Day 9 of Eric Vs. 365 showcases Marvel's Spider-Man for PS4. We actually have a fair bit to talk about with this one. Things like how the game is solid but mostly just a polished up version of the same stuff Activision was doing with Spider-Man 15 years ago. And also how this video went through a couple of iterations before it ended up like this. Stick around, pull up a chair, and continue reading this blog post about Marvel's Spider-Man.
Back when Spider-Man first released in September 2018 I liked it well enough but couldn't quite understand the hyperbole (from mainly Sony fanboys) around it. It absolutely is a very good game, but it doesn't do anything new or different than the open world Spidey games Activision was pumping out 10-15 years ago did. The combat is the same. The mission design is the same. New York City is pretty much the same. The only difference is that Insomniac polished the hell out of it to make Spider-Man feel better than it ever has before. There is no denying that swinging feels freaking amazing in this game, but the overall package is an evolution rather than a revolution. Maybe if you have an extremely short selective memory which, admittedly, most gamers do, but for me Spider-Man PS4 was awfully familiar. Still good, of course, and I doubt I could go back and actually play any of those old Activision games because of how much better this new one feels, but we've done a lot of this before.
I'm not sure what this video was actually supposed to be when Andrew and I started recording. In my mind I think I just wanted to show off the pretty graphics and fun swinging mechanics, but as soon as Andrew took the controls things sort of went off the rails. He, for whatever reason, couldn't really wrap his head around the controls and spent a lot of time flailing around at ground level. Then I had the idea that maybe this whole video would turn into an acrophobic Spider-Man joke where we just did super normal pedestrian things close to the ground the whole time. Like I keep saying, I want these videos to subvert expectations and be something new.
We played for more than an hour, passing the controller back and forth and just having a conversation, which kind of ruined the "hurr durr, Spider-Man is bad at Spider-Man-ing" joke we had going. I'd swing around with great skill and Andrew slowly got better, so there just wasn't enough "bad" footage to make a whole video out of. Some of that still definitely made it in, though. Also, our conversations were interesting enough that I didn't want to cut them out, so the video ended up being a mix of all sorts of stuff. I was also feeling frisky with some edits, too, which makes the video pretty fun.
In the end, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's funny and interesting and that all you can really hope for.
