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.