plan excellently, shows off his ability to infect people, and the extent of the symbiote infestation, all while providing two damn intense combat arenas with venom and an army of symbiotes. With venom down, the city starts falling into chaos. Hives sit out in the open, the grabbers steal civilians that you need to rescue. There’s a lot of saving to be done. SHIELD set up a quarantine zone, which is where you head next. Civilians beg to be set free, and black widow rolls up telling you that you’re under arrest. And then Electro shows up and into yet another boss fight you go. The Electro fight is considered by some to be the best in the game. Electro is desperately searching for his sister, and he tells Spiderman to piss off multiple times. You follow Electro and he zips between perch to perch, sometimes firing electricity at you. It’s very much a test of your maneuverability, since you need to dodge his projectiles and deal damage at the same time. Like most bosses he has a web strike counter, so it’s not always reliable. After having searched two SHIELD checkpoints, he tries to shake you off his tail. The boss now revolves around keeping up with Electro, but you can still deal damage while doing so. He’ll set up electric gates that you’ve got to jump through or over. I find it easier to web run. At this point, the symbiotes are in open warfare with shield. As you chase Electro down, web striking and dealing any damage you can, you’ll see shield fight symbiotes on rooftops, and my personal favourite, Wolverine fending off a small army of them. The detail here is just incredible. Electro leads you over some disused train tracks which is where most players will be able to get him pretty low. If you get him too low before a certain point, he won’t take anymore damage which I do feel is a tad irritating. I understand the fight needs to reach a certain point, but just having him absorb some health from a lamppost or something would maintain the immersion. Once Electro hits the right point, he’ll attempt to absorb power from a transformer station, but it proves far too much for him. He’s then promptly shot in the head by black widow. Unconscious, he lays next to the quarantine zone, where his sister recognises him from the crowd. Sadly, there was a reason she was in quarantine, and her symbiote infection sees the stronger host in Electro. Symbiote Electro unleashes an explosion, incapacitating everyone in the crowd. And that’s that. That was 4 bosses, Vulture, Wolverine, Venom and Electro in the span of one relatively short Act. Act 2 is almost like a boss rush that serves to introduce all the major players in Act 3. And I think that’s the reason it’s so engaging, there’s not one bad mission here, every single one is memorable. And they’re packed tight. Now, just before the game is reaching it’s crisis, is the perfect time to get players as invested as possible. MJ calls again, and you then go to find Kingpin who’s attempting to leave the city. You know you need someone a lot smarter than you to help get rid of the symbiotes. The candidates are Tony Stark and Reed Richards. And you can’t get either. Reed is out on a mission in another dimension, fair enough, but Tony isn’t explained. He simply can’t be reached. Spiderman says that if they could be here, they would, and I have to wonder what’s more important than a full scale invasion that could threaten the entire planet. I appreciate that Shaba might not have been able to use these characters, Iron Man especially, since the movie came out in the same year. But they could’ve come up with a more convincing excuse. Instead of those two, you settle on Tinkerer, who’s being held in Ryker’s prison. Moon Knight and Vulture often to fly you over there, who you pick means pretty much nothing. This is apparently Spiderman’s first crime. It’s a pretty cool setting, and it does feel weird to beat up people who aren’t explicitly bad. The first sections simply involve pressing some buttons which is a bit boring, but soon after, you bust out Rhino, everyone’s favourite Spiderman character. You can use rhino to smash through enemies, walls, and generators, but he controls awfully so it’s pretty difficult. You also need to keep Rhino’s anger in check, but this gauge only amounts to a timer, because there’s no real way of preventing it changing. Still, it’s a cool experience to ride rhino through a prison, not something I expected. I also liked that they used the awful handling to their advantage by placing mines everywhere. When you get to the right place, you can choose to release Rhino on any superheroes flying about, or to send him back the way he came under the impression that he can escape. Another pointless choice. You immediately find tinkerer, but are then ambushed by Black widow, and Kingpin, and Moon Knight, and Vulture. There’s a lot of bickering, but eventually, Kingpin convinces Widow to go along with your plan. You’re shuttled over to Manhattan as you watch the helicarrier blowing up the bridges and hear Spiderman narrate how screwed up the city is. Apparently, Black Widow put everything on the line to use your plan. She shows you the small fort around Stark Tower that they’re using as a base and that you need to go save the SHIELD operatives in the city. And then you’re let loose. I don’t like post apocalyptic settings. At all. I actively avoid them. It took me a while to figure out why, but I now believe it’s the sense of loneliness. That you are the only one left and everything else is dead or wants you dead. It taps into some kind of paranoia I have locked away somewhere in my head, that all of that is true, that I’m on my own against something unstoppable. I carry those feelings away from the game whenever I stop playing. This is why I’ve played web of shadows 10 times, but only completed it once. The second half puts me on edge, but even going into the game knowing that, I still regard it as one of my favourites. And that to me, speaks volumes as to how well this setting is realised. Through the following sequences, the game shows off the extent of the disaster from many angles. If you head over to Harlem, you can fight with the gangs against symbiotes. You can save SHIELD agents in the field throughout the city, and aid in APC extractions where you need to defend a group of civilians until they all make it into the vehicle. Random cars will get attacked by symbiotes, and you need to bust up the car enough so the civilian gets you, then take them to the nearest safe zone. Everywhere is donald ducked in this city, so it can actually be difficult to stop someone falling into the symbiotes hands. All of this is backed by a horror type ambient soundtrack. It’s perfect for the setting, but in my opinion, not for the game. Spiderman Web of Shadows is a game that very much wants you to be free roaming. For free roaming, the player needs to want to be in the city. And horror ambience creates the exact opposite feeling. It’s designed to make you want to get the hell out of there, that’s what it’s for in horror games. I believe this is counter productive, and that they would’ve been better off creating a dystopian sound without anything necessarily horrific. After you’ve saved SHIELD’s asses, Widow tells you to make Kingpin help you. He’s holding out at his tower, fortified with an Electronic fence and tens of his men. To disable the shields, you have to clear out the goons, then spam a button to swap the direction of this big metal pole. Really not sure how this contraption works. There’s 3 of them total. After prying open the door, you bust in and tell Kingpin what’s up. He agrees, but only because he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing Spiderman needed him to save the city. You also agree to be Kingpin’s bitch too. Your first task is to repair the generators on the building, because now the symbiotes are overrunning it. You basically have to do the exact same thing you did the first time but it’s slightly harder. This is just dumb, shameless padding and really should’ve been cut. Once the defenses are back up, Black Widow and Tinkerer arrive. Tinkerer explains his plan, that they’re going to plant a bomb on the empire state building which will send out a sonic pulse that’ll mash up all the symbiotes. But only if he gets 25 million dollars, a castle, a waifu and a pardon. Classic Tinkerer. With that sorted, Kingpin’s got some more tasks for you. He asks you go rescue some associates of his trapped on a building on the other side of the island. You mount up on hovercrafts and get this incredible view of the city. The mission asks you to prevent Kingpin’s guys from dying, but that’s easier said than done when the Electrolings show up. With their constant barrage of energy bolts and web strike counters, they’re pretty hard to deal with without using the black suit’s tendrils. Black Cat also turns up halfway through to support you. With Kingpin’s guys safe, Black Cat suggests you find the source of the Electrolings. And I have to wonder. Black Cat acts rather cold to you here, almost as if you hadn’t been in a relationship a few days ago. Almost as if they game forgot some people picked the black option and just went with the red status quo for her return. Hmmm. Electrolings can be found guarding their purple tipped hives. At this point, it’s pretty easy to see how much worse the symbiote infection is getting. Biomass tendrils wrap around buildings and connect them, creating this twisted street aesthetic. Once you’ve dealt with all of them, Black Cat tells you to get them at the source. Kinda odd, didn’t she just say that? Yes. Yes she did. Run out of money or time? I wonder. This time the source involves following an Electroling to his hideout. And whaddya know? The source is symbiote Electro. Symbiote Electro is encased in this big ass symbiote cage. Electro is somewhat of a squishy boss in this fight, but a lot of the fighting is against the Electrolings who attempt to feed Electro power. If he gains enough power, he spawns a bunch of hives which you have to kill before anything else. Killing all the electrolings before Electro gains the right amount of power seemed extremely difficult to me, I found it far easier to web strike a few and then just wail on Electro. The hives aren’t that big a deal, and he doesn’t take a whole lot of punishment. This has game some amazing bosses, but I don’t think this is one of them. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but some of these mechanics just feel like fluffing up a basic ass fight. The choice here is interesting. Red encourages Electro to fight the symbiote, and when he gets up, all he can think of is his sister which is clearly too much for him. Black beats the crap out him, calling him a pussy, until he final gets rid of it. Spiderman tells Electro that it was the symbiotes that took his sister. And Electro promises to kill them all. I’m sorry, how was the black choice evil here? This isn’t a psych ward, the entire city has gone tits up, and it was the symbiotes that took his sister. Another powerful ally is a damn good thing. There seems to be a pattern emerging with these choices. With Electro dealt with, the rescue ops are expanded to hovercrafts. These flying things are not hovercrafts. They’re also not APCs. But the game calls them both. I mean, you could argue that they are armoured personal carriers, but then how does SHIELD distinguish between them and the actual APCS. Semantics aside, these are some of the most immersive missions in the game. Plural, because you can find them in the city later too. The hovercraft lands a bit away from the civilians, and they make their way over as Spiderman defends them. This can actually get pretty tense. The civilians all have weapons, but there’s a hell of a lot of symbiotes. And grabbers provide a real challenge. They usually target who ever’s running, and you’ve got too book it over there before they’re turned. On a skyscraper, if you tackle the grabber at the wrong angle, you can lose civilians to getting very poor choice of worded. These are fun sections, but I have to wonder why exactly the hovercraft lands far from the civilians. And why they go single file. Honestly, I can’t think of any other ways of making enough time for a substantial gameplay section, so I’ll forgive it. With them evacuated, Black Widow tells you that her operatives are being attacked by flying symbiotes. It’s never explicit, but following how it happened to Electro, you can assume Vulture has been taken. On the way there, Vulturelings attack the SHIELD convoy which makes for a fun high speed air battle. The destination turns out to be Spector Industries. Moon Knight suggests you beat up some Vulturelings, and so you do. 30 of them. And you have to kill 15 hives too. This is boring as hell. Vulturelings are good enemies, but no one wants to fight 15 rooftop hives, they just bully you unless you spam special attacks or attempt the swing kick over and over. After that, the symbiotes begin a siege on the shield safe zone. Black Widow gives a pretty good speech. The symbiote walkers come forward and expel goo into the gate until it gets all clogged up. But even when they’re exposed, very few symbiotes if any come through. The battle boils down to jumping from the right to the middle to the left over and over, beating up all the symbiotes each time. The defence seems is nothing more than a couple men per quadrant. It’s not exactly Helm’s Deep. A big red carnage looking symbiote rocks up a bit later and attempts to smash through the door. He’s not particularly tough when he’s on his own. Once he’s dead, you call in a airstrike and carpet bomb the entire area. Seems a bit overkill to be honest, are there not people living in those camps? How on earth did they manage to avoid horrific collateral damage after carpet bombing your own base? This is a stupid ass mission. If the symbiotes could breach the gates, why haven’t they done it already. Why hasn’t venom done it himself. Why don’t the Vulturelings just fly over it. Come on. The next mission takes you to Luke Cage and MJ who are preparing the evacuation of Harlem. Before you can aid them though, you’ve got to find Wolverine at the church. The church mission is among the best in the game. It’s set at night which creates the perfect gothic setting. Symbiotes rush the building and attempt to break in. You and Wolverine fight them off, but their numbers are a challenge. If you fire webs at the bell however, the sound stuns the symbiotes. After holding out for long enough, the civilians are evacuated, but Wolverine has to stay behind to free the APC. He find himself literally dogpiled by symbiotes, 

and after the coolest intro in Spiderman video game history, you find yourself a little bit screwed. Symbiote Wolverine looks awesome, a perfect design. The fight plays out similarly to Wolverine’s fight, but Spiderman is far stronger by now. He also web strike counters less. Part way into the fight, he uses a hive to gain symbiote armour, which you have to break before dealing damage again. This isn’t exactly depth, because it’s effectively just more health. At another point, Wolverine takes down the bell, and chucks it right at you. Seems like a risky move, given he’s a symbiote now. Maybe that’s Why he chose to push it down from above instead of pull? I’m not sure. Spiderman’s too much of a badass for that shit to fly, and you throw it right back at him. After a game of tennis, it eventually falls apart. So it was completely pointless apart from destroying the bell, which I assume the player could use to stun Wolverine. Why, given that the fights easier than Wolverine 1, I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the sequence, it looked awesome and made the fight more memorable, I just think it lacks weight when the fight is easier than it should’ve been. With Wolverine down, you get 2 choices. Give Wolverine words of encouragement, or tear him in half. Don’t really see the benefit apart from being a dickhead in picking Black here. Seems like a dumb choice. You return to Luke and MJ afterwards, and depending on what choice you picked, they react differently. But either way, it’s now time to defend the Harlem convoy. I always found the back 2 cars to be very difficult to keep alive, but it’s only the APC and the School Bus that matter. MJ makes you promise to not use the Black Suit, but there are no repercussions whatsoever whether you do or not. It’s not like there are any windows on the APC so she can’t see shit. Once you’ve escorted the vehicles to safety, Spiderman loses MJ. How that happens, I’ve got no idea. But he’s pretty pissed. Kingpin takes the piss an… wait a minute. Two kingpins? I know for a fact that this bug doesn’t affect just me. Come on guys. And that leads into the intro. We’re all caught up. FISK tower is attacked, the symbiotes launch a full scale attack on SHIELD, everything’s going to shit. As we saw in the intro, Spiderman does eventually find MJ. But you can see Black Cat in the flames. And Spiderman is quickly swamped by symbiotes, prompting him to use the Black Suit one last time. This leads right into the symbiote Black Cat fight. Symbiote Black Cat is a bit weird. It doesn’t have the same level of freedom as Black Cat, because it needs to be confined to this roof. The focus isn’t on her, because there are loads of extremely dangerous symbiotes all over the place. And she’s not even that powerful. I appreciate that the symbiote exaggerates it’s host’s characteristics, and Black Cat isn’t hugely powerful to begin with. Her abnormal infatuation with Spiderman is one of her major characteristics, so it gets expressed powerfully. I thought this was a bit weird. Being attacked by a symbiote that says it wants to be with you is just really, really strange. Mary Jane shows up half way through, on a hovercraft, with a shotgun. Um. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger levels of badass. It’s this more than anything that makes her my favourite MJ in the movies or the games. She helps you fend off the symbiotes, but obviously, you need to stop her from dying. She’s got a lot of health so this isn’t much of an issue, but because the fight is contained to this tiny roof, it gets pretty restrictive if you want to be effectively defending her. Once you finally beat Symbiote Black Cat, the fall frees her from the symbiote. The moral choice here is hardest in the game, because you can only assume what this means. Red means Mary Jane, Black means Black Cat as the final love triangle choice right? Sort of. If you press black to go with black cat, you tell Mary Jane to suck on it and that you need Felicia. So you make this symbiote cocoon which wraps around her and brings her back to health, but now she’s acting all evil? I don’t get this. The red suit choice is going with MJ, but bringing black cat along with you anyway. It’s implied she’s going to make it. So if you want to be with Black Cat, you have to act like an evil backstabbing bastard. Why? Black Cat isn’t necessarily a villainous character. And the player shouldn’t have to overtly be a villain to pick her. It’s odd. Depending on what you pick, the next cutscene is different. You lose everyone’s trust in the black suit, but it’s fine and dandy in the red. You’re preparing to detonate the anti symbiote bomb, but symbiote Vulture ambushes the crew. The way he speaks is particularly interesting. The symbiote this time exaggerates his Englishness. Huh. This fight acts as the final siege against the symbiotes, and it certainly looks the part, with this curved blade looking symbiote deposit coming out of the empire state. Symbiote Vulture is a big step up form the original. By now, you should have the black suit’s air upgrades, making it far superior to the red suit in air. You can land on the platforms to cut off the Vultureling supply, but it’s only a minute and a bit before you’re thrust into phase two. You can swing off the hovercrafts which is very cool. Symbiote Vulture is vulnerable to web strikes, tendrils, air attacks, the beatdown, pretty much everything you can think off. He’s no challenge, he’s just got a big health bar. The Vulturelings surrounding him are the true danger here, it’s a dense battle and you’ve got to keep an eye on the health bar. As long as you focus Vulture, he goes down, and the symbiote defense with him. Vulture even without his symbiote encourages you to remove the detonator, and embrace the power of the dark one. What you happens here is entirely dependant on what you’ve chosen throughout the game. As far as I know, it’s a tally of all the red and black choices you’ve made so far, and it’s not affected by suit alignment. Red detonates the bomb, destroying the black suit for good, and every symbiote in the city with it. Black removes the bomb. Both will result in you being called to the helicarrier, where Venom and the symbiotes are making their last stand. You’re either going to kill Venom, or to stop the symbiotes. Whichever it is affects who helps you in the battle. I don’t really know how Luke Cage or Wolverine get up here, but I’ll go with it. The helicarrier stand is difficult. Red players only have access to the red suit, and that is a serious handicap at this point in the game. But I like that it goes out of it’s way to show you the sacrifice you made when you have up the black suit. The entire shield crew is symbiote. You’re objective is to destroy three jammers, but these flying shield assholes make that a difficult task. Special moves are among the only practical ways to get a window on the jammers. Your allies can be knocked off the helicarrier, and once that happens, they’re out for good. The red suit’s ability to regenerate health faster the black suit is a help in going from one battle to another. With all 3 jammers down, the bomb bay doors open and you’ve got to take a bomb from the symbiote guard. They’re not very tough. You plant bombs in multiple areas over the helicarriers, and the game repeats the web strike chain motif to get you there. Problems begin to present themselves for Spiderman when a symbiote about the same size as the helicarrier itself shows up. The framing captures Venom’s scale perfectly here, it’s honestly incredible. The courage of Spiderman, the seemingly unstoppable force of darkness contrasted against the tiny resistance is all here. This one shot is a microcosm of the entire game. Spiderman tells Venom that he’s going down, and venom’s response is pretty hard to make out. His voice at this point is so deep that I could just about hear “I think not”. After listening to it about 5 more times, Venom says that he’s going to use the helicarrier to take the world. Spiderman appeals to Brock’s ideals of protecting the innocent, but Venom dismisses Brock’s importance. Let’s just get it out the way, this fight looks cool. Really cool. And as it is with most giant fights in games that aren’t designed around fighting giants, this doesn’t have much depth to it. Whenever venom puts one of his heads on the ground, you web strike it. You can only use Web strike bounce here, and the timing is different from normal too, which would’ve been nice to know. Each head takes about 3 hits. Venom will occasionally spit out symbiotes onto the helicarrier to distract you which does make getting into position a little harder. Once you’ve destroyed the heads Spiderman tries to bait out Eddie Brock from the big Venom thing. It says they don’t listen to brock anymore and attempts to smash you a bunch. You eventually call out the original Venom, and he struggles, telling you that he can’t control the symbiote anymore. You reach out for him, and get a choice. Red or Black. Red is by far my favourite. Venom realizes what he’s done and attaches a line to the rotors. As he crawls down he says “time to die… like a man”. This is my favourite moment in the game. Venom knows that he’s gone against his principles, to protect the innocent. And the only thing he can do now is to die in sacrifice, as men are expected to. It’s really sad. The black choice is the same, but you kill venom by tieing him to the rotor. The explosion ends up detonating the ship as it sinks, dealing the final blow to the symbiote. The final ending is dependant on your choice with Black Cat, and your overall alignment after fighting symbiote Vulture. Red has Spiderman atop a skyscraper. If you picked black Cat, he phones Mary Jane, apologising to her, explaining that he did what he did because he wanted to win so much. If you picked Mary Jane, she catches you narrating the story, and then you cheesily swing together off the building, which is a stark contrast to the darkness of the rest of the game, making it particularly sweet. Black has you ruling the city as it’s god. The symbiotes bow to you. Black Cat rules with you if you pick her. Black Widow and Kingpin plot to kill you by using symbiote Wolverine.There’s 4 endings that do actually take your choices into account and that’s clearly a good thing. Web of Shadow’s told a dark story extremely well. By having the city practically being a character through mission design, it’s far more immersive than most. The use of Marvel’s characters was consistently great. Speaking to or fighting all of them before they play their part in Act 3 and 4 meant a lot for the subsequent fights and their characters. The Black Suit’s raw power ties into the whole temptations of darkness theme they went for with both Venom and Spiderman’s character. The fun stories told in Act 1 and 2, only served to connect you to the city before it went to shit, and the enemies you fought there end up helping you in the invasion. This game proved that you don’t need cinematics, it managed to provide an immersive story with good dialogue, voice acting and a spectacularly immersive city alone. That’s not to say it was without fault. The voice acting is good. Venom in particular was written and performed spectacularly. But Spiderman’s own voice stops it from being near perfect. Micheal Vaughn’s voice isn’t really the issue, it’s just that he didn’t sell the lines well at all. He completely overdid the red suit Spiderman’s witty, teenage character, and while it contrasted well against the hyper edgelord Black Suit, it often felt out of place. I don’t know if they couldn’t get many takes, or Vaughn just wasn’t up to the task. But an issue with immersion in a game this immersive is a big deal. The fact that Venom shows up only three times is considered by some to be a serious problem, but I disagree. Though I do think he should have been slightly more present, web of shadows benefits from a story device I’ve discussed twice before on this channel. Venom and the symbiotes are effectively the same thing. Every action the symbiotes take is a direct result of Venom’s will, up until he infects some more major characters. This means that every thing the force does, that being the symbiotes, develops, and is a result of Venom. So he himself isn’t present, but it’s still him pulling the strings. You wouldn’t criticise president snow for not being in hunger games much, when he’s the one who controls the capitol. I also think the rarity of venom’s appearances punctuates those scenes so much more. When venom appears halfway through the story, it feels like somethings seriously going down, like you’re finally getting to the bottom of this mystery. And when venom shows himself, the size of a building at the final encounter, that feels like the climax of an epic story. Some raise issues with how much sense the story makes. The only time it attracts attention to it’s logical flaws is when the gate is attacked. The gate is dumb. But overall, the game doesn’t make you think about any of it’s other plot holes, and so I don’t consider them to be big issues. But they are still wroth discussing because as soon as you realise them, they can sour the memory of the story. First off, Venom is a Grade A Plank for starting his invasion on manhattan island. If you wanted to take the world, why didn’t you start in china where it would‘ve been next to unstoppable. If he must have Manhattan first, then why didn’t he send some infected civilians off the island before playing all his cards. He has flying symbiotes, why don’t they just fly off the island and go infect the rest of new york. And there are trains aren’t there? Venom’s master plan sucks, and it could’ve done with some acknowledgement in game. A couple lines of dialogue as to why Venom couldn’t get off new york would’ve gone a long way. But I think the biggest problem with the story are the choices. They don’t make the story worse, they’re just poorly implemented. Both love triangle options are bad. The first one is bad because you have no loyalty to MJ at this point and the second one is bad because you can’t pick Black Cat without turning into evil kinevil. Some choices make no difference at all. Vulture’s choice is just tie him up and joke about it, or tie him up and threaten him. Some choices are completely stupid. Ripping symbiote Wolverine in half serves no other purpose than making Spiderman evil. It doesn’t help him in any way. If the choices are supposed to be good vs evil, instead of passive vs aggressive, then why even give us the choice. Why would we want to flip flop between being a friendly neighbourhood Spiderman and a god of death on a dime. But they’re not always this way, because the black option for symbiote Electro is clearly more logical and better than the red option. So it’s not always good vs evil. The choices never tell you what they’re going to entail, so you can only ever assume, which only works for some of the characters. How am I supposed to know that the black option for Symbiote Wolverine tears him apart instead of helping him like with symbiote Electro. Black meant just being with black cat the first time but the second time it mean turning her into a symbiote. The choice system is a mess. The game would’ve been much worse without the red and black paths because they’re both really cool versions of events. The different dialogue is cool and all the endings are awesome. But the individual choices suck. I’d also like to bring up suit alignment. This changes based on how much you use each suit and how many black or red points you get. I thought this would affect the ending, but it actually means nothing for the story. It only affects how civilians react to you. They’re scared of a black aligned Spiderman, but love a red aligned Spiderman. What suit you’re wearing is also a factor. I can only fault this so much, because the player will probably assume that it matters even though it doesn’t. It’s only until you research it that the illusion is broken. Web of Shadow’s had it’s problems. The combat could get repetitive. The enemy design was sub par until the symbiotes invade. The choice system sucked, and Spiderman’s voice was crap. And there’s no problem hardcore Spiderman fans bring up more than what happens after the ending. The credits roll. And you’re spat out on to main menu. If you press continue again, the credit’s roll again. Yeah, you can’t free roam after the story is done. What could’ve possibly possessed the guys over at shaba to do this, I don’t know. But it’s not as big a deal as you might think. Because this game also features a NG+, in which you carry over your upgrades and your spiders. So you can free roam after the story, you just can’t have the story continuity. And that’s kind of a good thing. If you think about it, what enemies would you have to fight after the story? The thugs, kingpin and the symbiotes are dealt with, so there’s nothing left. The city would still be pretty messed up too, with no life, no civilians and nothing to do. If you got the Black ending, you’d end up with an army and nothing to do with it. It’s an impossible situation for Shaba. With a NG+, you’re in a calm version of the city, with lots of civilian life and gangs to fight. You can advance the story till any point you want before the parley, so they’ll be a good degree of enemy variety. It’s clearly the better way to go. There is a problem with NG+ though. The game never actually tells you how to get it. If you press new game thinking that it would give you an option, it overwrites your previous autosave and you lose it forever, which is really, really awesome. The actual way to get NG+ is to press continue on the credits again. So you watch it the first time, then you watch it the second time, then on the third selection, you get the NG+ prompt. Genius, really. On PC you can download saves so it’s not a big deal, but you’re donald ducked if you make the mistake on console. And that brings me onto the differences between the versions. There were 4 in total, and I know it was fashionable to have maybe 2 or 3 max back in 2008, especially among superhero games, but I cannot believe that there’s 4 versions of web of shadows out there. The first one is clear, you’ve been seeing it thus far, but it isn’t my favourite version. I actually prefer the wii version, and yeah, the graphics can’t hold a candle to all the fancy effects on Xbox and PS3, but you get a lot of immersion simply from moving the wiimote to make Spiderman swing, or webstrike. Better yet, the wii version has unlockable suits, and they’re all pretty awesome. Spider armour, iron spider, scarlet spider, spider carnage. There’s not many, but they’re all cool. Some you just unlock by playing the game, but others require a certain amount of spiders collected, which gives you a lot more motivation to go for them. On the Xbox and Ps3 you’d get allies instead, so it was a trade off, but I was more than happy to buy the game twice. Allies is calling in a hero or villain to fight with you at the cost of your entire special meter. It’s not really worth it to be honest, and bafflingly, it’s never tutorialised properly. Not once. Still, it’s a fun novelty. Apparently a lot of ps2 owners got punked into thinking they’d be getting the game in all the trailers, and then when they booted it up, got this side scrolling piece of shit. Yeah, the amazing allies version of the game leaves a lot to be desired, and considering that the ps2 is capable of a full new york, it must’ve been a kick in the teeth. The DS version was also a side scroller, but much more like a metroidvania. one that somehow managed to be better than Ps2 version. It captured the sense of the symbiote invasion pretty damn well, and is considered still to be the best spidey game on the platform. That’s no suprise. Griptonite games were at the helm for the DS version, and that’s always a recipe for success. I don’t count the PC version as a real version, because mechanically it’s identical to the Xbox and PS3. However, it does have a few differences. Mouse and Keyboard makes the game so much easier you wouldn’t believe. On a controller, you need your right thumb on the X button to boost and jump, which means you can’t control the camera while swinging. It’s even worse in combat. This completely destroys your level of awareness, which isn’t a problem on the Wii or PC version. The console also has a major graphical difference from the PC, and that’s motion blur. Some people love it, some hate it, but in this game, it’s effect is staggering. Level 6 Spiderman on console feels as fast level 10 Spiderman on PC. It creates a palpable sense of speed. You can’t get the PC version anywhere these days without uhhh…raising any flags. So if you want a copy, it’s that or ebay for a console edition. 

It’s one of the few games I’d outwardly go to the trouble of buying second hand. Web of Shadows is far from flawless, how could it be. But it did for combat what Spiderman 2 did for swinging, and it did swinging amazingly too. With easily the best story of the lot, even above edge of time, and a game designed around what people play it for, the free roaming, this is pretty much the best Spiderman game ever made in my honest opinion. With a game this size, and this damn good, 17 months of development time must’ve seemed like an unavoidable death sentence. I feel like that image of Spiderman could represent Shaba against the inevitable failure that their time restriction would result in. But thinking about it, even with so little time, Shaba made every move right to make a quality game. They used the combat and city to tell half the story and provide the length of half the game. They used collectibles for level ups. Where the full development force was needed, in the combat systems, the swinging, the bosses, it was given. This game is optimised for being great on a small time scale, and it didn’t get any recognition for that. That’s the lesson the industry could’ve learnt from this game. That’s the perfect swansong for Shaba games, who closed in 2009. And that’s another reason that this game’s poor sales is a tragedy. Relatively few people know about it. But with Spiderman PS4 on the horizon, everyone should. For people watching now, I think we know the bar. And for people watching however long after Insomniac’s Spiderman released, if you are looking a Spiderman fix you haven’t gotten yet, come play web of shadows.

Thank you all for watching. Please do subscribe if you’re new, I’ll be working on the Spiderman PS4 video as soon as it comes out. If you’d like to help keep the channel afloat, I have donation links in the description, and if you’d like to connect, I have a discord. I’m becoming less active on Twitter, but you can still reach me there. I’ve also got a list of channels I recommend in the description, but that’ll only be true if I remember and the chances of that are slim. Thanks again.

NOTES:

At the bottom right, you’ve got your face which represents what alignment you have, and two bars. Do me a favour, and guess which is the health bar? Red or green? Could easily be either. If you guessed green, you’re right. Red is the obvious choice, it’s on top signifying paramount importance, and red is what’s used in most other games because it looks like blood. But no, the red bar is your special meter which you drain when you call in allies or do a special attack. This caused me a damn lot of confusion on the regular.

The QTE event fails are fucking hilarious. When he fails to save MJ from falling off the APC and she dies, Spiderman just rubs his head. Yeah, nice one. You just let your girlfriend die you great plum.

Releasing a civilian from a car explosion in mid air gives them a web parachute. 

Car explosion rescues are inconsistent and bullshit. It’s Z or B to grab the guy, but if there’s any enemy nearby, Spiderman might just shoot them instead, resulting in a dead civilian and 10 black points.

The sound effects in this game are a 10/10, being comparable to even the likes of the zelda series. This stuff is truly exemplary. Almost everything in the world, and everything you can do has a unique, distinct, memorable sound effect, which results in more satisfying gameplay, deeper immersion, and a much more memorable experience, so much so, that I could remember how almost everything in the game sounded 6 years after I last played it.

Some of the webswing animations, specifically the one that has Spiderman dive, and if you fail to swing, splat on the ground, are reused from Spiderman 3. There’s also a robot design reused!

Spiderman Web of Shadows and Prototype are basically the same game. The similarities I’ve noticed are pretty crazy. Straight off the bat, they’re both developed by now closed down subsidiaries of activision, both were published by activision too. Both games are about a superhero with highly destructive powers fighting back an infection, and in both games, the second half is when the city has completely gone to shit. Both games have superheroes who’s most notable abilities revolve around their manipulation of biomass. Both games start with a prologue at the height of the infection, both games are set in manhattan, both games end on an aircraft carrier, both games are about the way power changes you, both games star massive edgelords, both games were released only a year apart. I honestly can’t believe that all of this was a coincidence. Accepting that it’s not, which game inspired which? I imagine Spiderman inspired prototype, because it came out a year earlier and had Spiderman 3 developed by Treyarch and Shaba with very similar concepts beforehand.