I platinummed every Spider-Man game on PSVITA

Hello everyone. I recently patinummed every Spider-Man game on the PSVITA and would like to review the experience.

Lets start with the first game of this post: The Amazing Spider-Man 2012.

Overall, this game was pretty straightforward and fun to platinum. The main story is on the shorter side at around 8 hours and you can 100% it in around 15-20 hours. There's not much padding and the game relies more on spectacle. There are also no missable trophies so you can do everything in one playthrough which is nice.

The game has around 4 groups of Trophies.

The first group are related to the main story. This includes the usual unmissable ones for completing certain missions or defeating the bosses or completing the game. There are also 3 trophies for beating the main story on the harder difficulties and I believe they stack. The game however, is pretty easy regardless of the difficulty so hard isn't that much harder and you have the ability to instantly "web retreat" when your health is low so it's rare to die.

 

The second group of trophies are for the side missions in the open world. These are all marked on your map and generally straightforward and fun to complete. I especially liked the races and events that ask you to go fast in the open world. But was rather meh on the combat and stealth ones. They do sometimes involve bosses which was cool.

 

The third group are for the game's collectibles. I'd divide these into groups: the open world collectibles in the form of Comic Books scattered all over Manhattan, and the interior collectibles you can only collect during missions. Fortunately the game does have a mission replay feature so no collectible is missable. The game even tells you which collectibles you have and haven't collected in missions and gives you a % completion for them. I recently platinummed TLOU2 and one of my biggest criticisms there was that the game would “forget” your progression when you replayed past levels. So props to TASM1 for doing this aspect well.

In addition, another nice consideration is that even though you can't highlight or mark collectibles, the different collectibles emit a different coloured bright light and emit a distinct sound when you are near them. Magazines for example, emit a bright yellow glow that can light up a bit of the surrounding area. So even if the magazine is behind some boxes, you can still see some of the glow. Audio Logs have a white glow. Tech Pieces have a blue-ish glow. Photo Ops have a giant Yellow "Oscorp" Sign planted next to them. So if the game tells you you have found all the magazines and tech pieces in a mission but still need to find some audio logs, you just have to keep an eye out for bright white light sources. Most collectibles are generally placed in plain sight. Only a couple are hidden in a random vent or corner that is a bit out of the way. I don't recall any collectibles that required some long puzzle or massive amount of backtracking to find. So not the most unfair set of collectibles to find.

However, this is only true in the PS3 version. In the VITA version, the graphics and lighting have been heavily downgraded in order to fit the game. So the collectibles are barely illuminated or emit much light. Add in the smaller screen, muddier resolution and textures and worse speakers on the VITA and there were times on my first playthrough of the game where I was moving through linear hallways with nothing else in them but a collectible and I still missed it. I could have walked slightly more to the left and would have picked it up without even realizing there was one there. It was really embarrassing 😭.

When I was looking up where the collectibles were on my iPhone, I could see them more clearly. For example, in one of the later Oscorp levels, there's a brief cutscene where the camera flys over an area. On my iPhone, I could see the blue glow of a Tech Piece. But on the VITA, even when I was looking exactly at the Tech Piece, it didn't even look distinct.

This even extends to the Photo Ops. On the PS3, these are usually pretty easy to find since you're looking for a bright yellow Oscorp sign next to the thing you need to photograph. But on VITA, these signs blend into their respective walls and even the words can be hard to read.

One really surreal experience that happened to me was in one of the final Oscorp Bio-Generator levels. In this area, there is a central generator that requires you destroy 4 consoles in the surrounding rooms to activate it. The rooms are labelled with a sign that says stuff like "Room 204: Biotechnology" or "Room 206: Recycling" so you know where you are and where you haven't been. One of the guides I was looking up told me there was 1 collectible in room 204, 2 in room 205 and 1 in room 206's vent. Simple enough. But when I was playing through it, I found 2 collectibles in room 204 and couldn't find room 205 or 206. I was really confused. It was only after watching some other guides that I realized that the VITA version reuses or simplifies textures more than I thought. Every room in the level had the same sign that said "Room 204: Biotechnology" even if their layout was different. I had already collected the collectible from the actual room 204 in my first playthrough, just found the 2 from Room 5 and just needed to get the one from the vent in 206.

Just for the fun of it, I decided to then replay some of the missions where I already knew where the collectibles were and compared what the rooms looked like between the 2 versions. And it showed that some of the collectibles on the PS3 version sometimes had additional detail or clutter near them to try drawing your eye to them. For example in the Beltoit Psychiatric Hospital mission, many of the collectibles had graffiti or posters near or above them. These were either absent or so low res as to be indistinguishable on the VITA version.

Now, it's debatable how much I can really criticize the VITA version for this. It's very likely these collectibles were designed to be more easily findable because of how lit up they normally were on the main PS3 version that Beenox probably didn't realize they'd be much harder to find on the VITA version. And I doubt Beenox would have had enough time or resources to somehow redo or significantly change the VITA version to fix something most players probably wouldn't even care about.

But then again, part of the issue, I feel, is due to the artstyle and locations of the game. TASM1 uses a much more "grounded" and muted colour palette. A lot of the interior areas are sewers, warehouses, generator rooms, underground tunnels and Oscorp facilities and they do start somewhat blending together even on the PS3. Compare this with say Insomniac's Spider-Man 2018 game and that game almost never used standard sewer areas for its interiors. Or even as a VITA example, Borderlands 2 was also ported to VITA and it too was heavily downgraded in order to fit. With many areas looking muddy and hard to make out. But the game's cell shaded look and more distinct locations were able to still preserve some variety and clarity. TASM1's visuals may have been able to get by on PS3 thanks to the console's power but as a result, hurts the VITA version way more than if it had more interesting visuals or colourful artstyle.

I’ll leave it to the readers to decide if this is an aspect worth criticizing.

Still, I do think it would have been better if, at the very least, there was some optional upgrade or tool you could get as an endgame unlock to highlight you of nearby collectibles. I find that generally benefits many games regardless of their artstyle or setup (certainly helpful in the Arkham games and their collectibles were bright green glowing question marks).

Anyway, there are also collectibles in the open world Manhattan in the form of comic books. You can't read these but I personally find them pretty fun and relaxing to collect with Spidey's web swinging. They remind me of the Animus Fragments in Assassin's Creed Revelations where they were all over the map and pretty fun to collect with your parkouring skills. There's only a few issues. The first is that there are 700 comics scattered all over Manhattan. Some are static and don't move. Others fly around the map. You need to Web Rush/Zip into them to collect them. They aren't marked on your map. So yeah, it would be quite rough to find them all. The game does offer some help. The comics emit a faint yellow glow and a certain sound as you get close to them. So it's advised to try finding them at night with the voice and music turned lower. Obviously it isn't as helpful on the VITA for the aforementioned reasons but the faint yellow glow at night is at least more noticeable than many of the interior collectibles.

 

Once you find 500/700 comics, it marks the remaining 200 on your minimap as you get near them. On paper, I'd actually really enjoy this. You have to find 500 sure, but it's fun swinging around as Spidey and looking out for them. There is some leeway and you can start seeing the patterns of where some are likely to be (many are often placed around skyscrapers, behind fire escapes and billboards etc). So it is reasonable to find 500/700 without the aid of a map. But the final 50 or so are more annoying. For one, they are only marked on your minimap and not your world map. And on top of that, they only show up on your minimap if you aren't too far from them, both on the x and y axis. Meaning it is possible for some comics not be highlighted on your minimap if you are too far above or below them. The final 10 were quite annoying as I had to thoroughly criss-cross sections of Manhattan at different altitudes. The last one I only found when I climbed to the top of Oscorp Tower and saw a really small faint glow in the night sky. This comic was quite far and really high up which is why it wasn't showing up on the minimap.

Again, I did enjoy finding these comic books. I just feel it would have been better if they were either always on your minimap once you find 500 regardless of your height and/or show up on the regular map as well.

The fourth group of trophies are for miscellaneous challenges. These include things like: "Sky Captain - Chain 10 Web-Rushes in the city", "Clean Victory - Defeat a Hunter without using your Web-Shooters".

I will highlight 3 notable ones:

"Heavyweight Champion - Defeat 1000 enemies". There aren't 1000 enemies in the main campaign or in the side missions. So you would have to replay some of the missions to get them. I got this naturally when I was replaying missions when looking for collectibles.

"Keep It Together - Immobilize 6 enemies simultaneously with web". I missed this one during my first playthrough because there's no real reason to do it. It's not like Insomniac's Spider-Man 2018 where you have a web ability to cover an entire area in web so you have to manually run around and web enemies up with your infinite webbing. But the combat is so easy that it's much faster to just KO enemies directly rather than incapacitate or stun them.

"The Sky Is the Limit - Defeat the S-01 without touching the ground". TASM1 really wants to be a spectacle. The second mission of the game showcases this with a bossfight against this giant Kaiju sized robot called the S-01. It's certainly a visual spectacle but not much of a gameplay one since you can easily move to dodge its attacks, perch to web its weak points and the game does much of the damage against the boss as you often just need to swing around to its weak points and press L and let the game go into autopilot for a few moments.

This trophy, funnily, actually helps the game on both the gameplay and visual front. And is one of the better examples of how a good challenge trophy can elevate a section of a game. It requires you defeat this boss without touching the ground. This also includes perching on lamp posts or the sides of building. Which means you have to keep swinging and are always on the move. The end result is this much more hectic and higher stakes encounter as you're swinging around dodging lasers, knowing any mistake could set you back. Sections that were more trivial before like webbing up fans near its feet/knees are more tense since you need to then web them while free falling and either swing or Web Rush away before you hit the ground. It's not the most challenging and I was able to get it in one try but it certainly made the fight feel more climactic and fun. Like I was actually playing this section of Spidey fighting this giant kaiju robot more than before (granted, the automated sections do hurt that feeling). Hell, even on the VITA version where the framerate was tanking, it even added to the feel. Like this boss was so epic that the poor hardware can't keep up lol. The section is also short enough to be impactful without losing or diluting the experience.

This is something Insomniac's Game does more of. It has bosses like Vulture and Electro you have to take on while web swinging. But there's something much cooler and enjoyable about the way TASM1 does it. Maybe it's the fact you're fighting this giant kaiju robot in a small-ish park and you have to move around way more vertically.

I will point out the trophy completion stats of this game a bit. Only around 78% of players managed to beat the first boss (i.e complete the second mission) of the game. Around 31% of players managed to beat the game on easy. That drops down to nearly 19% for medium and 9.9% beat it on hard. More people got all 700 comics in the open world (8.5%) than got the around 190-ish interior collectibles (7.5%) and only around 7% of players got the platinum.

So yeah, this was mostly a fun game to platinum. If the collectibles were marked a bit more (especially helpful on VITA), I'd have no complaints.

As for the game itself,  by VITA standards, it's pretty good as there aren't many games like it on the platform. Gravity Rush is probably the only one that's comparable. I am very nostalgic for this game so I'm probably praising it more than others would. I can see some people dismissing it or disliking it more. Especially for the game's performance on the VITA.

But ignoring the fact its on the VITA and comparing it with everything else, I feel it's.....decent at best. TASM1, I feel, is an awkward spot where very little it does is truly amazing or worth playing over other games for even if the experience itself is quite enjoyable and worth seeing at least.

For those who haven't played the game, the best way I can describe the game is that it's "the child of Batman Arkham City and Insomniac's Spider-Man 2018 (even though that game wouldn't come out for another 6 years)". From Insomniac's Spider-Man, you might recognize that TASM1 has more of a focus on Spidey zipping around in both combat and traversal, using multiple web blasts to immobilize enemies, a stealth system that involves getting above or close to enemies and pressing a single button instantly eliminate them with a web takedown. On top of that, the game has a faux twitter-like social media that you can see as the game's loading screen that updates and comments on the events of the game. The plot also involves a deadly pandemic that spreads across New York requiring Spidey to act (so I guess Insomniac plagiarized this game). It's actually really fascinating seeing how this game has ideas and concepts that would show up in Insomniac's game.

And from the Batman Arkham side, the game copies the exact same freeflow combat from Arkham. Right down to the same commands and moves. There's even a shielded enemy you cannot attack directly and need to jump over and attack from behind. The main issue here is that while TASM1 copied the surface level ideas of Arkham's combat, it didn't copy all the things that make it great. Batman Arkham's combat is fun because of 2 main factors. The first is that Batman has a wide array of moves that can be combo-ed and you must do so in order to get a high score from both the number of hits, the kind of move and the variation bonus. And the second is that the game introduces new kinds of enemies that can't be hit with your basic strike but either have a "designated weakness" and/or are vulnerable to any other kind of move. For example, stun baton enemies cannot be punched directly. Their "designated weakness" is that you can jump over them and then hit from behind. But that's not the only way to damage them. You can use a special combo takedown move on them, or temporarily down them with a baterang or other gadget, you can throw another enemy onto them etc. There are other kinds of different enemy types and later fights will start mixing groups so in order to get that high combo score, you need to juggle all your different moves and how best to use them to both manage all these different enemies and have enough variation. Arkham's combat is a lot closer to something like Devil May Cry (Arkham Origins even used an "S, A, B, C grading system that I wish was in all the Arkham games).

TASM1 doesn't really do any of this. Spidey only has basic strikes, a basic counter, jump attacks, automatic takedowns on weakened enemies, Rush attacks and the ability to stun enemies by webbing them and throwing them. There's no need to get good at countering or mix up your attacks. There's not even a scoring system. But on top of that, the game doesn't really have varied groups of enemies. The majority of human enemies you fight can be dealt with using basic strikes and counters. Some robot enemies need to be webbed up first to disable their shields but that's rather trivial and not something you need to plan doing or execute under much pressure. Mutated enemies can only be finished off with combo takedowns but you already get those automatically from just attacking enemies so they don't play much differently. Some late game mutated bosses have the ability to charge at Spidey and perform multiple claw swipes which you have press triangle multiple times to dodge (kinda like knife enemies from Arkham City) but that's really it.

If we compare this to Batman Arkham Asylum, released in 2009, 3 years before TASM1, Batman had basic strikes, basic counter, the cape stun, special combo takedowns, special combo throw, combo baterings, combo batclaw, jumping over enemies and the ground takedown. The game doesn't take long to introduce knife, baton, gun and titan enemies that mix up the experience and make you start working for those high scores. TASM1's combat, at its best, kinda feels like very early Arkham Asylum and doesn't evolve much from there. As a result, it starts getting repetitive quickly. At least the animations and moves from Spidey are pretty cool.

By the way, I am not criticizing the game for copying aspects from Arkham. But I'm of the opinion if you are going to copy from Arkham, copy more so you have a more fun combat system. Don't just take some aspects and leave it at that. Look at the Shadow of Mordor games. Those games copied way more from Arkham than TASM1 and the end result is a pretty fun combat system. TASM1's combat is in the awkward position where it doesn't copy enough to be good just by having all the good pieces, but doesn't add enough in its place to be different and good.

I already mentioned the stealth gameplay. But the one aspect I do feel the game actually has a really cool and original idea for and does quite well is the web swinging. Web Swinging in TASM1 operates in a somewhat similar way to Insomniac's Spider-Man where holding R allows Spidey to automatically shoot out lines and swing and pressing X allows you to jump while swinging. Though, webs don't have to stick to buildings which does somewhat limit the need to consider your environment. The animations are still really cool and the game does this thing where the camera zooms close to Spidey giving the swinging a more "cinematic flair". But the biggest new feature is the "Web Rush". By holding L, you enter a first person view of Spidey (complete with seeing through the lenses of his mask) in slow motion. You can point the camera and the game will highlight if you can get there. Releasing L will then have Spidey automatically go to that highlighted point. This can also be used in combat to give you some more breathing room and doing a web rush punch, and in stealth to move to points and perform stealth takedowns. 

On the surface, this doesn't sound that impressive. I've even heard some people dismiss it by saying "it's just the web zip from every other Spider-Man game only more automated". But I would argue there is more to it. One issue I had with Web Zipping in Insomniac's game was that it was a bit more situational. You generally used it more to zip to specific points, or onto perches and lights to jump and carry your current momentum. It wasn't as useful in quickly changing direction while still conserving some momentum. Especially when trying to gain altitude

But in TASM1, there's a lot more utility and flair here. You can typically Web Rush anywhere around you and the game is pretty good at picking up on where you want to go and getting you there. On top of that, depending on where you Web Rush from, Spidey will do a lot of cool animations. If you're standing on street level and Web Rush straight up, Spidey will usually automatically bounce up nearby buildings quickly gaining height. If you Web Rush while swinging close to street level, Spidey will sometimes run along buses and cars and bounce of buildings. If you Web Rush when higher up and near buildings, Spidey will sometimes Web Zip and Bounce along buildings. This sounds like its completely automated and wouldn't be fun. And if you use it like that, that can be the case. But I feel there are 2 things that elevate Web Rushing. The first is that you don't need to use the Slow Mo feature. You can Tap L when looking in certain directions to have Spidey Web Rush there. Using this while swinging means there's a lot more of a need to time and improvise which both looks cool and allows you to go really fast. The second is "cancelling" Web Rush. You can press X during a Web Rush for Spidey to cancel the rest of the Web Rush. Or Look at a different direction and press L to chain addition Web Rushes. This can lead to some interesting cases when swinging. For example, suppose you want to get over a building and you're approaching it while swinging. Instead of wall crawling/running over it, you can Web Rush up to have Spidey seamlessly bounce off the building and jump up and then quickly look to another direction and Web Rush again to zip of the building. If you need to swing around a building, you can Web Rush to the side to change direction while keeping momentum before transitioning back into a swing. Combine these features and you have a Web Swinging system that both looks really cool with all kinds of fancy animations, requires you to make a lot of quick decisions and gives you a lot of control and speed. Even on the poor VITA whose hardware struggles to keep up, I often felt like I was moving around faster and had more agency than Insomniac's Spider-Man game.

Though, the game doesn't really make you really take advantage of the depth here. Most of the races and side missions are pretty easy and generous. So you can often get by with basic swinging and Web Rushing. I can't remember if TASM2 made the races harder. I do remember the web swinging being more engaging because webs would stick to buildings and you could control which hand Spidey would swing from using the triggers.

As for the story and missions, I kinda like what TASM1 is going for here. It feels like it's more of a "The Amazing Spider-Man 1.5" as the story takes place after the events of the movie and features its own plot of how a breakout of a Cross Species infection from Oscorp infects all of New York. Resulting in rising case/infected numbers as you play the game, people needing to be quarantined and the race to develop a vaccine to try saving people. Alistair Smythe of Oscorp tries to fix the infection issue by releasing robots designed to hunt down and kill cross species. Which include Spider-Man himself since he was bitten by a cross species spider as opposed to a radioactive one, as well as any innocent civilians that are infected. Spidey also has to tank his reputation here by breaking Connors out of Beltoit's Psychiatric institute and working with him to develop a cure.

The story isn't the deepest or has much of an arc. It's also not even the most original as Web of Shadows already had a similar premise but with Symbiotes instead of Cross Species. But I still feel TASM1 makes it entertaining. The spectacle in seeing New York get progressively more wrecked, or Spidey needing to fight giant sized Kaiju Oscorp robots, or fighting many typical Spider-Man villains in the form of these mutated monstrosities like Scorpion and Rhino. That's really cool.

I also liked some of the twists, comedy and drama the story does. Stuff like the first cure failing so Gwen further distrusts Connors. Or Spidey's powers being suppressed by nanobots so the robots don't notice Peter as a Cross Species anymore. Which forces Connors to become the Lizard since Spider-Man can't be Spider-Man anymore. The sequence of powerless Spidey running through New York's streets while all the robot fighting is going around him and his apartment gets blown up in the process was really memorable. Especially because in the lore, that apartment was Stan Lee's who is renting it to Peter. He even calls Peter during this segment to ask him if the apartment is clean.

I also like how there's even a bit of foreshadowing and connection to the TASM2 game. Connors tells Peter about how this will affect his reputation and will come back to haunt him (i.e the main gimmick of TASM2). And the TASM2 game even has sections that relate to the cross species incident of the first game as well as the plot of the movie (TASM2 game really is its own alternate universe).

In closing, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 VITA was a fun time. I enjoyed platinumming it. And, as someone used to the VITA's rather poor performance, I wasn't bothered too much by the poor graphics and framerate. The game wants to be a spectacle and I enjoyed its more wacky elements. The combat and stealth got repetitive but the web swinging was really fun. Though sadly, there is very little reason to revisit this game specifically. Other Spider-Man games like Web of Shadows and Insomniac's Spider-Man do the combat and open world gameplay better. The game copies from Batman Arkham but not enough to even match it. Supposedly, the game was only made in 1 year and coincided with the movie's release. TASM1 was able to be decent despite the deadlines. TASM2 sadly, wasn't so lucky.

Still, I do have a fondness for this game and universe. Part of me wishes we got more TASM movies and the games got more time. Perhaps TASM3 game would have been really cool.

Next up for me is platinumming every Batman Arkham game on VITA. See you then.

I platinummed Sly Cooper 4: Thieves in Time on VITA to get the secret ending.

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the PSVITA version of Sly Cooper 4: Thieves in Time as my 28th platinum. It only took me 10 years, 4 weeks, 22 hours to do it. Did you know this game hides its true ending behind the platinum?

Anyway, I'd like to talk about the experience.

 Sly 4 was a bit confusing and inconsistent to platinum. I get the feeling the game wants you to platinum it given how on every loading screen it shows you how much you've completed the trophies and collectibles for the game. And that there no missable trophies. But there are some decisions that don't help with that.

So I'd say there are around 3 groups of Trophies in this game.

The first group are the mandatory story trophies. Not much to say about these. There's nothing missable here and the names are quite cool. I do like looking at the percent completion to see how many players completed the PS VITA version of the game. Did you know that around 73% of players booted this game up and completed the prologue? And only around 25% of players even beat the game. The biggest drop happened around the start of Episode 2 since the completion dropped from around 60%to 48% for some reason.

The second group are the trophies for the collectibles and arcades. I'll talk about these later.

The third and final group of trophies are for miscellaneous challenges. I'll start with these first and highlight some of the notable ones that I missed on my first playthrough.

"Crazed Climber - Scale the dragon lair in under 90 seconds". This was one I missed during my original playthrough of the game. This requires you to climb a giant tower filled with traps in the mission "Mechanical Menace". And this one was really fun even though it took me like 3 attempts. Sly 4's movement and platforming is quite fun so having a mini speedrun challenge using Sir Galleth's moveset was a treat. The one criticism I have here is that the game drops a checkpoint as soon as you get to the top. If you haven't gotten the trophy by then and need to retry, you need to quit to the main menu/hideout and reselect the mission, skip through all the cutscenes and get back there which gets annoying. At least the tower is near the start of the mission.

"Ancient Warfare 3 - Crackshot 10 enemies within 65 seconds. Sly's ancestor, Tennessee "Kid" Cooper" has an ability similar to "Dead Eye" from Red Dead Redemption where he can slow down time, mark enemies and objects and then instantly shoot them dead called "Crackshot". I never got this trophy when I first played the game because there wasn't much opportunity to. There aren't large groups of enemies wandering around that you can casually get 10+ of them line up for you to shoot them. Plus, I was already good at shooting them normally. I tried running around in the open world trying to lure enemies but found it wasn't working. There's a mission in the game called "Blind Date" that throws lots of rabbit enemies that chuck TNT at you that worked better for me.

"Hubba Hubba - Don't miss a beat in the Carmelita dance game." This trophy is, without a doubt, the main reason to platinum this game on VITA instead of the PS3. So nobody can see you play this dumb minigame and call you a Furry. This trophy requires you to complete the minigame where Carmilita needs to disguise herself as a belly dancer and dance to distract guards while the Cooper gang try and open a door. You just need to hit the button prompts perfectly. So you can ignore the times the minigame asks you to shake the VITA from side to side like a champagne bottle to make Carmilita shake her ass (seriously, why does this game sexualize Carmilita so much? None of the past Sly games did it).

"Get To the Chopper - Don't take any damage during Up In Smoke." This one was actually fun. In the mission "Up in Smoke", you have to control an RC Helicopter and drop bombs on turrents while drones and mines chase you down. It was fun dodging and weaving through them. There are 3 phases to this mission and you have a checkpoint in between every phase. So if you mess up, you can just restart the checkpoint to the last phase. You don't need to avoid taking damage the whole way through which is nice.

"Unexpected Package - Place 60 bombs in enemy pockets with Bentley." When I first saw this trophy, I groaned. This would be a massive grind. And I had actually made it harder on myself. You see, normally, when you sneak up behind an enemy as Bentley and hold triangle, Bentley will try to put a bomb in the enemy's pocket. Larger enemies won't notice this but smaller enemies will. But the main issue is that I had previously unlocked the Heat Seeking upgrade for Bentley. Meaning sometimes, the bombs would "miss" and stick to an enemy guard's arms or legs instead. So it was annoying going around the hub world and planting bombs on guards.....until I remembered that I had purchased the upgrade for sleep bombs. My plan now was just to find a lone guard on a rooftop, try and place one sleep bomb into his back pocket and detonate it. He'd then fall asleep. Then I'd go to his sleeping body and try placing 5 sleeping bombs in his pocket and back away (the max you can place at any one time). When he wakes him, I'd detonate all 5 which set him to sleep and then repeat. Even if I'd "miss" a few bombs that would stick to their legs instead, I generally 3 or 4 bombs work perfectly. So it didn't take long to get all 60.

"Apollo Wins - Have the perfect workout during the Training Montage." During the mission "Getting Stronger", you have to do a training montage with Bob where you alternate through 6 minigames as you complete them with the minigames getting harder as you complete them. The trophy requires you to complete 10 randomly selected minigames without making a single mistake. If you mess up, you can restart the checkpoint to the beginning of the montage and have to play through a new set of 10 randomly selected minigames. The Minigames are "Slippery Slope" where you balance an egg on a beam using motion controls while penguins jump around on the floating iceberg you are standing on. "Penguin Popper" where Penguins are diving in front of you and you have to play baseball using them. "Sumo Slap" where you have to perform QTEs to push a giant penguin out of a Sumo Ring. "Duck and Cover" where penguins get launched at you from 4 different directions and you have to move the left stick to dodge them. "Super Sling" which requires you to use a catapult to launch a penguin at a flying pterodactyl. And "Whack a chump" which is Whack a Mole but with penguins. Some of which are fake and you should avoid.

Penguin Popper was easy. Once you get the timing down it's easy to get into a rhythm and hit the penguins since they don't vary when they dive. Whenever this popped into the rotation, I considered it a freebie. Sumo Slap was extremly easy. The button mashing was extremely generous. This was another freebie. Duck and Cover requires a bit more focus because of the timing and inconsistent patterns. It's not too challenging. Interestingly, I noticed that the VITA's speakers would reflect if the penguin was coming from the right or left but not above or below you. I guess headphones would make this easier but I had no need for it. I was generally glad when this popped up in the rotation. Whack a Chump was a bit harder than Penguin Popper because there is no set pattern and the additional challenge of not hitting the fake penguins. But it wasn't too bad. I was glad when this popped up in the rotation.

Super Sling and Slippery Slope were the 2 I dreaded and the ones I messed up the most on. Super Sling doesn't give you much indication of where your sling will go. The Pterodactyls have varied speeds so you can't rely on pattern recolonization and reactions. And there's time pressure as taking too long counts as a miss. And it kept popping up in the rotations for some reason!

Slippery Slope was stressful because of the motion controls and how wild later versions of it were.

"The Cooper Open - Have a 20 hit rally with Bentley in each hideout." There are 6 hideouts in the game. In each hideout there is a table tennis table where you as Sly can play a round of table tennis with Bentley. I question the inclusion of it but I suppose it can be a nice distraction. This trophy requires you get a sequences where both you and Bentley hit the ball back and forth 10 times each (or 20 times overall) without missing. And repeat for each of the 6 tables. I found Bentley kept messing up so I had to intentionally hold back and avoid making good shots and try and hit the ball towards him. The main issue is the fact you have to repeat it 6 times. I feel it would be better off just once and as nothing is really added by doing it 6 times. If anything, it's more annoying given the long load times to switch hideouts and Bentley's random AI.

"Hassan Would Be Proud - Pickpocket a full collection of every item in the game." Each of the 6 or so locations have around 3-4 items that can be pickpocketted from guards. The main issue with this trophy is that it doesn't keep track of which items you have already pickpocketed in any way. The game already tracks how many treasures and masks you've found per general area but not pickpocketted items.

I only got this trophy by planning on systematically going through every location in the game and pickpocketting every enemy item and noting down which ones I found.....only to get it in the first level when I used Murray's shake move on some rat enemies. Enemies that you never encounter or have a reason or opportunity to naturally pickpocket. I guess 2013 me had already gotten 99% of these items previously.

"Navigate Like Drake - Take a look at every map in every episode". I found this trophy really annoying. The way it works is that every location in the game, including linear interiors that are exclusive to missions and even the hideouts, have a map you can look at by pressing SELECT. The game doesn't keep track of which locations you've seen the map of. So I had to systamatically play the game from the first mission and press SELECT whenever I entered a new interior. Then quit out and play the next mission and repeat. It popped for me in Episode 4 so somehow, 2013 me had looked at all the maps in Episode 5 without realizing it.

I don't like this trophy. It doesn't really add anything. The player would already be looking at the maps in the hub worlds where they would be at their most useful since those are open world sections. They have no real reason to use the map in linear interiors. And even less useful in hideouts as these aren't even explorable. They are basically just menus that happen to have a 3D background. I'd be more forgiving of this trophy if the map showed collectibles at least. That way, players have more of a reason to use this feature.

Shout out to the Lazy Trunk Spa & Lounge. A secret area in the game that contains a mask collectible and counts for the trophy with a unique map. No mission ever goes here. So even if you were to play diligently and open the map for every area you encounter, you'd still miss this.  I only knew this existed because the trophy guide I looked at told me about it so I decided to tag this area while doing the "Get to the Chopper" trophy.

"Hero Tech - Battle with a secret weapon" Once you collect 50 Sly masks. You unlock Ratchet's wrench from Ratchet and Clank. This weapon even turns the coins you collect into bolts. Collecting 60 Masks unlocks Cole's Amp from inFAMOUS. This can electrocute the enemies you hit. I chose to use Cole's Amp to get the trophy as a tribute to inFAMOUS. Killed by Ghost of Tsumia 😭. May it rest in peace. Gone too soon.

That covers all the miscellaneous trophies. Now for the collectibles and arcades.

Sly 4 has a bunch of different collectibles scattered in each of its 6 episodes.

Bottles: Each hub world contains 30 bottles. Collecting all of them gives you access to unlock a safe hidden somewhere in the hub world. Unlocking that safe rewards you a special treasure. Bottles make a "clinking" sound when you're near them so if you're having a hard time finding them, try going into the game's settings and turning down the music and voice sounds. If you find the safe in Episode 3, the special treasure it gives you will highlight bottles and safes in every other episode on your map which is quite nice. I wish the game did this more often. If it hides collectibles from the player, at least give the player an endgame ability to highlight them. It makes it more feasible and fun to complete these tasks instead of combing every last inch (or looking up a guide).

Treasures: Each hub world has around 11 treasures scattered all around. The gimmick here is that in order to collect them, you first need to find where they are in the hub world. Then once you pick them, you need to race back to your hideout under a certain time limit and without taking any damage. If you mess up, you need to repeat the process. The treasures generally require you to have all of Sly's costumes. And a couple require you to be playing as Sir Galleth because England has increased gravity for some reason. Some of these treasures are really well hidden. Requiring you to go to these holes in the middle of nowhere which then require you to switch between some of Sly's costumes. Like, if you open the map when picking some of these up, you'll find Sly is located beyond the borders of the area.

I found it way more fun to race back to the hideout than actually finding them. It was tedious to find many of them because of how well hidden they are. There is no tool or item in the game that can help mark them on your map. Well, I say that. Supposedly, if you have both the PS3 and VITA versions of the game and play them at the same time, you can use the VITA like a scanner/binoculars to locate these treasures. And then use the Cross Save feature to nab them in both versions. I only have the VITA version so no luck for me. Again, I'd argue it would be better if there was an endgame upgrade or tool you could get that would mark the treasures like how the game does it for bottles. There isn't even a "clinking sound" or any help for these.

Anyway, collecting all the treasures for an episode unlocks the arcade machine minigame for that episode.

Also sidenote, but this game has the worst map screen that still somehow can be useful. The map gives a top down view of the area but with a blue filter. This makes it harder and more annoying to navigate and use landmarks for reference. Especially on the VITA with its smaller screen. There are also no icons on the map (aside from bottles, safes and objectives) or the ability to make your own markers. The VITA version makes it worse as you can't even use the buttons to navigate the map. You have to use the touchscreen even though that's not how it is in the PS3 version. But you can still use it to know where you are and where collectibles can be from guides. It's technically readable and useful but just barely. I've never seen a map in a game so perfectly walk the line between useful and annoying.

The next collectible are Sly Masks. There are 60 total and around 11 per Episode. Collecting them unlocks skins and some goodies. But the catch with them is that they can be anywhere. There can be a couple in the hub world. But also couple during select missions and even some in the arcade minigames. There's no way to know where any of them are. They generally tend to be really well hidden even if you are trying to scour every area.

Again, I wish there was a way to highlight them. The game's long load times make it a chore to switch episodes or missions so it's tedious to try searching for them manually.

Now it's time to talk about the arcades. Sly 4 has 3 arcade minigames that are used in both the main missions and have a harder version in the arcades in hideouts. The arcade versions of these minigames are harder, go on for much longer and can have secret paths that lead to portals that reward you with points and some of them even have Sly masks. You need to beat the high scores to get the trophies

The first minigame is "Alter Ego". This has you play this 2D auto scrolling twin stick shooter minigame where you must avoid enemies and collect these "ionic bits". Collecting 5 yellow bits levels you up so your weapons get more powerful. At level 10 you have shoot crazy fast, can launch missiles and have floating drones that can damage enemies around you. But whenever you take damage, you drop an entire level. And you get left behind as the level autoscrolls, you respawn at level 0. You can also collect blue bits which can give you a grenade explosion around you.

Personally, I don't really like this minigame. It's fine when playing casually as a change of pace but grinding the high score isn't great. Since it is an autoscroller it is entirely possible you don't have enough points to match the high score and you won't know until its too late, wasting your time. I also found the hitboxes a bit too small. Making items more annoying to pickup.

The key to success is finding the right balance between collecting yellow bits as they give points and level you up (and how high your level is acts as a multiplier for your score) and killing enemies since they give more points. As well as avoiding taking damage and maintaining level 10 as much as possible and knowing where the secret paths are so you can get more points as well as level up if you have messed up.

The second minigame is "System Cracker". Here, you guide a little space ship looking thing through 2D levels in top down twin stick shooting sections. This isn't an autoscroller. You need to explore levels looking for keys and shooting enemies. There are 3 ships you can switch between by going onto specific coloured pads and each ship has its pros and cons. The green ship you start with does decent damage and has decent health and can carry keys. So it's a jack of all trades master of none kinda ship. The pink ship literally resembles a tank. It fires slower and at a shorter range but does more damage and has more health. It's also necessary for destroying pink crystals to progress. The blue ship has floatier handling and faster speeds. Its shots also bounce off walls and it can draw a line which can activate switches and damage enemies. It is weaker than the green ship though.

I actually really enjoyed this minigame and was happy whenever it comes up. It even feels the most fleshed out of the 3. Like, I feel it could even be released as a small standalone game with some tweaking and expansion. I'd probably play a mobile version of this in my free time.

I like how varied the levels can be. You can have a lot of different threats and mini-puzzles and even scenarios where you have to keep switching between ships on the fly to damage enemies. Like, there's this one enemy that's made up of orange, blue and pink hexagons that require you to switch between all 3 ships and use their abilities to damage it. It's quite fun. Damage one ship takes is "saved" on that ship. So if you take 50% damage with the green ship and switch to the pink one, the pink one will have 100% health. But whenever you switch back to the green one, you will be back at 50% health. So mistakes have consequences requiring you to make decisions accounting for them without being too overbearing.

Beating the high scores for the associated arcades is very easy. For one, there is no time limit or pressure so you’re free to take your time and play carefully. On top of that, the mode is very generous with points. Whereas Alter Ego only gives you points for killing enemies and picking up bits (and you need to get and maintain a multiplier for decent times), System Cracker gives you points even for shooting obstacles and barricades in your way. In Alter Ego, I was scraping for points until the very end. In System Cracker, I had more than enough points by the halfway mark.

I suppose the game could have balanced this by increasing the points threshold and rewarding extra points for taking less time to complete sections but I’m not complaining.

The third and worst minigame is “Spark Chaser”. Here you must guide a little electric ball across these maze like areas with gaps that end your attempt if you fall down them and these pinball like bounce pads that bounce you really far. There’s also a time pressure. You have around 20 seconds to get as far as possible with more time added as you pick up these purple clock icons.

The biggest issue is that it’s entirely controlled by motion controls. And this makes me experience worse on VITA. Seriously, I very nearly quit playing. This post was almost titled “I gave up trying to Platinum Sly 4”.

With the PS3 version, at least titling the remote doesn’t also affect your view of the screen. You can look at the game and play it the same as you normally would. But in the VITA version, the “neutral” position where no input is registered by the system is placing the VITA flat with its screen facing up. The standard “screen facing you” position registers as down.

The end result is a frustrating experience. This minigame requires really fine precision given how easy it is to fall off and the time pressure requires you both be fast and more precise to collect time pickups. On top of that, your view is constantly being messed with due to how much you need to tilt the system from odd angles. Especially how tilting “up” really makes it hard to see. Oh, and the dialogue from Bentley as you bounce gets really annoying and repetitive.

It’s barely tolerable in regular missions since those don’t require as much precision or speed. And even then, the usage there in 2013 was suspect to begin with. I only completed this because there’s a cheese where if you can get enough time early on, you can then keep bouncing on certain pads which give around 20 points per bounce. When I played “normally”,  I’d get around 300 points with the high score being 1000 points. Using the cheese, I averaged around 990 points and managed to get lucky to win with 1010 points.

Tangent Time:

I’ve said it before. Motion controls work best when they complement existing controls in an optional way or in more restrained ways. I love it when games have gyro aiming since that can help compensate when aiming with sticks with small fine corrections. It works here because the sticks do most of the work and the gyro sensors work where they are best suited.

Or in many mobile racing games, steering is often done by tilting your phone. I enjoy this because there is only one axis you need to tilt your phone, the screen often rotates in conjunction so your view is preserved and it’s more intuitive to feel the “range” of rotation and how it corresponds to steering.

Hell, even ignoring these approaches, motion can still be used in worthwhile ways. Such as by mapping an extra action that is infrequent if all other buttons are occupied. The Mario games on Wii map a “spin” when you jump and shake the remotes giving Mario a bit of grace allowing him to make slightly further jumps or correct a bad jump. Call of Duty MW1 on Wii allowed you to assign certain commands to custom motions of the controller and nunchuck. So you could map stuff like jumping, moving and shooting to buttons but map reloading to smacking the nunchuck to the Wii Mote or plunge the Wii Mote forward to do a melee attack or tilting the Wii Mote to bring out a grenade or alt fire.

Even Resistance 1: Fall of Man had a neat idea. You could quickly tilt the controller left to bring up the Scoreboard screen without needing to take your thumbs off the sticks or stop moving. The Soulsbourne games allow you to quickly do emotes without needing a menu by holding the interact button and quickly tilting the controller in certain directions. 

I bring all this up to highlight how Sly 4’s use of motion controls are a failure on every level. They’re mostly used in place of minigames as the sole method of control. So all the issues of motion controls (such as the lack of broad control and feedback) are front and centre. The only place where the motion controls are understandable is when firing arrows as you can then control the arrow after it’s fired using both the sticks and gyro aiming. But even then, the lack of any ability to tune the gyro sensitivity or even invert the controls hampers any use it could have had.

I don’t mind the idea of Sly 4 having decent motion controls. There are places where I can see it being beneficial. In addition to shooting and guiding arrows, I can see it being useful when you have to use the binoculars. Especially as Bentley as you need to shoot darts precisely.

Or, here’s a gimmicky one: you can bind certain costumes or tools to also be selected by quickly tilting the system. Even though using the D-pad for a quick select would be faster, it would still be a better use of motion controls for Sly 4 than most of what’s currently there.

End Tangent.

Back to getting all the trophies, the final arcade machine, unlocked only when you’ve gotten all the treasures in every other episode, is very easy. It has “3 rooms”, one featuring every minigame thus far. But the high score requirements are really low and rooms aren’t as tough as prior versions. You can easily get the high score in the first area which is the Alter Ego one. Even if you miss it there, the second area is Spark Runner but you can keep reloading the checkpoint to preserve your score. So you can get some time clocks, reload a checkpoint when you’re close to running out of time or about to fall off and repeat until you get the high score.

 

You do need to get past the Spark Runner section to the 3rd and final section that uses System Cracker's gameplay in order to get a hidden Sly Mask, but it's far easier than the dedicated Spark Runner arcade minigame as the section is shorter, is more generous with Time Pickups, has easier level design and lets you reload a checkpoint if you're about to fail which doesn't end the run.

So yeah, Sly 4 Thieves in Time was....inconsistent game to platinum. I enjoyed the base gameplay, System Cracker, the various challenge trophies and the mini speedruns for collecting treasures. I didn't enjoy finding the collectibles and doing some of the other minigames. I hated Spark Runner.

If the game had more ways of tracking collectibles, fewer minigames and better load times, I'd gladly recommend it as a fun game to platinum.

As for the base game itself, I am mixed on it. The gameplay is arguably the best in the series. Sly's movement and costumes are so fun to play around with. Murray, Bentely and Sly's ancestors are also fun changes of pace during missions.

The story is lacking. My main issue is that it doesn't feel like it realizes its following up Sly 3. The story so casually undoes the ending of Sly 3 to get Sly 4's story going. I get it, that's what a sequel has to do. But the way it does it really undermines Sly 3. It's also much more lighthearted and doesn't have as much of a theme or focal point as its predecessors. Sly 1-3 explored the theme of legacy and the consequences of adhering to it so tightly. A major aspect of Sly 3 was Sly realizing the Cooper Vault wasn't worth dying for. It's what prompts him to fake his amnesia and retire with Carmilita in the end. So for Sly 4 to then have Sly have an itch to steal just for the fun of it, it's sending mixed messages here.

In addition, Sly is really casual about the fact Carmilita now knows about his betrayal and has broken up with him. Seems like that should have been a bigger deal. In fact, that kind of "casual-ness" persists throughout the story. Sly doesn't really have much of an arc or any real heartfelt moments with his ancestors. Nor do they seem to really care their decedent from the future is here with them.

If I could have tweaked the story to address these points, here's what I would have done:

 

I'd have the story open with Sly, Bentley and Murray enjoying their "retirement" and have no plans of thieving. I'd go so far as to have Sly even scoff at the idea of him ever wanting to be a thief.  Then when the pages of the Thievus Racconus are dissapearing, Sly, Bentley and Murray have to reluctantly unretire to try stopping them. There would be dialogue during the opening mission of Sly being worried if they get caught as it would undo their happy ending. And then when Carmilita catches Sly, Sly at first is flustered and tries to explain the situation to Carmilita who isn't having any of Sly's BS. Sly is forcibly extracted by the gang and then they time travel. As they are time travelling. Sly is upset that, in order to go literally defend the Cooper Legacy, he has to give up his happy relationship and can't be repaired now. That even if they fix the problem, they'll be on the run forever now. Murray had to give up his professional career as well.

Already, I feel this introduction has a few things going for it. It respects the ending of Sly 3 and keeps the characters in more character, as well as putting more heat on Le Paradox. Sly 4 had to rip away the happy ending that was Sly 3. The characters know that and aren't happy about it. There is immediate consequences. And that heat can be directed at Le Paradox when he comes later.

I'd also like if all of the ancestors Sly met had different reactions to both him and the Cooper legacy and how it affects Sly's arc.

For example, lets say when he meets Riochi Cooper, Ricohi is initially disappointed in Sly as the future Cooper decendent as Sly doesn't act honourably or respect the legacy or something like this. Something that makes Sly start to question if it's even worth defending the Cooper Legacy. Bentely is the voice of reason here and mediator that gets the gang to work as well as they can.

Then when Sly meets Tennessee Cooper, Sly is initially expecting another traditionalist ancestor that cares a lot about the Cooper Legacy. But Tennessee is kinda the opposite of Riochi in that Tennasee doesn't care about the legacy in the same way. He adds his own spin and contributions but also uses the knowledge from it to do his own thing. Perhaps Tennessee is this Robin-Hood esque figure who uses his heisting skills to steal from the corrupt ruling class and give to the lower class. The point being that through Tennessee, Sly considers another aspect of the Cooper Legacy on how he's not that beholden to it and can potentially make it his own.

Then when Sly meets Bob, part of Bob's training is also from Sly as Sly teaches him some of the Cooper moves he knows. Since Bob is the first Cooper ancestor, he has no bias towards the legacy or any knowledge. So he's far more grateful and begins to use his new skills in helpful ways. Causing Sly to wonder if he could use the Cooper Legacy in more ways.

It's a similar situation for Sir Galleth. And for Selim, perhaps by that point, Sly has a newfound outlook and appreciation for the Cooper Legacy and ways on how he can improve it or make it his own that he encourages Selim not to retire or to retire in such a way where he could help people or something like that.

So yeah, there's this theme now of "Don't let the past define you now. You can make it your own and grow past its flaws". Which I feel would give Sly 4 more of a punch. I am basically copying Metal Gear Solid 4 and Assassin's Creed though.

I also feel it would be better if Penelope wasn't the villain of episode 4. It seems to contradict her character from past games and the explanation given for her heel turn doesn't really hold water. I feel the story would be better if Penelope had the role Dmitri has where she's their help in the present and the Knight was a new character. But if you need to have Penelope as the antagonist, have her be under mind control or something. That way the team has the conflict of how will they stop the plan without hurting their friend. But if you really insist on Penelope being a full on antagonist now by her own choice, perhaps flesh out her motivations more? Maybe something like "she sees how Bentley will never reach his full potential as the Bill Gates of the world because of his criminal past that requires him to lay low and not take public credit for his inventions. So she's trying to erase the Coopers so Bentley will have never met Sly". That would at least be more than "I want money".

Everything else, I feel works more or less.

I will note that the cliffhanger ending was a weird choice given that this game wasn't projected to sell well and kinda pigenholes any story Sly 5 would be going for. Plus, it being locked behind the platinum trophy means only a small portion of the few players that played Sly 4 would even know about it.

So yeah, that's my take on platinumming Sly 4: Thieves in Time. What do y'all think?

Next up for me is platinumming every Spider-Man game on PS VITA. See you then.

Platinumming TLOU2 + Grounded and Permadeath

 Hello everyone. Recently I’ve platinummed TLOU2 as well as getting the DLC trophies for completing the game on Grounded Difficulty and Permadeath mode. And I want to talk about the experience.

In terms of getting the Platinum, TLOU2 was mostly straightforward. The trophy list is a lot more “streamlined” compared to both TLOU1 and Uncharted games. In the base game, there are no trophies for completing the game on any specific difficulty modes or using any of the game’s accessibility or assist modes. No significant “missable” challenges or requirements. There are only like 28 trophies.

I feel the game has 4 kinds of trophies.

The first group are the standard story based ones. Except unlike other games, there’s only really one for this category: “What I had to do- Complete the story” which is sitting at a 57.6% completion on PSN. It is weird for there to only be one story trophy. Typically, games like this would have a trophy per act or chapter or something. I like these kinds of trophies as you can use them to see where players stopped playing or how many made it to a certain part.

The second group are what I call the “standard collectibles”. These are the typical collectibles that don’t reward the player and are either there to add lore or context or to be regular collectibles. Stuff like artifacts (notes from other people. Interesting for lore.), superhero trading cards (which honestly were quite cool) and state quarters (definitely more on the boring side). There are also "secret collectibles" that give a trophy like the Precursor Egg that's been a secret collectible in every Uncharted and TLOU game so far. And Nathan Drake's ring.

There are a few positives I can say for these collectibles. The first is that the game's level select keeps track of how collectibles you have collected per area. Making it easier to know where you have to look (granted, you can't access this when in a level which is a bummer). The accessibility menu have the option for collectibles in the area to ping when you use listen mode and for them to show up yellow in High Contrast Mode and for collectibles you've already collected to be highlighted differently.

 

The second is that there are no "conversations" to collect like there were in TLOU1 and Uncharted 4. I am not fond of these since these depend more on your AI partner to be in specific positions and states. And it is possible to accidentally make your AI partner either skip or never enter a correct state for a conversation to trigger. I remember back in TLOU1, there were some rather annoying conversations that took some finessing to trigger.

But personally, I am not fond of these kinds of trophies where they ask you to collect all 100% of things. I guess they encourage the player to explore more and perhaps even get some benefit out of it but it can make the experience rather tedious as eventually, players resort to using guides to find the last remaining collectibles in hidden areas. I've always felt it would have been better if such trophies only asked you to find 70-80% of collectibles rather than 100%. That way, you still have to put in some effort but the wiggle room allows you to miss some of the trickier ones and still get the trophy.

Another suggestion is that once you beat the game, you unlock some kind of optional power up or ability to flag collectibles in an area. I am also platinumming Sly 4 at the moment and really appreciate such a feature and wish more games had that.

The third group of trophies are what I call "Useful Collectibles". These are collectibles that give some sort of tangible reward that it may be worth seeking them out even on repeat playthroughs to help you out.

I'll put the trophies for getting every safe, weapon, player and weapon upgrade, workbench and training manuals here. One thing to note is that some of these you cannot get in a single playthrough. There simply aren't enough weapon parts and supplements to max out all upgrades in one run. That's what NG+ is for. The amount of parts and supplements are fixed regardless of difficulty and run and all your progress is saved per save files. Meaning you can keep doing NG+ until you get everything you need. Though, in my case, it only took around "4 Seattle Days" per character to max them out. The game is kind enough to then stop spawning parts and supplements once you max them out so they no longer clutter the environment or waste your time which is nice.

I'm more favourable towards these collectibles because they encourage you to get powered up and you can use the knowledge from these for future playthroughs even if you have the trophies. Such as knowing where all the safes are and how to open them helps in getting resources you'll always want.

The fourth kind of trophies are what I call "miscellaneous activities". These are trophies for one off or specific challenges in certain levels. The game has the following: "Sightseer - Visit every location in downtown Seattle", "Looks Good On You - Put a hat on your companion" , "Sharpshooter - Win the marksmanship competition", and "Put My Name Up - Earn the high score in the archery game".

These generally feel like fun side quests or diversions during the main story. I kinda wish there were more of these that revolved around using some of the game's features and systems. For example, how about something like "have a clicker kill an Infected" by doing kneecapping an infected and getting a Clicker to attack you? Or completing certain encounters without killing anyone or using a specific weapon or getting hurt? Or for messing around with the renders and extras. Imagine a trophy for completing a chapter using mirror world or having certain cheats on or unlocking all the concept art and models? Uncharted had quite a few of these and I remember them being quite fun. Or a trophy for playing certain songs on the guitar? I am also disappointed there are no alternate costumes to unlock 😭.

So yeah, all you need to do to platinum the game is essentially beat it once, grab all the collectibles and then get all the upgrades in NG+. The game leaves it you with how you do it as there no specific difficulty or missable trophies. Which is nice.

There is one issue I feel really drags down the experience.

So, my original plan for this game was to do a casual playthrough on hard and get a sense of how it works and enjoy the story and gameplay. Then, Step 2 was to use the chapter select to mop up any collectibles and get the platinum. Then Step 3 was to do a Permadeath Run using my Hard playthrough's NG+ but with a custom difficulty of everything on Hard except resources on Grounded to prepare for Grounded. Step 4 was to do the dreaded Grounded Mode.

Now, normally, when you use a game's level select feature, you expect that it still remembers that fact you have completed the chapters after it. But TLOU2 does it weird. The game ties your completion to the autosave file it creates. Meaning if you say, complete the game all the way up Ellie Seattle Day 3 then use the level select to go to Ellie Seattle Day 1, the game "forgets" you completed the game up to Seattle Day 3. Unless you have a manual save to get your progress back, you have to replay the game to get back to where you were.

This left me in an odd place. I had 2 options. Either "replay the game backwards" and select chapters from the end of the game and work backwards to collect the collectibles, save  and then quit out and select the next previous chapter. Or do a regular playthrough and collect the collectibles normally. I was worried about my progress being overwritten or missing a collectible so I decided to kill 2 clickers with one shiv and combine steps 2 and 3 together. I was going to do a hard NG+ permadeath playthrough while still getting all the collectibles.

 

The permadeath mode comes in 3 flavours and can be applied to any new playthrough of the game. Whole game (if you die you have to restart the entire game from scratch), Per Act (if you die, you have to restart the game from the last act you completed. Acts are typically around 3-6 hours long in a regular playthrough) and per chapter (chapters are typically around 30-60 minutes). I choose per chapter.

Permadeath mode makes a few other changes. You can't use any cheats or reload prior checkpoints. If you close the game or exit to the main menu when in proximity to enemies, the game counts it as a death and you have to reset. And once you turn on permadeath, you cannot then turn it off or change any aspect of the difficulty like you could with a casual playthrough. You're locked into this wild ride until you finish it or die trying.

It was....rough. Hard Mode is still sorta forgiving. Yeah, enemies hit hard, are pretty alert and the added Grounded option for resources did make them quite scarce. But since my characters had all the upgrades, I was bulky enough to make quite a few mistakes in combat and still make it through. Stealth was useful in sneaking past or onto certain enemies and knowing which enemies to ignore. Plus, I was familiar enough with the game by this point to know where most resources were so I knew which areas to save up resources for and which to ignore since I had already gotten the collectibles there. Most of my deaths were in the following places: 

Hillcrest Ellie Seattle Day 2. The game throws lots of human enemies at you that are quite accurate with their shots. I was rushing through this area to nab the collectibles and then get out. So I often took a few shots and didn't bother healing them. Later on, there's this enemy that can grab you if try to avoid fighting them. Since I had so little health, their choke hold killed me and cost me 20 minutes.

Abby Seattle Day 1: There's this fight in a weird warehouse looking area with no lights where you must survive against a wave of infected on your own until help arrives. The game throws lots of infected at you. Including multiple Runners, Clickers and Shamblers from all sides. If you aren't aware of where they spawn and which order they come in and don't kill them quickly enough, you can get overwhelmed. I messed up here lots of times. Usually a clicker would nab me from behind while I was fighting a runner or trying to avoid a Shambler's acid bombs.  

 

I also lost 2 runs to the start of Abby Day 1 to the Home Depot fight.

Abby Seattle Day 2: This is more embarrassing actually. For some reason, I can't jump properly in this game on Permadeath mode. I'm fine when playing normally. I tend to either press X to early so my character jumps off the ledge and can't make the jump and falls to their death. Or I press X but my character is stuck to the ledge and then falls off. I think the pressure to make these jumps in Permadeath made me worse at doing them. I lost 3 runs here. The point of TLOU2's story is to come to understand the perspectives of all the characters and walk a mile in their shoes. I didn't expect to also get Abby's fear of heights from my playthrough as well lol.

I also lost 1 run to the Rat King.

Abby Seattle Day 3: The fight with Ellie is rough. She's a psychic and can hear you super well and can quick turn around really fast (hey, just like the player. So it feels like you're fighting another main character with the same OP-ness as you). Lost a few runs here.

Aside from these, permadeath was mostly straightforward. The unskippable cutscenes and slow walking sections were a chore to have to replay. And the trophy is a bronze! It should be at least a Gold! Why is beating the game without dying worth 2 tiers below beating the game normally!

When that was done, it was onto Grounded. Grounded is whack. You no longer have a HUD so you can't see how much health you have left or how much ammo is in your current magazine. You can still use the weapon select menu to see how much ammo you have total at least. Listen Mode is gone meaning you can't pinpoint enemies through walls. You die very quickly. Resources are extremely scarce. There were times when I had a couple bullets in my main guns for entire stretches of the game. Enemies are much more alert. The tactic of "walking while aiming to not make any sound" no longer works. If you want to stealth near an enemy, you better be moving at a snail's pace. Hell, even reloading or crafting stuff makes noise which enemies can now hear. If you ever try to sprint, it will alert everyone around you in less than a second. I honestly wished I had the sound meter from Splinter Cell so I could see how loud I was being and how close I was to being spotted. But I guess since Grounded takes away your HUD it wouldn't have helped much anyway.

My only solace were my NG++ characters that had all the upgrades at least. But I did have one trick up my sleeve, Anthony Caliber's speedruns. Watching his work and noting down some strats helped me bypassing some of the challenges. For example, I learned how you can run past certain encounters and avoid them entirely. So whenever I got stuck on an encounter, I would sneak until I was around halfway through and then book it to the exit. If you are relatively far from enemies and running away from them, they get a penalty to their accuracy. I exploited that a lot. It was funny as sometimes, I'd get shot partway through a level and I'd refuse to heal up since I need to save resources. Poor Ellie and Abby would be clutching their sides until they could get to the end of the day to sleep and get a free heal. I kept thinking of that one meme that was like "in order to save money, just don't eat food and sleep longer".

Resources were scarce. So you want to avoid engaging with enemies as much as possible as doing so will drain what you have. And you need whatever you can get for the bosses and mandatory fights. But not engaging with enemies and skipping past them means you don't get the resources that they were guarding. Fortunately for me, since I knew where all the collectibles and safes were, I could use them to get enough resources to usually get by without needing to engage with enemies. I also learned a few tricks for dealing with enemies. The big one is stunning them. If you shoot then in the leg and then melee them, this can kill many enemies quickly and only require one shot. This is great for enemies like Clickers which can take multiple body and headshots to go down.

One tip that really helped me for the boss fights were that, just like in real life, enemies that are on fire take double damage from bullets. When I first fought the Rat King (also called Kevin in speedruns for some reason), I had to use most of my ammo on him and felt like I barely made it through. On my grounded playthrough, I beat him surprisingly quickly by repeatedly setting him on fire and shooting with my hunting pistol and shotguns. I didn't even have to bring out my regular rifle this time.

I do feel Ellie's sections are significantly easier than Abby's for a few reasons.  NG+ Ellie has a permanent switchblade which can quickly finish off stunned opponents and clickers without consuming additional resources. NG+ Ellie also has 3 weapons that can be silenced. The pistol, bow and silenced SMG. The SMG can be hard to aim from longer ranges but it can do wonders in dealing with some enemies without alerting others. Ellie can also craft silenced arrows. Making it easier to stealth through areas. She also has smoke bombs which can stun armed humans without taking away resources from your offensive arsenal and craft trip mines. These would be helpful when needing to defend against waves of infected as you can plant them beforehand. Ellie has molotovs which explode on impact and spread fire everywhere instead of being on a delay which make them easier to aim and use. Ellie also has an upgrade called Endure which allows her to survive a fatal blow if she is over a certain percantage of health.

Ellie's sections also don't have as much mandatory and extended combat scenarios that drain your ammo.

In contrast, Abby has to use her fists for melee and craft shivs to deal with Clickers. Cutting into other resources. Abby only has the pistol and crossbow as silenced weapons which give less uses to stealthily kill enemies. Abby doesn't have any equivalent to a silenced SMG or the ability to craft arrows. Abby also only has pipe bombs as throwable weapons which don't explode immediately. Abby also doesn't have any smoke bombs or trip bombs. Which would have been way more handy in her sections given how more combat focused her sections are.

So sections that were rough on my permadeath run were more challenging with how easy it now was to die. At least the checkpoints were better. That is one thing TLOU2 grounded helps you more with. In TLOU1, Grounded Mode had fewer checkpoints. So you'd often have to play through 3-4 encounters or over 30 minutes of progress before getting a checkpoint. TLOU2 does the opposite. You often get a checkpoint for killing certain enemies so you can get multiple checkpoints per encounter. Making it more feasible to brute force your way past certain encounters if you need to.

Still, I also now died more to sections like the Stalker ambush in the forest, or the Seraphites in Abby Day 3 as ambushes are much harder to deal with. But with enough speedrun strats of "running away from everything", I could do it. And even had a respectable time of 8 hours 22 minutes and 5 seconds. If I were to submit this time to the speedrunning leaderboards for the Grounded Glitchless NG+ Main Game category, I'd even get a 3rd place spot. My biggest criticism is the fact this trophy is a Silver! This honestly should have been a second platinum!

So, how was the experience overall? Honestly, I really enjoyed it. If you remove all the standard collectible trophies and improve the chapter select system, then I'd say this was a great experience with no real flaws.

As for the game itself, I really loved it. The gameplay is so much more improved and fleshed out over the original that I can't ever go back to TLOU1 without being able to dodge and fight so well. The human enemy AI are some of the best I've seen since MGSV and really put up an amazing fight. The story is also great. I love how it explores the consequences of violence and asks the player to critically think about the characters they play as rather than just working with an assumed protagonist centred morality.

Normally for these trophy reviews, I usually write a long and excessively detailed review on the games themselves. Going into depth on all their functions and parts. And I was planning on doing that for TLOU2, but I found that Girlfriend Reviews and Mightynifty already covered what I would have said but far better. So I'll just shout them out here instead.

Reviewing 9 Spider-Man games on Nintendo DS

 Hello everyone. I recently played many of the Spider-Man games on Nintendo DS and would like to briefly review them

-1. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

This was the first Spider-Man game released on the Nintendo DS. It was developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision and actually set the template for future Spider-Man games on the DS in terms of gameplay.

Unlike it's console counterparts, SM2DS is a linear 2D side scroller that uses 3D graphics, models and environments.

The controls are as follows: You press B to jump and B again in the air to start web swinging. To keep web swinging, you have to time B presses as Spidey's swing animation ends and you can swing faster by holding forward, slow down by holding back and gain height by holding up. Personally, I like the way this game handles web swinging. It works for a linear 2D side scroller by being quick and easy to perform and having to time B presses in rhythm keeps it from being too mindless.

X allows you to shoot a web line. If it touches a surface, Spidey will web zip to it and there's really good range and speed with this. However, due to the small screen size, you won't see what you're web zipping into. If you zip into an enemy, great. You deal damage to them. If it's a hazard like fire, you take damage and it can be hard to react to hazards in time so you have to aim your shots beforehand which can be challenging due to the screen size and perspective. Note that you can't web enemies with this (future games let you do that though). You can shoot at a straight, 45 degree angle or 90 degree angle by using the D-Pad before pressing X.

You can wall crawl by jumping onto a surface and holding the direction corresponding to that surface (such as right for a wall or up for a ceiling). It works well enough but can be a little annoying if you didn't mean to stick to the wall.

Y is for punches and A is for kicks. You can combine them along with directions to perform different attacks. You can also make attacks in the air but it's not as robust or fun as later games' air combat. You an also perform special attacks by pressing R such as web throwing an enemy, sliding into an enemy or shooting impact web. Special attacks drain from a Special Meter that recharges over time.

Combat itself isn't very fun. Spidey lacks defensive options. You can press L at certain moments before certain attacks to enter a slow mo state which can help a bit but there's no dedicated block or dodge command like the console version or later DS Spider-Man games. Enemies also attack quite fast and get frequent invulnerability. So combat often requires quite a slow and defensive play which does conflict with the pace of the game.

The biggest issue with the game is the mission design. SM2DS loves having long and large labyrinthine mazes for levels where you have to scour every last room to find every hostage or criminal. The first level of the game exemplifies this well. You have to rescue 5 hostages from a burning building while fighting criminals. And the maze of a level makes it hard to know where to go next or where the hostages are. The only clue you get is a small audio cue of hostages crying for help when you're near them (and given that my hearing isn't the best and that my 2DS lacks stereo speakers, the help here is limited). There's no map or markers to help you and no checkpoints whatsoever. To jump ahead a bit, this feels like a late game level in a later DS Spider-Man game (and even those offer more help to the player). I remember when I played SM2DS as a kid, I had to actually draw out my own maps of the levels on paper and note all the enemies, hazards and points of interest just to help me out because it was that frustrating. And if you forget one hostage, you have to backtrack through the entire level which really kills the pace. Fortunately as an adult I didn't need to draw stuff anymore but it was annoying when it happened.

It's a shame because I like what the game is going for. Large sprawling levels where you can complete objectives in a non-linear fashion and have bonus tasks for a high end level grade is a good idea. And I'd actually like them in later DS Spider-Man games. But SM2DS makes them more annoying than fun.

The game also has missions that involve boss fights or more traditional levels. These often have touch screen minigames like tapping Mysterio Clones to web them or guiding a ball through a maze like the Operation board game. These are alright.

 

The game's story is mostly an abridged version of the movie. Albeit in the form of static textboxes and stills from the film and console game. So not the most exciting telling of the story but it gets the job done. It is kinda nostalgic seeing those grainy pics ngl.

In conclusion, SM2DS is a solid foundation for future Spider-Man games on DS. But the abundance of mazelike levels (sometimes the same level back to back) and stop and go combat and navigation kill the vibe. I stopped playing the game after getting tired of missing a single enemy in another long level.

Also, bit of an aside but as I was playing this game on my 2DS, my grandmother was watching me play and claimed "this game looks very ugly". I told her this was one of my favourite childhood games and she said "it's still ugly".

-2- Ultimate Spider-Man (2005)

Talk about a massive improvement. USMDS improves on just about all of my criticisms on SM2DS. Vicarious Visions did a great job here taking the foundation of a linear 2D Spider-Man game on DS and improving it.

Let's start with the aesthetic, like its main console counterpart, USMDS tells the same story in slightly less abridged form based on the comic book of the same name. But USMDS goes the extra mile. It seems to draw and animate its own original cutscenes based on the story. And these cutscenes look really good. They feel like a really cool motion comic at times. Like, I could watch an entire movie in this style. It doesn't feel lacking or rushed like SM2DS' cutscenes. It really does feel like USMDS got a decent budget and resources during its development here. This game oozes personality and charm.

 I also like how some of these cutscenes on the DS version manage to outdo their main console counterpart in some areas. Such as Carnage's introduction in the DS version looking and sounding more painful and scary than in the console version which just speeds through it. The final cutscene where Peter learns the truth about his parents and where Eddie finds Trask are also much better directed on the DS. There's a much better sense of pacing and using pauses, shadow and "the reader's own imagination".  Of course, while the action and fight cutscenes are always better on the main console version, I think it's high praise than in some of the story heavy sections, the DS version does the better job than the version on the platforms more powerful than it.

In addition, the cell shaded comic book aesthetic really pops on the small DS screen and looks both visible and quite nice.

Onto the gameplay now. Starting with Spider-Man himself, he has been tweaked to be more agile and fun to control. His attacks now have a wider range and can be done from more positions, his special moves are more useful. He can web throw enemies naturally. But the most important change is the addition of a dodge button. By pressing L at the correct time before an attack, Spidey will phase through the attack. And this can include bullets (which can be seen as they are fired), hazards like fire and even boss attacks (but not electricity for some reason). Honestly, it might be too good. But it significantly speeds up the pace and makes Spidey fun to control. It's so much more fun to play more aggressively, dodging and weaving through attacks and taking on bosses.

 

Attacking enemies also builds up Spidey's special meter which can be used to use certain special moves by pressing R. Some moves require different amounts of meter which drains if you do not keep attacking enemies. You can change moves by tapping the icon on the touch screen which pauses the game, lets you see the name of the move is and how much meter it costs. I like this idea as it gives more combat options but I found many of the moves a bit too situational and mostly just "do a super powerful attack". I think this is something SM2 did a little better with some moves like the slide being a special move. I feel USMDS would be better if there were more conventional moves present that would be more usable in regular combat. Like a better slide where Spidey trips up multiple enemies. Or temporarily webs multiple enemies quickly giving you more space and time. Also, a description of what the move does when you select it would help in better knowing how to use certain moves.

Levels are also more varied. The more maze-like "find all the things" levels from SM2DS are sparingly used. And even when they are, objects of interest are marked with an icon and you're given them as you progress through the level to prevent the player from getting lost with some having occasional timers to keep up the tension. Most levels now task the player with getting through the level, completing some objectives along the way which is far more fun. Oh. And there's mid level checkpoints now which makes completing levels way less frustrating.

 

The touch screen is also used a fair bit. You need to swipe repeatedly when lifting objects or tap objects to complete hacking minigames. I'm not too fond of these. I'd rather they be button based as I find switching to the touch screen in these cases to be a bit of a flow breaker.

Like its main console counterpart, Venom is also playable in certain missions and is important to the story. There are some differences between how Venom and Spidey play. Venom is designed to work with the touch screen more. You can use buttons normally but Venom's levels are designed to get players to use his unique abilities through the touch screen since some of his abilities can't be fully replicated with just buttons.

So Venom can perform claw attacks by pressing X or by tapping in front of him. These attacks are short range and deal more damage. Pressing A or tapping further in front of him will cause him to attack with his tendrils which can damage multiple enemies and have more range. Pressing Y or swiping from Venom will cause Venom to shoot out a tendril to damage certain enemies or "web zip". Pressing L will cause Venom to feed on an NPC to regain health. And you can tap and hold on the touch screen to have Venom shoot out a tendril to carry an object. In Venom's second mission, this is more useful as you can use this to carry mines, rockets, cars and people to damage other enemies or tank damage for you as shields. And like his main console counterpart, Venom slowly takes damage over time as the symbiote is feeding on Eddie Brock so he needs to feed on NPCs to regain health. Venom doesn't have any special moves or meter like Spidey.

However, as cool as Venom is, I feel he isn't as fun to play as compared to Spider-Man. I felt this when fighting certain bosses like Silver Sable and Beetle as both Spidey and Venom fight them in the story. Venom lacks good defensive options. He doesn't really have anything like Spidey's dodge so fights are far riskier. Being able to heal by feeding on NPCs isn't very useful in boss fights since Venom, the NPC and the boss are on the same plane/axis and can deal more damage to Venom while he's feeding than he gain through feeding. Add in the fact his health is constantly draining. I guess you could use an NPC as a shield but I found that awkward to control. I often found that when I played Venom's boss fights, that the best approach was just to focus on rushing down the boss as quickly as possible and try and jump to avoid attacks. It wasn't worth using more of Venom's unique arsenal. In addition, while Venom is technically better at combat than Spider-Man on paper given his long range tendril attacks, in practice, he doesn't feel better at combat than Spidey because Spidey's combat moves get the job done just fine. It's not like later levels require Spidey to take on multiple enemies quickly or something so Venom's advantages don't really feel like advantages.

I know it's unfair to compare a DS game to its main console counterpart but I think it highlights the point. In the main console versions of Ultimate Spider-Man, Spidey can't take down enemies by just beating on them. He has to beat them until they get stunned and then web them up to incapacitate them. It's not very taxing but it does take some time to do. In contrast, Venom defeats enemies by hitting them until they don't get up. And can perform moves like snapping an enemy in half, throwing vehicles at them, his tendril attacks cover a wide area and hurt groups. He can jump quite high to avoid attacks etc. So Venom feels better at combat because he can take down groups of enemies quicker and easier than Spidey can. Even feeding is more useful in 3D since Venom can get away from an enemy more easily, find cover behind a building and feed on NPCs without being at much risk.

 

Ultimate Spider-Man on DS tries its best to emulate its main console version, and it's often a good effort, but things like this make it difficult for it to replicate the feel its counterpart was going for.

I do have some suggestions for how the experience could be better. For starters, maybe Spidey could have to web enemies he knocks down. That way, Venom's ability to just take down enemies feels better. Plus,Venom could have some sort of parry or block to go with his "powerful risk/reward" playstyle.

That's not to say Venom's levels aren't fun. They are. Some of them even involve more puzzle like elements as you use the touch screen to position enemies and hit switches using his tendrils. And the added pressure of his decreasing health always keeps the tension going. It's just that, Venom doesn't feel like an upgrade over Spider-Man as much as he should in the DS version compared to the main console version.

Also, this is an odd point but one thing USMDS does is, at certain points during the story, give the player the option of which 2 missions they want to do first. With some dialogue and level changes happening based on the player's choice. For example, the first time this comes up, Shocker is robbing a bank at the same time Rhino is rampaging through Chinatown. If the player chooses the Shocker mission first, the bank has fewer traps but more of Chinatown is destroyed and more people need to be saved from Rhino. If the player chooses the Rhino mission first, then there's less destruction and people to save in Chinatown but Shocker's goons will have rigged the bank with more bombs.

This is a cool idea but given the short nature of the game and the infrequent use of the idea, it ends up being more of a novelty. Especially as you can't access the other version of missions on a single playthrough. You'd need to start a new save file.

There is one case where the system doesn't really make sense. The final instance of this mechanic is after Venom defeats Carnage/Peter. At this point in the story, Eddie has just gotten full control over the symbiote because he has absorbed Carnage. He's at his most strongest. Peter has just regained consciousness after having spent the past 24 hours drugged with tranquilizers and forced to be a host for a new symbiote he couldn't control. Both Venom and Spidey want to get to Trask now. Venom for revenge and Spidey to get information on Richard Parker. The game lets you choose if you want to play as Venom or Spidey for the next mission. If you choose Venom, Peter attempts to punch Venom, who effortlessly dodges him and knocks him out before starting a rampage through the building to get to Trask. Later, Peter wakes up and you take control of him as you follow the destruction Venom has caused. This makes sense given the story and circumstances.

But if you chose Peter, he casually knocks out Venom with a single punch while dropping quips and heading to find Trask himself. Again. Doesn't really make sense here. I think a better fix for this would have been for Peter's choice to have him trap Venom in the room. Peter then has to hurry to get to Trask before Venom finds a way out. I think this would work better because it better suits the situation and makes more sense.

 

 

Finally, there is a multiplayer component to the game. If 2 people with a copy of the game link up on DS wireless, you can engage in pvp battles using a bunch of characters from the main game. These characters include Spider-Man, Symbiote Spider-Man, Venom and Carnage. It sounds cool but it wasn't very balanced. I know I praised the life out of Spidey's moveset over Venom but Venom can use his grab from singleplayer to completely immobilize Spidey and win every time. It doesn't work on Venom or Carnage. So yeah. I guess I got that situation where Venom's combat ability was better.

So yeah, that's Ultimate Spider-Man on DS. It's a very good game and one I would recommend checking out. Especially if you're a fan of the main console game. This version tries hard to be a demake of it. And while it mostly does a decent job, there are times it outdoes its bigger version particularly in the cutscenes and direction.

-3- Spider-Man: Battle for New-York (2006):

 

An interesting note is that SMBFNY is a prequel to Ultimate Spider-Man. So I feel it's kinda cool that this is a DS game that's a prequel of a DS game that's based on the main console version that's based on a comic book. So we're quite a few layers down the obscurity chart. 

 

So there's no main console version of this game to compare to. But the best way to describe  SMBFNY is "more of Ultimate Spider-Man DS". It retains the same gameplay, graphics, controls (mostly). Has some tweaks and takes place before the events of USMDS. So you'd think I'd absolutely love and enjoy this game. Well........

The biggest change for Spidey is that some of his buttons have been moved around. Such as Y being kick instead of web (which really messed with me throughout the game. And there's no remapping option). And that web is now a finite resource. As you use web, it decreases your reserves. So you can't use it as frequently as you could in USMDS. Though, if you run out, it does recover to like 1 unit after a while. Levels sometimes give you partial refills for defeating enemies. Personally, I don't like this approach. I feel it restricts both your movement and combat opportunities since you can't be as quick with zipping around or as free with webbing and dealing with enemies.

Another complaint I have is with the UI and how special moves are handled. You can still select special moves on the touch screen and you only have 4 instead of the 5 in USMDS, but instead of giving you the name of the move, you just see an unhelpful still of Spidey doing part of move which isn't very helpful in telling you what the move is. At least SM2DS used more stylized icons letting you know what the move was. The game also doesn't pause when selecting moves so it's less useful in hectic situations. I mostly just used the web whip or adrenaline throughout the whole game. In a change, you also now only start with 1 of the 4 moves and randomly unlock the rest as you complete levels. Completing some levels also presents an upgrade screen where you can upgrade Spidey's health, damage, web hold and web reserves up to 4 times each and have 4 upgrades every time. Personally, I'm not really fond of these unlocks as they don't really add anything but don't really take away anything either. Bit of a spoiler but I feel the next games handles this concept better.

Of course, the other big part of gameplay is the Green Goblin. In the Ultimate Universe, Goblin is basically the Hulk but with fire powers. Which is kinda cool. SMBFNY seems to use his appearance USMDS as a base to make the Goblin here. But I don't feel Goblin is that fun to control or play is. If anything, he's less fun than Venom was in USMDS. Goblin's movement is quite slow and his basic attacks are quite weak and simple so he doesn't feel that powerful to play as is. I don't really feel like a monster rampaging around. His fire powers are cool and there's a variety of them but since most drain your fire reserves, they aren't used that much. Mostly to deal with flying enemies and other out of the way enemies. His levels also don't have much variety or gimmicks to keep them interesting.

Again, to compare him to Venom from USMDS, Venom at least had decently fast movement options (and even a good walking speed), wide tendril attacks, the ability to grab and move objects and NPCs throughout a level which could be used for both combat, platforming and light puzzle solving. He also could heal by feeding on NPCs, which he had to since his health was always draining. Playing as Venom did feel a bit like playing as a monster even though it could have been better. Goblin's differences generally make his levels feel more like a drag.

On the aesthetic side, SMBFNY swaps the cutscenes of USMDS in favour of a style closer to that of the Amazing Spider-Man comics. Apparently, these were drawn by actual marvel comic artists and they do look quite good. But I feel the ones in USMDS were a lot more dynamic and striking (despite literally being stills moved around). Plus, it kinda conflicts with the continuity since SMBFNY is supposed to be a prequel to and set in the Ultimate Spider-Man universe. Even the voice actors for Spidey and co are different. But in gameplay, the game uses similar models from USMDS. Even some of the prior voice actor for Spidey's voice clips are used in some places. So it does feel quite a bit jarring. I think it would have been better to stick with the Ultimate aesthetic but I wouldn't be surprised if there were licensing issues there.

Onto the story. The game follows Norman Osborn becoming the Goblin and trying to take on Spider-Man. I know it sounds like I'm summarizing but there's not much going on. I know being a prequel kinda limits what the story. But still, It's not really interesting. Goblin learns that Peter is Spider-Man and initially sets out to take him on because of how becoming the Goblin is making him go insane. But that plotline is forgotten after their first confrontation because of Goblin then taking on SHIELD and making deals with the Kingpin and making his own Goblin army. The latter 2 we don't really get to see. So it's odd when we are playing as Spidey and uncovering what Goblin is up to, but when we switch to Goblin, it doesn't feel like he's done anything. We don't get to make or control Goblin's army when playing as the Goblin so it kinda feels that Goblins levels were tacked on after the fact. Spidey also doesn't really have any larger threat or rivalry with Goblin so there's no real hype for personal stakes for him.

Again, to compare to USMDS' story, Peter feels partly responsible for Eddie becoming Venom. Venom's story where he's being ordered by Trask both move the plot forward and show why Eddie would want revenge against him. Both Peter and Eddie are independently looking into their relationships with the Symbiote. Both Peter and Eddie have a similar goal of getting to Trask, Peter wants to find him and understand his father's secrets. Eddie wants revenge. So there's more going on than just "Spider-Man needs to stop the villain and then repeat". While SMBFNY just does that.

If I could write SMBFNY's story, I would have had it where most of Peter's early story is him learning who this Goblin is. While when we play as Goblin, his missions consist of him thinking Fury is the enemy and making alliances with people like Kingpin to take Fury down as well as setting traps for Peter's friends and family to try and delay Spider-Man. There could have even been more for Spidey to do here. Perhaps have Fury refuse to help him or even hinder him in some cases so the player is sorta rooting for Goblin a bit and have Spidey feel a little miffed about having to also rescue someone kinda rude and unhelpful to him. The ending being Fury respects Spidey more. It wouldn't really be much but might be a bit more interesting.

In conclusion, SMBFNY is more of USMDS, but is lacking much of the quality in the game. Many of SMBFNY's changes either don't add much, make the game a little worse or aren't that good. I'd still say it's better than SM2DS but it's not really worth going out of your way to play.

-4- Spider-Man 3 (2007) 

 

The past 3 DS Spider-Man games had set a pretty similar template. There might have been differences in level design, tweaks to mechanics and different characters but the core controls and design was relatively consistent.

SM3DS makes the most drastic changes to the 2D DS Spider-Man game template yet.

Firstly, the controls. Past Spider-Man were mostly controlled with buttons with the touch screen occasionally being used to select certain moves or complete minigames. SM3DS binds every action aside from basic movement and web swinging to the touch screen. So all your attacks, dodging, web moves, NPC interactions, mission select now all require the use of the touch screen.

Let's start with the basic controls. You move with the d pad or buttons so you can use the touch screen despite your handedness. L or R are used to show points of interest in the level. You jump by pressing up or X.  Pressing up/X or right/left/y/a in the air will cause Spidey to start webs winging. Unlike past Spider-Man DS games, there's no rhythm to time button presses to keep swinging. You can just hold a direction while swinging to continue that direction or increase height.

Wall crawling has a new addition where double tapping up/X while climbing up will cause Spidey to jump up the wall which scales it faster.

Now onto the touch screen controls. You can swipe towards an opponent to attack them. You can chain facing swipes to do combos. Swiping away from an enemy throws them. Swiping up launches them into the air and you can follow up by swiping again. Double tapping anywhere on the touch screen will cause Spidey to shoot web in the direction corresponding to the touch (even though he's on the top screen). You  can temporarily trap certain enemies by webbing them. When webbed, swiping away causes Spidey to yank the enemy towards him and kick him. You can swipe to launch a webbed enemy from a distance. And if you web an airborne enemy, Spidey will automatically web yank him. You can swipe down to make Spidey dodge certain attacks.

You can also unlock addition moves through an in-game shop such as swiping clockwise to do area attacks and webbing an enemy in the air while Spidey is also airborne to have Spidey bring the enemy to him and beat on him while falling. Another cool move is being able rodeo and web slam webbed enemies.

 The cool part is that all of these moves can be combo-ed into each other.

I feel that this is the best iteration of combat so far in a 2D DS Spider-Man game. All the various moves flow into each other well and look and feel quite cool. The game encourages getting combo strings doing all these moves to get extra XP to unlock new moves. Some enemies are also immune to certain moves at certain points like throws, basic strikes and webs so you're encouraged to mix up attacks.

Plus, once the player gets the Symbiote, Spidey automatically changes into the black suit upon dealing a lot of damage to enemies in a short period of time. And as long as the player doesn't go too long between attacking enemies or doesn't get hit much, they maintain the Black Suit which boosts Spidey's moves and improves the flow and combo potential. Even webswinging into enemies deals damage. Black Suit Spidey can throw and combo from more places which can be quite fun and it really encourages the player to stay active and aggressive to keep the suit.

 

But even with all that praise, I do have some criticisms.

 

For one, is the fact that all this is through the touch screen. I will admit that shooting webs is technically enhanced by the touch screen as you can shoot webs in any direction now rather than just at 0, 45 and 90 degree angles like in past DS SM games so moves like Web Yank are more fun (and also more movement options with the Web Zip. But almost every other move feels a bit sluggish because of the delay caused by swiping. Doing a dodge in prior Spider-Man games was as simple as pressing L when an attack was about to hit Spidey, but now you have to draw a mostly straight line and hope the swipe ends at the perfect time to make Spidey dodge the attack. And it is possible in hectic situations to draw something you didn't mean to. I have had situations where I had Spidey do a slide attack instead of dodge because I swiped in more of a diagonal direction than straight down. Or did a launcher instead of a throw. There were even cases where when I was doing repeated combo strikes with swipes, sometimes, Spidey would stop and shoot web away from the enemies because the speed of my swipes made it appear to the game I was doing a double tap. Issues that never happened with button presses. Other moves like charge and area attacks that require a clockwise swipe always took too long to naturally initiate.

I also don't feel the control scheme couldn't be replicated with buttons. For example, have regular attacks be a  Direction + A. Have throws be a direction + X. Have Web be with Direction + Y. Have jumps be with B. More intricate moves like Area Attacks and Slams could be accomplished with a modifier button. Like L + A. Have a quick tap of Down on its own as the dodge. Now you have all of the main combat moves only now they are much more precise and reliable. You know that you will always do a specific move at a specific time every time (in fact, this is what some later DS Spider-Man games do. Showing that SM3DS has some good ideas at heart with its combat).

The only move you couldn't really replicate as precisely with buttons is webs since you are back to 0, 45 and 180 degree lines, but I feel that wouldn't be too bad. The player would just have to time their webs with falling enemies to chain web yanks now.

Another issue is that combat does start to feel repetitive after a while. There aren't too many different kinds of enemies and most can be defeated with the same kind of attacks eventually. Plus, there aren't that many upgrades or unlockables so you can eventually reach the point of not even needing to do well in combat since you've already gotten everything. The game has a lot of combat focused missions which doesn't help its case. Something like Ultimate Spider-Man DS had more set pieces and levels with different "styles" to help mix up the experience. While SM3DS is a lot more dependent on the same few tricks. Later SM games would add more to improve the combat experience.

 

I also suspect this is one reason why web swinging was changed to simply have the player hold buttons instead of timing presses. The player might already be too focused on swiping to be able to time button presses with (though, timing presses are still useful in having Spidey maintain a certain height when swinging which can help with timed challenges).

Onto another topic. Another way SM3DS is a departure from its predecessors is that it's an open world game now.

The game may be 2D, but you can explore 2D slices of various distracts of New York, stopping some crimes, looking for collectibles and starting missions. Some missions do take place in linear levels sectioned off from the open world but still, this is quite impressive from a technical perspective that the game attempts to emulate a major feature console counterparts.

But as cool as the attempt at an open world Spider-Man on DS is, there are some cracks in the attempt.

For one, the open world isn't entirely seamless. It's separated into multiple 2D distracts by loading screens that are about as "wide" as some linear levels (though they do often have slightly more verticality) You can travel between distracts by finding Blue portals in a distract or by using your map in the pause menu to fast travel between distracts.

The open world districts also don't have much to explore for. There are a few collectibles but those are also in linear levels. The crimes in progress in these districts are just straight up combat challenges. They do house missions and races at least. Traversal also isn't too interesting since there's sparse vertical areas or different "layers" per area and web swinging through levels is quite simplistic. All this means is that the open world feels more like "linear levels with extra steps" rather than an open world. Which is a shame but I can't really blame the game for it. It's a DS game. It is on a device with limited processing power and controls and is also at least somewhat grounded in reality. You can't really expect a fully featured 3D open world like the main console parts due to the limited hardware or an intricate 2D map like in a Metroidvania due to the more grounded setting. So the open world ends up being more of a novelty than a real selling point.

 

Still, at least the open world races can be quite fun and challenging with having to quickly adjust Spidey's height while web swinging to hit nodes through a level. These missions feel like they were designed around the movement system to be as challenging and fun as possible.

Finally, let's talk about the presentation and story.

SM3DS opts for a really cool style for its cutscenes. It's a similar technique to what Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man Battle for New York did where they have these sorta animated motion comic panels, but instead of being comics, it's in the style of Daily Bugle Newspapers. I do think it looks quite nice. Plus, this gives the cutscenes the excuse to appear grainy and low detailed since they are supposed to resemble certain newspapers. So it's both a creative way to have an interesting aesthetic and deal with a hardware limitation. Since the characters are based on the Spider-Man 3 movie and not a prior comic book, it would probably be much harder to depict the characters in a more "realistic" style in the cutscenes so this works well.

The story itself is sadly not too interesting. In the game's defense, the source film, Spider-Man 3, isn't one that would easily lend itself to a DS game since it's a lot more slow paced than its predecessors. A lot of the film is Peter dealing with the personal consequences of the symbiote rather than Peter dealing with an external threat. But SM3DS doesn't do a good job there. The opening of the game's story does a good job in adapting the movie from Peter getting the Symbiote and fighting Sandman and Harry Osborn. But from there, seemingly has "filler" missions where Peter tackles random gang members, lizards and bombers until the last mission where the game remembers which movie it's trying to adapt and rushes Venom and Sandman together.

Like, the game's entire middle 90% feels like they'd be the side quests you'd do to take a break from the main story. As a result, much of the emotion from the story is drained. The story doesn't get a chance to bring up how Peter sees that Flint was the one who killed Uncle Ben, or how Peter ruins Eddie's life leading to him becoming Venom, or Harry coming to forgive Peter after Peter tries to ask him for help, or Peter forgiving Sandman etc.

I remember as a kid playing this game first instead of watching the movie and being really confused. Even the one beat this game tries to adapt, that being Peter becoming more reckless as a result of the Symbiote, is done in a one off cutscene rather than being a consistent part of the story and missions. Granted, once I watched the movie I got what was going on. It's a shame because I find that whenever the story of the DS version references the movie, it is at its most interesting and I wish the game followed the movie more closely and tried to replicate its beats more. From what I hear online, it is common to dislike Spider-Man 3 the movie but I always really liked it. I loved the story of Peter finally giving into his inhibitions through the Symbiote and seeing how that would make him a worse person. I loved Venom being what "Peter would have become" if he hadn't give up the Symbiote and Sandman being a "good person forced to do bad things and having to keep paying the consequences".

And some miscellaneous topics: once you beat the game, you can buy cheats using the in-game currency to give you invincibility, permanent black suit, a new background, permanent night mode and replacing all enemies with robots that have some really cute voice acting of them going "beep beep bop boop bop" that also have much greater health. These are neat and do make replaying missions to get the "symbiote only collectibles" and speedrun times easier to get.

Though, seeing as you now have permanent black suit powers, it does somewhat undermine the feeling the movie had where Peter had to learn to adapt without using the black suit. The DS game has only 1 mission after Peter loses the black suit and that's the final mission of the game which was pretty easy so you don't lose the Symbiote for too long.

In closing, SM3DS is easily the most ambitious DS Spider-Man game thus far with its open world and new combat system. But due to the hardware or development time, it never makes the most of its ambition. Often feeling less fun than some of its predecessors at times. It's a good DS game but could have been a lot better.

-5- Spider-Man: Friend or Foe (2007)

The second Spider-Man game released in 2007. The DS version of Friend or Foe was developed by Artificial Mind & Movement. And out of all the games thus far, it is the most similar to its console counterpart, for better and for worse. I have played a little of the PS2 version before but don't remember much aside from some of the early levels.

SMFOFDS is the most different thus far from its predecessors. Unlike past DS Spider-Man games which were this 2D platformer/Beat-em-up Hybrids, SMFOFDS is a 3D co-op focused beat-em-up. The pace is much slower as you slowly walk through levels (there's no real webswinging) as Spidey and a friend work together to complete objectives and beat up enemies.

In addition, the game is this odd amalgamation of the Raimi films and comic books. You have characters and designs from the Raimi films (like both New Goblin and Green Goblin existing at the same time. Or that Venom is alive and Sandman is a villain) alongside more comic-booky designs and voices for characters like Black Cat and Spider-Man. The tone and story also feels decidedly more like a comic book than the movies with a plot about these alien creatures called P.H.A.N.T.O.M.s (Perpetual Holographic Avatar Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters) that came to Earth from the same meteorite that brought the Venom Symbiote.

I'm not complaining. While I do personally prefer more serious stories in my comic book superhero games, a more cheesy comic book style story suits what SMFOFDS is going for. It's trying to be this fun team up game where Spidey works with a bunch of his supporting case, both heroic and villainous for beat-em-up action. And I remember liking that in the mainline console version. Having the banter between Spidey and Venom was quite fun. And I smiled when in the DS version, they actually justify the trope in Beat-em-up games where your character can't leave an area until all enemies are defeated. The DS version has Nick Fury tell Spidey with a straight face that these P.H.A.N.T.O.Ms create these hard light holographic prisons that will trap everyone that gets near them until they "get defeated". And if you do actually try to move ahead in an area while there are still enemies to fight, you'll see these white light ring effects when you reach the edge of the fighting area which is a nice touch.

 

Though, that charm does start to fade as the game goes on. One of the things I kinda liked about the mainline version of the game is the banter between Spidey and his allies. The DS version does a decent job replicating that with Black Cat and Nick Fury but no one else. The game often has mission briefings where Spidey talks to Nick about the upcoming objective for the next mission. For example, The mission in Paris has Fury tell Spidey his partner this time will be Blade because he knows the Paris Catacombs well. But Blade never speaks to Spidey during this. Same for Dr. Ock. Venom literally replaces Sandman as a partner and doesn't ever point out why Spidey is now wearing some Symbiote. And it's a shame because they do have some brief cutscenes where they speak to Spidey and those are pretty cool. Were the voice actors for these characters paid by the line or something?

Onto the gameplay and sadly, I was less impressed here. 

The game plays like a typical Beat em up. You jump with B, perform punches with Y, Kicks with X, Special Moves with A. You can swap to your partner in a level by pressing R and pressing L cycles through special moves. Special Moves drain your Special Meter and are typically used for ranged attacks and AOE moves.

The combat though, is quite basic. And encounters get repetitive as you spam the same few basic attacks over and over again. There's no dodge or parry or intricate combo system. No interesting enemy types. In addition, many of the additional characters often don't feel too distinct or mix up the experience. And in some cases aren't that fun to play as. Dr. Ock for example, has terrible range on his melee attacks allowing enemies to jump him easily despite the fact he has 4 long robot arms that should have great reach. Spidey, Blade and Black Cat have very similar movesets. In addition, the game has an upgrade system where coins you collect during levels can be used to purchase things like Health and Special meter upgrades for Spidey, bonus modes in the menu and extra characters for free play. But only Spidey gets the upgrades. So you end up in a situation where Spidey has a health and special meter that's double the size of his partner which ends up discouraging trying other characters, the game's main gimmick. At least Spidey's moveset is decent and later characters like Sandman and Venom get larger bars so that's something.

The levels are also often not great. Many are quite plan and basic with not much variety in set pieces or scenarios. You can explore to find additional coins to unlock stuff in the store but that's it. So the game's freeplay system with other characters doesn't feel as impactful. The early levels have a habit of asking the player the explore these large areas with buildings you can climb onto and enter from rooftops to find x number of civilians or items. And I got PTSD flashbacks to SM2DS. The game does at least have a small radar that points you to the nearest objective if you are within range. Many levels often have a gimmick in the form of a Touch Screen minigame. In Black Cat's level, you have to lockpick certain doors with a quick timed lockpick minigame only Black Cat can do. So you have to switch to her and do the Minigame. In Dr. Ock's level, you have to tap on buttons in a sequence as they light up in random order. These minigames are sometimes timed and if you make mistakes during them, they reduce your time. If you run out of time, you have to try the minigame again after fighting another wave of newly spawned enemies. This got particularly frustrating in Dr. Ock's level as the timer on his minigame is really strict and it's random when the correct numbers appear. If you're even a millisecond too late, it counts as a mistake and you lose time. There's around 5 mandatory sets of these minigames that get progressively harder with the last one requiring close to 10 attempts from me to finish. I was genuinely considering giving up on the game at that point.

The boss fights are also lacking. Many of them ask the player to repeat an action multiple times while waiting for the boss to get into position. For example, in the Dr. Ock boss fight, it's on top of a moving train. You have to get Ock in a position where you can snare him with web so an obstacle hits him while you jump over it. Seems simple enough. But the game's draw distance and camera doesn't clearly show when these obstacles are coming. So you have to have web Ock and hope you timed it right. And if you don't, it's not clear when another obstacle is coming. And if you run out of special meter, you can't web Ock until a couple obstacles later when they start spawning.

This is odd when you consider that the later Green Goblin and Sandman boss fight does this much better. Here, you need to activate an electric field when Goblin flies into it so you can knock him off his glider and then attack him. But here, the bottom screen shows you Spidey from a top down isometric angle while the top screen is locked onto Goblin from a wide angle shot. This makes it intuitive to control Spidey on the bottom screen to fight henchmen and activate the trap while using the top screen to see where Goblin is for the trap. It's a shame that the Dr. Ock boss fight didn't have a similar set up where the top screen shows what's coming up ahead so you can time webbing up Ock.

While I am not normally a huge fan of the double screen setup of the DS, I must admit this is one case where the 2 screens help accomplish something that would be difficult to replicate on a single screen handheld. Particularly one with such small character models. Like on a single screen, it would be awkward to pan the camera to see Goblin while also seeing Spidey (granted, the game doesn't have camera controls anyway so I guess that adds to the argument). Picture in picture would be awkward given how small the models already are so it would take up valuable screen space. The current setup allows for this bossfight to work.

Now, when I write these reviews on older games, I feel I often have to be more generous to these older games. Like of course a DS game from over 15 years ago isn't as refined as a 2023 game regardless of genre. But some are often still work playing or have more excusable flaws so you can still have fun with them. So I often compare these games to other similar games from around the same time to see if they're worth playing. As I played SMFOFDS, I was constantly reminded of Lego Batman 1 on the DS and how I enjoyed that way more. In many ways, Lego Batman 1 DS has similar goals to SMFOFDS but does all of them way better. It too is this more chill co-op brawler type game with Superheros and a more playful tone. But Lego Batman 1 DS is also more fun to play despite being a DS Lego game. The combat is really basic but still feels more fun with how punchy the hits feel and how you can send enemies flying and they explode into little Lego pieces. The levels often have more variety to them. Batman and Robin have a bunch of different suits the levels ask them to swap between which often allows for more interesting puzzles and set pieces and platforming. The puzzles are often much more snappy rather than tedious to do. Different characters often have drastically different abilities that interact with the environment so replays using different characters often results in finding more collectibles. Collectibles themselves often unlock more goodies for the player to mess around with. It even has more charming Lego themed cutscenes.

Like, even by the standards of simple co-op brawler games for the time, SMFOFDS is really lacking and I wouldn't recommend it.

-6- Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008)

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows on the DS was released in 2008 by Griptonite games. And of all of the Spider-Man games on the list, this is the one I was looking forward to the most. I really love the PS3 version of Web Shadows as I feel it has some of the best movement and combat in any open world Spider-Man game. I love the idea of a Symbiote infestation that allows the player to make Spidey make some inFAMOUS style choices and gives a unique atmosphere. And I remember enjoying the PS2/PSP version of Web of Shadows as a kid as this fun little 2D side scroller. Plus, I like many of Gryptonite's handheld games like their takes on Assassin's Creed and Aliens.

And I'm happy to say that Web of Shadows DS is arguably the best game so far. To the point where I'd say it's good enough where it could be re-released as a remake or remaster on modern platforms with some tweaks and still hold up well. WoSDS feels like it took notes from all the previous Spider-Man games on DS, from the general control scheme of Ultimate Spider-Man, the idea of maze-like levels from Spider-Man 2, the more freeform and flowing combat of Spider-Man 3, and improved on them significantly to make the Ultimate Spider-Man game on the DS (lol). Making its predecessors feel like demos.

Let's start with the basic controls. The game is controlled in 2D. You move with the D pad. Y is now your primary attack button. You can combine it with the D pad for directional attacks. X is now an "interact" button and allows you to pick up and throw objects. A is now used for shooting web if you're wearing the red suit. These can be used to stun opponents or web zip to places. In the Black Suit, A is used as a dash that can be used to slam into enemies (either on the ground or in the air) or be used to jump wide distances. B is used to jump and web swing. Webswinging now works more like in the mainline console Spider-Man games where webs attach to surfaces and are momentum based. Requiring you to time your swings like a pendulum. The web lines can even be affected if there are items in the way in a more realistic way. You can wall crawl to moving into a wall. R lets you dodge attacks (albeit with a shorter window than in Ultimate Spider-man DS but still quite usable). And L lets you swap between the Red Suit and the Black Suit.

Combat is much improved over past games. In many of the past games, combat against normal enemies wasn't very engaging after a while as normal enemies didn't have that many new tricks and there was no reason to use more of Spidey's moveset. WoSDS fixes that. For one, the normal enemies aren't regular humans with weapons but rather, all manner of Symbiotes. Ranging from mini-Venoms to flying bats, to extra thicc 12ft tall monsters, to green skinny monsters can jump 20ft high to knock you out of the air when you jump, to small burrowing guys, to blue guys that shoot energy balls that can travel through walls and 10ft long Panthers to everything in between. 

Enemies here are much more aggressive and agile. Capable of jumping up platforms to follow you, swarming you and blocking and launching counterattacks allowing them to catch you off guard for blindly attacking them. It can be quite the challenge when fighting large groups of mixed enemies as a result as it can be quite easy to lose all your health. But it often feels fair and fun (at first) due to Spidey's improved combat abilities that feel like a mix between the controls of Ultimate Spider-Man DS and the flow of Spider-Man 3 DS. You feel both powerful and vulnerable at the same time. 

For example, there are sequences where I was fighting one group of Symbiotes in front of me, using a mix of strikes and the Black Suit's dash and smash move to keep enemies away so they wouldn't counter attack. An enemy comes at me from behind. I can't stop and attack him (well, I could but then I'd be exposed on both sides and risk an attack), so I used an uppercut launcher to knock the enemy in front of me into the air where I punched him twice then jumped back off him and then web swung to perform a kick to hit all enemies below me in one single uninterrupted combo and it felt great. Like, Web of Shadows DS encourages the player to get the most out of Spidey's moveset by having it help you to survive against Symbiotes and by having such combo strings reward the player with extra EXP to unlock new moves which really help against the Symbiotes. It does make the early game feel a bit tedious since many moves, including those you started with in prior DS Spider-Man games, are now locked behind an upgrade menu. But at least there are also plenty of new useful moves priced high enough that you won't unlock them immediately.

Speaking of which, the upgrade menu has 3 kinds of upgrades, those that both suits can use (generally being more basic and all around attacks and movement options), those exclusive to the red suit (generally being more web line and speed based ones) and those exclusive to the Black Suit (being more powerful area of attack moves). I am mixed on this approach. Being able to upgrade both suits does mean the player is never punished for switching to the "other suit" but it does mean the suits don't feel as unique or differentiated. In the PS3 and even PSP/2 versions of WoS, both suits have intricate upgrade paths exclusive to them that make specializing in them feel more novel as well as story benefits for sticking with your suit of choice. The Red suit gives you more ways to stun and dodge, the black suit gives you raw power. But in the DS version, given how aggressive and agile enemies are, that the black suit was often more of a hindrance. Being able to dash and smash was useful in breaking some blocking enemies and the rare enemy that was impractical to web, but I found that I was using the Red Suit 90% of the time (even when I was making "Black Suit Choices") because being able to web enemies and web zip away and towards enemies was far more useful and safe.

The game also has an interesting way of handling lives which reminds of the Iron Man game. So in WoSDS, the player starts with 3 blue orbs that signify lives. If the player runs out of health, they use one of these orbs to play a minigame where they have to use the touch screen to drag red orbs to Spidey's body to have him recover some health. Due to the random nature of this minigame, you may not recover with a full bar of health. I kinda like this feature. It makes situations where the player loses 1 or 2 lives in a single boss fight feel more tense as you rush to get as much health as possible for your remaining lives. If you run out of these lives, you are forced to restart at the last save point.

However, as cool and improved as the combat is, I do have some gripes. The main issue is the difficulty. At first the game feels challenging but fair as enemy numbers and groups are tough but manageable. But about an hour in, there are some pretty severe spikes where the game throws 10+ enemies at once of different types at you in smaller arenas. This becomes problematic as having so many different types of enemies at once severely cuts off your options and makes it extremely easy to get overwhelmed. Like, you have to rush down the extra thicc Venoms since they can do crazy amounts of damage and have lots of health so you can't let them attack you. But if there are also small Panther Venoms with them, you can't also hurt them at the same time since their hitbox may push them out the way and allow them to pounce on you while you're attacking other enemies. If there are flying Bat Symbiotes also around, they may start swooping into attack you in between other attacks. And you don't really have the time and space to spare trying to web them when other enemies are attacking you. And if there are ranged Symbiotes around, you need to watch out for their projectiles that can pass through enemies and even walls and hit you. And if there are Green Symbiotes around, jumping is now more risky since their whole deal is countering your jumps by quickly launching into you when you jump. And if there are burrowing Symbiotes, you need to watch out as they can teleport beneath you and upper cut you. It's a lot to keep an eye out for. Oh. And even regular attacks tear off a huge chunk of your health bar while you do very little damage.

Yeah. In the 3 rooms before you meet Green Goblin, I spent over 2 hours stuck fighting enemies over and over again as I'd keep dying. I barely managed to get through on one attempt because the RNG for which types of enemy spawns managed to keep it to just Thicc Venoms and Green Symbiotes and Basic Ranged Symbiotes which I had to cheese with the red suit's web yank abilities (Note that which enemies spawn change when you enter a room. Sometimes, it might be harder groups of enemies or easier ones and you can't predict it until you're already there).

 

I fully acknowledge a skilled player might be able to get through by learning the patterns of every enemy and having perfect reflexes to use Spidey's basic dodge move perfectly. But I feel more could have been done to make these spikes less jarring and to give the player a fighting chance and allow a more gradual difficulty curve as well as reducing the tedium. Like, consider that on my 2DS, these character models are a couple millimetres tall and there can be multiple of them. It can be quite hard to read their tells in all the chaos (especially if you have bad eyesight like me). Past Spider-Man games like Ultimate Spider-Man DS had Spidey's Spider Sense appear as an orange halo effect on Spidey's head when he was about to get hit as a warning and Web of Shadows DS doesn't even have that. Something like that as a way to indicate if a player is about to get hit would help a fair bit in learning some of the dodge timings.

Spidey does eventually get better defensive and offensive options through upgrades such as multiple dodges and counterattacks as well as decent health and damage stats. But those take a while to unlock. Either you collect XP from the enemies you beat to unlock more useful moves, or you explore levels to find permanent upgrades to health, lives, defence and attack power.

Part of me feels this is intentional. That the game has this spikes to encourage the player to explore more of the levels more and get upgrades. But still, it often felt like I had accidentally selected "Hard Mode" when the game has no difficulty options. And this is still a Spider-Man game on the DS so having an easy or normal option might help with the kids that would play this.

Now onto the level design.

Remember back 20 pages ago when I talked about Spider-Man 3 DS and how a more grounded take on New York doesn't lend itself to an open world in a 2D game, either in the form of a traditional open world or as a Metroidvania? WoSDS disproves that as it's actually a Metroidvania. You have rooms connected to other rooms through pathways in the form of doors and vents. Many paths are locked behind upgrades you have to come back to later (though, many of the upgrades are rather mundane such as "Spidey being able to lift heavy dumpsters" and "Spidey being able to use his web to lift heavy dumpsters from the side" etc). The map is also divided into "biomes" such as "Residential apartments", "sewers", "Downtown" etc.

This allows for more interesting exploration than prior Spider-Man DS games and is quite engaging at first. Though, the more room based design does mean that you won't be able to web swing around as much compared to its predecessors. But I feel that is a worthwhile trade off here since web swinging in prior DS games wasn't exactly a highlight. Another aspect is that the game is more linear than expected. Closer to a Metroid Fusion than a Super Metroid, complete with waypoints and objective markers that tell you what to do. Though, there is a reason for that. Since WoSDS (tries) to retain its mainline console's feature of having Spidey make choices in the story, the game needs to direct the player to where those choices are and if they even exist. Like, if the game were structured more like Super Metroid, it would kinda be harder to make say, Red Suit Choices if you come across the option to help Green Goblin blow up Symbiotes and not know that's actually a Black Suit Choice.

However, halfway through, the game does start to present issues. The game seems to want to pad for time so there are lot more instances of the game requiring you to bracktrack through areas you completed, and locking you into a room which 10+ different enemies that keep respawning and ambushing you and requiring you to defeat them all in order to be able to leave. These encounters are really rough if you don't have enough upgrades since you'll be spending forever attacking enemies, trying to perfectly dodge attacks, all while taking so much damage from individual attacks. My conspiracy theory is that they are also designed to drain your lives and health so you'll be weaker against upcoming boss fights and spam ambushes and either die and restart from the last checkpoint, or spend time exploring to either find upgrades and/or grind up health and lives from fighting enemies. This is compounded by the way the game hides its upgrades in levels. Many upgrades are "hidden" in areas that require the use of a specific ability you get from defeating bosses. But the placement of these areas often requires a lot more additional backtracking and scouring. Meaning that as the game goes on, you might find yourself returning to the same general areas multiple times to collect any new upgrades that are now available. As an example during my playthrough, I had to return to the same area in the Residential Levels multiple times since one area had a health upgrade that could only be accessed when Spidey got the increased strength power up. Another nearby area had a damage boost upgrade that required Spidey be able to crawl on Ichor. Another nearby Life Upgrade required Spidey to have the "Wall Smash" Power Up. And another one required the "ground smash" Power Up. And repeat for similar areas in Downtown and the Sewers.

As a result, the latter half of the game started to drag and feel more repetitive. With a formula of " Revisit Older Areas -> mandatory spam ambushes that drain you -> tough boss fights (which may require you to leave and scour for upgrades in already explored areas to stand a chance) -> Get a new power up that lets you traverse through some new connecting paths and search for upgrades -> repeat".

Speaking of which, the game does have boss fights, and I'm conflicted on how the game handles them. The early bosses you fight are modified versions of "regular enemies you fight later". They are challenging at first but learning how they operate is both fun and helpful for when you fight them later as regular enemies. Like, the extra thicc Venoms are at least somewhat more manageable later on when they come in groups when you previously had to fight a powerful solo one and learn all of its possible attacks and timings. I enjoyed these kinds of boss fights. But for some of the last several ones, the game reuses a "Super Symbiote" that has the exact same moveset and animations as Spider-Man. It was surreal fighting a boss that could use the exact same dodge, web yank and web swing kick that I could and could dodge and jump around as much. These guys can even trap you in the exact same basic combo you can do as Spidey. These mirror matches are really exciting at first but the game reuses them so much in its latter half that they start to feel repetitive and tiring. The game only has 2 "unique" Bosses that don't re-appear in some form. Venom and the Symbiote Queen which were some really intense and fun fights that required you to really learn the timings of moves with decent tells (usually), and had a great back and forth with dodges, attacks and counters. It was in these fights that I started to feel like WoSDS is like "The Dark Souls of 2D Metroidvania Spider-Man games on the DS".

Also, during boss fights, as you damage the boss, you build up a meter that when full, allows you to call the help of an ally. Like, Black Cat can drop healing items for you or Green Goblin can bomb the boss taking away a huge chunk of health. These add more decision making during bosses such as deciding what help you need more of.

Finally, let's talk about the story. And sadly, it is probably the most disappointing aspect of the game. The PS3 and PSP/PS2 versions had a lot more major events happen, some of which required Spidey to make choices that felt really interesting. But the DS version's story for 90% of its runtime is "Spidey is looking for Venom and fights random Symbiote bosses along the way that do a 'your princess is in another castle'". Even the Allies and choices feel really undercooked. There's only really 2 sets of choices, do you help Nightcrawler (the Red Suit option) save lives or help Green Goblin (the Black Suit option) bomb the Symbiotes. That's it. One of the cool things about the PS3 and PSP/PS2 versions of WoS is seeing how Spidey interacts with all these characters from Marvel comics, either as himself or a corrupted version of himself thanks to the Symbiote. You don't really get that here. As a result, it makes the ending and what few beats there are feel a lot less engaging.

Like I said earlier, the game sacrifices some of its Metroidvania-esque design to accommodate the ability to make choices that affect the story, but then doesn't do that much with the choices and story. Which is a shame. Like, I feel the game would have been better if it chose a direction and stuck to it. Either commit 100% to the Metroidvania design of Spidey having to survive an open ended map on his own, or take the route the PSP/PS2 version of WoS and be a more linear side scroller type game to better facilitate the story and choices.

Once you beat the game, you get the option of a NG+ playthrough where you carry over all your upgrades but start from the beginning of the story. I might complete this at some point to see what changes and how the upgrades affect the experience. I would expect they do since you have a more capable Spidey upfront allowing for more options in combat without as much tedium.

In conclusion, I could easily see the argument for Web of Shadows DS to be the best Spider-Man game on DS. Its combat system is much more in-depth and engaging with a large assortment of useful moves and challenging and varied enemies to really test your skills. The atmosphere of a Symbiote infestation is amazing. But with the wacky difficulty spikes, the overuse of spam ambushes and repeated bosses in the latter half, and the high amount of backtracking prevent mar the experience. I would love a remaster of this game that adds in difficulty options and balances some of the enemies. But the foundation is solid enough for a full on remake that significantly improves the experience such as by improving the Metroidvania aspects and design. Because unlike all of its predecessors, WoSDS is close to being an amazing game that can stand beyond being a DS game.

-7- Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (2010)

 Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions DS was released in 2010 by Gryptonite games as something of a follow up of 2008's Web of Shadows DS. It appears to retain the same engine, the same freeflowing 2D combat, the same Web Swinging system that has webs stick to ceilings and the same sorta Metroidvania-esque design. So yeah, read my section on Web of Shadows' gameplay since most of it applies to Shattered Dimensions.

The premise of the game is that it tries to be something of a Spider-Verse game. Mysterio finds a mysterious tablet that breaks in a fight with Spidey and gets scatted to other dimensions. So the current Spider-Man (dubbed the Amazing Spider-Man) works with his counterparts, Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Man 2099 to help recover the tablet fragments to save the multiverse.

The home console version of Shattered Dimensions was a departure from its predecessors. Instead of another open world game set in New York, it was more of a linear action adventure game where the style of gameplay and aesthetic changed depending on which Spider-Man you were controlling. Amazing Spider-Man played more like a typical Spider-Man. Noir wasn't good in combat and relied more on stealth and had this really striking black and white aesthetic. Ultimate Spider-Man had the Symbiote and an art style closer to the Ultimate Spider-Man look, and more powerful combat attacks. Spider-Man 2099 took place in the distance future of 2099, had a more futuristic aesthetic and had gliding and slow mo powers.

Bit of an aside, but I really would prefer open world Spider-Man games to be based on Spideys from different universes rather than the standard "current day Manhattan". Imagine an open world Spider-Man game set in 2099 or Noir's world or London. We already got Ultimate Spider-Man so why not these others.    

 

 Anyway, the DS version continues from the design of Web of Shadows DS. Initially, the game seemed to address many of my gripes from the last game so it seems Gryptonite were aware of them. When you start up a new profile, it offers 2 different sets of difficulty options for both exploration and combat. I've never seen this in a DS game before. It's great. You can make combat easy, normal or crank it up to be as hard as Web of Shadows DS normally is. I chose Normal and it really did seem more fitting as the damage Spidey received and dealt felt more apporiote and scaled more naturally as the game progresses. Bosses were challenging enough to kill me a few times until I got the dodge and timings down. The game ditches the lives and resource management aspects of WoSDS. If you die in a challenging room, the game resets to a checkpoint in the room and automatically skips the dialogue instead of entirely rewinding your progress to the last save (in addition to placing saves right before boss rooms). This helps the pacing as you won't have repeat as much content with deaths.

 

Exploration difficulty allows you to either have everything marked for you beforehand on the map, only mark stuff once you explore it and still highlight the next objective or not mark much (not even the objective marker). This is great as it better allows the game to lean into that Metroidvania-esque design of its predecessor if you want it as the game lacks the choice based system of its predecessor. You're much more free to just wander your way through the game with no guidance and discover objectives naturally.

 So the general loop is that you explore levels as a Spider-Man to get to the next objective and boss fight. Engaging in some combat and light puzzle or traversal challenges along the way and unlocking new abilities that let you explore new areas of the map. This can include going to portals placed throughout the world to swap to a different Spider-Man.

The game also streamlines and introduces some nice quality of life features when compared to its predecessor. When you find a new ability or move, the game takes you to a specific tutorial room where it shows you a video demonstration and you can actually test it out. Or skip it altogether and move on. In Web of Shadows DS, there was only 1 tutorial room with a single static enemy that could only be activated from save rooms and didn't provide scenarios for specific moves. For example, there was no specific tutorial room for the dodge so you could get a sense of what the basic dodge timings were. But in Shattered Dimensions DS, the tutorial rooms can be accessed from anywhere. The tutorial room for the dodge move actually has an enemy that will attack you so you can practise the dodge timings. The tutorial room for the web disarm or angled web room actually has an enemy with a weapon that can be disarmed or be in an elevated place so you can practise shooting webs at an angle. It's neat and makes it much more intuitive to see how to use certain mechanics and moves. The game also damage displays numbers for all successful hits from all characters. Making it clear which moves do what damage and how useful they'd be. The game also removes the exp and shop system of Web of Shadows DS. Instead moving all of those upgrades as collectibles in the world. While this does remove some of the incentive to get a high combo count, it also means there is less of a need to grind or get in lots of combat and better allows you to try out and use more moves that you may not have purchased in Web of Shadows DS.

However, the biggest issue I feel Shattered Dimension DS has, is in the implementation of the different dimensions. In the mainline console version, each of the 4 Spider-Man had their own unique visual style and gimmick that somewhat differentiated them. But in the DS version, each of the 3 Spideys mostly play the same (for some reason, Ultimate Spider-Man isn't in this version. Which is strange since he was basically playable in the last game as Black Suit Spider-Man). Noir's levels don't consist of any stealth so you fight enemies the same way you do as Amazing or 2099.

The game also has an odd way of managing the progression of the different Spider-Man. When you first take control of a Spider-Man, they have a "unique" ability but are missing a default Spider-Man ability. For example, when you take control of Noir for the first time after playing for a while as Amazing, Noir has the unique ability to reveal hidden objects in the environment like hidden switches for certain doors by holding L. But doesn't have the ability to stick to walls. The game even tells you this and to be creative with Web Zipping and Web Swinging to compensate. When you first play as 2099, he has the unique ability to glide but can't web swing or web zip, requiring you to traverse levels by wall crawling and gliding. In order to be able to use the abilities of other Spider-Men, you need to find a dimensional conduit (think the challenge runes from Doom 2016) that puts you into a combat room. Completing this gives that Spider-Man an ability of another Spider-Man. However, this upgrade isn't synched across other Spideys. For example, when you find the first Dimensional Conduit with 2099, 2099 gains the ability to web swing and zip like the other Spider-Men but not Noir's perception ability or Amazing's ground slam. Nor does Amazing or Noir get access to 2099's glide. You need to find additional Dimensional Conduits as these other Spider-Men to have all of them get access to each other's abilities.

I don't think I've played a Metroidvania-esque game where you control 3 variations of the same character with abilities you have to work to make them all share. It's certainly .... unique. And did lead to some awkward situations as I forgot that 2099 couldn't scan the environment to open up paths yet even though I was using the scan with Amazing earlier. At the very least, the 3 characters share the collectibles and powerups you find in levels. That would have been rather rough if they didn't.

In addition, the way you swap between these characters is coming up to a portal, pressing X and then playing this odd Wario Ware-esque minigame where you need to rotate your tablet to be able to send it through the dimension while needing tap or hold enemies that try to stop you using the touch screen. It gets repetitive and annoying really soon and I groaned whenever I had to do it to swap characters.

Also, I really don't like Noir's levels in this version. In the main console version, they had a cool and stylized black and white look. But in the DS version, they just have a brown sepia filter like it's a 7th gen shooter. Aside from getting repetitive, it also sometimes made it hard to see vents and other exits of areas.

 

So it feels like Shattered Dimensions DS doesn't really want to be a Shattered Dimensions game where you control different Spider-Men with their unique tools. It feels more like it wanted to be a Metroidvania-esque game like its predecessor, but was told it had to accommodate 2 extra Spider-Men, so it segmented its world into like, 3 sets of areas and made some odd changes to progression as a result.

Part of me wonders if this game would have been better if instead of having the Spider-Men be present only in their own respective dimensions like in the main console version, all the Spider-Men were all present and playable at the same time and the player could swap between them like the Red and Black suit in Web of Shadows DS. Perhaps this could have allowed the game to be able to better differentiate the Spider-Men. For example, in the current version of the game, Noir needs to be able to play like Amazing since his levels and gameplay is already similar to Amazing's. But if Noir operated like a suit, the game could have it that if the player switches to Noir, they can no longer attack enemies but can perform stealth takedowns on certain enemies. And as soon as the enemies spot the player, the player can swap to Amazing or 2099 since they can fight enemies normally. This can even lead to more interesting boss fights and puzzles as the player needs to use the different abilities of the different Spider-Men at once. Perhaps there even could have been some interaction with their abilities. For example, Amazing could perform a web throw to get an object airbourne, then the player swaps to 2099 and uses the slow time ability to be able to use the frozen object as a platform or to web swing or something.

But anyway, after some time of playing Shattered Dimensions DS, I think I start to see what the game is going for with its odd progression system. Back in Web of Shadows DS, one of my biggest criticisms of the game was that the game started to get really repetitive, especially in its second half. It started to rely more and more on extended spam ambushes against large groups of really difficult and varied enemies. And much of the exploration or traversal of the environment wasn't very interesting. Even once you defeated a boss and gained a new ability, it didn't really change how you played the game or had new challenges to using it. You just used it on the correct coloured door.

While Shattered Dimensions DS does still kinda do this, it still tries to make the traversal and abilities a little more interesting outside of combat. While some abilities work similar to how Web of Shadows DS used them, like the ground slam and web yank break special coloured doors and don't exactly require much thought to use. There are some instances of Shattered Dimensions DS trying to do more. For example, in 2099's levels, there are some collectibles that are on top of electrified billboards. You can't just wall crawl or jump onto them as Spidey will shocked and fall off. In order to reach them, you have to find a spot a bit later on in the level, jump off and start gliding. And gliding works a bit like a 2D version of how gliding works in the Arkham games except more precise and easy to mess up. While gliding, if you hold up, Spidey will immediately straighten himself and gain a little height and end the glide. Holding down has Spidey begin to dive and gain speed. So you have to control gliding Spidey so he has enough speed and distance to get close to the billboard, then time it so you hold up so Spidey gets that last bit of height, then shoot a web line at a 45 degree angle to hit the area to the top of the billboard to zip to it and get the collectible. This one optional collectible in Shattered Dimensions DS, that took me quite a few embarrassing attempts to get, was more fun to do than any collectible in Web of Shadows DS because of how it required some small challenge using Spidey's movement abilities with timing and precision.

Another example is how later on in the story, Spidey gets an upgrade that allows him to be able to web zip and swing from electrified walls, but not stick to them since they will shock him off. And there some hidden collectibles that now require you to time some web zips through some narrow hallways to get them. Another example is that one of the final abilities Spidey gets is if he runs for long enough uninterrupted, either naturally or through conveyors placed in specific points, he enters a special dash state that allows him to run along walls if he approaches them while running (as opposed to jumping), jump large gaps and smash through certain walls. This state ends if Spidey's momentum is halted or he jumps onto a wall. At first, I thought I thought this was too situational to have much other use. But there are a few puzzles where you have to get Spidey to use a conveyor to get the dash state, then navigate Sonic Spidey through a small area and time a jump to smash through a wall that was slightly elevated over a gap. This also took an embarrassing number of tries since I'd either be too late and Spidey would "fall and land" on a lower part of the wall and exit the dash state. Or I'd jump too early and Spidey would land above the wall and exit the state. And it was quick and easy to retry the challenge so it was satisfying to eventually complete it.

In addition, while I did criticize Noir and 2099's sections earlier for still retaining most of the gameplay of Amazing's instead of being more distinct, they still at least mix up how you navigate and traverse the environments. In Noir's levels, since he can't stick to walls, you have to make use of wall jumps and web zips to walls. A feature in this game (that was also in Web of Shadows DS) is that if you web zip to a wall at a 45 degree angle, Spidey will wall run along it for a few seconds before stopping and then transitioning to a wall crawl. In Noir's levels, you end up having to play it more like a 2D Prince of Persia game as a result by needing to time your jumps and zips between walls. The areas even consist of more narrower hallways and areas to better facilitate that. In 2099's levels, the environment consists of more open areas stacked on top of each other. So it can be possible to enter one area by gliding or wall crawling from another area above or below it.

I also felt these sections also serve another purpose. To prepare players for the challenge mode. In Shattered Dimensions DS, in addition to the regular campaign, there is also a series of bonus challenge levels that test your skills in various navigation and combat challenges . You unlock these levels as you complete milestones in the main campaign and can access them from the main menu. The first challenge level asks you to navigate to the end of a series of obstacles using your web moves under a strict time limit. While you can still web crawl like normal as you are playing as Amazing Spider-Man here, the time limit is so strict that you have to make the most of your web zip and wall run skills to stand a chance. This first challenge is so hard that it took me nearly 40 minutes to barely pass it with like 0.02 seconds left. I really felt like I had to optimize my skills to the limit. My hands even started to hurt from the play. I was kinda worried on what the other challenges would be. The second challenge asks you to use your "advanced web skills" though I ended up clearing this one in a few attempts (that ended with me dying by hitting an instant kill wall) with 20 seconds left on the clock even though I didn't play that well and made some big mistakes because the time limit was more generous and the hazards weren't as tightly placed. So some weird balancing and naming there. The next challenge is a gliding level where you need to glide between 2 unclimbable walls with 2099, wall jump and repeat and gain enough height to get to the top. I managed this with around 3 seconds left and it really felt intense. The next is a gliding challenge that asks you to glide between increasingly narrow corridors lined with kill walls, then time your decent down a vertical corridor with kill walls. I cleared this with 20 seconds on the clock and multiple attempts though, this is because it's kinda because you couldn't really slow and stop rather than it being easy. There was also a challenge level that took that dash state ability from the main game and really went all out it. There are more challenge levels, including a few combat ones, but these sets of levels are really fun and challenging and really make you master the movement mechanics of this game. They really made me appreciate how fun these systems can be. The main game seldom challenges you with traversal outside of small bursts, and even then, it's often not necessary if you could wall crawl. So I didn't know I wanted these. I do feel they could be made better with a "Gold, Silver, Bronze" rating system instead of a single time limit that boots you out if you miss it.

So yeah, generally the level design is a bit more interesting and less mindless compared to Web of Shadows DS. The game also even tones down on the number of mandatory spam ambushes, saving them as either part of certain bosses and challenges or for like, some of the final rooms before the final boss. The game does also tone down some of varied enemy types from WoSDS as well. Which is a bit of a shame. The game now only really has regular humans/robots with some varients with shields and guns, and larger robots and small drones as the primary enemies you face. No more Panther Venoms or more agile Symbiotes that can match Spidey's movement. It's a bit of a shame as while SDDS is less frustrating as a result of the more sparse roster, I do feel the game could have kept some of those other enemies while still being somewhat balanced and fair as combat can start to get a bit repetitive towards the end.

The game does also improve on Boss Fights from Web of Shadows DS. Most bosses are either sorta unique enemies in how they face Spidey (such as Vulture 2099 throwing features and doing dive bomb attacks), or when they involve regular enemies also involve some kind of gimmick to mix things up (like Tinkerer requiring you to destroy some of his enemy robots so you can then destroy the generators that activate to make them). It's a huge step up from WoSDS that reused the same enemy type for 90% of its bosses. Once you beat the game, you even unlock a Boss Rush Mode that gives Spidey 999 health and all the moves and damage upgrades and asks you to defeat all the bosses. It's a fun challenge.

In fact, compared to its predecessors, Shattered Dimensions DS offers the most content and replayability. You have the main campaign that once you beat it, can either replay it in a NG+, or a time trial/speedrun mode, or with self imposed challenges to unlock in-game achievements like complete the game with x or fewer collectibles. In addition to the campaign, you have an entirely separate challenge mode that tests your movement and traversal and combat abilities.

The story isn't very interesting despite the rather cool premise. Unlike the main console version of the game, the DS version is quite sparse on cutscenes, dialogue and world building. What few interactions there are between the Spider-Men and their villains, or Amazing doing his usual quips are still engaging at least. The 3 Spider-Men don't even talk much with each other as Madam Webb acts as the intermediary so they all feel quite disconnected. In the final cutscene when Amazing thanks his other counterparts and they all reminisce on how they were all a team, it feels rather hollow. So instead of it feeling like these 3 different Spider-Men were all helping each other out, it feels more there happens to be 3 Spider-Men on 3 separate adventures that happens to sorta connect.

I feel the story would have been more interesting if it was kinda like what the console version of Edge of Time did where the Spideys were psychically linked to each other and could comment and talk to each other. Like, imagine Amazing quipping while watching Noir fight Captain Boomerang or something. Would really add to the experience. In addition, there are fewer subtitles in this game whereas Web of Shadows DS was quite good at catching throwaway lines so it's easier to miss some of the dialogue.

All in all, while I feel there are aspects of Shattered Dimensions DS that its predecessors did better, like Ultimate Spider-Man had the better story and art style. Web of Shadows had the better atmosphere, enemy types and premise. Shattered Dimensions DS is overall, thus far, the best Spider-Man game on DS as it improves on the foundation of Web of Shadows DS by smoothing out many of its rough edges. It retains mostly the same fun 2D freeflowing combat and makes it less frustrating by reducing the enemy spam (a bit too much at the cost of some of the enemy variety). It improves on the traversal and level design so there are some mini challenges and ways to explore on the way to the next boss fight. It adds so much extra challenges and bonus modes that make it very replayable. It stumbles in incorporating the Shattered Dimension concept and story, but nails almost everything else. Gryptonite made a DS Spider-Man Metroidvania game I'd recommend anyone check out with no caveats. In fact, I would even go so far as to say this could be remastered or re-released as is and still hold up well. I can't wait to play Edge of Time DS and see how Gryptonite improve their design even further.

-8- Spider-Man: Edge of Time (2011)

Spider-Man Edge of Time DS released in 2011 and like its predecessors, its something of a 2D Metroidvania-esque game. However, instead of it being the 3rd attempt by Gryptonite after the great Shattered Dimensions DS, Edge of Time DS was developed by Other Ocean Interactive. And it's apparent from as soon as you start the game. Instead of the cute 3D character models, you have 2D sprites. So the game resembles those GBA Spider-Man games. I don't mind, it does look quite charming.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Edge of Time DS is something of a sequel/follow up to Shattered Dimensions as it takes place in the same continuity (Peter Parker references this when he asks 2099 Spidey where the other Spider-Men are). The premise here is that in the year 2099, Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the year 2099, finds Walker Sloan, a scientist at Alchemax (The Amazon meets Oscorp of 2099), planning on using a time machine to travel back in time to establish Alchemax about 100 years ago so he can rebuild the company in his image and dismantle his competitors before they can pose a threat (which, honestly, feels realistic to what a large company would do if they had the ability to time travel). Miguel fails to stop Sloan, resulting in something of an altered and mixed timeline between the future and past where Alchemax exists in the past.  Miguel somehow finds a way to establish a psychic temporal link with Peter Parker in the past allowing them to communicate (the DS version glosses over this). The 2 Spider-Men then have to work together in their own time periods by exploring the Alchemax building. The big new gimmick is something called "Quantum Causality" (that Reed Richards apparently discovered) where if Peter does something in the past, it affects Miguel in the future (or technically it would be the present according to Miguel). 

The game demonstrates this at first when Peter enters Alchemax by having him open a door which causes that same door to open and close in 2099. In addition, the player can instantly switch between Peter in the past and Miguel in 2099 by pressing the Select Button with the game "remembering" the state of the worlds while pausing them. So if Miguel is fighting enemies in 2099 and the player switches to Peter, those enemies will still be there and resume fighting Miguel when the player switches back. The game even uses this in a cool way with a puzzle where Peter is stuck in a computer room and needs the password. Miguel can see what the password is by entering that same computer room in 2099.

Obviously, this approach to time travel makes absolutely no sense. But I still love it. And I feel the DS version actually has more potential with this idea compared to the main console version. The Main console version of Edge of Time is this linear brawler/beat em up with scripted set pieces. So the quantum causality aspect was generally limited to certain story beats and set pieces. But since the DS version is more of a Metroidvania-esque game, it can better incorporate this into the puzzles and traversal challenges.

But I do feel the general gameplay and controls of Edge of Time DS is a major step back from the improvements Shattered Dimensions DS made. Combat plays closer to Spider-Man 2 DS as it lacks that freeflowing nature where attacks combo into each other or dodge/parry options or longer range attacks. As a result, it's functional but way less fun. It gets especially frustrating when fighting airbourne enemies as Spidey lacks the web yank or any comparable ability. Web Swinging still operates like in Shattered Dimensions DS at least with webs sticking to ceilings and preserving Spidey's momentum. Web Zipping and navigation is back to how it was in Spider-Man 2 DS so not as engaging.

The game feels a bit rushed. Like Activision didn't give Other Ocean a lot of time to make the game. And this seems to especially affect the navigation and progression. This is the first DS Spider-Man game so far to have some major glitches and bugs that affect movement. There were times when Spidey would get stuck when climbing walls in a falling animation, taking quite a bit of effort to break out. The game's minimap is far less detailed than either Web of Shadows DS or Shattered Dimensions and you have no control over it. You can't manually zoom in or out like before. Levels are also more labyrinthine, relying more on smaller vents that are quite hard to see to connect areas. So if you want to see where the objective is if it's not on the minimap, you have to quickly pause and unpause the game as then, the minimap will pan to where the next objective is and then pan to where you are which really kills the flow. This is made worse when sometimes, the minimap "gets stuck" and doesn't update to where you actually are. Resulting in weird situations where Spidey goes out of the minimap so you have to do a combination of pausing/unpausing and backtracking to reenter the minimap so you can try to orient yourself. It also doesn't give the option to highlight obstructions or "where the other Spider-Man roughly is". This is problematic because there are times when the game wants the player to bring one Spider-Man to a point but there is an obstruction on the way that the other Spider-Man can remove. But there is enough slight variations in the time periods and the map is so minimal that can be easy to get lost along the way.

On top of that, the game does a very poor job in highlighting how one is supposed to progress through it. For example, one of the abilities Miguel can get is "Adamantine Claws" with the description "can allow him to break through certain walls". Ok, but which walls and how? The game doesn't have a tutorial or demonstration like its predecessors or even every other Metroidvania. I only figured it out because I decided to try a random ground slam on a certain floor and it worked. Nothing about the upgrade highlighted that. Some doors are locked for Peter that open with no heads up (Prior Metroids have like different coloured doors and keycards which helps with this). And once you do figure it out, the game becomes quite tedious as you have to equip and swap between items that are used passively. For example, if there is a purple door you need to break with the Adamintine Claws, you need to press R until you select the Claws. Then if there is an electric shielded door, you need to Press R until you select the Resist Electricity Ability. And if there is a Red Energy Shield, you need to press R until you select the Red Energy Shield Ability and Web to it. None of these abilities overlap or are set up in such a way that you would need to only activate one at a time. It kills the momentum and gets really annoying. The prior SM games on DS didn't require you swap around such abilities and instead kept them always activated. EoTDS treats abilities in a way closer to how the older Pokemon games treated HMs.

 

The minimap does at least highlight any nearby collectibles which is nice. But I feel more could have done here. Perhaps do what Web of Shadows DS (and also Hollow Knight years later) did and have the map name and colour the major areas of the map. So it would be more intuitive to know "oh, If I need to get to these rifts, I need to navigate through the Alchemax Portal Room, then past the testing lab and find a vent up to the skyline/Daily Bugle".

One example I feel that showcases all of these issues at once is the objective that requires Miguel to get to a rift to encounter Black Cat. The minimap at least highlights where the objective is so you know where to navigate Miguel to. Along the way, you need to perform a ground slam on a specific kind of floor (that the game doesn't tell you about). Then you eventually reach a glass wall in front of a giant robot that blocks you from progressing. There's no obvious solution here for what Miguel needs to do here to progress. The solution is to switch to Peter. Since Peter doesn't have any objectives active, the minimap remains static so it's not even clear that you need to switch to Peter here. You need to take a completly different route to where that robot and glass wall would be in the future. This route isn't intuitive because there is no hint this is the correct way. Especially given the doors to get there were locked and there was no indication they are unlocked now. The area that corresponds to the robot looks different in the past with more of a generic office theme than a sci-fi lab theme and a different layout so it doesn't look like you're in the same general area. Then you destroy a yellow rectangle with a ground slam that causes the robot in Miguel's time to fall and crush the glass door allowing Miguel to proceed.

 

If this were Shattered Dimensions DS, then at least the game would have provided some hints and better signposting that this would be the solution.

-The story

The DS version tells a compressed version of the story in the main console version. But unlike its predecessors which did a much better job in preserving some of the drama and context from their console versions, EoTDS fumbles here.

For example, in the main console version of Edge of Time, there's a section where Peter learns MJ is going to die soon. Miguel, being the pragmatic one here, tells Peter to forget about her and focus on the mission as the future is at stake. Peter snaps and angrily shouts at Miguel "I have no future without her!" and that Miguel is unworthy of being Spider-Man due to his disregard for others' safety. After an awkward silence. Miguel offers to go rescue MJ to which Peter breaths a "I owe you one". Later on, once Miguel has saved MJ, she tells him he is a worthy successor to Spider-Man which stuns Miguel.

I loved this sequence in EoT. The music and setting of the scene was amazing. Seeing Peter get so angry and respond in this way was novel given his usual demeanour. And it highlights the difference in the 2 protagonists. And it gives Miguel something of an arc as he adopts some of Peter's views.

The DS version speeds through this. When Peter learns MJ is in trouble, Miguel immediately offers to help which results in a less interesting story beat.

It's a similar case with Atrocity. The Main console version takes its time setting up Anti-Venom and how it all leads to Atrocity. The DS version skips all that and has Atrocity just show up.

I like the interactions the 2 Spider-Men have with each other and some of their more obscure villains in the boss fights, but the story itself lacks the impact the main console version has even though the material is right there and wouldn't have been impossible to implement.

Also, Black Cat is super horny in this version. Including telling Miguel she wants him to show her how he handles a cougar. Isn't the DS version rated E for everyone here lol?

To be honest, I couldn't bring myself to finish this game. The bugs made it frustrating to even do basic wall climbing as Spidey would either automatically fall off or teleport back down. The lacklustre minimap and lack of signposting made it a chore to navigate and solve puzzles. And the combat feels like a downgrade to SDDS.

It's a shame because I really liked the main console version of EoT and feel the DS version has a really cool premise for its gameplay with the ability to freely switch between the 2 Spider-Men in different time periods. Like I said, if this version was built by Gryptonite on the foundation of SDDS, it likely would have been amazing. I wish EoTDS gets a remake or inspires a future game because its premise is gold and I would love to explore a Metroidvania with the ability to time travel.

Onto the final game of this series: The Amazing Spider-Man DS. See you then.

-9- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

At last, we're at the final game of this retrospective. The Amazing Spider-Man 1. It's poetic to send this series with a movie licensed game. Ocean is back for another "sprite + 3D environments in a sorta Metroidvania-esque" game.

I remember sorta enjoying the main console version of TASM1.  It was the first open world Spider-Man game after Web of Shadows in 2008. It was decent but it walked back a lot of what was cool about its predecessors. The Web Swinging and combat was more automated and not as deep as WoS. Stealth was passable. I remember really liking the "scale" of the game with how Spidey had to fight giant robots and cross species. It did a decent job in making the threat to New York feel severe (plus, it had a story about a disease spreading all over New York that required people to quarantine and get vaccinated....... so clearly Insomniac plagiarized this game).

I also really love TASM1 movie. Hot Take, but I feel this is the best Spider-Man Origin Movie. Even better than Raimi's SM1. Don't get me wrong. I love Raimi's version. But what I love about TASM1 is how much more it spends time on Peter developing into Spider-Man. In Raimi's version, it sorta speeds through it. Once Peter gets his powers, he's a bit of jerk to Uncle Ben, he goes and wrestles for money, Uncle Ben dies which makes Peter pursue revenge. He finds the mugger and realizes he's the guy he let go earlier which motivates Peter to become a good Spider-Man. It's done well.

But TASM1 explores this in more detail. It spent more time of Peter being a jerk with his powers. It spent more time showing how there were consequences to Peter's initial selfishness with Aunt May needing to walk home alone that Peter initially doesn't pick up on. As a result, it makes Uncle Ben's death feel more significant and tragic since you can see how he and Aunt May just wanted what was best for Peter and for him to mature and Peter was brushing them away.

In addition, even when Peter becomes Spider-Man, he doesn't instantly become a hero. He continues acting selfishly. He takes down criminals and is quite the jerk to them. Peter thinks he's doing a good job. He gets his first reality check when at dinner with Captain Stacey, Captain Stacey points out how this Spider-Man is a menace as he ruins police operations and is making things worse. It's the first time Peter starts to see the consequences of his actions from someone he respects. It's not until Peter later chooses to let the Lizard go to save people that Peter truly starts to become the Spider-Man we all know and love. That progression is what TASM1 absolutely nails. I love when an origin story really explores the motives, thought process and progression of a hero rather than brush through it.

Anyway, I can no longer stall for time here. I have to sadly go back to the main topic of this post: The Amazing Spider-Man DS game. I'll be honest with y'all, I couldn't bring myself to finish this one either. That's 2 DS Spider-Man games in a row now!

Like its main console version, it takes place after the events of the movie in this weird alternate timeline where everything is a lot more "comic-book-y". Oscorp was continuing Connor's research which results in a breach of cross species getting out into New York and spreading the disease. Alastair Smythte sends out his robots to contain them and they also target Spidey since he's a cross species. Peter is forced to break out Connors from a mental Asylum and work with him to try and fix everything.

(Quick Side Tangent. But back in Edge of Time's main console version, Anti-Venom's healing powers could "cure" Peter's powers since Peter got his powers from radiation so it's technically an illness. But Miguel was unaffected by Anti-Venom since his powers are DNA based. In TASM universe, Peter gets his powers from a genetically engineered Spider as opposed to a radioactive one. So would TASM Peter have the same immunity to Anti-Venom that Miguel has? )

The basic controls are similar to Edge of Time DS. You have the same rather clunky and rigid combat that lacks the freedom and freeflow nature of Griptonite's games. You have the same sorta worse Web Swinging and Navigation controls as EoTDS.

The way the game handles levels is both different and odd. It feels like a combination of Edge of Time DS and Spider-Man 3 DS. You now have an "off mission open/hub world" that consist of areas like the sewers, parts of Oscorp and New York Streets. These areas houses entrances to missions that play like sorta self contained areas from Edge of Time DS. The game even rates your performance on these missions by how fast you complete them and how much health you have left by the end.

The "off mission open/hub world" is kinda cool in that it connects different parts of the map together and technically is more varied than what EoTDS has. But I don't know, it inherits SM3DS' issues of the open world not really adding much and it's even more limited in side content and exploration.

The missions themselves are extremely tedious. The goal is to get through them and complete whatever the objective is. There are "branching paths" that lead to other areas that might contain collectibles. Remember when I complained the minimap in Edge of Time DS was too minimal for its own good? That version would still be an improvement to TASM1DS. When in missions, the minimap only represents areas with basic rectangles and shows pathways between them with lines. The number and position of lines gives you some idea of how many and where these pathways are at least. But you have no clue about the general layout of the area or where the objective may be. Resulting in a lot of combing around for items which really slows down the pace.

The biggest issue is that sometimes, the door to the next area is locked and you need to get a keycard by defeating the enemy that has it. But it's not clear if this room requires a keycard. If you ignore all the enemies and just get to the end you either get to move onto the next area with no issue or have to backtrack through the area and find all the enemies to defeat. If you choose to fight all the enemies upon entering, it can end up as a waste of time if there is no keycard (not helped by how lacklustre the combat is). Again, you won't know what is required until you find the door. The issue is exacerbated because you don't know which enemy has the keycard and what the general layout of the room is. It's possible the enemy with the keycard is tucked away in a random far off corner that requires you to comb the entire place. Or is a slow floating drone that requires you to awkwardly position yourself, wait, jump and begin striking and repeat the process until it gets destroyed. I can't believe TASM1DS has levels that are worse than SM2DS!

The fact there's a mission rating and replay system suggests to me the game intends for this to be something replayable? Like, the player can improve how a mission goes by the knowledge on replays and it would be more fun? But I don't know, with how tedious and unrewarding it already is, I feel that hurts the replayability.

Let's compare this to prior DS Spider-Man games. Ultimate Spider-Man DS and Spider-Man 3 DS had linear levels with no minimap that sometimes asked you to defeat specific enemies to be able to progress. But in those games, the levels were laid out in a straightforward way that didn't require you to comb every inch or fight every enemy using a lacklustre combat system to progress. In addition, they had markers highlighting important targets and had some nice set pieces to mix it up.

Web of Shadows DS and Shattered Dimensions DS had more of a Metroidvania-esque design. But kept up the pace by giving the player a minimap that at least showed the general outline of the area (with the option to highlight collectibles and objectives) which gave a better indication of what to do and not blindly explore. In addition, it actually had a much more fun combat system but rarely asked the player to fight every enemy in an area.

Even Spider-Man 2 DS at least only asked the player to just comb every inch of a level to find stuff. Yeah, it wasn't ideal because it lacked a minimap or any indication or markers. But at least there's no additional fluff or requirements for individual areas that waste your time. You don't need to fight every enemy just to open a door you didn't know about.

The sad part is that I can sorta see what TASM1DS is sorta going for and how it could have actually been something great.

Imagine an alternate version of the game where every mission just dropped you into a sorta self contained mini-metroidvania level. Remember Breath of the Wild's Eventide Island? It was a small self contained section of Breath of the Wild that reset your equipment and had you sorta start from scratch to complete a few challenges.

Imagine if TASM1DS was set up where when you enter a mission, it drops you into such a level. It gives you a rough indication of where your objective is and leaves it to you for how to find it. And there are multiple ways of reaching the objective. Maybe you can follow the most direct route but it requires you to backtrack and find keycards that open certain doors by defeating certain glowing enemies. But if you didn't want to do that, you can try and explore for a vent or something that takes you to different areas that have their own set of challenges in a more "out of the way" path. And since you unlock new abilities as you progress the game, you can return to older levels and use your new abilities to open entirely new paths that have their own challenges (kinda like what Shattered Dimensions DS does) and get an even better completion time and rating.

Even the limited minimap TASM1DS already has would fit this version of the game as now scouring every inch of the area is only one possible option for progression and the player can naturally find their own paths.

But, that is not the game we got. I do not recommend y'all play this game. Even the prior DS SM game that I couldn't finish: Edge of Time DS, at least had the novel time switching mechanic that was worth checking out at least. TASM1DS does nothing to make it worth playing over its predecessors. Ending this series on a low note.

-10- Conclusion

So yeah, how was the experience of reviewing each of these games?

I was a little surprised we never got a full on 3D Spider-Man game like the old Neversoft ones (Friend or Foe was the closest one and it was a different genre). But given the fewer buttons on the DS and the issue older 3D SM games had with the camera, that was probably a wise call. I doubt the folks making DS Spider-Man games would have been given the time to make an amazing 3D Spider-Man game.

All of the main ones were 2D side scrollers. Hearkening back to those GBA and SNES Superhero games. That's not a bad fit for Spidey. Gryptonite managed to really find an interesting niche with the formula by making the games Metroidvanias and improving the combat and navigation systems.

So with the rankings of these games, I'm going to give Shattered Dimensions DS the top spot. I recommend everyone reading this to try it out as it's a great game that executes its ideas well and offers a lot of content and replayability and accessibility. It goes above and beyond its predessors.

For second place, I'm torn between Ultimate Spider-Man DS and Web of Shadows DS. USMDS has the better story and refines the "linear side scrolling gameplay" side of DS Spider-Man games. But it's not very replayable. WoSDS begins the Metroidvania SM games and has great combat and gameplay and atmosphere but suffers from poor balancing, difficulty spikes. Plus, SDDS improves on its formula in nearly every way. 

Basically, I feel like SDDS, USMDS and WoSDS are the 3 Spider-Man games on the DS that are the most worth playing as they're pretty good overall.

This next tier is of games that, while not bad, aren't great and are only worth checking out if you're curious. I'll put Battle for New York DS and Spider-Man 3 DS here.

Honourable mention to Edge of Time DS since, while the game is unfinished and needed more polish, it does have the most unique gimmick of time travel which is novel even among recent games and even Spider-Man games.

The final tier would be games I'd advise you avoid. Either because they are flat out bad, boring, have other games that do their concept better or are a chore to play. Here comes Spider-Man 2 DS, Friend or Foe DS and The Amazing Spider-Man DS.

This was a wild ride and took me a long time to write. What are all y'all thoughts on this?

Next up for me is probably Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on the DS. See you then.