nicklenivy
This review contains spoilers
It's been about 5 months since the release of this game, and I feel it's a good time to revisit my old review. In hindsight, the hype had gotten the better of me and clouded my judgement. I still stand by my 10/10 rating PERSONALLY, but I also stand by the fact that this game is about a 7 objectively, and as time has gone on, I have constantly and begrudgingly become more fucking pissed off at this piece of shit game.
I'm a gigantic Spider-Man fan, and not the "TikTok kind" that is so popular nowadays. Y'know, the ones who have seen a couple of the movies and maybe watched the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and thus brag online about how they're "huge fans". I've wasted most of my teenage years reading comic books and specifically ALL of Spidey's comics. And while they all obviously range from créme de la créme to... Well, Zeb Wells and Nick Spencer, I still feel like on some degree, Peter Parker is pretty consistent in all of them. It's an understatement to say Spider-Man is my favorite fictional character of all time and that I love him to death, and that obviously makes me the target audience for a Spider-Man game... Right?
I'd like to preface this by saying that I really like Insomniac's Spider-Man and his world. While I disagree with a few things, namely Mary Jane's portrayal and the introduction of Miles Morales so early on, I still feel like Insomniac DOES get who Peter Parker is and what his stories are all about. And what solidified him as one of the GOATs is the ending of the first game, where Peter does what he couldn't do in One More Day. He sacrifices Aunt May and just... Lets go. He grows. And that's what made me truly love him. To see a Peter accept the weight of his responsibilities and grow into one of the definitive iterations of Spider-Man was quite endearing and amazing. I also enjoyed Miles, if a little bland, and the supporting cast was pretty good. Mostly the villains, but the others were serviceable enough. I have spent thousands of hours on PS4 and PC combined on the first game, and it's my second favorite Spider-Man game. Is that enough? That's enough.
All this to say, I was completely on board for this game and full of hype. I'm not that huge of a fan of the symbiote storyline, especially because no one ever adapts the actual symbiote and just adapts the TAS and Raimi versions, but I was hella excited and mostly curious to see Insomniac taking a shot at it. Hell, I pre-ordered the game! The only game I've ever pre-ordered is, wouldn't you know it, Marvel's Spider-Man. I was in the forefront, foaming at the mouth to get this game which was supposedly gonna be the end-all be-all of Spider-Man games, the game that would end the dumb debate that Spider-Man 2 is actually the best one (it's not), the game that would bring justice to its characters and their 60 years of stories.
Yeah... About that.
TL;DR Game is unfinished, buggy, has terrible characterization and lacks any sort of charm that made the first one so beloved. The story is written for a casual audience that doesn't know the character and has so many plot holes you'd think Mole Man passed through here.
Love for a game should NEVER cloud objective judgement over it. My favorite game of all time is Life is Strange, and while I absolutely recognize that it's FAR from perfect, I love it nonetheless. And Insomniac, those sly dogs, had it easy. Like Sam Raimi once said, "kids come to this picture and Spider-Man is their hero, [...] anyone you put in the superhero outfit and you play the heroic horns on the soundtrack, they're gonna look up to as their hero, you just get that unearned, it's not fair but it really is true... So you have an obligation to bring your character to the level that's worth their admiration, you get it without having paid for it, so the job of making the movie in some ways is paying for it". Insomniac doesn't have to do shit, they could make the worst Spider-Man game ever but dumbasses (me) are still gonna keep buying it because it's fucking Spider-Man. They didn't earn anything, people just buy their Spider-Man games cause of, you guessed it, Spider-Man! Which means they should have a moral obligation to make the game up to the standards that people expect for a character as iconic and beloved as the gool ol' webhead. And here's where Insomniac already loses me.
Let's look at it from a gameplay perspective first. The game is, in almost everything in that regard, an upgrade from the first one in terms of mechanics. The swinging is still fun as ever and the new option to change swinging difficulty is cool, if a little useless. Barely anything changes, really, but it's nice that you can smash your head on the floor if you don't calculate everything. Fall damage is... Cool? Doesn't change much and doesn't add that many stakes, honestly. But it's nice to have the option.
The suit selection is really pathetic and lackluster. Almost half of the slots are taken up by movie suits that were in the previous game, and even ones that no one asked for. Like seriously, who asked for the fucking Night Monkey suit? It's obvious that Insomniac wanted to make everyone happy by having every movie suit, but it sucks that we have to sacrifice stuff like the ol' trusty Spidey armor and the Big Time suit, especially when a suit slot is taken up by something like a goofy ass Peach Momoko suit. And I like Peach Momoko! But what is that suit doing here? It's also limited by the fact that they wanted Miles and Peter to have the same number of suits... Which makes zero sense. Peter has been around for six times as long as Miles, it's obvious he's gonna have more suits. And even then, a lot of Miles' suits are taken out. The animated suit from his solo game looked so freakin' good and yet, it's nowhere to be found here. And that's glossing over the digsusting looking "Evolved suit" that he gets towards the end of the game. An Adidas ad, in my Spider-Man game? What is this, Web of Shadows?
Foreshadowing. Anyway, the map may be much bigger but it has very little to offer. I love that they added Queens, it's seriously amazing, and going back there for the first time since 2005, back in Ultimate Spider-Man, was amazing. I liked the layout and it's pretty accurate, obviously scaled down a bit but that's fine. It looks great, and that's the problem. It's mostly just there and serves little purpose other than a few missions taking place in it. Even something as simple as going into Peter's house, something you could do in the TASM2 game of all things, is only allowed in one mission. So I don't understand why they added the second island other than to show it off. Hell, if anything I'm angry that they made THAT but not Washington Heights? It's never represented in Spidey games for some reason, give me some Washington Heights rep :(
The enemy bases are fine, a bit of a downgrade from the first game but I was never fond of them, and so are the sidequests. They're on par with the first game for the most part but they have much higher highs and lower lows, whereas the first game was much more consistent. That's not to say that there aren't missions that I loved purely for their production value. I liked Howard's side mission, hell I loved it, but it's a sign of what's to come. The only way that mission works is if you suspend your belief to the point where you can seriously believe that there's a magic illness that you know will kill you in a few minutes, allowing you to say goodbye one last time. It's a mission that comments on, as corny as that sounds, the beauty of life and I loved it but if you put your glasses on, you'll see it's basically impossible for it to be real and can only happen in a pre-determined narrative. As for other stuff, Wraith's storyline is fine. I don't really like her character and she makes zero sense but they handled Cletus Kassidy well. Mysterio's storyline is also a bit weird because like, I understand what they were going for but having Miles be locked in to play them takes away from the fact that Mysterio has a history with Peter. There's also the Brooklyn Visions quest which are... So pathetic. They reek of corporate mandated progressive quests that I have a hard time taking them seriously at all. They're corny as hell and only work in a Disney Channel setting, if anything. There's also the random crimes which have been either completely simplified to the point where their skill requirements are null or made so boring and tedious that you don't even stop to do them.
So to give a brief overview of all of that, the crimes, challenges and bases have taken quite a step down as there's less variety in them and the replayability of the bases is non-existent. Collectibles are about the same and the sidequests are sometimes a bit better and sometimes a bit worse. Carnage and Mysterio obviously are more memorable due to the characters featured and their higher production value, but that's about it. There's also many smaller features, like quality of life stuff, that are completely missing. The social feed from the first game was an interesting window into the perspective of an average person living in New York during the events of the game. In fact, a lot of it was actually well written and felt authentic to interactions and exchanges that you often find on the internet. And while I realize it wasn't that important of a feature, it was cool to have and yet it's nowhere to be seen here. It's such a shame because it would have been really cool seeing people's thoughts on the symbiote invasion and black suit Spidey. There's also a lack of character bios, which is baffling because there's no reason for them not to be here. I loved reading them in the past two games because they were written from Peter's and Miles' perspective, but there's nothing here. It would have been very useful, especially for several characters who really could have used some more backstory.
There's also the podcasts, which are... Horrid. They are clearly written by people who don't understand JJJ's character and just want to make him a full on Alex Jones parody, while Danika is the wonderchild internet SJW or whatever who always says the right thing. It's boring and uninspired. I read somewhere that someone thought it would have been really cool to replace Danika with a Flash Thompson podcast where he praised Spidey and talked about different happenings from the past, and I honestly love that idea. I love Flash Thompson and I would kill to have him be an actual character in this game, rather than a boring easter egg in a flashback.
One of the most important parts of the game, gameplay wise, is combat. And combat is very fun, still too repetitive to be comparable to Batman Arkham or even Sleeping Dogs, but they added some tweaks and moves that make a lot of difference. When you fight, there's a 99,9% chance your combo will start by you knocking the enemy in the air and then beating them down while floating like a beautiful butterfly, and since that's a good majority of the game, Insomniac made air combos much more dynamic. You have a bounce, you have a dodge under mid-air, you have a follow up to the swing kick and you can juggle enemies much more easily than the first game. That doesn't mean ground combat isn't great either, because I'll admit I freakin' love bashing bad guys into red paste by spamming the attack button while they're against a wall. Yes, I'm mentally insane.
But on the other side of the coin... The combat abilities. God. Damn. It. I wasn't completely against the iron arms at first, I thought it was an interesting evolution of the character based on what he had done in the last one, and I liked to think we would get an explanation as to why he has them, the reason being that Peter feels like he never does enough and has to keep up as much as he can and overcompensates for everything. Or maybe he would build them to make up for his lack of a symbiote suit. But instead, the game has NO explanation of the iron arms, they just appear and we're supposed to accept it. Let me make it clear: a man who cannot even afford rent for a one room apartment manages to create nano-tech so advanced that it can materialize out of thin air. It's honestly hilarious because the developers also seem kind of "embarrassed" about it? The arms are never used in the story, even in situations where they would genuinely save the day (i.e. Coney Island). And that's without even mentioning how dumb they are in-game. The abilities are a cool concept but the cooldown strips away the fun of them because you have to wait 30 seconds for them to pop up again, when it could have been like in Miles' game where you can use any ability as long as you have the meter, and finishers are stored in another slot. They also look so dumb and half the time don't even target the right enemy, making the combat sorta frustrating and imprecise. The symbiote abilities, on the other hand, at least visually make sense and look cool.
So now not only do we have an MCU-ified Spider-Man with nano-technology, we are also canonically stuck with it. And to the thumbsuckers going "just don't use them if you hate them that much", okay you doofus, I would if they weren't super-imposed all the time. If I parry, they pop up, if I want a boost while in mid-air they pop up, if I go walk my dog they pop up. Oh, and let's not forget that they also took away most of the gadgets and left the dumbest and most boring replacements for them. It sucks so much ass and I can't think of a good reason they would have done this except for the obvious one. They had to make it more like the MCU to make it more marketable, just like with the Peter face change.
The faces. Good lord the faces. I was fine with the face change when it was first announced. I was okay with it because it didn't impact me that much. It looked decent in Miles Morales and a bit weird in the Remastered, but I chalked it up to my brain thinking about the original one every time he showed up. But now, it's been about 4 years from the face change. We've had time to accept it, and grown to love it. "Love" it. Right.
To all you motherfuckers out there who said they didn't change Peter's face to make him look more like Tom Holland, I dare you not to compare them in the flashback sections. It's insane how much they look alike, in fact it's not insane it's downright ABSURD. Back when the first game was being made, the main Spider-Man was Andrew Garfield so they got a guy that resembled him in some way, John Bubniak, and he was PERFECT. Genuinely such a perfect look for Peter and the voice fit him so well. Then, since the current one is Tom Holland, Insomniac clearly realized they needed a bit of brand synergy so the casual gamer would link them just by looking at it. Remember when people cried about Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of The Galaxy not looking at all like the MCU? Yeah, exactly. Dumb complaints from people who have never even looked in the general direction of a comic book.
And I wish Peter was the worst of this. He may look awful and his face is completely wrong, but he looks like Brad Pitt compared to the other ones. Harry is fine, I kinda like his redesign, even though I do miss the older one. I also miss Scott Porter, he's my GOAT :( I actually think Miles looks the best out of all of them simply because you can tell he was animated with care for every subtle detail, so that's nice.
And then... Mary Jane. I'm sorry for the actress, and I know she has come out and said she had jaw reconstruction surgery, but they botched her so bad in the game. I'm not one of those cringy coomers who go "OMG THEY MADE HER WOKE BY MAKING HER UGLY #REDPILLED" like some of you weirdos out there, but it's fucking abhorrent what has happened to her. Mary Jane is a SUPERMODEL. I don't get why everyone wants to turn her into Lois Lane when she has always been this fun-loving, gorgeous redhead who looks like the kind of girl who never stops partying. Underneath that, she's a whole different beast, but it's always worked in the comics so why can't it work here? Would it be objectifying to make her a model? It's just a job! But even if we take all of that out of the way, even if we say "she's a normal person who works as a journalist so she can't look like the hottest woman on Earth", I genuinely cannot excuse the way she looks. The animations of her face look so bad that you'd think Dingo Pictures made them, her Jaw gives the Crimson Chin a run for his money and her fashion sense is god-awful. She looked great, beautiful, gorgeous even in the first game. I loved her design, she looked like what a modern Mary Jane would look like in my head, and then they went and redesigned her for some reason and she looks awful. So we pair a Peter who looks like he's maybe 21 at max with a Mary Jane who looks in her late 30's, coupled with the fact that they're written horribly. What do we get? One of the worst parts of this game.
Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker are not Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker. I don't think the writers know who the fuck these characters are and the most exposure they've gotten about them is probably, like... The Raimi movies? Maybe not even that. In the first game, Mary Jane complained about the fact that Peter held her hand too much and looked out for her. From our perspective, it makes sense that she's just talking crazy because we witness first-hand what the baddies are willing to do to get what they want, so her complaints are understandable but ludicrous too. It's human, and I liked that. If anything, I see a lot of similarities between her and Skyler from Breaking Bad, both being love interests who people hate because they actually have a point which goes against the protagonist. And thus I really liked MJ and Pete last time. But that's the thing. I didn't like THESE MJ and Pete, I liked the first ones. Everyone of importance has changed face models to the point where the first game and this one feel like they take place in different universes and it makes me so disconnected from the narrative because this feels like such a random recast. I loved those characters that I associate with a certain face model, and now not only are they written completely different, they also look completely different. I feel detached from them and it sucks because the most important part of any Spider-Man story is the conflict between characters that you know and love. But here, we have a different faced Peter, a difference faced Mary Jane and a different faced AND voiced Harry. So at the end of the day, all of the time I spent in the past game getting to know and love them is null and void because they're not who I fell in love with. And again, I really really liked MJ and Pete in the first game. But then in this one, for some reason, they have this tension between them that is so weird and off-putting. They do not act like two people in a relationship, they act like they have to be nice to each other because both of them are too uncomfortable to actually say that they don't like being in a relationship. It's weird and it's never explained, they have these cute moments that feel so sterile. I remember smiling like a dumbass in the first game's DLC when they said "I love you" to each other, and I was hoping that would get expanded here but... Nope. Nada. What we DO get is a Mary Jane who says nothing of importance and her only goal is to be the best reporter at the Daily Bugle. That's all there is. And to those screaming that she has depth and just keeps it all bottled up inside, I'm gonna ask you this very simple question. Who is Mary Jane Watson?
I genuinely mean it. Who is she, outside of Peter's girlfriend? Do we know anything about her? About her past? About her family? About her friends? MJ's past is such a HUGE part of who she is in the comics, it explains all of her behaviors and puts into perspective how much she is hurting. Like Peter, she has also lost someone because of her lack of responsibility, Obviously that is VERY MUCH reducing it but that's the jist of it. The reason they work together so well is because they both have such complex lives that, when put side by side, match. But in the game, all we know is that MJ is a reporter and she loves Peter and Harry. That's it. When New York goes to absolute shit because of the symbiotes, we don't hear her being worried about her Aunt Anna, or her sister, or her friends. She is a nobody and acts as a simple plot device. All of her playable sections only exist to have her help Peter. MJ has nothing going on in her life outside of supporting Peter. The game tries to comment on this by having her complain (as a brainwashed monster, mind you) about her job and having to help Peter all the time, but it's not enough to simply acknowledge these problems. You have to fix them.
It's clear that the intention of Mary Jane becoming Scream is to have her vent her frustrations about life and Peter, but it doesn't work for three reasons. Firstly, we know that the symbiote is capable of making people act differently from their normal selves, so it's hard to believe what she's saying is true. Secondly, the lack of setup is astounding. Apparently, MJ hates her job now. Even though she wanted it so bad in the first game that she repeatedly almost died for it. Even in this very game, she gets so upset when her story doesn't get published, but after one discouraging Skype call from JJJ she wants to quit? Thirdly, just like the first game, the conflict between MJ and Peter is lopsided. Due to Insomniac being so afraid and unwilling to give Peter any negative traits, it has always been difficult to take MJ's complaints seriously because really, Peter wasn't being overbearing or overprotective, he was actually supportive of her work, even giving her gadgets to help her sneak around. And even for stuff like the Charles Standish situation, that was a complete misunderstanding and the blame of the situation falls entirely on MJ since she's the one being unreasonable.
Something similar happens here, where MJ is mad at Peter for not being able to pull his weight and not being supportive of her and her goals. But that's bullshit! He tries his hardest to get a job and is only ever kind and encouraging to her whenever she brings up her work. So the issue is not that Peter is an unsupportive boyfriend, the issue is that MJ can't communicate her feelings properly. But that's not a character flaw, that's a genuine writing flaw because it's clear they didn't know what they were supposed to do with her. It's funny because people who say that the complainers are just nerds who wanted her to be hot and have no character ironically defend a non-character. I've seen cereal boxes have more personality and depth than this Mary Jane, and it sucks because I genuinely believe we'll never get a good adaptation of her EVER. The 90's show version was good and so were Spectacular and TNAS, but other than that we're drier than the Sahara Desert.
So all of that to circle back to their relationships. They don't talk like a couple, in fact no one in this game talks like they're anything more than acquaintances. All, and I mean ALL, of the characters act like nerdy youth pastors. Like many people have already said, they talk like they know their employers are listening. It's hilarious because it's true, it really is. They are all such goody two-shoes that it's laughable when they try to sound "bad". These are New York natives, dude! NEW YORK! You do not make it in New York if you don't try to grow a backbone and at the very least stand up for yourself. Miles doesn't talk like a black kid who grew up in NY, and the flashback where Peter is riding his bike and telling off on people is goofy as hell. I understand that Insomniac doesn't want to offend anybody but all I ask for is for writing that makes ME decide if I like that character or not, not some pre-determined "well, Harry is nice because he has this charity foundation and he's super cool and he is very nice and never says anything bad and he loves Peter". Miles also pisses me off so bad because whenever Peter says he's too busy to talk to him and ignores him, Miles is like "aw man, Pete, that sucks" and never fucking tells him that he's an asshole. MJ is also a very generic love interest who can take care of herself, so let's put a check on that in the clipboard so we can be labeled as "progressive". As for the other characters like Hailey, Rio, Ganke... Uhm... Yeah no that's it. There's no other supporting character. Cool. So just like, all of them act super nice and sweet to each other like it's a fucking Nickelodeon show. None of them have an edge or some sort of character introspection. Peter is just a good guy who wants to do good, Miles is just a good guy who wants to do good, MJ is just a good gal who wants to do good, Harry is just a good guy who wants to do good. There is no introspection, no interesting side that we get to see.
And again, it's laughable when they try to make Peter sound evil. 80% of the things Peter says while under the influence of the symbiote, he would have genuinely said himself in the 70's-90's comics. I like Peter being a super nice person, but this version is just so plain that it makes white bread sound like a five star dish. Which is why this rendition of the symbiote storyline sucks. Previous adaptations of the symbiote storylines (which veer off from the comic book one) all work because they use Peter's existing character flaws to show how the symbiote makes them worse. Even Spider-Man 3 of all things does a good job of showing that Peter is being selfish, arrogant and dismissive before getting the symbiote. So when he's wearing it, these negative aspects are brought to the forefront and he's forced to confront the consequences of his own actions and vanity. That is NOT what happens in this game.
Peter gets the symbiote after getting literally one-shot by Kraven (no comment on that, really) and the symbiote moves from Harry to Peter. It almost instantly starts to affect Peter's mind, which is weird considering it didn't do that at all when it was on Harry. It's also odd because Insomniac's Peter is one of the nicest versions of the character, so there are no negative traits to focus on and to exaggerate. Instead, the symbiote essentially brainwashes him into a different person altogether to create conflict, which feels so forced and artificial, especially because it happens in just a few days. Peter goes from normal to batshit crazy way too quickly, and it's made even worse by the fact that Peter has zero moments of introspection and self-reflection.
Every adaptation of the symbiote where it affects Peter's mind ends with him realizing that the symbiote is manipulating and twisting his mind, thus pushing him to his breaking point and realizing that to beat this darker side, he must overcome his negative emotions. This doesn't only show how incredible Peter's will-power is, but it also shows that he's a smart guy who can figure out when something is wrong with him. Take for example in Spectacular Spider-Man, when Flash tells him off and Peter goes "if Flash Thompson is starting to make sense, then something is completely wrong". It works because Peter is constantly self-conscious and he would realize after a while that all the people in his life are shunning him because of his behavior. He's built his entire sense of morality around being responsible so he should notice when he's not being responsible, yet this never happens. Even when he realizes the suit is alive (which should have been obvious from the start for someone like him), he still keeps using it with no reservations. So combine the symbiote making Peter cartoonishly evil with his inability to realize that something is very clearly wrong with him and you end up with a character that looks like a total fucking moron.
And I know that the immediate defense is that this isn't a showcase of Peter's ineptitude but instead a showcase of the symbiote's ability to manipulate people, but I do not buy that excuse at all. Let's look at how the story tries to justify this. There's a bit in the story where we get to go into Peter's mind as the symbiote takes hold, and this is where we see that Peter allegedly feels a sense of frustration at how villains and criminals he puts away often end up breaking out and committing more crimes. This feeling is alleviated by the symbiote, who proposes that they just kill them. You might have noticed that i said "allegedly" because Peter himself shows no indication that he feels that way. There's a whole entire side-story dedicated to Peter staunchly defending the point of not killing criminals to the point where he has to fight his former friend over it. The second reason as to how the symbiote was able to get such a strong hold of Peter's mind is that May's death is still in Peter's head and he's still mourning the loss of his surrogate mother. And the symbiote somehow vaguely uses this to get Peter to do things...? Once Harry becomes Venom, the symbiote uses the voice of Harry's mother to trick him into going along with the symbiote goal. It's a really interesting concept that is not utilized at all. The symbiote should have been using this on Peter to string him along, maybe even convincing him to kill criminals and super villains. I feel like that would have been a really interesting twist on the symbiote story, one that would make use of what the previous game set up to better serve the narrative. But we don't get that.
Instead, the symbiote makes Peter big mad and then Miles goes "this isn't you!" and beats it out of him. Speaking of, what does Miles do in this game? Right, nothing. He's probably the flagship Insomniac style character, that is to say a generica nice, well-meaning character with no real substance. This isn't new to this game, but in the earlier entries it made sense because he was still somewhat coming into his own, but here it stands out so much more because he's the co-protagonist. Or at least... He's supposed to be. He's barely in this game, he's completely divorced from the main story until almost the end. He's not there in MAJOR points of the story and it would have been fine if he spent his time doing interesting stuff but he doesn't. Miles spends most of his time NOT writing a 500 words essay (which is a weird ass plot point that pretty much never gets resolved) and is tasked with doing some of the meaningless side stuff like the Mysterio sidequest or the Museum of Black History stuff. He's also the one who gets to interact with Black Cat, and that brings me to my next point.
The Black Cat mission really REALLY highlights how uninteresting and underexplored Miles is as a character. Peter says that Miles should take care of Felicia because Miles is a new face so she'll listen to him... More? What? Wouldn't she respond better to the guy she's known for years and literally dated? And after the mission's done, I have to ask how it would've gone down differently if Peter went instead. And that's the problem. It wouldn't. It would have been the same because both Peter and Miles are super nice and would be willing to help her out. We know this for sure because we literally saw this happen in the last game, even when she was straight up lying to him, Peter still helped her and he's obviously willing to do the same here. So why did Miles have to go do this instead?
Well, because Insomniac realized they needed to give Miles SOMETHING to do. Anything, really. Outside of the main story, Miles is busy trying to get over his hatred of Mr. Negative, the man who killed his father. This is a legitimately interesting plotline and it's definitely one of the highlights of the game's story. Miles is in a similar position to what Li found himself some time ago, both being granted extraordinary powers and both having the chance to use them to take revenge on the man responsible for the loss in their lives. Li succumbed to his anger and vengeance, yet Miles chooses to move on, showing Li a new path away from anger and hate. He doesn't quite forgive Li, but he can't keep hating him. And that story is legitimately touching and cool and a great take on two characters that, let's be real here, sucked in the comics. And then we get back to the symbiote storyline and it's complete dogshit!
Back to the main point, Miles is barely involved in the main plotline and he basically just swoops in at the end to fight Peter and save the day. And that's what pisses me off so much. The whole reason Peter's ability to reflect on his actions has been removed is because if Peter was capable of signle-handedly repelling the symbiote, Miles would have nothing to do in this story. I think a much more obvious and easy solution would have been to give Miles the symbiote instead because then it would directly tie into his growing hatred and frustration, but even that isn't a great idea. The problem with the story is not even the story itself but the context surrounding it. Take for example the game's ending. Miles and Harry DO NOT know each other. They have pretty much never interacted except for maybe twice and they have no emotional relation. And a significant part of the finale hinges on the conflict between these two and it's REALLY hard to take it seriously because there is no real relationship between them. Harry, or rather the symbiote, is jealous of Miles for taking Peter away from them, but like... There is no buildup to it. We're just supposed to believe it.
And that's also one of the OTHER biggest failings of this game. Miles and Peter's relationship. I'm not even sure what their relationship is supposed to be. It's not a teacher and student because we've never seen Peter teach Miles anything and at this point, Miles is much much stronger than Peter. Like seriously, I think it's actually Peter who seems to need teaching since he's constantly getting tossed around like a ragdoll with Miles coming in to save him. For example, the Spider-Verse movies have Peter and Miles actually feel like friends, and because of the age gap Peter fits into the mentor role much better. I think it's that age gap that makes their relationship in the game so awkward. They're far enough that they're not really peers, but they're still too close in age for Peter to be the old guy because they're both still really young.
They also don't feel like friends either, they treat each other more like co-workers. People who only hang out with each other because they have to. And yet, the narrative plays it out as if these two are already super close and that we already believe that. So it makes no actual effort to show that they are really friends, and I say that because strangely enough the narrative actually DOES believe that they are close to each other. That's how their relationship is presented. The Peter boss fight hinges on you believing in their relationship but it ends up feeling emotionally hollow and sterile because it's a relationship that barely exists on screen. It also fails because there's no actual tension or conflict between the two. Peter is not actually jealous of Miles and his extra abilites, he doesn't actually think that Miles is getting in the way of him doing his thing, he doesn't actually have an insecurity problem from getting saved by Miles all the time, it's just the symbiote being evil because the plot demands it. If Peter was allowed to have some kind of negative aspects to his character, if he was allowed to not agree with Miles on everything, if he was allowed to not be a little bitch and blindly say yes to anything MJ says, if he was allowed to be honest and even "edgy" with his feelings then maybe this fight could have been interesting, but he's not so it doesn't.
Another huge missed opportunity to build a relationship between these two is with the Mr. Negative subplot. Peter should be able to relate to Miles and what he's going through because, in some way, Peter also went through something incredibly similar with Uncle Ben's death. Peter could tell him about the guy who killed Uncle Ben and how he felt about it and what he did. But he doesn't. He just generically says "shucks, we'll get him next time" and "hang in there, pal". You see what I mean when I say these two don't feel like close friends? And the same goes for Harry.
I love the relationship between Peter and Harry, it is genuinely one of the best parts of the game. They're such wholesome and adorable friends who you can TELL love each other like brothers. It's great and Insomniac nailed that. Which is why I don't buy for a single second that there would be any miscommunication between them. As stated in the game, they've known each other since they were pretty much little kids. They have known each other for almost two decades. They have been best friends for longer than most Fortnite fans have been alive. And yet, when Peter is VERY CLEARLY BEING MANIPULATED BY THE SYMBIOTE, Harry doesn't realize. Hell, MJ doesn't even realize. How in the fuck do you not notice when your best friend is clearly being manipulated by something or someone? Especially someone like Peter, of all people! The characters are all WAY too relaxed when the symbiote first appears. Both Peter and Miles sort of shrug off this super evil-looking unexplainable black mass and it's extremely strange. When Peter and Harrry have their sleepover they say they're going to test out the symbiote but they don't. They really don't. Because if Peter had used any of the tech of that facility to run tests on the symbiote, he would have found out that it's a living creature and would have freaked out about it. But then, the rest of the story obviously wouldn't have been able to happen, so instead they just vaguely screw around for a bit before going to sleep. I know this sounds super nitpicky, but Peter is a SCIENTIST, he should be interested in examining what the symbiote is and it's completely out of character that he doesn't. Harry's able to turn the suit into a very intricate set of tactical armor despite having very little control over the symbiote abilities and even copies the appearance of Peter's suit, and no one bats an eye. And again, even when Peter gets the symbiote, NO ONE realizes that it's altering his mood. Even if you're the biggest moron in the world, you would realize that the suit is changing with time as Peter's own mental fortitude is decaying. Like, it's just a visual thing, you can literally just look at the suit and see that it's morphing. But because the story needs everyone to not realize it, Peter's anger and edginess is chalked up to him being stressed out, completely ignoring how out of character that is. Like christ dude, he's genuinely tweaking out of his mind!
I've known my best friend for a decade. We've gone through high school together, we've gone on vacation together, we've lived some of the greatest moments of our lives together, we've spent so much time together that I consider him as more than a brother. And not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty much always a very generous and nice person to basically everyone, just like Peter is. If one day, I suddenly started being all moody and irascible, my best friend would notice in half a minute and ask me what's going on. Because we know each other like the back of our hands and we can be honest with each other. But Peter and Harry seemingly know one another almost exclusively on a surface level. It's so weird because the way they're written, it sometimes makes you feel like they genuinely ARE best friends, but that's not often. There's never a "your mom" pun or a weird inside joke that only they can understand, they act like they're scared of hurting each other's feelings all the time which results in a sterile relationship where both of the characters sound like they're walking on eggshells to avoid offending the other.
And that explains the game's greatest mistake: Venom. Harry is not the sole reason as to why it fails, but it's a big part of it. Also, notice how I've glossed over Kraven because while I don't necessarily dislike him, I think he is played up to be TOO much of a bad guy to the point where you have a hard time believing it. Seriously, this asshole took down half of Spidey's rogues gallery by hand? Everything he says is badass as all hell and I won't deny that, but it sucks because he's built up to be this big unstoppable force when we all know that he's just filler for when the real main event kicks in. And this version of Venom... My god, he's REALLY bad.
Venom is as bland as they come. No one seems to ACTUALLY know what Venom acts like and who he is so we're stuck with the TAS and Raimi interpretations 'till we die. "Uhhh well the symbiote is uhhh EVIL because it uhh it's BLACK and ALIEN and uhhh it uhh it HATES SPIDER-MAN because uhmmm yeah he wants to TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND TURN EVERYONE INTO SYMBIOTES!". Ignoring the fact that it is literally impossible for a symbiote to do that because it cannot have that many offsprings (which I can gloss over, it's a comic book nitpick that's not that big of a deal), it's insane to me that we get Venom on screen for a total of like 30 minutes in the entire game and we never even know what he wants. We don't know if it's controlling Harry or if Harry is evil or if he is being manipulated by the symbiote (I know he hears his mom's voice but that's not the point). We just know he wants to take over the world like he always does in videogames where Venom is present. How boring and one-note.
On a positive note, his design is really good, definitely one of the best we've gotten in the past few years and THANK GOD HE ACTUALLY HAS THE CHEST SYMBOL. Tony Todd is also so freakin' good and so wasted because of that. He's genuinely too good for how bad this Venom is. I mean it, I hate this Venom with a passion and it all starts with Harry.
Harry's goal in life is to "heal the world", whatever that means. It's a very vague sentiment but one that you can understand because he really is just trying to make the world a better place. The symbiote twists this mission statement to fit its own goals of covering the world in symbiotes and-- Okay, he's just the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man 1. He's a big dumb monster that wants to turn everyone into the same thing he is because he thinks it'll make everyone better, except he's much worse than the Lizard! Because at least, HE made an actual case for why he wanted to do this. Venom doesn't. And Peter never makes an argument against him either. He never says that the symbiotes will rob people of free will and make the world a worst place, he just goes "we've got to get that thing off of Harry" and that's it. That's their whole conflict. Venom is just a big dumb monster that wants to take over the world and it's so SO dumb.
They also try to shoehorn a little bit of conflict between Peter and Harry by having Harry be jealous of Peter because of the love Norman has for him, but like... Where does that even come from? It doesn't factor into the story at all, if anything it feels like a holdover from a different version of the script that no longer makes sense. It's a tired trope that comes out of left field and makes me wonder if the writers have ever even seen any other piece of Spider-Man media outside of the movies, because it's seriously uncanny how many parallels this game has to the Raimi movies and The Amazing Spider-Man movies.
But even if we ignore all of that, the most common defense for this Venom is that he's a new take on the character and that people only dislike him because he's not exactly like his original comic counterpart. So let's break this down.
To start, I will admit that part of the reason I don't like this Venom at all is that he isn't ANYTHING like what the character was in the comics. This isn't my entire reasoning for it but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't part of it. I really like Venom so, y'know, I kinda wanted something that was at the very least evocative of the character in the comics. But what is Venom like in the comics?
Well, there are four different ways you can interpret the character that make Venom who he is. The first one is that of a psychotic stalker and it's how Venom was first portrayed. It's probably the most popular version and I understand why. The combination of the symbiote's strength, its knowledge of Peter's personal life and its ability to bypass Peter's Spider-Sense made Venom a uniquely dangerous and terrifying foe. Unlike most villains, Venom could strike whenever, wherever and there was very little Peter could do about it. So this first version of Venom exists only to torment Peter with his sick sense of humor usually centering around his perverse obsession with killing Spider-Man.
The second way you can interpret Venom is that of the goofy anti-hero and it's the role Venom took on after he started his path to redemption. Thinking that what he's doing is the right thing, Venom engages in bizarre and sadistic behavior that would be seen as completely demented if not for the fact that he's usually doing these things to criminals and supervillains. As a result, Venom's silliness and more sinister sense of humor is more prominent here, and I can think of no better example of it than the Playstation 1 Spider-Man game by Neversoft. In that game, Venom legitimately thinks he's doing the right thing. He believes that Spider-Man stole technology from the Science Expo and needs to be punished for his crimes, so Venom's insane solution to this is to kidnap Spider-Man's wife and put her in a death trap to force him to come out and fight him. Because to Venom, this is a totally rational strategy that makes perfect sense.
The third way is that of the dark, evil mirror to Spider-Man. Peter stands as the ultimate symbol of responsibility, so this Venom stands as the ultimate symbol of irresponsibility. A person who can't take responsibility for their actions, instead choosing to blame their misfortunes on anyone and everything around them. The most obvious examples I can think of in mainstream media for this is Spider-Man 3's version of Venom. In that movie, he's a sleazy scumbag with no redeeming qualities, largely because this version's personality was primarily inspired by the Ultimate version of Venom who also fills this role. Both of these versions of Venom directly parallel Peter, being as scummy and self-serving as Peter is selfless and heroic. They also always have some sort of childhood connection, like in the Ultimate universe where their parents were friends and scientists together, those same people actually CREATING the symbiote in that universe. So it hits even harder when Venom says "our fathers died to create me" because you know the emotional weight behind that.
Ideally, a good interpretation of Venom should be able to be a mixture of all three of these. A psychotic stalker born out of an inability to take responsibility for his failures, but one with a twisted sense of honor and humanity that leaves the door open for a redemption down the line.
Now you might have noticed that I didn't mention the fourth way, and that's because the fourth way you can interpret Venom is the evil goo monster angle. Some evil goo fell on the host and he became an evil goo monster. That's all that is. I think you can see how uninteresting that sounds, and I want you to guess which one this game goes with.
I've gone through all of this without ONCE mentioning Eddie Brock, who in the comics is not only the host of Venom but IS Venom. I'm so tired of people thinking Venom is just the goo and the host doesn't matter, like the Tom Hardy movies. Venom is the combination of Eddie Brock and the symbiote, there's no going around it. When Peter's wearing the symbiote, we don't call him Venom, so why should we call anyone BUT Eddie Venom? I'm not one of those crybabies who hate that it's not Eddie in the game, but if you're not gonna have the most iconic host for the symbiote then at least make the substitute half as good! Regardless of all that, the reason I haven't mentioned Eddie until now is that I wanted to show that, funnily enough, it isn't really about him specifically. When it comes to Venom, any character could be a good Venom if given the proper setup to genuinely take on the role and challenge Peter. It's just that Eddie already has the motivation, backstory and personality to create Venom, since he is the original version of the character. The inherent problem with removing Eddie Brock from the symbote equation is that the version of Venom you end up with is nearly always going to be the fourth way you can interpret it, it being the evil goo.
Now, to be fair, there are versions of Venom that keep Eddie Brock and still fall into this category, I'm not saying that Eddie is an inherently better choice and that no other option is possible. But what I'm saying is that replacing the symbiote host with someone else requires a lot more narrative and character justification to make up for what is lost. It's this extra work that this game's version of Venom doesn't even bother to do, and that's because it takes cues from other interpretations without understanding them.
Insomniac's version of Venom is not an original creation. Venom being a childhood friend of Peter's is taken from the Ultimate comics, Venom being Harry is specifically taken from the Ultimate cartoon (OF ALL PLACES), Harry being sick, as I already mentioned, was already done in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Venom initiating a symbiote takeover of New York was already done in Web of Shadows. Everything done with Venom here has already been done before somewhere else and, arguably, better. So while this take may be new in the sense that it's a new combination of previously existing ideas, it is not inherently a new take. And when it comes to new interpretations, I'm actually quite open to them. That's why I think the symbiote, if anything, should have gone to Miles instead. It would have ACTUALLY been a new spin on the story and it would have allowed for new things to be done with Venom. For example, in the comics, the symbiote copied Peter's powers. I'm not sure why every single interpretation ever glosses over this, but the only reason Venom can do what he does is because he copied Peter's powers. So they could have taken this a step further and have Venom absorb Miles' invisibility (although in the comics, the symbiote can turn invisible) and venom powers, maybe even taking its name from THOSE venom powers. Sidenote, how come no one ever comments on that? Like, no one ever even makes a small joke about Venom and Miles' venom powers, that's weird.
Anyway, that would have been at least something new and different, something that would have made the "evil goo hurr durr" angle at least tolerable. But instead, we get this black turd with no real motivation other than wanting to take over the world. And I know a lot of people get upset whenever you dismiss this version of Venom as a mindless monster hellbent on taking over the world, but that's just what it is. A lot of people argue that Harry is the one with control over Venom, with his worldview being warped by the symbiote and NOT the symbiote simply puppeting Harry around for its own needs. So let's discuss this, because it's actually pretty funny. Harry is NOT in control. There are two main pieces of evidence to support my claim, the first being that we can see exactly when Harry is in control and when he's not. When Venom first forms at Oscorp, he's completely non-verbal until the arrival of Kraven. If Harry was the one in control there, then wouldn't he be speaking instead of behaving like a mindless animal? Once Kraven shows up, Venom starts to talk to him and the subtitles credit him as Harry, so I think that Harry's brain at this point starts to wake up, becoming fully aware once he kills Kraven. Harry is the dominant personality from this point up to the confrontation with MJ at May's house. That's where Venom gets his name (which is never explained, at least make him say the classic "we are like poison to you, Peter... That's why we call ourselves Venom!" or something) and we don't see Harry again until the finale. So I think that once Venom names himself, Harry is completely gone and the symbiote becomes the dominant confrolling force. The second piece of evidence is that during the finale, when the symbiote is peeled back to show Harry's face, the emotion Harry expresses is... Confusion? He has no idea what's going on and it's clear he hasn't been in control for a while. Like I said, the symbiote's been at the wheel since his encounter with MJ and once he's freed up, Harry starts protesting against the symbiote's actions. What more do you want to show that Harry isn't in control?
The most obvious counterpoint to my argument is that Venom speaks as if he is Harry. He reminisces about his time with Peter in high school, he goes out of his way to try and get Peter on his side and expresses anger at his father for not accepting him (which again, it's so confusing because Norman has literally given everything he possibly could to Harry and clearly loves him no matter what). So if that's the symbiote in control, then why would it care about any of this? At this point, my theory is that the symbiote is more like a parastic body snatcher, if you get what I mean. It aims to fully replace its host using its host's memories and personality as a base for its existence. So Venom does all these things because it's accessing Harry's memories and trying to become him. But that's not the truth at all. The truth is that this is simply bad writing. Insomniac were unsure of whether they wanted the symbiote to be evil mind-controlling goo with its own agende or if Harry should have actual reasons to be angry at Peter and his father, therefore turning to the symbiote. Unsure of what direction to go in, and probably scared of making Harry have some sort of edge or personality, they just went with both and the end result is a mess.
In the end, the story is rushed and there's no way around it. You, as a creative director, cannot say that "we didn't add the black suit in the first game because we felt it deserved its own story" when THIS is the story they had in mind. The pacing is all over the place, there are many unexplained plot points (like the meteorite which just randomly pops up to serve as Chekov's Gun) and the characterization is non-existent and almost insulting. It's absolutely insane to me that this Peter has gone from one of my favorite adaptations of the character EVER, to probably one of the worst, up (or rather, down) there with the Ultimate and 2017 shows. The symbiote arc lasts for a few days when it should be at the very least a week or two, and that makes it jarring because everyone acts like it's been months since it happened. Peter becomes corrupt way too easily and way too fast, and then he's all like "well sorry guys" and everything is magically okay, because there is nothing he should apologize for. He has no dark side, and that makes him boring.
The writing is not nearly as good as the first game. Hell, I can't remember any quips other than the "fresh out of honey" one, and I could name half of the ones in the first game by heart! I think that comes down to the fact that Insomniac had to prove themselves to the public by making the very best Spider-Man game they could, so they worked their asses off and made the first one with love and care and understanding of the character. But this game just feels like a generic AAA superhero game that is made with the mission statement of making the most money possible. I swear, there has to be some sort of Halo Infinite horror story behind the production of this fucking thing because there is no way the budget was this high and yet it's so buggy, lackluster and story-less. I mean it, we really REALLY need comic book writers back in the writing room for videogames because what the fuck is going on. First Arkham Knight, then this, then Suicide Squad. It's clear that whoever is writing just aims to make the most generically enjoyable story possible, and that makes all of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts. They are all super basic and there is very little development except for Peter and Miles dealing with grief. Woohoo, MJ is now a... Podcast host? Great development, take five everyone. Miles has the best arc in the game and yet, he was left off to the wayside a lot.
Another thing that bothers me is that the power levels are off the charts. Kraven can kill almost all of the Sinister Six, one shots FUCKING SPIDER-MAN, gets beaten by symbiote Spidey, and then Miles beats Peter. So does that mean that Miles is stronger than all of them? I mean, he is the one who beats Venom in the end fight (which THANK GOD we couldn't fight Harry as Peter, cause that would have been too emotional and made too much sense) so what's the deal here?
And then, as the cherry on top and the sole reason why I went back and re-reviewed this game after 6 months, the latest update. With the latest update, Insomniac added features that people were clamoring for. New Game Plus, replayable missions and bases, changing time of day, changing tendril colors, two... Just two? Okay-- Two new suits. And that's it. So in 6 months, we got about a quarter of the features we were asking for, and not only that but we got features that were already in the last game by DEFAULT. Miles Morales shipped with literally all of that. New Game Plus, replayable missions and bases and changing time of day were all in the Miles Morales base game. It's clear that the developers were rushed and while I can really excuse and understand that, because it sucks that publishers force developers to release unfinished games just to meet deadlines... I also think the core issues with the game go beyond the concept of time constraints. They had five fucking years to make this game be their magnum opus and yet, what we get is something that is technically marvelous but deep as a puddle.
And sure, the average Joe who buys the game won't care about all of these nerd ramblings and will be content with the game because he recognizes Venom from the cartoons and thinks he's super cool. He will be happy that the game is the equivalent of a Fast and Furious movie because that's what the average Joe likes. But even if the original game was a bit on that side as well, it made up for it with how much heart and love for the character you could feel. You could genuinely tell that Insomniac wanted to make die-hard Spider-Man fans happy and they had managed to. But sadly, they had to bend over and accept that to make more money, they had to make a game that would appeal to a bigger audience. And that meant giving up on any sort of depth and just making cool set pieces so wanna-be Spider-Man fans would go "WOOHOO THIS IS THE GREATEST GAME EVER" without even knowing the character. I realize how gatekeep-y I sound right now but I don't care, it's fucking criminal that Insomniac can get away with it and nobody bats an eye. If a book was adapted into a movie and wasn't faithful at all, everyone would go nuts and get super angry and boycott the creators, and yet when that happens with a comic book, no one cares. It's a sad truth that we have to live with. Comic book media is, depressingly, not made to appeal to us comic fans. They're made to appeal to people who would bully others who read comic books in high school.
So in the end, as much as it truly pains me to say it, once the honeymoon phase is over, the new coat of paint wears off and it's clear that we're just playing another Spider-Man game, when this could have been THE Spider-Man game. This game is inferior to the first one in almost everything except the graphics and traversal. It breaks my heart because I was repping this game all the way until release and yet, it's clear it was rushed and didn't have the same passion behind it as the first one. It was just a corporate mandated AI-written shlock of cool scenes and action moments. If you're a Spider-Man fan, you will like or maybe even love this game. But if you're THE Spider-Man fan, you will be heartbroken beyond belief. And as I said, I stand by my 10/10 personal rating because my favorite past time is listening to music while getting my thoughts together and swinging through NY. And this game gives me that in every way, and I love it. But I can't in good faith recommend this game for anything more than its gameplay. And that just makes me sad.
I have serious doubt that Insomniac will nail the third one, but I'm an idiot so I will buy it regardless. Here's hoping that in five years, I can come back to this review and tell myself I was wrong. But until then, this is how it is. A Spider-Man game, who dared to be great... And failed.
I'm a gigantic Spider-Man fan, and not the "TikTok kind" that is so popular nowadays. Y'know, the ones who have seen a couple of the movies and maybe watched the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and thus brag online about how they're "huge fans". I've wasted most of my teenage years reading comic books and specifically ALL of Spidey's comics. And while they all obviously range from créme de la créme to... Well, Zeb Wells and Nick Spencer, I still feel like on some degree, Peter Parker is pretty consistent in all of them. It's an understatement to say Spider-Man is my favorite fictional character of all time and that I love him to death, and that obviously makes me the target audience for a Spider-Man game... Right?
I'd like to preface this by saying that I really like Insomniac's Spider-Man and his world. While I disagree with a few things, namely Mary Jane's portrayal and the introduction of Miles Morales so early on, I still feel like Insomniac DOES get who Peter Parker is and what his stories are all about. And what solidified him as one of the GOATs is the ending of the first game, where Peter does what he couldn't do in One More Day. He sacrifices Aunt May and just... Lets go. He grows. And that's what made me truly love him. To see a Peter accept the weight of his responsibilities and grow into one of the definitive iterations of Spider-Man was quite endearing and amazing. I also enjoyed Miles, if a little bland, and the supporting cast was pretty good. Mostly the villains, but the others were serviceable enough. I have spent thousands of hours on PS4 and PC combined on the first game, and it's my second favorite Spider-Man game. Is that enough? That's enough.
All this to say, I was completely on board for this game and full of hype. I'm not that huge of a fan of the symbiote storyline, especially because no one ever adapts the actual symbiote and just adapts the TAS and Raimi versions, but I was hella excited and mostly curious to see Insomniac taking a shot at it. Hell, I pre-ordered the game! The only game I've ever pre-ordered is, wouldn't you know it, Marvel's Spider-Man. I was in the forefront, foaming at the mouth to get this game which was supposedly gonna be the end-all be-all of Spider-Man games, the game that would end the dumb debate that Spider-Man 2 is actually the best one (it's not), the game that would bring justice to its characters and their 60 years of stories.
Yeah... About that.
TL;DR Game is unfinished, buggy, has terrible characterization and lacks any sort of charm that made the first one so beloved. The story is written for a casual audience that doesn't know the character and has so many plot holes you'd think Mole Man passed through here.
Love for a game should NEVER cloud objective judgement over it. My favorite game of all time is Life is Strange, and while I absolutely recognize that it's FAR from perfect, I love it nonetheless. And Insomniac, those sly dogs, had it easy. Like Sam Raimi once said, "kids come to this picture and Spider-Man is their hero, [...] anyone you put in the superhero outfit and you play the heroic horns on the soundtrack, they're gonna look up to as their hero, you just get that unearned, it's not fair but it really is true... So you have an obligation to bring your character to the level that's worth their admiration, you get it without having paid for it, so the job of making the movie in some ways is paying for it". Insomniac doesn't have to do shit, they could make the worst Spider-Man game ever but dumbasses (me) are still gonna keep buying it because it's fucking Spider-Man. They didn't earn anything, people just buy their Spider-Man games cause of, you guessed it, Spider-Man! Which means they should have a moral obligation to make the game up to the standards that people expect for a character as iconic and beloved as the gool ol' webhead. And here's where Insomniac already loses me.
Let's look at it from a gameplay perspective first. The game is, in almost everything in that regard, an upgrade from the first one in terms of mechanics. The swinging is still fun as ever and the new option to change swinging difficulty is cool, if a little useless. Barely anything changes, really, but it's nice that you can smash your head on the floor if you don't calculate everything. Fall damage is... Cool? Doesn't change much and doesn't add that many stakes, honestly. But it's nice to have the option.
The suit selection is really pathetic and lackluster. Almost half of the slots are taken up by movie suits that were in the previous game, and even ones that no one asked for. Like seriously, who asked for the fucking Night Monkey suit? It's obvious that Insomniac wanted to make everyone happy by having every movie suit, but it sucks that we have to sacrifice stuff like the ol' trusty Spidey armor and the Big Time suit, especially when a suit slot is taken up by something like a goofy ass Peach Momoko suit. And I like Peach Momoko! But what is that suit doing here? It's also limited by the fact that they wanted Miles and Peter to have the same number of suits... Which makes zero sense. Peter has been around for six times as long as Miles, it's obvious he's gonna have more suits. And even then, a lot of Miles' suits are taken out. The animated suit from his solo game looked so freakin' good and yet, it's nowhere to be found here. And that's glossing over the digsusting looking "Evolved suit" that he gets towards the end of the game. An Adidas ad, in my Spider-Man game? What is this, Web of Shadows?
Foreshadowing. Anyway, the map may be much bigger but it has very little to offer. I love that they added Queens, it's seriously amazing, and going back there for the first time since 2005, back in Ultimate Spider-Man, was amazing. I liked the layout and it's pretty accurate, obviously scaled down a bit but that's fine. It looks great, and that's the problem. It's mostly just there and serves little purpose other than a few missions taking place in it. Even something as simple as going into Peter's house, something you could do in the TASM2 game of all things, is only allowed in one mission. So I don't understand why they added the second island other than to show it off. Hell, if anything I'm angry that they made THAT but not Washington Heights? It's never represented in Spidey games for some reason, give me some Washington Heights rep :(
The enemy bases are fine, a bit of a downgrade from the first game but I was never fond of them, and so are the sidequests. They're on par with the first game for the most part but they have much higher highs and lower lows, whereas the first game was much more consistent. That's not to say that there aren't missions that I loved purely for their production value. I liked Howard's side mission, hell I loved it, but it's a sign of what's to come. The only way that mission works is if you suspend your belief to the point where you can seriously believe that there's a magic illness that you know will kill you in a few minutes, allowing you to say goodbye one last time. It's a mission that comments on, as corny as that sounds, the beauty of life and I loved it but if you put your glasses on, you'll see it's basically impossible for it to be real and can only happen in a pre-determined narrative. As for other stuff, Wraith's storyline is fine. I don't really like her character and she makes zero sense but they handled Cletus Kassidy well. Mysterio's storyline is also a bit weird because like, I understand what they were going for but having Miles be locked in to play them takes away from the fact that Mysterio has a history with Peter. There's also the Brooklyn Visions quest which are... So pathetic. They reek of corporate mandated progressive quests that I have a hard time taking them seriously at all. They're corny as hell and only work in a Disney Channel setting, if anything. There's also the random crimes which have been either completely simplified to the point where their skill requirements are null or made so boring and tedious that you don't even stop to do them.
So to give a brief overview of all of that, the crimes, challenges and bases have taken quite a step down as there's less variety in them and the replayability of the bases is non-existent. Collectibles are about the same and the sidequests are sometimes a bit better and sometimes a bit worse. Carnage and Mysterio obviously are more memorable due to the characters featured and their higher production value, but that's about it. There's also many smaller features, like quality of life stuff, that are completely missing. The social feed from the first game was an interesting window into the perspective of an average person living in New York during the events of the game. In fact, a lot of it was actually well written and felt authentic to interactions and exchanges that you often find on the internet. And while I realize it wasn't that important of a feature, it was cool to have and yet it's nowhere to be seen here. It's such a shame because it would have been really cool seeing people's thoughts on the symbiote invasion and black suit Spidey. There's also a lack of character bios, which is baffling because there's no reason for them not to be here. I loved reading them in the past two games because they were written from Peter's and Miles' perspective, but there's nothing here. It would have been very useful, especially for several characters who really could have used some more backstory.
There's also the podcasts, which are... Horrid. They are clearly written by people who don't understand JJJ's character and just want to make him a full on Alex Jones parody, while Danika is the wonderchild internet SJW or whatever who always says the right thing. It's boring and uninspired. I read somewhere that someone thought it would have been really cool to replace Danika with a Flash Thompson podcast where he praised Spidey and talked about different happenings from the past, and I honestly love that idea. I love Flash Thompson and I would kill to have him be an actual character in this game, rather than a boring easter egg in a flashback.
One of the most important parts of the game, gameplay wise, is combat. And combat is very fun, still too repetitive to be comparable to Batman Arkham or even Sleeping Dogs, but they added some tweaks and moves that make a lot of difference. When you fight, there's a 99,9% chance your combo will start by you knocking the enemy in the air and then beating them down while floating like a beautiful butterfly, and since that's a good majority of the game, Insomniac made air combos much more dynamic. You have a bounce, you have a dodge under mid-air, you have a follow up to the swing kick and you can juggle enemies much more easily than the first game. That doesn't mean ground combat isn't great either, because I'll admit I freakin' love bashing bad guys into red paste by spamming the attack button while they're against a wall. Yes, I'm mentally insane.
But on the other side of the coin... The combat abilities. God. Damn. It. I wasn't completely against the iron arms at first, I thought it was an interesting evolution of the character based on what he had done in the last one, and I liked to think we would get an explanation as to why he has them, the reason being that Peter feels like he never does enough and has to keep up as much as he can and overcompensates for everything. Or maybe he would build them to make up for his lack of a symbiote suit. But instead, the game has NO explanation of the iron arms, they just appear and we're supposed to accept it. Let me make it clear: a man who cannot even afford rent for a one room apartment manages to create nano-tech so advanced that it can materialize out of thin air. It's honestly hilarious because the developers also seem kind of "embarrassed" about it? The arms are never used in the story, even in situations where they would genuinely save the day (i.e. Coney Island). And that's without even mentioning how dumb they are in-game. The abilities are a cool concept but the cooldown strips away the fun of them because you have to wait 30 seconds for them to pop up again, when it could have been like in Miles' game where you can use any ability as long as you have the meter, and finishers are stored in another slot. They also look so dumb and half the time don't even target the right enemy, making the combat sorta frustrating and imprecise. The symbiote abilities, on the other hand, at least visually make sense and look cool.
So now not only do we have an MCU-ified Spider-Man with nano-technology, we are also canonically stuck with it. And to the thumbsuckers going "just don't use them if you hate them that much", okay you doofus, I would if they weren't super-imposed all the time. If I parry, they pop up, if I want a boost while in mid-air they pop up, if I go walk my dog they pop up. Oh, and let's not forget that they also took away most of the gadgets and left the dumbest and most boring replacements for them. It sucks so much ass and I can't think of a good reason they would have done this except for the obvious one. They had to make it more like the MCU to make it more marketable, just like with the Peter face change.
The faces. Good lord the faces. I was fine with the face change when it was first announced. I was okay with it because it didn't impact me that much. It looked decent in Miles Morales and a bit weird in the Remastered, but I chalked it up to my brain thinking about the original one every time he showed up. But now, it's been about 4 years from the face change. We've had time to accept it, and grown to love it. "Love" it. Right.
To all you motherfuckers out there who said they didn't change Peter's face to make him look more like Tom Holland, I dare you not to compare them in the flashback sections. It's insane how much they look alike, in fact it's not insane it's downright ABSURD. Back when the first game was being made, the main Spider-Man was Andrew Garfield so they got a guy that resembled him in some way, John Bubniak, and he was PERFECT. Genuinely such a perfect look for Peter and the voice fit him so well. Then, since the current one is Tom Holland, Insomniac clearly realized they needed a bit of brand synergy so the casual gamer would link them just by looking at it. Remember when people cried about Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of The Galaxy not looking at all like the MCU? Yeah, exactly. Dumb complaints from people who have never even looked in the general direction of a comic book.
And I wish Peter was the worst of this. He may look awful and his face is completely wrong, but he looks like Brad Pitt compared to the other ones. Harry is fine, I kinda like his redesign, even though I do miss the older one. I also miss Scott Porter, he's my GOAT :( I actually think Miles looks the best out of all of them simply because you can tell he was animated with care for every subtle detail, so that's nice.
And then... Mary Jane. I'm sorry for the actress, and I know she has come out and said she had jaw reconstruction surgery, but they botched her so bad in the game. I'm not one of those cringy coomers who go "OMG THEY MADE HER WOKE BY MAKING HER UGLY #REDPILLED" like some of you weirdos out there, but it's fucking abhorrent what has happened to her. Mary Jane is a SUPERMODEL. I don't get why everyone wants to turn her into Lois Lane when she has always been this fun-loving, gorgeous redhead who looks like the kind of girl who never stops partying. Underneath that, she's a whole different beast, but it's always worked in the comics so why can't it work here? Would it be objectifying to make her a model? It's just a job! But even if we take all of that out of the way, even if we say "she's a normal person who works as a journalist so she can't look like the hottest woman on Earth", I genuinely cannot excuse the way she looks. The animations of her face look so bad that you'd think Dingo Pictures made them, her Jaw gives the Crimson Chin a run for his money and her fashion sense is god-awful. She looked great, beautiful, gorgeous even in the first game. I loved her design, she looked like what a modern Mary Jane would look like in my head, and then they went and redesigned her for some reason and she looks awful. So we pair a Peter who looks like he's maybe 21 at max with a Mary Jane who looks in her late 30's, coupled with the fact that they're written horribly. What do we get? One of the worst parts of this game.
Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker are not Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker. I don't think the writers know who the fuck these characters are and the most exposure they've gotten about them is probably, like... The Raimi movies? Maybe not even that. In the first game, Mary Jane complained about the fact that Peter held her hand too much and looked out for her. From our perspective, it makes sense that she's just talking crazy because we witness first-hand what the baddies are willing to do to get what they want, so her complaints are understandable but ludicrous too. It's human, and I liked that. If anything, I see a lot of similarities between her and Skyler from Breaking Bad, both being love interests who people hate because they actually have a point which goes against the protagonist. And thus I really liked MJ and Pete last time. But that's the thing. I didn't like THESE MJ and Pete, I liked the first ones. Everyone of importance has changed face models to the point where the first game and this one feel like they take place in different universes and it makes me so disconnected from the narrative because this feels like such a random recast. I loved those characters that I associate with a certain face model, and now not only are they written completely different, they also look completely different. I feel detached from them and it sucks because the most important part of any Spider-Man story is the conflict between characters that you know and love. But here, we have a different faced Peter, a difference faced Mary Jane and a different faced AND voiced Harry. So at the end of the day, all of the time I spent in the past game getting to know and love them is null and void because they're not who I fell in love with. And again, I really really liked MJ and Pete in the first game. But then in this one, for some reason, they have this tension between them that is so weird and off-putting. They do not act like two people in a relationship, they act like they have to be nice to each other because both of them are too uncomfortable to actually say that they don't like being in a relationship. It's weird and it's never explained, they have these cute moments that feel so sterile. I remember smiling like a dumbass in the first game's DLC when they said "I love you" to each other, and I was hoping that would get expanded here but... Nope. Nada. What we DO get is a Mary Jane who says nothing of importance and her only goal is to be the best reporter at the Daily Bugle. That's all there is. And to those screaming that she has depth and just keeps it all bottled up inside, I'm gonna ask you this very simple question. Who is Mary Jane Watson?
I genuinely mean it. Who is she, outside of Peter's girlfriend? Do we know anything about her? About her past? About her family? About her friends? MJ's past is such a HUGE part of who she is in the comics, it explains all of her behaviors and puts into perspective how much she is hurting. Like Peter, she has also lost someone because of her lack of responsibility, Obviously that is VERY MUCH reducing it but that's the jist of it. The reason they work together so well is because they both have such complex lives that, when put side by side, match. But in the game, all we know is that MJ is a reporter and she loves Peter and Harry. That's it. When New York goes to absolute shit because of the symbiotes, we don't hear her being worried about her Aunt Anna, or her sister, or her friends. She is a nobody and acts as a simple plot device. All of her playable sections only exist to have her help Peter. MJ has nothing going on in her life outside of supporting Peter. The game tries to comment on this by having her complain (as a brainwashed monster, mind you) about her job and having to help Peter all the time, but it's not enough to simply acknowledge these problems. You have to fix them.
It's clear that the intention of Mary Jane becoming Scream is to have her vent her frustrations about life and Peter, but it doesn't work for three reasons. Firstly, we know that the symbiote is capable of making people act differently from their normal selves, so it's hard to believe what she's saying is true. Secondly, the lack of setup is astounding. Apparently, MJ hates her job now. Even though she wanted it so bad in the first game that she repeatedly almost died for it. Even in this very game, she gets so upset when her story doesn't get published, but after one discouraging Skype call from JJJ she wants to quit? Thirdly, just like the first game, the conflict between MJ and Peter is lopsided. Due to Insomniac being so afraid and unwilling to give Peter any negative traits, it has always been difficult to take MJ's complaints seriously because really, Peter wasn't being overbearing or overprotective, he was actually supportive of her work, even giving her gadgets to help her sneak around. And even for stuff like the Charles Standish situation, that was a complete misunderstanding and the blame of the situation falls entirely on MJ since she's the one being unreasonable.
Something similar happens here, where MJ is mad at Peter for not being able to pull his weight and not being supportive of her and her goals. But that's bullshit! He tries his hardest to get a job and is only ever kind and encouraging to her whenever she brings up her work. So the issue is not that Peter is an unsupportive boyfriend, the issue is that MJ can't communicate her feelings properly. But that's not a character flaw, that's a genuine writing flaw because it's clear they didn't know what they were supposed to do with her. It's funny because people who say that the complainers are just nerds who wanted her to be hot and have no character ironically defend a non-character. I've seen cereal boxes have more personality and depth than this Mary Jane, and it sucks because I genuinely believe we'll never get a good adaptation of her EVER. The 90's show version was good and so were Spectacular and TNAS, but other than that we're drier than the Sahara Desert.
So all of that to circle back to their relationships. They don't talk like a couple, in fact no one in this game talks like they're anything more than acquaintances. All, and I mean ALL, of the characters act like nerdy youth pastors. Like many people have already said, they talk like they know their employers are listening. It's hilarious because it's true, it really is. They are all such goody two-shoes that it's laughable when they try to sound "bad". These are New York natives, dude! NEW YORK! You do not make it in New York if you don't try to grow a backbone and at the very least stand up for yourself. Miles doesn't talk like a black kid who grew up in NY, and the flashback where Peter is riding his bike and telling off on people is goofy as hell. I understand that Insomniac doesn't want to offend anybody but all I ask for is for writing that makes ME decide if I like that character or not, not some pre-determined "well, Harry is nice because he has this charity foundation and he's super cool and he is very nice and never says anything bad and he loves Peter". Miles also pisses me off so bad because whenever Peter says he's too busy to talk to him and ignores him, Miles is like "aw man, Pete, that sucks" and never fucking tells him that he's an asshole. MJ is also a very generic love interest who can take care of herself, so let's put a check on that in the clipboard so we can be labeled as "progressive". As for the other characters like Hailey, Rio, Ganke... Uhm... Yeah no that's it. There's no other supporting character. Cool. So just like, all of them act super nice and sweet to each other like it's a fucking Nickelodeon show. None of them have an edge or some sort of character introspection. Peter is just a good guy who wants to do good, Miles is just a good guy who wants to do good, MJ is just a good gal who wants to do good, Harry is just a good guy who wants to do good. There is no introspection, no interesting side that we get to see.
And again, it's laughable when they try to make Peter sound evil. 80% of the things Peter says while under the influence of the symbiote, he would have genuinely said himself in the 70's-90's comics. I like Peter being a super nice person, but this version is just so plain that it makes white bread sound like a five star dish. Which is why this rendition of the symbiote storyline sucks. Previous adaptations of the symbiote storylines (which veer off from the comic book one) all work because they use Peter's existing character flaws to show how the symbiote makes them worse. Even Spider-Man 3 of all things does a good job of showing that Peter is being selfish, arrogant and dismissive before getting the symbiote. So when he's wearing it, these negative aspects are brought to the forefront and he's forced to confront the consequences of his own actions and vanity. That is NOT what happens in this game.
Peter gets the symbiote after getting literally one-shot by Kraven (no comment on that, really) and the symbiote moves from Harry to Peter. It almost instantly starts to affect Peter's mind, which is weird considering it didn't do that at all when it was on Harry. It's also odd because Insomniac's Peter is one of the nicest versions of the character, so there are no negative traits to focus on and to exaggerate. Instead, the symbiote essentially brainwashes him into a different person altogether to create conflict, which feels so forced and artificial, especially because it happens in just a few days. Peter goes from normal to batshit crazy way too quickly, and it's made even worse by the fact that Peter has zero moments of introspection and self-reflection.
Every adaptation of the symbiote where it affects Peter's mind ends with him realizing that the symbiote is manipulating and twisting his mind, thus pushing him to his breaking point and realizing that to beat this darker side, he must overcome his negative emotions. This doesn't only show how incredible Peter's will-power is, but it also shows that he's a smart guy who can figure out when something is wrong with him. Take for example in Spectacular Spider-Man, when Flash tells him off and Peter goes "if Flash Thompson is starting to make sense, then something is completely wrong". It works because Peter is constantly self-conscious and he would realize after a while that all the people in his life are shunning him because of his behavior. He's built his entire sense of morality around being responsible so he should notice when he's not being responsible, yet this never happens. Even when he realizes the suit is alive (which should have been obvious from the start for someone like him), he still keeps using it with no reservations. So combine the symbiote making Peter cartoonishly evil with his inability to realize that something is very clearly wrong with him and you end up with a character that looks like a total fucking moron.
And I know that the immediate defense is that this isn't a showcase of Peter's ineptitude but instead a showcase of the symbiote's ability to manipulate people, but I do not buy that excuse at all. Let's look at how the story tries to justify this. There's a bit in the story where we get to go into Peter's mind as the symbiote takes hold, and this is where we see that Peter allegedly feels a sense of frustration at how villains and criminals he puts away often end up breaking out and committing more crimes. This feeling is alleviated by the symbiote, who proposes that they just kill them. You might have noticed that i said "allegedly" because Peter himself shows no indication that he feels that way. There's a whole entire side-story dedicated to Peter staunchly defending the point of not killing criminals to the point where he has to fight his former friend over it. The second reason as to how the symbiote was able to get such a strong hold of Peter's mind is that May's death is still in Peter's head and he's still mourning the loss of his surrogate mother. And the symbiote somehow vaguely uses this to get Peter to do things...? Once Harry becomes Venom, the symbiote uses the voice of Harry's mother to trick him into going along with the symbiote goal. It's a really interesting concept that is not utilized at all. The symbiote should have been using this on Peter to string him along, maybe even convincing him to kill criminals and super villains. I feel like that would have been a really interesting twist on the symbiote story, one that would make use of what the previous game set up to better serve the narrative. But we don't get that.
Instead, the symbiote makes Peter big mad and then Miles goes "this isn't you!" and beats it out of him. Speaking of, what does Miles do in this game? Right, nothing. He's probably the flagship Insomniac style character, that is to say a generica nice, well-meaning character with no real substance. This isn't new to this game, but in the earlier entries it made sense because he was still somewhat coming into his own, but here it stands out so much more because he's the co-protagonist. Or at least... He's supposed to be. He's barely in this game, he's completely divorced from the main story until almost the end. He's not there in MAJOR points of the story and it would have been fine if he spent his time doing interesting stuff but he doesn't. Miles spends most of his time NOT writing a 500 words essay (which is a weird ass plot point that pretty much never gets resolved) and is tasked with doing some of the meaningless side stuff like the Mysterio sidequest or the Museum of Black History stuff. He's also the one who gets to interact with Black Cat, and that brings me to my next point.
The Black Cat mission really REALLY highlights how uninteresting and underexplored Miles is as a character. Peter says that Miles should take care of Felicia because Miles is a new face so she'll listen to him... More? What? Wouldn't she respond better to the guy she's known for years and literally dated? And after the mission's done, I have to ask how it would've gone down differently if Peter went instead. And that's the problem. It wouldn't. It would have been the same because both Peter and Miles are super nice and would be willing to help her out. We know this for sure because we literally saw this happen in the last game, even when she was straight up lying to him, Peter still helped her and he's obviously willing to do the same here. So why did Miles have to go do this instead?
Well, because Insomniac realized they needed to give Miles SOMETHING to do. Anything, really. Outside of the main story, Miles is busy trying to get over his hatred of Mr. Negative, the man who killed his father. This is a legitimately interesting plotline and it's definitely one of the highlights of the game's story. Miles is in a similar position to what Li found himself some time ago, both being granted extraordinary powers and both having the chance to use them to take revenge on the man responsible for the loss in their lives. Li succumbed to his anger and vengeance, yet Miles chooses to move on, showing Li a new path away from anger and hate. He doesn't quite forgive Li, but he can't keep hating him. And that story is legitimately touching and cool and a great take on two characters that, let's be real here, sucked in the comics. And then we get back to the symbiote storyline and it's complete dogshit!
Back to the main point, Miles is barely involved in the main plotline and he basically just swoops in at the end to fight Peter and save the day. And that's what pisses me off so much. The whole reason Peter's ability to reflect on his actions has been removed is because if Peter was capable of signle-handedly repelling the symbiote, Miles would have nothing to do in this story. I think a much more obvious and easy solution would have been to give Miles the symbiote instead because then it would directly tie into his growing hatred and frustration, but even that isn't a great idea. The problem with the story is not even the story itself but the context surrounding it. Take for example the game's ending. Miles and Harry DO NOT know each other. They have pretty much never interacted except for maybe twice and they have no emotional relation. And a significant part of the finale hinges on the conflict between these two and it's REALLY hard to take it seriously because there is no real relationship between them. Harry, or rather the symbiote, is jealous of Miles for taking Peter away from them, but like... There is no buildup to it. We're just supposed to believe it.
And that's also one of the OTHER biggest failings of this game. Miles and Peter's relationship. I'm not even sure what their relationship is supposed to be. It's not a teacher and student because we've never seen Peter teach Miles anything and at this point, Miles is much much stronger than Peter. Like seriously, I think it's actually Peter who seems to need teaching since he's constantly getting tossed around like a ragdoll with Miles coming in to save him. For example, the Spider-Verse movies have Peter and Miles actually feel like friends, and because of the age gap Peter fits into the mentor role much better. I think it's that age gap that makes their relationship in the game so awkward. They're far enough that they're not really peers, but they're still too close in age for Peter to be the old guy because they're both still really young.
They also don't feel like friends either, they treat each other more like co-workers. People who only hang out with each other because they have to. And yet, the narrative plays it out as if these two are already super close and that we already believe that. So it makes no actual effort to show that they are really friends, and I say that because strangely enough the narrative actually DOES believe that they are close to each other. That's how their relationship is presented. The Peter boss fight hinges on you believing in their relationship but it ends up feeling emotionally hollow and sterile because it's a relationship that barely exists on screen. It also fails because there's no actual tension or conflict between the two. Peter is not actually jealous of Miles and his extra abilites, he doesn't actually think that Miles is getting in the way of him doing his thing, he doesn't actually have an insecurity problem from getting saved by Miles all the time, it's just the symbiote being evil because the plot demands it. If Peter was allowed to have some kind of negative aspects to his character, if he was allowed to not agree with Miles on everything, if he was allowed to not be a little bitch and blindly say yes to anything MJ says, if he was allowed to be honest and even "edgy" with his feelings then maybe this fight could have been interesting, but he's not so it doesn't.
Another huge missed opportunity to build a relationship between these two is with the Mr. Negative subplot. Peter should be able to relate to Miles and what he's going through because, in some way, Peter also went through something incredibly similar with Uncle Ben's death. Peter could tell him about the guy who killed Uncle Ben and how he felt about it and what he did. But he doesn't. He just generically says "shucks, we'll get him next time" and "hang in there, pal". You see what I mean when I say these two don't feel like close friends? And the same goes for Harry.
I love the relationship between Peter and Harry, it is genuinely one of the best parts of the game. They're such wholesome and adorable friends who you can TELL love each other like brothers. It's great and Insomniac nailed that. Which is why I don't buy for a single second that there would be any miscommunication between them. As stated in the game, they've known each other since they were pretty much little kids. They have known each other for almost two decades. They have been best friends for longer than most Fortnite fans have been alive. And yet, when Peter is VERY CLEARLY BEING MANIPULATED BY THE SYMBIOTE, Harry doesn't realize. Hell, MJ doesn't even realize. How in the fuck do you not notice when your best friend is clearly being manipulated by something or someone? Especially someone like Peter, of all people! The characters are all WAY too relaxed when the symbiote first appears. Both Peter and Miles sort of shrug off this super evil-looking unexplainable black mass and it's extremely strange. When Peter and Harrry have their sleepover they say they're going to test out the symbiote but they don't. They really don't. Because if Peter had used any of the tech of that facility to run tests on the symbiote, he would have found out that it's a living creature and would have freaked out about it. But then, the rest of the story obviously wouldn't have been able to happen, so instead they just vaguely screw around for a bit before going to sleep. I know this sounds super nitpicky, but Peter is a SCIENTIST, he should be interested in examining what the symbiote is and it's completely out of character that he doesn't. Harry's able to turn the suit into a very intricate set of tactical armor despite having very little control over the symbiote abilities and even copies the appearance of Peter's suit, and no one bats an eye. And again, even when Peter gets the symbiote, NO ONE realizes that it's altering his mood. Even if you're the biggest moron in the world, you would realize that the suit is changing with time as Peter's own mental fortitude is decaying. Like, it's just a visual thing, you can literally just look at the suit and see that it's morphing. But because the story needs everyone to not realize it, Peter's anger and edginess is chalked up to him being stressed out, completely ignoring how out of character that is. Like christ dude, he's genuinely tweaking out of his mind!
I've known my best friend for a decade. We've gone through high school together, we've gone on vacation together, we've lived some of the greatest moments of our lives together, we've spent so much time together that I consider him as more than a brother. And not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty much always a very generous and nice person to basically everyone, just like Peter is. If one day, I suddenly started being all moody and irascible, my best friend would notice in half a minute and ask me what's going on. Because we know each other like the back of our hands and we can be honest with each other. But Peter and Harry seemingly know one another almost exclusively on a surface level. It's so weird because the way they're written, it sometimes makes you feel like they genuinely ARE best friends, but that's not often. There's never a "your mom" pun or a weird inside joke that only they can understand, they act like they're scared of hurting each other's feelings all the time which results in a sterile relationship where both of the characters sound like they're walking on eggshells to avoid offending the other.
And that explains the game's greatest mistake: Venom. Harry is not the sole reason as to why it fails, but it's a big part of it. Also, notice how I've glossed over Kraven because while I don't necessarily dislike him, I think he is played up to be TOO much of a bad guy to the point where you have a hard time believing it. Seriously, this asshole took down half of Spidey's rogues gallery by hand? Everything he says is badass as all hell and I won't deny that, but it sucks because he's built up to be this big unstoppable force when we all know that he's just filler for when the real main event kicks in. And this version of Venom... My god, he's REALLY bad.
Venom is as bland as they come. No one seems to ACTUALLY know what Venom acts like and who he is so we're stuck with the TAS and Raimi interpretations 'till we die. "Uhhh well the symbiote is uhhh EVIL because it uhh it's BLACK and ALIEN and uhhh it uhh it HATES SPIDER-MAN because uhmmm yeah he wants to TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND TURN EVERYONE INTO SYMBIOTES!". Ignoring the fact that it is literally impossible for a symbiote to do that because it cannot have that many offsprings (which I can gloss over, it's a comic book nitpick that's not that big of a deal), it's insane to me that we get Venom on screen for a total of like 30 minutes in the entire game and we never even know what he wants. We don't know if it's controlling Harry or if Harry is evil or if he is being manipulated by the symbiote (I know he hears his mom's voice but that's not the point). We just know he wants to take over the world like he always does in videogames where Venom is present. How boring and one-note.
On a positive note, his design is really good, definitely one of the best we've gotten in the past few years and THANK GOD HE ACTUALLY HAS THE CHEST SYMBOL. Tony Todd is also so freakin' good and so wasted because of that. He's genuinely too good for how bad this Venom is. I mean it, I hate this Venom with a passion and it all starts with Harry.
Harry's goal in life is to "heal the world", whatever that means. It's a very vague sentiment but one that you can understand because he really is just trying to make the world a better place. The symbiote twists this mission statement to fit its own goals of covering the world in symbiotes and-- Okay, he's just the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man 1. He's a big dumb monster that wants to turn everyone into the same thing he is because he thinks it'll make everyone better, except he's much worse than the Lizard! Because at least, HE made an actual case for why he wanted to do this. Venom doesn't. And Peter never makes an argument against him either. He never says that the symbiotes will rob people of free will and make the world a worst place, he just goes "we've got to get that thing off of Harry" and that's it. That's their whole conflict. Venom is just a big dumb monster that wants to take over the world and it's so SO dumb.
They also try to shoehorn a little bit of conflict between Peter and Harry by having Harry be jealous of Peter because of the love Norman has for him, but like... Where does that even come from? It doesn't factor into the story at all, if anything it feels like a holdover from a different version of the script that no longer makes sense. It's a tired trope that comes out of left field and makes me wonder if the writers have ever even seen any other piece of Spider-Man media outside of the movies, because it's seriously uncanny how many parallels this game has to the Raimi movies and The Amazing Spider-Man movies.
But even if we ignore all of that, the most common defense for this Venom is that he's a new take on the character and that people only dislike him because he's not exactly like his original comic counterpart. So let's break this down.
To start, I will admit that part of the reason I don't like this Venom at all is that he isn't ANYTHING like what the character was in the comics. This isn't my entire reasoning for it but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't part of it. I really like Venom so, y'know, I kinda wanted something that was at the very least evocative of the character in the comics. But what is Venom like in the comics?
Well, there are four different ways you can interpret the character that make Venom who he is. The first one is that of a psychotic stalker and it's how Venom was first portrayed. It's probably the most popular version and I understand why. The combination of the symbiote's strength, its knowledge of Peter's personal life and its ability to bypass Peter's Spider-Sense made Venom a uniquely dangerous and terrifying foe. Unlike most villains, Venom could strike whenever, wherever and there was very little Peter could do about it. So this first version of Venom exists only to torment Peter with his sick sense of humor usually centering around his perverse obsession with killing Spider-Man.
The second way you can interpret Venom is that of the goofy anti-hero and it's the role Venom took on after he started his path to redemption. Thinking that what he's doing is the right thing, Venom engages in bizarre and sadistic behavior that would be seen as completely demented if not for the fact that he's usually doing these things to criminals and supervillains. As a result, Venom's silliness and more sinister sense of humor is more prominent here, and I can think of no better example of it than the Playstation 1 Spider-Man game by Neversoft. In that game, Venom legitimately thinks he's doing the right thing. He believes that Spider-Man stole technology from the Science Expo and needs to be punished for his crimes, so Venom's insane solution to this is to kidnap Spider-Man's wife and put her in a death trap to force him to come out and fight him. Because to Venom, this is a totally rational strategy that makes perfect sense.
The third way is that of the dark, evil mirror to Spider-Man. Peter stands as the ultimate symbol of responsibility, so this Venom stands as the ultimate symbol of irresponsibility. A person who can't take responsibility for their actions, instead choosing to blame their misfortunes on anyone and everything around them. The most obvious examples I can think of in mainstream media for this is Spider-Man 3's version of Venom. In that movie, he's a sleazy scumbag with no redeeming qualities, largely because this version's personality was primarily inspired by the Ultimate version of Venom who also fills this role. Both of these versions of Venom directly parallel Peter, being as scummy and self-serving as Peter is selfless and heroic. They also always have some sort of childhood connection, like in the Ultimate universe where their parents were friends and scientists together, those same people actually CREATING the symbiote in that universe. So it hits even harder when Venom says "our fathers died to create me" because you know the emotional weight behind that.
Ideally, a good interpretation of Venom should be able to be a mixture of all three of these. A psychotic stalker born out of an inability to take responsibility for his failures, but one with a twisted sense of honor and humanity that leaves the door open for a redemption down the line.
Now you might have noticed that I didn't mention the fourth way, and that's because the fourth way you can interpret Venom is the evil goo monster angle. Some evil goo fell on the host and he became an evil goo monster. That's all that is. I think you can see how uninteresting that sounds, and I want you to guess which one this game goes with.
I've gone through all of this without ONCE mentioning Eddie Brock, who in the comics is not only the host of Venom but IS Venom. I'm so tired of people thinking Venom is just the goo and the host doesn't matter, like the Tom Hardy movies. Venom is the combination of Eddie Brock and the symbiote, there's no going around it. When Peter's wearing the symbiote, we don't call him Venom, so why should we call anyone BUT Eddie Venom? I'm not one of those crybabies who hate that it's not Eddie in the game, but if you're not gonna have the most iconic host for the symbiote then at least make the substitute half as good! Regardless of all that, the reason I haven't mentioned Eddie until now is that I wanted to show that, funnily enough, it isn't really about him specifically. When it comes to Venom, any character could be a good Venom if given the proper setup to genuinely take on the role and challenge Peter. It's just that Eddie already has the motivation, backstory and personality to create Venom, since he is the original version of the character. The inherent problem with removing Eddie Brock from the symbote equation is that the version of Venom you end up with is nearly always going to be the fourth way you can interpret it, it being the evil goo.
Now, to be fair, there are versions of Venom that keep Eddie Brock and still fall into this category, I'm not saying that Eddie is an inherently better choice and that no other option is possible. But what I'm saying is that replacing the symbiote host with someone else requires a lot more narrative and character justification to make up for what is lost. It's this extra work that this game's version of Venom doesn't even bother to do, and that's because it takes cues from other interpretations without understanding them.
Insomniac's version of Venom is not an original creation. Venom being a childhood friend of Peter's is taken from the Ultimate comics, Venom being Harry is specifically taken from the Ultimate cartoon (OF ALL PLACES), Harry being sick, as I already mentioned, was already done in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Venom initiating a symbiote takeover of New York was already done in Web of Shadows. Everything done with Venom here has already been done before somewhere else and, arguably, better. So while this take may be new in the sense that it's a new combination of previously existing ideas, it is not inherently a new take. And when it comes to new interpretations, I'm actually quite open to them. That's why I think the symbiote, if anything, should have gone to Miles instead. It would have ACTUALLY been a new spin on the story and it would have allowed for new things to be done with Venom. For example, in the comics, the symbiote copied Peter's powers. I'm not sure why every single interpretation ever glosses over this, but the only reason Venom can do what he does is because he copied Peter's powers. So they could have taken this a step further and have Venom absorb Miles' invisibility (although in the comics, the symbiote can turn invisible) and venom powers, maybe even taking its name from THOSE venom powers. Sidenote, how come no one ever comments on that? Like, no one ever even makes a small joke about Venom and Miles' venom powers, that's weird.
Anyway, that would have been at least something new and different, something that would have made the "evil goo hurr durr" angle at least tolerable. But instead, we get this black turd with no real motivation other than wanting to take over the world. And I know a lot of people get upset whenever you dismiss this version of Venom as a mindless monster hellbent on taking over the world, but that's just what it is. A lot of people argue that Harry is the one with control over Venom, with his worldview being warped by the symbiote and NOT the symbiote simply puppeting Harry around for its own needs. So let's discuss this, because it's actually pretty funny. Harry is NOT in control. There are two main pieces of evidence to support my claim, the first being that we can see exactly when Harry is in control and when he's not. When Venom first forms at Oscorp, he's completely non-verbal until the arrival of Kraven. If Harry was the one in control there, then wouldn't he be speaking instead of behaving like a mindless animal? Once Kraven shows up, Venom starts to talk to him and the subtitles credit him as Harry, so I think that Harry's brain at this point starts to wake up, becoming fully aware once he kills Kraven. Harry is the dominant personality from this point up to the confrontation with MJ at May's house. That's where Venom gets his name (which is never explained, at least make him say the classic "we are like poison to you, Peter... That's why we call ourselves Venom!" or something) and we don't see Harry again until the finale. So I think that once Venom names himself, Harry is completely gone and the symbiote becomes the dominant confrolling force. The second piece of evidence is that during the finale, when the symbiote is peeled back to show Harry's face, the emotion Harry expresses is... Confusion? He has no idea what's going on and it's clear he hasn't been in control for a while. Like I said, the symbiote's been at the wheel since his encounter with MJ and once he's freed up, Harry starts protesting against the symbiote's actions. What more do you want to show that Harry isn't in control?
The most obvious counterpoint to my argument is that Venom speaks as if he is Harry. He reminisces about his time with Peter in high school, he goes out of his way to try and get Peter on his side and expresses anger at his father for not accepting him (which again, it's so confusing because Norman has literally given everything he possibly could to Harry and clearly loves him no matter what). So if that's the symbiote in control, then why would it care about any of this? At this point, my theory is that the symbiote is more like a parastic body snatcher, if you get what I mean. It aims to fully replace its host using its host's memories and personality as a base for its existence. So Venom does all these things because it's accessing Harry's memories and trying to become him. But that's not the truth at all. The truth is that this is simply bad writing. Insomniac were unsure of whether they wanted the symbiote to be evil mind-controlling goo with its own agende or if Harry should have actual reasons to be angry at Peter and his father, therefore turning to the symbiote. Unsure of what direction to go in, and probably scared of making Harry have some sort of edge or personality, they just went with both and the end result is a mess.
In the end, the story is rushed and there's no way around it. You, as a creative director, cannot say that "we didn't add the black suit in the first game because we felt it deserved its own story" when THIS is the story they had in mind. The pacing is all over the place, there are many unexplained plot points (like the meteorite which just randomly pops up to serve as Chekov's Gun) and the characterization is non-existent and almost insulting. It's absolutely insane to me that this Peter has gone from one of my favorite adaptations of the character EVER, to probably one of the worst, up (or rather, down) there with the Ultimate and 2017 shows. The symbiote arc lasts for a few days when it should be at the very least a week or two, and that makes it jarring because everyone acts like it's been months since it happened. Peter becomes corrupt way too easily and way too fast, and then he's all like "well sorry guys" and everything is magically okay, because there is nothing he should apologize for. He has no dark side, and that makes him boring.
The writing is not nearly as good as the first game. Hell, I can't remember any quips other than the "fresh out of honey" one, and I could name half of the ones in the first game by heart! I think that comes down to the fact that Insomniac had to prove themselves to the public by making the very best Spider-Man game they could, so they worked their asses off and made the first one with love and care and understanding of the character. But this game just feels like a generic AAA superhero game that is made with the mission statement of making the most money possible. I swear, there has to be some sort of Halo Infinite horror story behind the production of this fucking thing because there is no way the budget was this high and yet it's so buggy, lackluster and story-less. I mean it, we really REALLY need comic book writers back in the writing room for videogames because what the fuck is going on. First Arkham Knight, then this, then Suicide Squad. It's clear that whoever is writing just aims to make the most generically enjoyable story possible, and that makes all of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts. They are all super basic and there is very little development except for Peter and Miles dealing with grief. Woohoo, MJ is now a... Podcast host? Great development, take five everyone. Miles has the best arc in the game and yet, he was left off to the wayside a lot.
Another thing that bothers me is that the power levels are off the charts. Kraven can kill almost all of the Sinister Six, one shots FUCKING SPIDER-MAN, gets beaten by symbiote Spidey, and then Miles beats Peter. So does that mean that Miles is stronger than all of them? I mean, he is the one who beats Venom in the end fight (which THANK GOD we couldn't fight Harry as Peter, cause that would have been too emotional and made too much sense) so what's the deal here?
And then, as the cherry on top and the sole reason why I went back and re-reviewed this game after 6 months, the latest update. With the latest update, Insomniac added features that people were clamoring for. New Game Plus, replayable missions and bases, changing time of day, changing tendril colors, two... Just two? Okay-- Two new suits. And that's it. So in 6 months, we got about a quarter of the features we were asking for, and not only that but we got features that were already in the last game by DEFAULT. Miles Morales shipped with literally all of that. New Game Plus, replayable missions and bases and changing time of day were all in the Miles Morales base game. It's clear that the developers were rushed and while I can really excuse and understand that, because it sucks that publishers force developers to release unfinished games just to meet deadlines... I also think the core issues with the game go beyond the concept of time constraints. They had five fucking years to make this game be their magnum opus and yet, what we get is something that is technically marvelous but deep as a puddle.
And sure, the average Joe who buys the game won't care about all of these nerd ramblings and will be content with the game because he recognizes Venom from the cartoons and thinks he's super cool. He will be happy that the game is the equivalent of a Fast and Furious movie because that's what the average Joe likes. But even if the original game was a bit on that side as well, it made up for it with how much heart and love for the character you could feel. You could genuinely tell that Insomniac wanted to make die-hard Spider-Man fans happy and they had managed to. But sadly, they had to bend over and accept that to make more money, they had to make a game that would appeal to a bigger audience. And that meant giving up on any sort of depth and just making cool set pieces so wanna-be Spider-Man fans would go "WOOHOO THIS IS THE GREATEST GAME EVER" without even knowing the character. I realize how gatekeep-y I sound right now but I don't care, it's fucking criminal that Insomniac can get away with it and nobody bats an eye. If a book was adapted into a movie and wasn't faithful at all, everyone would go nuts and get super angry and boycott the creators, and yet when that happens with a comic book, no one cares. It's a sad truth that we have to live with. Comic book media is, depressingly, not made to appeal to us comic fans. They're made to appeal to people who would bully others who read comic books in high school.
So in the end, as much as it truly pains me to say it, once the honeymoon phase is over, the new coat of paint wears off and it's clear that we're just playing another Spider-Man game, when this could have been THE Spider-Man game. This game is inferior to the first one in almost everything except the graphics and traversal. It breaks my heart because I was repping this game all the way until release and yet, it's clear it was rushed and didn't have the same passion behind it as the first one. It was just a corporate mandated AI-written shlock of cool scenes and action moments. If you're a Spider-Man fan, you will like or maybe even love this game. But if you're THE Spider-Man fan, you will be heartbroken beyond belief. And as I said, I stand by my 10/10 personal rating because my favorite past time is listening to music while getting my thoughts together and swinging through NY. And this game gives me that in every way, and I love it. But I can't in good faith recommend this game for anything more than its gameplay. And that just makes me sad.
I have serious doubt that Insomniac will nail the third one, but I'm an idiot so I will buy it regardless. Here's hoping that in five years, I can come back to this review and tell myself I was wrong. But until then, this is how it is. A Spider-Man game, who dared to be great... And failed.
This is one of the worst videogames I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
This review contains spoilers
Superman and Batman are my favorite superheroes, other than Spider-Man. I have read hundreds of comics with them, fallen in love with them. I replay the Arkham games yearly. I've rewatched the Justice League shows more times than I can count. I love these characters to death.
Anyway, in this game fucking Boomerang almost pisses on Flash after shooting him in the head.
Rocksteady, go fuck yourself.
Anyway, in this game fucking Boomerang almost pisses on Flash after shooting him in the head.
Rocksteady, go fuck yourself.
2022
I've been playing this game since it came out and took a break this summer. In that entire playtime, I only got Spider-Man last month. I think that's a good representation of the game as a whole.
Marvel SNAP is a good concept, executed terribly because of its restriction. That being, it's a free-to-play, mobile game. Which means everything revolves around money and how much the developers can steal from your pockets. But let's go by levels.
The game is fairly easy to understand and has a fun concept behind it. There are three locations based on the Marvel universe; each card has an ability, a cost and a value; whoever has more power wins. It's a fun idea, if a little repetitive. But the game executes the gameplay loop in a way that feels fun and satisfying, and you hardly get bored of it. The games are also very quickly paced, you can get one game done in about 3 or 4 minutes, which makes it perfect on the go whereas other card games tend to drag a lot. I should mention that I heavily dislike card games, the most I've ever played was Pokémon when I was in elementary school and then I avoided them like the plague. But I enjoy Marvel SNAP, mostly because it's an awful game but with a Marvel reskin which makes my monkey brain go "yayyyy" and clap my hands.
The game itself isn't that bad, the gameplay is fine and can feel fun at times. Snapping (which is basically betting your ranked points on the game) can feel very rewarding and I thoroughly enjoy spamming emotes and "Snap?" at the opponent whenever I can to remind them that I am, in fact, a fucking asshole.
But the game crumbles when you consider everything AROUND IT that isn't the gameplay. For starters, every card can be upgraded. Upgrades range in cost from 25 to 500, depending on the rarity, and once you completely upgrade a card you can "prestige" it and get the same card but with a different colored background. You also earn account levels every time you upgrade. The problem is not with how lame that is, but rather the fact that to level up you have to spend credits on cards. The reason that's a problem is because there is no way to earn credits except for random lootboxes and daily challenges. You get about 6 daily challenges, and they give you AT MOST 450 credits. Which means you can upgrade a card, provided you have the boosters (you get them by playing that specific card), a whopping 3 levels. That's 3 levels of card a day. And then, once you wanna upgrade that card again, you can only do it once per day because of the absurd costs. You have no way to earn credits from playing, the only way you get them is from limited sources that exploit you playing. For example, in Conquest mode, you play a sort of "ladder" mode where you earn medals if you win. Medals allow you to buy things from the medal shop like mystery skins and credits, which sounds great right? No, because they are limited. Once you get 300 credits from there, you can't buy any more of them until the next season, which is the month after that. The game heavily handicaps you for NOT spending money. Your credit earnings are pathetic and clearly downplayed so you will eventually cave in and spend money, and that's shown the best through the way you earn cards.
At first, you earn a card every two level, which means you have a steady increase of cards and can start building your own deck, which is great. Then, it goes up to four levels, which is decent and acceptable. Then, it goes up to six levels, which seems a little excessive but still doable. Then, once you get to level 486, the game takes a steep decline. Twelve levels. That's how many levels you need to get to earn a new card. And guess what? It's not even guaranteed that it'll be a card! Yeah, because you get these "Collector's Caches" that can award you skins, cards, credits (usually 50, woohoo!), boosters, profile pictures or titles. Notice how I said OR. You might level a full 120 levels, so ten of those caches, and find maybe one card. Out of 120 levels. If my math is correct, at the LEAST (and highly improbably) it's 3000 credits. 3000 credits, which you can get in about seven weeks of play. So in almost two month, you can earn a SINGLE card that might not even be a card that you like or that's good. 90% of the times, the broken and meta cards are locked behind the season pass, which resets every month, and are earnable only AFTER the season ends. And then, after the season is over, the broken cards get nerfed to the ground, making your 10 dollars (because you have no way of earning the pass) wasted. Sure, you earn some extra things like mystery skins and credits along the way, but that's practically pathetic value for what you actually get, because at the end of the season, your cards will be completely useless and you'll still be in a credits deficit.
Then, there's the premium currency, gold. You can earn a maximum of 800 gold per month through weekly challenges, which is totally awesome because the card skins, called variants, cost a minimum of 700. So enjoy the low rarity variants unless you wanna wait two months to get one! And guess what? Even if you DID wait those two months, there is no way for you to get the exact card that you want. That's where FOMO sets in.
Say that you love Spider-Man, just like me. There is a shop that gets updated every 24 hours with 9 different variants. Now, you might think that it's not too bad, and that it's a decent compromise. Well, say you found Spider-Man after 8-9 months of playing, just like me. You have, by now, earned about 250-300 cards, give or take. Every one of those cards has AT LEAST 5 variants. So if you want a Spider-Man variant, just like me, then you have a 0.09% chance of getting it in your shop. And chances are, it might even be a variant you DON'T like. Variants like the Pixel and Baby ones are clearly made on purpose to lower the chances of you getting an actual good one and just filling it with terrible fluff. No one likes Pixel variants, hell, the developers know it themselves since when you buy a mystery variant, it clearly states "no Pixel variant guaranteed". But of course, as most mobile games do, none of that matters because people will proudly spend hundreds of dollars on PNGs of a character they like and thus, the developers will keep doing what they do best: being greedy.
Say, by some miracle, you found the Todd McFarlane Spider-Man variant in the shop, just like me. You now have 24 hours to either buy the variant or possibly lose it forever. Hey, maybe it might show up tomorrow as well! Or it might not show up ever again. So you either spend the gold you earned in literal months of playing (because variant values are totally arbitrary, some variants are incredible and cost 700 meanwhile disgusting looking ones cost 1200) OR you cave in and buy the gold with real money. Now, I'm not one to cry about spending money for skins. I've bought skins in various videogames in the past and there's nothing wrong with it. The problem arises when a SINGLE skin costs 20 bucks. That's right, a single fucking PNG of Spider-Man (which wasn't even made for the game, it's a literal comic cover that was just imported) costs 20 bucks. I wouldn't even pay 20 dollars for a real physical photo, let alone a fucking image on a mobile game. There have been bundles with exclusive variants that you'll never be able to get again which cost 60 fucking dollars, not even gold but straight up money. "But dude, it's a good deal! You also get 2000 credits and 500 gold!" yeah yeah go fuck yourself. Those are imaginary things. You're not buying a comic and getting a bunch of discounts for the next ones you buy, you're buying an image and getting an imaginary value to go alongside with it. The developers don't lose money or spend it to produce it, they literally just earn and give a share to the original artist. They create a problem, i.e. low amount of credits per day, and then sell the solution for real money. It's incredibly scummy and I barf in my mouth a little every time I see someone proudly showing off their cards and saying "love this, couldn't wait to get it!" like, my guy, you spent a week's worth of food for an anime image of She-Hulk. That's somehow even worse than NFTs, and NFTs actually harm the real world!
But now, for the last time, say you had enough gold saved up like a good little boy, just like me. You bought the Spider-Man McFarlane variant, which goes unbelievably hard, and you're excited to use it. Sure, you may have to switch your deck around (which I loathe, because I enjoy playing the characters I love, not the ones that synergize, and that heavily handicaps me), but you find a way to make Spider-Man work into your deck. You start playing him and getting a feel for him, and you actually enjoy him a lot! A few weeks later, the new season begins and cards get reworked. Now, your beloved Spider-Man which you spent months to finally get and then spent your hard-earned gold on to get a cool skin, gets reworked to be absolutely terrible. Now, instead of locking down a location for a turn so you can secure the win, he swings to another location and brings an enemy card there with him. Sure, it's not THAT bad, but now you just went and completely reworked a card that worked fine for the sake of "balance". The truth is, it's not because it's unbalanced, but it's because the card itself wasn't bringing them enough money because there's no way for you to buy it. You just have to somehow be lucky and find it.
That exact thing happened in one of the previous passes with Mobius M. Mobius. It was a very strong card that allowed you to not have your costs increased, and everyone bought the season pass to get him. Well guess what, after the season was over, the developers said "fuck you" and reworked him into an absolutely dogshit card that no one wanted anymore. And if the players weren't vocal about it for once (cause lord knows they would let the developers shoot their relatives in the knees and somehow justify it) then the card would have been as is and left there to rot. They make balance decisions around super unfun and unfair decks, and then either nerf them to the ground and make them useless or create even MORE unfun and unfair decks. Thus, if you don't care about having fun and just want to win, you're forced to play those decks, with cards that you have to spend REAL MONEY for.
And when you're not playing against absolutely broken and bonkers decks, you're playing against the same two or three decks. I swear, I would kill a man to make sure I never hear "nuff said, bub" again in my fucking life. Every single deck that is not broken is just unfun, like destroy/discard decks and move decks. And then, if you try to counter those decks with the likes of Cosmo or Armor, it makes the game unfun for both of you because neither you and your opponent get to play the game the way you want to. It's boring and the way the game is structured is too based on what brings in money, rather than what's fun. Galactus was a strong card that could win games under certain conditions. It wasn't broken, it could be very easily countered by just having a brain, and it was highly situational. But then, they reworked it to be a situational card that sucks ass and that you almost never get to win with.
I love Marvel a lot, and I enjoy this game simply because I get to see my favorite characters be cool and play with them and have abilities that, for the most part, fit. But it's incredibly demoralizing to always face the same three or four decks with the same playstyle, with people who don't even grasp how the game works and yet manage to win because Knull is fucking busted and if you play your cards before the enemy you can't even destroy it with Shang-Chi. It's incredibly demoralizing to play a game which doesn't reward you for playing but rewards you for opening your wallet. As of writing this, there's a bundle which sells two incredibly gorgeous variants of the Human Torch and Doctor Strange for 6500 gold. That is a genuine minimum of 100 bucks for two images. Sure, you also get credits and gold, but it goes back to the same argument I made earlier. Players keep being "whales" or so they're called and throw money at their screen as soon as they see a cool skin they like, and the FOMO only serves to make it worse. Nobody complains, everyone just shuts up and accepts it, which is embarrassing and depressing, but also perfectly sums up the state of gaming as a whole nowadays. I haven't spent a dime on this game, and sadly, you can truly feel it.
Please do yourself a favor and DON'T play this game unless you're ready to either spend money (yuck!) or time (yuck!).
Marvel SNAP is a good concept, executed terribly because of its restriction. That being, it's a free-to-play, mobile game. Which means everything revolves around money and how much the developers can steal from your pockets. But let's go by levels.
The game is fairly easy to understand and has a fun concept behind it. There are three locations based on the Marvel universe; each card has an ability, a cost and a value; whoever has more power wins. It's a fun idea, if a little repetitive. But the game executes the gameplay loop in a way that feels fun and satisfying, and you hardly get bored of it. The games are also very quickly paced, you can get one game done in about 3 or 4 minutes, which makes it perfect on the go whereas other card games tend to drag a lot. I should mention that I heavily dislike card games, the most I've ever played was Pokémon when I was in elementary school and then I avoided them like the plague. But I enjoy Marvel SNAP, mostly because it's an awful game but with a Marvel reskin which makes my monkey brain go "yayyyy" and clap my hands.
The game itself isn't that bad, the gameplay is fine and can feel fun at times. Snapping (which is basically betting your ranked points on the game) can feel very rewarding and I thoroughly enjoy spamming emotes and "Snap?" at the opponent whenever I can to remind them that I am, in fact, a fucking asshole.
But the game crumbles when you consider everything AROUND IT that isn't the gameplay. For starters, every card can be upgraded. Upgrades range in cost from 25 to 500, depending on the rarity, and once you completely upgrade a card you can "prestige" it and get the same card but with a different colored background. You also earn account levels every time you upgrade. The problem is not with how lame that is, but rather the fact that to level up you have to spend credits on cards. The reason that's a problem is because there is no way to earn credits except for random lootboxes and daily challenges. You get about 6 daily challenges, and they give you AT MOST 450 credits. Which means you can upgrade a card, provided you have the boosters (you get them by playing that specific card), a whopping 3 levels. That's 3 levels of card a day. And then, once you wanna upgrade that card again, you can only do it once per day because of the absurd costs. You have no way to earn credits from playing, the only way you get them is from limited sources that exploit you playing. For example, in Conquest mode, you play a sort of "ladder" mode where you earn medals if you win. Medals allow you to buy things from the medal shop like mystery skins and credits, which sounds great right? No, because they are limited. Once you get 300 credits from there, you can't buy any more of them until the next season, which is the month after that. The game heavily handicaps you for NOT spending money. Your credit earnings are pathetic and clearly downplayed so you will eventually cave in and spend money, and that's shown the best through the way you earn cards.
At first, you earn a card every two level, which means you have a steady increase of cards and can start building your own deck, which is great. Then, it goes up to four levels, which is decent and acceptable. Then, it goes up to six levels, which seems a little excessive but still doable. Then, once you get to level 486, the game takes a steep decline. Twelve levels. That's how many levels you need to get to earn a new card. And guess what? It's not even guaranteed that it'll be a card! Yeah, because you get these "Collector's Caches" that can award you skins, cards, credits (usually 50, woohoo!), boosters, profile pictures or titles. Notice how I said OR. You might level a full 120 levels, so ten of those caches, and find maybe one card. Out of 120 levels. If my math is correct, at the LEAST (and highly improbably) it's 3000 credits. 3000 credits, which you can get in about seven weeks of play. So in almost two month, you can earn a SINGLE card that might not even be a card that you like or that's good. 90% of the times, the broken and meta cards are locked behind the season pass, which resets every month, and are earnable only AFTER the season ends. And then, after the season is over, the broken cards get nerfed to the ground, making your 10 dollars (because you have no way of earning the pass) wasted. Sure, you earn some extra things like mystery skins and credits along the way, but that's practically pathetic value for what you actually get, because at the end of the season, your cards will be completely useless and you'll still be in a credits deficit.
Then, there's the premium currency, gold. You can earn a maximum of 800 gold per month through weekly challenges, which is totally awesome because the card skins, called variants, cost a minimum of 700. So enjoy the low rarity variants unless you wanna wait two months to get one! And guess what? Even if you DID wait those two months, there is no way for you to get the exact card that you want. That's where FOMO sets in.
Say that you love Spider-Man, just like me. There is a shop that gets updated every 24 hours with 9 different variants. Now, you might think that it's not too bad, and that it's a decent compromise. Well, say you found Spider-Man after 8-9 months of playing, just like me. You have, by now, earned about 250-300 cards, give or take. Every one of those cards has AT LEAST 5 variants. So if you want a Spider-Man variant, just like me, then you have a 0.09% chance of getting it in your shop. And chances are, it might even be a variant you DON'T like. Variants like the Pixel and Baby ones are clearly made on purpose to lower the chances of you getting an actual good one and just filling it with terrible fluff. No one likes Pixel variants, hell, the developers know it themselves since when you buy a mystery variant, it clearly states "no Pixel variant guaranteed". But of course, as most mobile games do, none of that matters because people will proudly spend hundreds of dollars on PNGs of a character they like and thus, the developers will keep doing what they do best: being greedy.
Say, by some miracle, you found the Todd McFarlane Spider-Man variant in the shop, just like me. You now have 24 hours to either buy the variant or possibly lose it forever. Hey, maybe it might show up tomorrow as well! Or it might not show up ever again. So you either spend the gold you earned in literal months of playing (because variant values are totally arbitrary, some variants are incredible and cost 700 meanwhile disgusting looking ones cost 1200) OR you cave in and buy the gold with real money. Now, I'm not one to cry about spending money for skins. I've bought skins in various videogames in the past and there's nothing wrong with it. The problem arises when a SINGLE skin costs 20 bucks. That's right, a single fucking PNG of Spider-Man (which wasn't even made for the game, it's a literal comic cover that was just imported) costs 20 bucks. I wouldn't even pay 20 dollars for a real physical photo, let alone a fucking image on a mobile game. There have been bundles with exclusive variants that you'll never be able to get again which cost 60 fucking dollars, not even gold but straight up money. "But dude, it's a good deal! You also get 2000 credits and 500 gold!" yeah yeah go fuck yourself. Those are imaginary things. You're not buying a comic and getting a bunch of discounts for the next ones you buy, you're buying an image and getting an imaginary value to go alongside with it. The developers don't lose money or spend it to produce it, they literally just earn and give a share to the original artist. They create a problem, i.e. low amount of credits per day, and then sell the solution for real money. It's incredibly scummy and I barf in my mouth a little every time I see someone proudly showing off their cards and saying "love this, couldn't wait to get it!" like, my guy, you spent a week's worth of food for an anime image of She-Hulk. That's somehow even worse than NFTs, and NFTs actually harm the real world!
But now, for the last time, say you had enough gold saved up like a good little boy, just like me. You bought the Spider-Man McFarlane variant, which goes unbelievably hard, and you're excited to use it. Sure, you may have to switch your deck around (which I loathe, because I enjoy playing the characters I love, not the ones that synergize, and that heavily handicaps me), but you find a way to make Spider-Man work into your deck. You start playing him and getting a feel for him, and you actually enjoy him a lot! A few weeks later, the new season begins and cards get reworked. Now, your beloved Spider-Man which you spent months to finally get and then spent your hard-earned gold on to get a cool skin, gets reworked to be absolutely terrible. Now, instead of locking down a location for a turn so you can secure the win, he swings to another location and brings an enemy card there with him. Sure, it's not THAT bad, but now you just went and completely reworked a card that worked fine for the sake of "balance". The truth is, it's not because it's unbalanced, but it's because the card itself wasn't bringing them enough money because there's no way for you to buy it. You just have to somehow be lucky and find it.
That exact thing happened in one of the previous passes with Mobius M. Mobius. It was a very strong card that allowed you to not have your costs increased, and everyone bought the season pass to get him. Well guess what, after the season was over, the developers said "fuck you" and reworked him into an absolutely dogshit card that no one wanted anymore. And if the players weren't vocal about it for once (cause lord knows they would let the developers shoot their relatives in the knees and somehow justify it) then the card would have been as is and left there to rot. They make balance decisions around super unfun and unfair decks, and then either nerf them to the ground and make them useless or create even MORE unfun and unfair decks. Thus, if you don't care about having fun and just want to win, you're forced to play those decks, with cards that you have to spend REAL MONEY for.
And when you're not playing against absolutely broken and bonkers decks, you're playing against the same two or three decks. I swear, I would kill a man to make sure I never hear "nuff said, bub" again in my fucking life. Every single deck that is not broken is just unfun, like destroy/discard decks and move decks. And then, if you try to counter those decks with the likes of Cosmo or Armor, it makes the game unfun for both of you because neither you and your opponent get to play the game the way you want to. It's boring and the way the game is structured is too based on what brings in money, rather than what's fun. Galactus was a strong card that could win games under certain conditions. It wasn't broken, it could be very easily countered by just having a brain, and it was highly situational. But then, they reworked it to be a situational card that sucks ass and that you almost never get to win with.
I love Marvel a lot, and I enjoy this game simply because I get to see my favorite characters be cool and play with them and have abilities that, for the most part, fit. But it's incredibly demoralizing to always face the same three or four decks with the same playstyle, with people who don't even grasp how the game works and yet manage to win because Knull is fucking busted and if you play your cards before the enemy you can't even destroy it with Shang-Chi. It's incredibly demoralizing to play a game which doesn't reward you for playing but rewards you for opening your wallet. As of writing this, there's a bundle which sells two incredibly gorgeous variants of the Human Torch and Doctor Strange for 6500 gold. That is a genuine minimum of 100 bucks for two images. Sure, you also get credits and gold, but it goes back to the same argument I made earlier. Players keep being "whales" or so they're called and throw money at their screen as soon as they see a cool skin they like, and the FOMO only serves to make it worse. Nobody complains, everyone just shuts up and accepts it, which is embarrassing and depressing, but also perfectly sums up the state of gaming as a whole nowadays. I haven't spent a dime on this game, and sadly, you can truly feel it.
Please do yourself a favor and DON'T play this game unless you're ready to either spend money (yuck!) or time (yuck!).
2023
13 years. 13 years I waited for this. We won, baby.
In my Marvel's Spider-Man review, I ended it by saying that no Spider-Man game, show or movie could ever top that.
Boy, was I wrong.
I would normally write this after having completed 100% of the game but holy fucking SHIT I cannot contain my excitement. This game is spectacular, amazing, ultimate, whatever other Spidey adjective you can think of for it. I genuinely have not played a game that has made me feel these many raw emotions in a long ass time, hell I've played Baldur's Gate 3 after 3 years of waiting (and I was blown away by its quality) and yet my emotions were nowhere near the clusterfuck of feels I had throughout this incredible experience.
Spider-Man has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I have never loved a fictional character as much as I love Spider-Man and I have never put in as much dedication into a fictional character as I have with him. I spent most of my teenage years reading all of his comics from 1962 'till today and I still keep up with him. I have seen every show, movie and even every game, no matter how bad or outdated. This character means more to me than I can explain and I'm sure that 99% of people would feel this behavior is weird but I don't care. I love this character to the bone.
Which is why in the days leading up to this game I had started to get anxious. The original 2018 game was absolutely incredible and I called it the greatest Spider-Man game of all time, saying that I could not even begin to imagine a way for the sequel to top this one.
But my God, they did it.
Spider-Man 2 makes the original one look like a prototype. It's as if Insomniac saw what they did, laughed and told themselves "That's it? We can do WAY better" and THEY DID.
The web-swinging was made not only more fun and interactive, but also HARDER (if you want it to). The fact that you can have fall damage, increase how realistically you want the web to move and more, is absolutely nuts to me. The web-wings finally getting some representation in something is great, considering Homecoming used them for half a scene, and they are an incredible addition to your traversal. Not only are the animations fluid as hell, but the web-wings also function amazingly and make the game much more dynamic instead of simply pressing R2 and X. I genuinely cannot for the life of me understand how they managed to make them work this well and also give them such importance. It's totally possible to not use them while going around but damn do they make everything much more stylish and cool. As someone with about 3000 hours across PS4 and PC, I basically had to re-learn traversal and how to move fluently around the city. I can foresee coming back to the first one and feeling naked without the same speed, agility and moves as the sequel. But I love it. Especially the speed part, it's crazy going from Harlem to Coney Island in a single minute. The map is incredible and while I do hate that there's still NO WASHINGTON HEIGHTS REPRESENTATION, I love it so much. Finally going back to Queens since Ultimate Spider-Man is a treat and I loved it. The map is also gorgeous in itself, especially because of how much you can admire it while soaring the skies. Oh and the slingshot, GOOD GOD THE SLINGSHOT. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?
The combat is much much much more fun and way harder than the first one. I loved how much of a challenge the game was and especially the fact that boss fights felt hard but fun and decently doable. The developers realized that it's much more fun to have a huge moveset right from the start and then getting even MORE stuff as you progress. I also very much liked that Pete and Miles had different styles of play, it made switching between them feel truly diverse. Only thing I kinda miss is the huge array of gadgets in the first one, but I understand that streamlining them to only be gadgets that you will ACTUALLY use (unlike the Matrix for example) makes complete sense. Plus, the new L1+button moves are so so SO fun and gave the combat some nice variety, especially when you're wearing the symbiote. Although I do think of all the gadgets, they could have kept the trip mine at the very least.
The symbiote. Wow. What's there to say? The story was very very good from start to finish and, while a bit predictable at some points, it truly felt like a worthy continuation of the first one. But I also think the story is, ironically, the weakest part of the game. If there's one thing to critique, I do feel like Spider-Man 1 had a more tight-knit story with much slower story beats. The storylines had way more time to breathe, but I understand the intent of this story, so I didn't mind it that much while playing it, but when I finished the game and had to let it all sink in I thought "well, that could have used an extra hour or two". I really appreciate that you get the black suit a good chunk into the story, it would have been all too easy to simply get it at the start, so I like that you have to "earn" it. But I do think that the suit should have been more of a slow burn, rather than outright making Pete "angry" in such a short time. After all, the suit should not make Peter a villain. In the original comics, he took off the symbiote once he realized it was a living being and for that reason, the suit hated him for abandoning it. Thus why it started to feed off of Eddie Brock's hatred for Peter, creating Venom. But that's not how most people see it now, so I understand and appreciate the approach Insomniac took with it. Blame the 90's show and Raimi's Spider-Man for that, I suppose. I also loved many of the emotional beats and it truly hit me in the gut. What a rollercoaster! As for the gameplay part, the symbiote was incredibly fun to use and I love how naked you feel without it, truly conveying the NEED Peter feels for it.
The secondary missions are on par with the first one, which is awesome since they were already perfect, although I do feel like there should have been more. I love that most missions, you can do with both Spideys, making the game highly replayable if only for the different voicelines and interactions, but it sucks that you can't re-do any of them. Seabird lives rent free in my head and that is definitely my favorite side mission in any videogame ever.
All of the villains are incredible and I especially loved Flint Marko. That was an incredibly wonderful and tragic take on the character that I wish would have taken more of a center stage. I won't spoil anything but fucking hell, Kraven and Venom were phenomenal (although the latter was a bit rushed).
Also the suits are pretty damn good. Are there a few missing that I had hoped for? Yeah. Do I care that much? Hell no! The only complaint I have is that I wish there weren't like, 20 slots just of movie suits.
But now, I have to get to the non-biased part of the review, because there are absolutely a bunch of flaws in this game that I think would have been easily fixed if only it had more time. I mostly have two complaints which stop me from making this my favorite superhero game, and they are the fact that the story is a bit too short and that some content is lacking. As for the first reason, I think Insomniac put too much into making the game bigger and forgot to truly make it better. I guess they wanted to do their Arkham City but it ended up feeling much more grand but much less well thought out, in my opinion. The story is incredible but Act 3 goes by in pretty much 3 hours, which is way too little to do the whole "symbiote invasion" thing. I loved that the first act got you back in the groove, making you play silly carnival games in Coney Island and riding bikes with Harry. But Act 2, while long, feels like a few days and yet characters treat it as if it's been weeks and it's kind of jarring. And then Act 3, precisely after Venom goes on a rampage, is too rushed and feels like they needed to wrap things up because otherwise they wouldn't have time to do everything else. I loved the story but I would have loved it even more if they had made it deeper and longer. The first game had a more engaging and well-thought out story, but here it feels like you're going from plot point to plot point simply because the game says so. My second reason is the fact that the game is missing some core mechanics that really, should have been shipped with the game. New Game Plus was added in a later update in the first one which was acceptable, and then in Miles Morales it was shipped with the game. Yet here, we have to wait for an update. And even things that were in the first game, like replayable enemy bases, character bios, being able to listen back to podcasts, no social feed and changing the time of day, are gone. Adding them at a later date only furthers my suspicion that the game was supposed to come out a bit later but Sony gave Insomniac a deadline, because these are things that should not be missing in a game which is supposed to be an evolution of your first one. I also encountered quite a few bugs that, while not gamebreaking, were a little annoying and that I never encountered in the first one. These two reasons are what stop me from saying that this game is the second coming of Christ, which sucks but it's understandable. I think in the end, Insomniac bit off more than they could chew and you can see that, because this game just SCREAMS for more development time. From a purely videogame standpoint, this is highly superior to its predecessors but looking at the entire picture, it falls short on quite a bit. It sucks because I wanted this to be the definitive Spider-Man experience, but so many of these missing features, suits and missions just kinda leave me saddened because this was as hyped as it could possible be. It was shaping up to be spectacular but it ended up simply being... amazing. Funny, huh?
And that was the more grounded part of the review. I wanna say more but I can't. I have to replay it and 100% it about three or four times before I can get all of my thoughts together without fanboying like a fucking moron. This game is incredible and I loved it to death. I mean it when I say Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is one of the greatest Spider-Man games of all time. And I'm saying that because I hope they can do what they did last time when I called Spider-Man 1 that. Which is, blow me away.
It's an almost perfect game, and I truly believe it could have been a GOTY contender and the best superhero game of all time with just a bit more time in the oven. This game is just barely ALMOST everything I could have ever asked for and more, which makes me somewhat sad but hopeful for the future. Nonetheless, even while recognizing its faults, I can't deny that I loved this game and that to me, it's a 10/10. But I also understand that objectively, it's definitely more akin to an 8/10.
Thank you Insomniac for reminding me of why I love this character so fucking much. I'm gonna put in another 3000 hours 'till the next one.
Boy, was I wrong.
I would normally write this after having completed 100% of the game but holy fucking SHIT I cannot contain my excitement. This game is spectacular, amazing, ultimate, whatever other Spidey adjective you can think of for it. I genuinely have not played a game that has made me feel these many raw emotions in a long ass time, hell I've played Baldur's Gate 3 after 3 years of waiting (and I was blown away by its quality) and yet my emotions were nowhere near the clusterfuck of feels I had throughout this incredible experience.
Spider-Man has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I have never loved a fictional character as much as I love Spider-Man and I have never put in as much dedication into a fictional character as I have with him. I spent most of my teenage years reading all of his comics from 1962 'till today and I still keep up with him. I have seen every show, movie and even every game, no matter how bad or outdated. This character means more to me than I can explain and I'm sure that 99% of people would feel this behavior is weird but I don't care. I love this character to the bone.
Which is why in the days leading up to this game I had started to get anxious. The original 2018 game was absolutely incredible and I called it the greatest Spider-Man game of all time, saying that I could not even begin to imagine a way for the sequel to top this one.
But my God, they did it.
Spider-Man 2 makes the original one look like a prototype. It's as if Insomniac saw what they did, laughed and told themselves "That's it? We can do WAY better" and THEY DID.
The web-swinging was made not only more fun and interactive, but also HARDER (if you want it to). The fact that you can have fall damage, increase how realistically you want the web to move and more, is absolutely nuts to me. The web-wings finally getting some representation in something is great, considering Homecoming used them for half a scene, and they are an incredible addition to your traversal. Not only are the animations fluid as hell, but the web-wings also function amazingly and make the game much more dynamic instead of simply pressing R2 and X. I genuinely cannot for the life of me understand how they managed to make them work this well and also give them such importance. It's totally possible to not use them while going around but damn do they make everything much more stylish and cool. As someone with about 3000 hours across PS4 and PC, I basically had to re-learn traversal and how to move fluently around the city. I can foresee coming back to the first one and feeling naked without the same speed, agility and moves as the sequel. But I love it. Especially the speed part, it's crazy going from Harlem to Coney Island in a single minute. The map is incredible and while I do hate that there's still NO WASHINGTON HEIGHTS REPRESENTATION, I love it so much. Finally going back to Queens since Ultimate Spider-Man is a treat and I loved it. The map is also gorgeous in itself, especially because of how much you can admire it while soaring the skies. Oh and the slingshot, GOOD GOD THE SLINGSHOT. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?
The combat is much much much more fun and way harder than the first one. I loved how much of a challenge the game was and especially the fact that boss fights felt hard but fun and decently doable. The developers realized that it's much more fun to have a huge moveset right from the start and then getting even MORE stuff as you progress. I also very much liked that Pete and Miles had different styles of play, it made switching between them feel truly diverse. Only thing I kinda miss is the huge array of gadgets in the first one, but I understand that streamlining them to only be gadgets that you will ACTUALLY use (unlike the Matrix for example) makes complete sense. Plus, the new L1+button moves are so so SO fun and gave the combat some nice variety, especially when you're wearing the symbiote. Although I do think of all the gadgets, they could have kept the trip mine at the very least.
The symbiote. Wow. What's there to say? The story was very very good from start to finish and, while a bit predictable at some points, it truly felt like a worthy continuation of the first one. But I also think the story is, ironically, the weakest part of the game. If there's one thing to critique, I do feel like Spider-Man 1 had a more tight-knit story with much slower story beats. The storylines had way more time to breathe, but I understand the intent of this story, so I didn't mind it that much while playing it, but when I finished the game and had to let it all sink in I thought "well, that could have used an extra hour or two". I really appreciate that you get the black suit a good chunk into the story, it would have been all too easy to simply get it at the start, so I like that you have to "earn" it. But I do think that the suit should have been more of a slow burn, rather than outright making Pete "angry" in such a short time. After all, the suit should not make Peter a villain. In the original comics, he took off the symbiote once he realized it was a living being and for that reason, the suit hated him for abandoning it. Thus why it started to feed off of Eddie Brock's hatred for Peter, creating Venom. But that's not how most people see it now, so I understand and appreciate the approach Insomniac took with it. Blame the 90's show and Raimi's Spider-Man for that, I suppose. I also loved many of the emotional beats and it truly hit me in the gut. What a rollercoaster! As for the gameplay part, the symbiote was incredibly fun to use and I love how naked you feel without it, truly conveying the NEED Peter feels for it.
The secondary missions are on par with the first one, which is awesome since they were already perfect, although I do feel like there should have been more. I love that most missions, you can do with both Spideys, making the game highly replayable if only for the different voicelines and interactions, but it sucks that you can't re-do any of them. Seabird lives rent free in my head and that is definitely my favorite side mission in any videogame ever.
All of the villains are incredible and I especially loved Flint Marko. That was an incredibly wonderful and tragic take on the character that I wish would have taken more of a center stage. I won't spoil anything but fucking hell, Kraven and Venom were phenomenal (although the latter was a bit rushed).
Also the suits are pretty damn good. Are there a few missing that I had hoped for? Yeah. Do I care that much? Hell no! The only complaint I have is that I wish there weren't like, 20 slots just of movie suits.
But now, I have to get to the non-biased part of the review, because there are absolutely a bunch of flaws in this game that I think would have been easily fixed if only it had more time. I mostly have two complaints which stop me from making this my favorite superhero game, and they are the fact that the story is a bit too short and that some content is lacking. As for the first reason, I think Insomniac put too much into making the game bigger and forgot to truly make it better. I guess they wanted to do their Arkham City but it ended up feeling much more grand but much less well thought out, in my opinion. The story is incredible but Act 3 goes by in pretty much 3 hours, which is way too little to do the whole "symbiote invasion" thing. I loved that the first act got you back in the groove, making you play silly carnival games in Coney Island and riding bikes with Harry. But Act 2, while long, feels like a few days and yet characters treat it as if it's been weeks and it's kind of jarring. And then Act 3, precisely after Venom goes on a rampage, is too rushed and feels like they needed to wrap things up because otherwise they wouldn't have time to do everything else. I loved the story but I would have loved it even more if they had made it deeper and longer. The first game had a more engaging and well-thought out story, but here it feels like you're going from plot point to plot point simply because the game says so. My second reason is the fact that the game is missing some core mechanics that really, should have been shipped with the game. New Game Plus was added in a later update in the first one which was acceptable, and then in Miles Morales it was shipped with the game. Yet here, we have to wait for an update. And even things that were in the first game, like replayable enemy bases, character bios, being able to listen back to podcasts, no social feed and changing the time of day, are gone. Adding them at a later date only furthers my suspicion that the game was supposed to come out a bit later but Sony gave Insomniac a deadline, because these are things that should not be missing in a game which is supposed to be an evolution of your first one. I also encountered quite a few bugs that, while not gamebreaking, were a little annoying and that I never encountered in the first one. These two reasons are what stop me from saying that this game is the second coming of Christ, which sucks but it's understandable. I think in the end, Insomniac bit off more than they could chew and you can see that, because this game just SCREAMS for more development time. From a purely videogame standpoint, this is highly superior to its predecessors but looking at the entire picture, it falls short on quite a bit. It sucks because I wanted this to be the definitive Spider-Man experience, but so many of these missing features, suits and missions just kinda leave me saddened because this was as hyped as it could possible be. It was shaping up to be spectacular but it ended up simply being... amazing. Funny, huh?
And that was the more grounded part of the review. I wanna say more but I can't. I have to replay it and 100% it about three or four times before I can get all of my thoughts together without fanboying like a fucking moron. This game is incredible and I loved it to death. I mean it when I say Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is one of the greatest Spider-Man games of all time. And I'm saying that because I hope they can do what they did last time when I called Spider-Man 1 that. Which is, blow me away.
It's an almost perfect game, and I truly believe it could have been a GOTY contender and the best superhero game of all time with just a bit more time in the oven. This game is just barely ALMOST everything I could have ever asked for and more, which makes me somewhat sad but hopeful for the future. Nonetheless, even while recognizing its faults, I can't deny that I loved this game and that to me, it's a 10/10. But I also understand that objectively, it's definitely more akin to an 8/10.
Thank you Insomniac for reminding me of why I love this character so fucking much. I'm gonna put in another 3000 hours 'till the next one.
2023
If it wasn't for nostalgia, this game would be awesome... on a PSP in 2009. I love Jet Set Radio to death, but this game wouldn't be half as highly rated if it wasn't for JSR. Go emulate JSR for free and you'll have a better time, I promise.
2023
can't sex the star rail
2020
When I first started writing this, I was hoping it wouldn't be too long but I realized I had too much to say and I had to somehow get it all out. I write these mostly for myself so I don't care if anyone else reads.
TL;DR Marvel's Avengers is one of the most depressing happenings in superhero related videogames ever. With all of the hopes and hype surrounding it, it almost feels unfair that it ended up being this bad. The gameplay is repetitive and mediocre at best, the story is fine but nothing special, the missions are annoyingly repetitive and the multiplayer aspect is so under-developed and buggy that it makes release Cyberpunk look like the Citizen Kane of videogames.
When Crystal Dynamic's Avengers game came out in September of 2020, it was almost instantly met with pretty negative reviews and subsequently promptly forgotten about. Seriously, the game has been getting semi-consistent updates ever since its release yet no one seems to care. The playercount has barely been in the triple digits for about a year now and yet, I don't think this is a game that deserves to be forgotten. Not because I think it'll make some kind of miraculous turnaround and become an underrated gem or anything like that, GOD KNOWS THIS GAME HAS NO CHANCES, but because I think this game is a rare example of a game that made the worst possible decisions at every turn.
When the game was first revealed in 2019, there were a lot of first impressions that came out. Everyone knows that first impressions are everything, and people had of a lot of things to say. The biggest criticism was mainly about the character design and how each of the main Avengers looked like a bootleg version of the MCU. This, in fact, is probably the biggest complaint people STILL have whenever they see the characters. Hell, even my best friend has asked me multiple times about why the characters look like the cheap knockoff versions of the movies. And while I personally have no beef with characters not looking like their movie counterparts (see Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy & Spider-Man), I think there's a huge point to be made about the abhorrent design choices the developers went with. I am by no means an expert on character design but I have never seen an in-depth explanation about why they're THIS bad so I'll try to explain it to the best of my abilities.
First off, the designs are closer to the MCU than the comics. There's no way to get around the fact that the designs in the game bear an awful resemblance to those seen in the movies. For example, taking a closer look at Captain America it's clear to see that Marvel thought giving him the weird feather/scale-y texture on his live action costume would have looked awful and silly, so they decided to go for a very militarized look. He doesn't have scales, he doesn't have wings on his helmet, the iconic lower torso stripes are pretty much missing, he has a bunch of pouches and belts, dark fingerless gloves and boots instead of the colorful red ones and he has a chinstrap. Overall, it's a generally muted color palette that tries to adhere to reality to make it more believable. But they steer far away from Cap's original comic book design and, looking at Marvel's Avengers, it's clear what the developers' inspiration comes from. Sure, he may not look like MCU Cap, but he still looks like him a lot more than his comic counterpart which, in turn, invites immediate comparisons. This also goes for the other characters in the base roster to varying degrees. Some try to be bold, like Iron Man, but they just end up looking derpy.
Second reason is... The faces are so awfully generic. And while some people might say this is subjective, I have a pretty strong reason to say this. I don't think this game uses facial models, a practice that has become widely used in the past few years and that I appreciate a whole lot, because the faces look too "computer-generated", if that makes sense. Devil May Cry 5, The Last Of Us Part II and Marvel's Spider-Man, to name a few, are whole-heartedly enhanced by the fact that each character has a face that I can pinpoint as looking like an actual human. So why do I think Marvel's Avengers doesn't use them? Well, just look at the differences between pre-release Black Widow and final release Black Widow. She was judged for looking too "manly" (YIKES!) and as such, was changed. You wouldn't be able to do that with a face model, or at least not to the degree that they did. So that leads me to think that the faces in the game are not those of real people, and it severely hurts their credibility. They have no real discernible imperfections or details that come with having a real face. So while people say that the faces look like off-brand versions of the actors, the truth is that the faces are so generic that they really could look like anyone.
Thirdly and lastly, the designs are just plain bad. I know that this will fall into subjective category and in all honesty, I don't hate the designs as a whole. But I want to make an argument that the designs of this game's characters are subpar, specifically the Iconic suits, which is ironic in itself. And yes, I know you can change suits, but I'll talk about it later. Also, the Iconic suits are the canonical ones that were specifically made for this game, so that's my main gripe. I will be using Captain America once again since he's one of my favorite avengers and probably the only one besides Tony that I like in the game. Before I get into the costume, something worth pointing out is that this version of Steve Rogers has a 5 o'clock shadow. And while this may sound like I've gone absolutely batshit insane (which may very well be true), it's something that I feel is important to point out. Captain America is supposed to always be perfectly clean shaven. It's a part of his design so when he isn't, he looks weird. I think CD made this change in an attempt to make it look more realistic (which I get) but it still falls flat because it's very much misguided. Steve Rogers is supposed to be the human that everyone looks up to in the Marvel universe, similarly to Superman in the DC universe. So having him be the spitting image of perfection (hell, he's a nazi's wet dream when you think about it) is the whole point of the way he looks. Changing that small detail not only looks wrong but it also adds to the feeling that this isn't Captain America and it's actually just some guy wearing a Captain America inspired costume. And that's not even mentioning the fictional symbolic meaning of having facial hair. In fiction, and especially Marvel cause they love that shit, having a stubble or just some overgrown beard is usually a sign of having fallen on hard times. But I digress, it's very off-point. My first main problem with Cap's suit is that it's too bulky. Steve is a super soldier with a god-like physique that comes with it, but the bulky costume hides his muscles and makes him look out of shape. Additionally, there's not much reason for his suit to have so much padding and armor. Captain America already has the best protective item known to man, his shield, he has superhuman levels of durability and he should be agile enough to dodge any incoming threats. So why would he be covered in armor and padding? Wearing that much armor is admitting that, well, he NEEDS that much armor, which makes him look weak and inefficient. Then, we get to the fact that the costume looks too generic. I understand that the idea is that the suit is supposed to look like modified military gear because Cap is a soldier, but the problem is that the costume no longers looks like a costume and now looks like a normal, real-world military gear that was painted over in an attempt to cosplay as Captain America. And that's not to say that the suit is comprised of real world military gear because it's really not, but it looks like it is. And that's the problem. To make another comparison, MCU Cap's costume is clearly inspired by military and tactical gear and yet, although it looks believable, it still looks like a uniquely designed super suit. It also accentuates Chris Evans' body, whereas the game version makes him look too bulky. My last and largest problem is the stripes that I mentioned earlier. Or more accurately, the lack of them. The suit has iconic white and red stripes on the lower torso and they are quite literally the american flag plastered all over him. That is the entire point of that choice, to emulate America on him. But the Iconic suit doesn't have any of them, instead choosing to opt for small white lines and barely noticeable red pinstripes. That makes the lines feel more like an easter egg than an active part of the design. Again, this largely absent part of the design lends credence to the feeling that these are not the actual characters we know and are instead knock-off versions of them.
Onto bigger things that actually interest the majority of the players instead of nerds like me who make a fuss about Thor's hair being the wrong shade of blonde.
When discussing this game, it is common to see people say that the story is not only the best part, but that it's a genuinely good story all by itself. Well, I'm here to say... That last part is completely untrue. While the story is relatively one of the best parts of the game, its plot is still nonsensical, poorly explained and too short to be of any real substance. I'll try to rapidly go through the story to explain my biggest issues with it, so buckle up.
The whole A-Day scenario that the game opens up with is already a massive narrative misstep. The premise of it just doesn't make sense. The Avengers are unveiling a new untested power source while ALSO announcing the winner of their fan fiction competition. I have so many questions, the biggest of them being WHY?! These two events don't exactly go hand in hand, especially because of the severe risks involved with it, yet the story expects the audience to believe that this is a totally rational and normal thing to do. There's also this weird feeling that this parade of self celebration is not exactly something a team of honest heroes like the Avengers would do. If anything, it feels more like something out of a parody or some other form of media that depicts superheroes as narcissistic and self-indulgent. But let's suspend our disbelief and move on. The whole level is seen through the eyes of Kamala Khan, the game's main character. And while many will say that Kamala's inclusion in this game is sacrilege by itself, I'll outright state that I don't exactly hate her. She's fine. If anything, the real issues will start further down the road. Anyway, Kamala meets all the heroes (which is very convenient) and then an explosion in the distance interrupts everything. The Avengers fly off to deal with it and the attention shifts off of Kamala and onto the characters you actually bought the game to play as. That being said, they don't really do much gameplay-wise because this section is more of a tutorial than anything. Narratively speaking, that's because not much actually happens until Taskmaster shows up on the bridge with a truck full of sonic bombs, which can apparently liquify the city. But even with Taskmaster defeated and the bombs disarmed, the Chimera seemingly gets hijacked (little sidenote, I think the Chimera doesn't even get properly introduced and the game just starts referring to it and you have to sorta play along and not question it but nonetheless, the Chimera is a helicarrier powered by Terrigen, the new energy source the Avengers were unveiling) with Dr. George Tarleton and Captain America onboard. Cap mentions that the ship seems to be getting pulled to some sort of heat signature underground (keep this in mind, it'll be important later) and, after Taskmaster is dealt with, the rest of the Avengers try to go to the helicarrier and help Cap. The Terrigen reactor detonates and blows up the Chimera completely, taking Cap down with it.
This leads into a glorified slideshow presentation where the game shows what happens in the five years between this event and the rest of the game. Captain America is declared dead and the Avengers are blamed for the tragedy. They disband, Stark Industries and SHIELD get put out of business and rebranded into A.I.M. by Dr. Tarleton and a woman named Monica. A.I.M. is basically a mega-corporation that seemingly controls the world, unlike its comic counterpart. Anyway, the mist emitted from the Terrigen crystal gave birth to a race of superpowered individuals called Inhumans, and A.I.M. now seeks to find and cure every Inhuman.
So, a lot of things have happened, and very little make ACTUAL sense. Captain America is presumed dead and yet, no one finds a body. This is brushed off like it's a minor thing, but that is a MAJOR thing to be concerned about. It's basically an unwritten rule in fiction that if there is no body, then the person isn't actually dead. Yet no one ever mentions how it's weird that a body was never found. It's absolutely insane to me that none of the remaining Avengers consider this and that they all just believe that he died. And that's just... Depressing. Seriously, none of his close friends even thought to go looking for something to bury? None of them even considered that they were being lied to? I guess Hulk found his shield, but still. It's just weird. I'd want someone to try and find my body if I was presumed dead instead of just stealing my favorite frisbee. But again, none of this is brought up or discussed as a possibility. Next, my issue with it is... Stark Industries and SHIELD have their assets ceased and given to Tarleton and Monica. I can understand SHIELD being dismantled and maybe having those two acquire it later, but how on Earth does it make any sense at all that Stark Industries are given to them? I am by no means an expert of this subject, but how is it possible for a company to fail so miserably that they get completely taken away from their righteous owner and given to a third party? And even if this is how that works, is the game seriously implying that Tony Stark doesn't have any kind of backup? At all? He just goes back to his crumbling family home with no money, Iron Man suits or even JARVIS? How? Tony Stark is either the unluckiest bastard in the world when it comes to the legal system or he's incredibly stupid and didn't have any money or assets saved up. Both of which make 0 sense. There's also the confusion on how A.I.M. as a company was created. I originally though that it came to be after Tarleton and Monica seized Stark's assets and money, but apparently A.I.M. existed as a company before that and was just much smaller. It's not a huge deal I guess but the lack of clarity is still a little confusing.
Then, there's the use of the Inhumans in the story. While not exactly a problem, it's baffling that this game deals with Inhumans at all. I mean, after the colossal failure of the TV Show and their general lack of popularity in the comics in like, ever, it's confusing that they would be such a seemingly large part of the game's plot and world. I say "seemingly" there because the real issue of the Inhumans in this game is that they barely matter at all. Their existence basically kicks off the main plot of the game but outside of Kamala, I can only remember two other named Inhumans. The fire-powered Dante (who has one scene and basically does nothing) and Theo, the guy with the portal powers working for the Resistance. You never have to fight any Inhuman enemies, only one Inhuman is playable and most confusing of all, there is no appearance or even reference to the Inhuman Royal Family. I'm not saying that the story would be better or more complete with them in it, but it's still incredibly odd that they don't feature at all. It would be like writing a story where mutants are front and center and yet never having a single appearance from any of the X-Men.
And finally, the biggest and I mean BIGGEST problem with this setup is how the Avengers are blamed for the destruction on A-Day. In the story, the characters say that the public needed someone to blame so they blamed the Avengers, but there is already someone to blame: Taskmaster. Taskmaster is the one who led the attack on A-Day, Taskmaster is the one responsible for the bridge collapsing, Taskmaster is the one who brought a bomb capable of liquefying the city, so it ultimately was Taskmaster who caused the destruction on A-Day. I understand the Avengers getting some of the blame but how is it possible that they got ALL of the blame and the actual culprit seemingly takes none of it. To make a comparison, this would be like blaming first responders for the events of a terrorist bombing. And what's even more strange is that Taskmaster (again, the character who practically sets the entire plot in motion) is only mentioned one other time after A-Day, when Cap and Widow realized that it was Monica who hired him. Taskmaster should have been a key figure in the A-Day hearings, being thoroughly investigated for his actions and motivations, but instead he disappears almost entirely from the game's story.
So already, we have a lot of stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense and this is just for what essentially is the prelude of the story and even the ACTUAL story itself. It's clear to see that a lot of the narrative decisions in the game were made not because they make sense but because they were necessary for the story to progress. The A-Day celebration has a new power source unveiled AND a fan fiction competition at the same time in the same place despite being an obviously terrible idea, not because it's something that makes sense but because it allows for Kamala to be there and get her powers. The Chimera goes into the air, despite supposedly being non-operational, not because it makes sense but because Cap needed to be separated from the team so he can die. And NO ONE questions it, because if he was alive then he would have rallied the team back together and the rest of the game wouldn't have happened. Tony Stark gets his company taken from him and given to a pair of lunatics not because that's how the legal system works but because the developers thought it would be cool if Tony didn't have any money and had to start back at square one. Taskmaster isn't investigated for his actions on A-Day and found to have been working for whoever because that would have prevented Tarleton and Monica from taking over Stark Industries, which would have prevented the story from happening. He needs to be forgotten about so the Avengers can take the full blame for A-Day and the story can progress from there.
It's clear to see that a lot of the story beats seem to have been made backwards. The developers came up with an effect they wanted to see (small fangirl meets every Avenger withing a small timespan + gets powers) and then wrote the cause for it (there is a fanfiction competition that happens at the same time the Avengers unveil a new energy source) afterwards regardless of whether or not it made sense. This problem is something that continues to persist throughout the rest of the game and it's incredibly annoying.
Now that the opening is out of the way and I've only spent 18 paragraphs talking about it, it's time to start the story proper. It's been nearly 5 years since A-Day and Kamala has gone from a small child to a teenager. There is now a resistance that is formed in response to A.I.M.'s global control and subjugation of the Inhumans and Kamala finds a link to Tony Stark's uh... Work accounts? on the Resistance subreddit and after correctly guessing his password which is just "I Am Iron Man", she is able to access his account and this somehow grants her access to A.I.M. servers where she copies the available files onto a thumb drive. During the data transfer, purple electricity surges from her computer and boots her off the server. With her computer bricked and A.I.M. literally right outside looking for her, she decides to go into her "headquarters" to take a look at what was on the flash drive. So what's wrong with this story beat? A lot of things really.
What exactly is the account that Kamala is trying to access? It's Tony Stark's account, yes, but his account for what? I hesitated to call it his work account because it's not an account for Stark Industries, it's an account for A.I.M. I guess it could be that Stark's account with Stark Industries was changed to an A.I.M. account once Stark Industries was absorbed into A.I.M. but that still doesn't make any sense. Because Tarleton and Monica should have deleted his account or at the very least changed his password or limited what his account can access once they acquired his company to prevent him or anyone close to him from using his account to do something like this. Additionally, it's baffling that Tony Stark hasn't tried to look into this account himself, especially because we learn later he's still furious at Tarleton for stealing his company. So it only makes sense that he would want to do something about it and yet he just doesn't for some reason? People have gotten pretty angry about Tony Stark's password being "I Am Iron Man" because that's really stupid but I'm largely fine with it, Tony Stark is a pretty big moron in this game so something like that is perfectly in character for him.
As Kamala heads off to her headquarters we notice something else: The game completely skipped over Kamala getting her powers. You're thrust into gameplay and she just has them. There's a ton of narrative potential that is completely wasted here. We know from the slideshow intro that the Inhumans become wrapped in some sort of cocoon and emerge with their powers. What was Kamala's reaction to going through that? How did she hide becoming a human cocoon from her family? or do they know that she's an Inhuman? To make a comparison, this would be like if in the first Spider-Man movie, Peter was bitten by the spider and then after that, it cuts directly to the wrestling scene. I can absolutely see how it would confuse casual players when she just shows up with powers in this section of the game.
Moving on, Kamala is able to get to her headquarters and access the files on the thumb drive. There's a video of the Terrigen Reactor on A-Day where Tarleton seemingly shuts Captain America in the reactor just as it's about to blow. Kamala is convinced that this is the smoking gun that could take down A.I.M. and Tarleton, since in Tarleton's testimony about the A-Day event he claimed to be on the Chimera's command deck when the explosion happened. So not only did he lie about that, he also seems to have killed Captain America. After this, Kamala gets a message on her computer from a person named "tiny_dancer" who says that A.I.M. is on to her and she needs to get out ASAP. "tiny_dancer" then tells Kamala to meet them at Heroes' Park near the
Captain America statue. Kamala does as she's told yet when she arrives at Heroes' Park instead of finding tiny_dancer, she encounters a group of men bullying a guy. Kamala interferes with her honestly kinda disgusting gigantic hands and forces the bullies away. The guy she saves isn't very thankful and scurries away. With tiny_dancer nowhere in sight, Kamala is forced to flee and after seemingly getting away through the sewers, she is found, knocked out and taken captive. She awakens in a limo seated opposite Tarleton and Monica. This is where we see the beginning of Tarleton's transformation into MODOK. His head is considerably larger than normal but it's not quite there yet. It's also here that we see that Tarleton has acquired a superpower: Technokinesis AKA the ability to control technology. Tarleton offers to help Kamala by finding a cure for the Inhumans but she refuses and escapes. She runs away from some aim-bots and as she does so, she encounters a human in A.I.M. gear that is seemingly able to teleport. This person tells Kamala to stop running but she refuses and keeps going (keep this in mind it'll be important later). When Kamala is cornered in a building, she's forced to fight her way through some Aimbots and once that's finished, she gets on a bus to go to Utah. Utah is where the Resistance is rumored to be so Kamala figures it's her best bet to find someone to show the drive to. After this, we get a brief cutscene with Tarleton and Monica. Monica is showing Tarleton a variety of powers possessed by the Inhumans they have captured and are now experimenting on. One of these Inhumans is a woman who is able to clone herself near perfectly but the only difference being the clone has differently colored eyes (keep this in mind it'll be important later #5). The pair talk about how they plan to implement these powers into their programmable adaptoids, before Monica tells Tarleton he's due for another shot of her regenerative formula. After injecting it into him, he seems to get a boost in power.
Kamala makes it to Utah and when she gets there, she finds the Chimera stranded in a canyon. So uhm yeah quick side-note, how did the Chimera get here? The last time we saw it, it was on A-Day, San Francisco. So how did it cross Nevada without its Terrigen power source and get to Utah? The game doesn't act like this is a concern at all and just moves along so I guess I have to, too. Kamala looks around the Chimera and sees that it's deserted, but while exploring she finds Captain America's shield. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of the Hulk, who chases Kamala through the Chimera. Hulk corners her and after almost scaring her to death, takes back the shield and disappears. For some reason, after this, Kamala mentions that Hulk is "probably back to Banner now" which is just... A little odd? Like, how could she know that? Anyway, she tries to escape but just as she's about to, she's cornered by Aimbots. Even though she's somewhat dealing with them, she still has a few weaknesses and kinks she hasn't worked out about her powers. In fact, the begins to pass out mid-fight. Lucky for her, Hulk comes back and defeats the remaining Aimbots. When she wakes back up, she's laying on a bed besides Bruce Banner, who tends to her. Kamala shows the video on the USB drive to Bruce, who still isn't 100% convinced to tag along with her. The video is also corrupted and doesn't have any audio, which certainly doesn't help. Kamala then gives some speech about being Inhuman that I slept through and finally, Bruce agrees to help her. Their plan is to go to an old SHIELD bunker to find JARVIS and then use JARVIS to find Tony. Once they get there, they're ambushed by Aimbots and have to fight their way through. Kamala manages to find a hard drive copy of JARVIS but not before finding a picture of the original Avengers. A picture that includes Hawkeye.
So, quick side-note... Where is Hawkeye? Obviously the real world answer is that he came into the game later through DLC, but I'm asking about the narrative of the game. The story doesn't give any explanation as to why he isn't present during the events of A-Day and nobody even WONDERS where he went. This is incredibly bizarre as the Avengers are supposed to be very close friends other than teammates. But not a single member of the team says anything about him. If you weren't already familiar with these characters, you'd probably be confused by the random guy in that picture. Say what you will about the Marvel movies, but those films have an incredible attention to detail when it comes to these kinds of things. When a character's absent, they usually give an explanation on what they're doing and why they aren't available. It doesn't have to be a full fledged 10 minute explanation, but just a single line of dialogue could have explained this away. But instead, we get absolutely nothing. Moving on, Kamala turns to leave and comes face to face with the Abomination. There's no buildup or anything, he just appears. Hulk then ALSO appears out of nowhere to tackle Abomination away.
Quick meaningless side-note, there's this really odd line Abomination has here. He says something to the effect of "you're not looking well" to Hulk. Which I thought meant he had fought Hulk before, hence his comment. But if you look at the in-game character bio, it says he only became Abomination AFTER A-Day. So that means that this is the first time Abomination has ever fought Hulk. Not only that, this is basically the first time ANYONE has seen Abomination in this world. Yet no one comments on this. Kamala doesn't look especially surprised to see him, she doesn't even ask Bruce if he knows him or if they have a history. Then, there's the fact that Banner doesn't really have a reaction to Abomination either. At least in the comic books, one of Banner's greatest fears is that the military will try to turn the Hulk into a weapon. And here stands that fear made flesh and Banner says nothing.
Anyway, Hulk defeats Abomination and Kamala arrives. She finds a video that shows a seemingly successful Inhuman cure. With that, the two leave the facility and head back to the Chimera. When they get back, Kamala has a little speech about not fitting in and not really liking her powers (TO HULK OF ALL PEOPLE) and Bruce just sort of goes "there, there, okay bye". With JARVIS restored, they can finally-- Wait, hold on. JARVIS isn't fully powered yet, so you first have to go around the Helicarrier and push a few buttons and levers. Not that JARVIS is restored, we can-- Wait, not yet. JARVIS needs something called a neural up-link to have full access to his files. Banner contacts Mariah Hill and asks her where they can find it. She gives them the info about a stash hidden somewhere up the mountains. So Kamala and Bruce head to the SHIELD vault, see a message from Nick Fury about these things called "SHIELD Protocols", get back to the Chimera, give their protocols to Mariah Hill and then give the neural up-link to JARVIS. So NOW he can find Tony. But wait! First, Kamala has to use the "HARM room", which is literally just the Danger Room from the X-Men, to play the game's second tutorial as Iron Man. Then, they can finally go and find Tony.
All of what just happened was completely pointless padding. None of that needed to happen, I could cut that part out of the review and nothing would change in the overall narrative. Why couldn't the story just have JARVIS able to locate Tony as soon as he was plugged in. While this is more annoying on the gameplay side, it accomplishes nothing on the story side but make the campaign a bit longer.
So JARVIS pinpoints Tony's last location to the Stark's Ancestral Home of Nevada. Kamala and Bruce head there and find a disheveled Tony living in a trailer in front of his decrepit family home. Tony and Bruce have a heated altercation that ends once Kamala shows Tony why the two are there. After watching the drive's contents, Tony realizes that what seems to be video corruption is actually clever encryption. But before he can decrypt it, a message from tiny_dancer appears on the screen, warning that A.I.M. has found them and that they don't have much time. A few seconds later, they do in fact appear and force the heroes into battle. Tony dons a make-shift armor to help out and they ultimately emerge victorious. With that, we move back to Tarleton, who's frustrated with his loss. Abomination comes into the room, complaining that Tarleton's choices and leadership are being challenged by Monica. Tarleton interjects and what follows is an incredibly bizarre and baffling scene. Tarleton tells a story about how, as a young boy, he found a wolf cub in the wild. His father told him that it was too dangerous to keep, yet Tarleton refused to listen and decided to raise the wolf cub. He explains that he thought that if it could instill the proper rules and boundaries within the wolf, he could make use of its abilities. One day, the wolf snapped and attacked Tarleton. As he gets to this part, he begins to choke Abomination with his mechanical claws. He continues and explains that his dog fought off the wolf long enough for Tarleton to call for help, ultimately ending with Tarleton's dad shooting the wolf. Monica then interrupts, telling him to stop choking Abomination by saying they "need him". Tarleton then seems to get out of this trance and he lets go of Abomination and apologizes. Abomination leaves, never to be seen again. So like, what was the point of that story?
Clearly Tarleton is trying to use it as some sort of metaphor, but again, what point is he trying to make? Is Abomination the wolf in the story? Because if that's the case, he's making a point on Abomination's insubordination. Why does he not repeat the events of the story and once again, kill the wolf? Maybe he would, had Monica not stopped him. But... Why does she? She claims that they need Abomination, yet he never appears again in the story so clearly that isn't true. What would they have needed him for, anyway? Or is the wolf the Inhumans (or even all super powered people in general)? If that's the case, then it kind of makes sense, given Tarleton's hatred for super powered people. But that just raises the question of why he's even employed Abomination in the first place, if he already held this disdain towards superhuman abilities. Also, there's the issue that his story and the message behind it have a glaring flaw: The fact that you can domesticate wolves. I just don't know what the writers were trying to say. All they're doing is draw attention to how stupid and nonsensical Tarleton's mistrust of super-powered beings is. But like, I already knew that. This doesn't give him depth by showing that his ideology has flaws, it just makes him look like a complete moron. So once again, I must ask, what was the point of the story? I honestly don't know and I don't think the writers knew either. I think they only reason this scene exists is that they wanted to give Tarleton some sort of villainous speech, so they wrote something that sounded profound and just went with it.
After this, Tony, Bruce and Kamala need to do some busy work before they can progress the story. Tony goes and finds some components in order to repair the Chimera's fabrication machine. Narratively, he does this so he can get his normal iconic Iron Man suit. Gameplay wise, this machine is used to acquire new costumes. Then, Tony splits up to look for initiator cores in order to power up the Chimera to the point where it can fly. Tony searches a city and finds an oversized arc reactor, which he promptly destroys. He then has an odd moment of self-reflection, where he realizes he can't just sit back while other people use his tech for nefarious reasons. A lesson that I'm not sure how he hasn't already learned, as it's literally supposed to be the entire reason he even becomes Iron Man. Regardless of this, he does... NOT find any initiator cores. Neither do Bruce and Kamala, who look everywhere through the Utah desert. Tired and feeling defeated, the two take a breather. Kamala once again voices doubts and disappointment about her powers TO THE HULK and then she asks where the other Inhumans are and why they aren't fighting A.I.M. With almost laughably goofy timing, a portal opens that leads right to the Inhuman Resistance. The Resistance lead by former Ant-Man Hank Pym. There is this base called "Ant-Hill", a name curiously NOT suggested by Hank but instead by tiny_dancer, who is confirmed here to be an anonymous hacker working for the Resistance. The place is full of Inhumans and salvaged A.I.M. tech, including initiator cores.
Before we continue, there is something a little strange I want to address. Hank Pym is present but there is no mention of his wife, Janet Van Dyne AKA The Wasp. Janet was one of the founding Avengers and has been The Wasp for decades since then. However, she is not mentioned at all here which is just... Incredibly bizarre. I mean, the story goes out of its way to explain why Hank doesn't suit up as Ant-Man (apparently, he was captured by A.I.M. at some point and experimented on, where his biology was messed with and he cannot manipulate his size any more). With such an incredible limitation to his abilities, you would think he might ask his wife for help. Her absence in this story doesn't really make any sense, unless the character just does not exist, which might honestly be the case. In the game's CODEX, Hope is mentioned, Hank's daughter (who is The Wasp in the MCU). I would not be surprised if the developers of this game decided to completely ignore Janet's decade long existence in order to copy what the movies have done. To avoid confusion, it seems that Hope is The Wasp in this universe and Janet simply does not exist, as weird as that sounds.
Anyway, after doing a mission that I completely forgot the point of, we go back to the main point of the story. Kamala talks to an Inhuman called Dante (a kid you've already met in the opening of the game but it's never addressed for some reason), who's practicing his use of his fire powers. He tells her that his mom is still in one of A.I.M.'s Inhuman prisons and that there's no way to save her because by the time the Avengers get to her, all of the prisoners will have been moved to another location and there will be no way to find them. Kamala's distressed about this and goes to talk about it to Bruce. He's with Hank, who's using an AI called ROY to send the initiator cores to the Chimera, so that issue's finally addressed. Kamala tells Bruce that they need to hit the prisons now, but he reassures her that Tony will be with them in less than a day and they'll be able to do it then. Kamala then has a small freak-out, but Bruce shuts her down and tells her that she's not ready.
So, quick side-note, why can't they just attack the prison now? Because they attack the prison later anyway once Kamala gets captured. Bruce says they can't do it now and that it's too risky and that it would be better for Tony to arrive with the Chimera. When they attack the prison later, Tony only gets there with the Chimera after the prison has been liberated. Surely they would have been fine if both Kamala and Hulk had struck at the same time. I'd even go as far as to say that the two of them could have liberated the prison by themselves without the Resistance's help. What's even weirder is that Bruce arrives at the scene of the breakout in normal clothing, which to me implies that he didn't even help as the Hulk. So that means that the Resistance could have freed the prison at any time without the Avengers, so why didn't they? The only reason I can think of is that they might have wanted to use the Chimera to transport and house these escaped prisoners, but they already had an Inhuman who could make gateway portals to ferry people out, rendering the Chimera pointless if that's what they were planning on using it for.
Anyway, Kamala ignores Bruce's demands and sneaks out at night to try and liberate the prisoners single-handedly. She gets help from Theo, the portal guy, who teleports her over to the prison's back entrance to start the assault. So uh... Why can't Theo just teleport Kamala directly inside the prison? The most reasonable assumption is that his portal powers work the same way that they work in most other media. That being that he needs to see or know where he's teleporting to in order to avoid teleporting into a wall or something. If this is the case, it's never stated and the logistics of his powers are never discussed. How did he teleport to Kamala and Bruce when the Resistance found them if he, as HE HIMSELF SAID, had never been to that place before?
Nevermind that, Kamala goes to the prison and gets captured after she tries to grow larger again and passes out due to the strain. She wakes up tied to a table inside the A.I.M. prison and Monica is there. She discusses generic villain stuff with a senator over some kind of holographic Skype call, where he demands to see progress on her cure. Tarleton appears and he assures the senator that the cure is coming along nicely. Then, the call ends. Monica and Tarleton briefly discuss how they both know that the cure is bullshit and while Monica still wants to keep working on it, Tarleton tells her to shit it down. Tarleton leaves and Monica starts messing with stuff on her holographic iPad and Kamala begins squirming. Monica puts Kamala to sleep with some sort of drug and then we cut to tiny_dancer. Surprise surprise, it's Black Widow. She's infiltrated A.I.M.'s prison and has informed the Resistance that it's time to strike, as she needs backup in order to try and rescue Kamala. So yes, not only had Black Widow been tiny_dancer this whole time, she was also the teleporting A.I.M. agent who pleaded with Kamala to stop running back in New Jersey. So this raises the question... How is Black Widow able to teleport?
It's actually explained in an elevator conversation that Widow was using A.I.M. tech in the uniform she was wearing to teleport and, once she was found to be a spy, A.I.M. remotely locked away the teleportation ability of the suit, so she threw the suit away and stopped using it. Before hearing this conversation, I was incredibly confused as to how Widow was teleporting and the explanation of how she was able to do it and why she stopped doing it is literally in an option conversation outside the main story. So, you know... Cool.
So, Black Widow traverses through Monica's lab and sees the truth of what she's doing. Monica's "cure" is made from D.A.R.K. Terrigen. What is D.A.R.K. Terrigen? What is D.A.R.K. supposed to be an acronym for? Who knows, don't ask. She forces the Inhumans to use their powers to the point where they seem to die from burnout and this process somehow allows for Monica to copy their powers onto the new adaptoid robots. After learning this, Black Widow goes deeper into the facility, facing off against the adaptoids and then against Monica herself in a mech suit. Widow defeats Monica and the day is won, or so it seems. Kamala isn't with the other escaped Inhumans so Widow goes looking for her. She finds her sulking in the compound, blaming herself for her failure and poor decision-making. Widow goes "there, there, okay bye" and Kamala feels better. With Monica captured, she's brought to the Chimera for interrogation. Bruce says he can handle this and very much DOESN'T handle it. He does very poorly and is unable to find out any information about A.I.M.'s secret lab, which prompts Monica to say "scour the Earth, you will not find our lab" which in itself should basically give away the obvious location of the lab but whatever I guess everyone in the game has the IQ of a spoon. Oh yeah, also, the story is now about trying to find Monica's secret lab. I'm not exactly sure when this becomes a priority. This whole interrogation scene brings it up as if it's something the audience is supposed to be aware of, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time the story says that Monica even has a secret lab.
Anyway, before Black Widow can go in and continue the investigation, the Chimera is attacked by A.I.M. forces. A large-scale battle ensues throughout the Chimera and Monica escapes. During the confusion, the A.I.M. robots damage the Chimera's power source, which makes the entire ship bound for a crash landing on the city of Manhattan. Luckily, Thor just decides to be a hero again (after having appeared maybe twice in the whole story) and shows up to help. He uses his lightning to power the Chimera back up so he can avoid crashing. Once everything has calmed down, Thor approaches the rest of the team and they all bicker a bit. Thor calms down once they explain al the evil bullshit that Tarleton and Monica are up to, and they have evidence of what really happened with Captain America on the Chimera thanks to Kamala. In an oddly sweet and well-done moment, Thor shows the he remembers Kamala from their brief encounter on A-Day. Just thought I should mention it because it was probably my favorite part of the game. The team then watches the fully decrypted video from Kamala's thumb drive (heyyy remember that? that was only like 8 hours of gameplay ago) and see that the footage shows Cap actually ordering Tarleton to leave and shut the doors to the reactor room while Cap purposely detonates the reactor. Shocked from that revelation that Cap's death wasn't orchestrated by Tarleton and that it was Cap who caused the explosion, Bruce and Tony get into a heated argument. Thor and Black Widow decide to leave as Bruce and Tony argument escalates and the two begin to fight. Also, can I just mention how absolutely fucking cool it is that the team breaks up for the SECOND TIME in the story. It almost feels like the writers were trying to have the Avengers together for as little time as possible. Like, Thor and Black Widow leaving the instant Tony and Bruce start arguing is super funny cause neither of them join on the argument or try to stop it, they just leave. Wow, what a great team.
Bruce and Tony burst out of the Chimera and have an off-screen Hulkbuster battle. Yes, you heard that right. They have an OFF-SCREEN HULKBUSTER BATTLE. I'm absolutely stunned that we don't get to play this fight or even as much as see it. The Hulkbuster is in the game already, it's not like adding a section with them fighting for 3 minutes would have taken that much. Anyway, Kamala gets sad and accidentally calls her father. He pleads with her to come home, saying that he misses her greatly. Due to a mixture of sadness, guilt and fear, Kamala doesn't speak until he hangs up. Something interesting, though, is that the father says "I should have never told you to hide your powers", which shows that he was aware of her Inhuman powers. That would have been nice to know much earlier in the game but you know what, that's fine. It's nice to see it addressed at the very least. Kamala re-watches the tape of Bruce questioning Monica and she focuses on her "scour the Earth" line. Realizing that this means that Monica's lab is no on Earth, she rushes to tell Tony and Bruce about her discovery. Once she tells them, Tony realizes he'll have to don a space armor and head into outer space to reach A.I.M.'s secret satellite lab. But before he can do that, you have to play a filler mission so that Tony can get the necessary components to complete the suit. Once that's over, Iron Man rockets into space and just barely makes it to the satellite. After traversing the inside of the satellite, he finds the source of Monica's regenerative formula. A living being kept there inside a chamber. Iron Man opens the chamber containing the formula source and it's none other than Captain America.
So, quick side-note, how DID the regenerative formula derive from Cap's blood to give Tarleton his powers? The super soldier serum in Cap's blood should basically just be a very powerful performance enhancer so I'm not sure how something derived from that could give a person the power to control machinery with just their thoughts. It could have been reasonable to assume that the formula CAN make someone incredibly smart and even increase the size of their head in a similar vein The Leader or something like that, but I think that the technokinesis is just a stretch too far.
Steve and Tony share a moment and then work together to escape the satellite. Also, I just want to point out that when I played through the scene, Cap's shield appeared on his back even though it's not supposed to be there. This seems to be a pretty common bug and I just found that funny. Monica appears on a holo-screen and threatens the two. While Tony pieces together that Monica is so adamant to stop them because Tarleton doesn't know about the satellite or what's on it, Cap manages to find an escape pod. They both get off the satellite just as it blows up, but the explosion seems to damage the escape pod's system, so the two are left to drift in space with seemingly no way to get back to Earth. So while the two have a moment to breathe, Tony asks Cap why he smashed the Terrigen reactor. Cap explains that the Terrigen was being pulled towards a subterranean heat signature and, if given more time, the entire San Andreas Fault would have collapsed and millions would have died.
In all honesty, I have to say that the intrigue behind Captain America and the Terrigen reactor's destruction is the most interesting in this game's story. At first you're led to believe that Tarleton sabotaged the reactor and killed Cap on purpose because of course he did, he's the bad guy. But then, the rug is pulled out from under you once it's revealed that Cap actually tried to get Tarleton to safety and then detonated the reactor himself. The Avengers, like you as the player, are left reeling wondering why on Earth Captain America of all people would do something like that and then, when this scene happens and Cap's noble reasoning is revealed, it's a nice resolution that makes you wonder why you ever even doubted Cap in the first place. Furthermore, it plants another seed of mystery, as you now wonder what that underground heat signature was. It's just a shame that this next mystery isn't resolved very well.
Anyway, Thor miraculously shows up to save Tony and Cap (which like, if Thor could have done this at any time then why didn't they get him to go up to the satellite in the first place? And why is Thor's reaction to seeing Cap alive again so subdued? Cap's death had such an effect on him that he literally left his hammer on Cap's grave and stopped being a hero, yet when he sees his thought to be dead friend again, all he says is "Welcome back"). We cut back to Monica in her lab, where sh'es confronted by Tarleton who now has completed his transformation into MODOK. He angrily accuses her of infecting him and stealing his hope. And while she tries to spin the situation to her advantage and calm him down, her attempts fail and MODOK injects her with her own regenerative formula, killing her. So, two things to point out here. Number one is that Monica doesn't actually die here (I know what you're thinking, no way!). As she's injected with the formula, we get a close-up of her eyes that show they are actually two different colors, whereas they have previously always been the same color. Remember that? That's what we call a "callback" in the showbiz. As we saw earlier in the story, there was an Inhuman that could duplicate herself near perfectly, the only imperfection being that the duplicate had different eye colors. Monica has seemingly been able to copy this power onto herself and the Monica that dies here is actually her clone. Meanwhile, the real Monica is alive somewhere else. I've seen a lot of people express confusion as to how she's still alive after this but this is the explanation. As with a lot of things in this game's story, I don't think this is ever flat out stated to be the case, instead you have to piece it together yourself. The second thing I want to address is Tarleton, or I guess MODOK now. The subtitles refer to him as MODOK now and in a later scene he admits that is now what he's calling himself, but I have to ask why? In the comics, MODOK is an acronym that stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. Is he using the same acronym here? If so, he doesn't explain that. If he's not using that acronym, and MODOK instead means something else, he doesn't explain that either. There's also the fact that now, he has his iconic incredibly oversized head. But there is an issue with that. Over the five year time skip from the opening, Tarleton's head only increased in size by a little bit, but over the course of what, a few days, maybe a week, he has now had a far more dramatic cranial size increase. I guess it isn't a huge issue but it's still a little weird and shows to me that there wasn't a lot of thought placed towards this aspect of MODOK.
Back on the Chimera, Cap reunites with his shield and Black Widow. It's here that the two of them piece together that it was Monica who hired Taskmaster with the intent of stealing some of the Terrigen Crystals. But this doesn't make any sense. Taskmaster's attack on A-Day seemed far more like a personal attack on the Avengers with the express purpose of discrediting them. Taskmaster was literally planning on liquefying the entire city, how was that an attempt to steal the Terrigen? And if Taskmaster WAS just a distraction while his goons were meant to steal the Terrigen, that doesn't check out either because the goons made no apparent attemp to steal anything. Why would Monica even go to these lengths in order to try and steal Tarrigen anyway? She worked on the project with Bruce and Tarleton, if she really wanted to steal some then all she needed to do was discreetly stash them away when no was looking. Regardless of any of that, the fully reunited team is called to the Chimera's wartable, where they see that A.I.M. is making their big final play. They have deployed gunships over major cities, holding down conventional military forces using their adaptoids. The Avengers decide that enough is enough, and that they're taking the fight to aim in order to end this once and for all. Except... Not yet. Because before you can do that, you have to do a resource hunting side quest so that Tony can build these "Stark Tech" outfits for the whole team in preparation for the final assault. Not, at this point, I have to be honest and say that this is where I stopped playing the game. The absurd level of boring padding wore me down to the point where I had no interest in playing anymore. So from this point forward, everything I speak on will not be from first-hand experience but instead from watching the cutscenes online.
Before moving onto the story though, I do have a quick side note to make here. Why does the team need the Stark Tech outfits for the final confrontation with MODOK? As far as I know, there's nothing particularly dangerous about him that necessitates the use of a more powerful suit of armor. And if MODOK was strong enough to warrant new suits, these new suits shouldn't be used for Thor and Hulk. Thor is literally a god, the god of THUNDER, and Hulk is power made flesh. It doesn't make sense for there to be any kind of technological suit that could boost their power beyond what they're already capable of. But that's another issue right there! The Stark Suits are technological suits, MODOK's power is the ability to control technology... Is no one concerned that he might be able to use his powers to affect that Stark Tech suits? Or maybe even control the heroes through them? The entire premise of these new costumes makes no sense whatsoever and it feels as if the only reason they even exist is because the developers saw how Insomniac's Spider-Man had him get a new costume for the final boss so they copied that idea without factoring in the reasoning of what made that decision work (and also be very cool).
Anyway, the Avengers gear up and head to where it all started. San Francisco. While I understand the attempt to make this a poetic thing, ending where the story started, the final area looks nothing like the starting area so this might as well be a completely different part of the plant. The team confront MODOK, working together to defeat him. Just as it looks as if MODOK has been defeated, he reveals the hear signature that has been underground is a gigantic extraterrestrial robot. It emerges from the Earth and the only reaction we get from that is Captain America asking what it is, only for Thor to reply "A Kree sentry". And that's it. How long has it been there? Why is it there? Keep in mind that this Kree sentry is basically the reason this entire story even happens and we know next to nothing about it. How is that even, like... Allowed?
MODOK gets the upper hand as he starts to directly pilot the sentry, which is powerful enough to battle away Iron Man like he's a house fly, sustain no damage from Thor's lightning and even overpower the Hulk. So how CAN the Avengers win the day? Perhaps by working together through their combined strength, defeating this villain like they've always done? Nope. It all comes down to Kamala, who uses her shape shifting powers to grow to the size of Kree sentry and fight it (despite growing to a much larger size than she ever has before and being able to sustain this form for long enough to defeat the sentry before passing out).
So quick side-note, I think this might honestly be the worst part of the entire story and what completely makes it barf-inducing and borderline literally fanfiction-esque writing. Kamala suddenly being able to grow as large as she wants without suffering from the drawback that had been set up twice by that point is nonsensical. Kamala being able to defeat the Kree sentry all by herself even though we've seen it tear through Iron Man, Thor and Hulk is flat out indefensible. This scene indirectly establishes that Kamala is the strongest member of the team which just feels incredibly bizarre and kind of unnecessary. People complain about Kamala a lot in this game, often saying that she feels like a fan fiction self-insert character and, as a person who doesn't really like Kamala, I have to say I don't think is true for the most part. For most of the game, she's fine, a reasonable and somewhat fun addition to the team. However, her being able to take down the Kree sentry by herself after the other heroes are unable to do so is the exact type of thing a fan fiction self-insert character would do and it makes everything so much worse.
Kamala is praised by the other Avengers once she wakes up and she has a little hart-to-heart with Bruce. She is then sent home, where she reunites with her father. There's also another scene that shows that Monica is alive and in full control of A.I.M. and then, to top it all off, there's a short post-credits scene showing the fallen Kree sentry send out some sort of pod into outer space. While this is the end of the campaign, there's still a little bit left for the story. After completing the "Reigning Supreme" mission chain, Kamala is officially inducted into the Avengers and with that, the main story is over. Also, I found it funny that at the end of all this, Cap says the iconic "Avengers Assemble" even though in a previous scene they said that they "don't really say that". What was the point of being embarrassed to say it earlier if you're just going to have the characters say it later? It's not like in the movies where there was a gradual build up to the line, they literally make fun of it in this game like it's something stupid. But then they say it anyway? Like, it would have made more sense for Cap to say it during the final fight, and for Kamala to say it at the end since she's not an official Avenger. Oh well, I don't even know what I expected. Anyway, story is completely done. That was quick, wasn't it?
I think the main campaign suffers from three fatal flaws. The first is that there's a severe lack of world building and characterization, hardly anything is properly explained and it's up to the player to either figure things out for themselves or simply create the answers they want in their own head-canons. Ideas and plot lines that should be entire stories are either shortened to a single line of dialogue or flat out ignored (The Kree sentry's origins, Black Widow being a mole, Hank Pym being captured, etc...). Furthermore, there's this bizarre disconnect where the game tries to establish itself as being different from the comics and the films, yet at some points forgoes explanations because it expects you to know things from the comics and the films. This leaves the game's world and characters feeling confusing, hollow and artificial. The second biggest issue is that the campaign is very short. Due to its short length, not a lot really happens and nothing is given the proper amount of time to be established. As I've already said, there's a lot of pointless busy work that you have to do between missions, which tells me that the developers were aware of how little their story had to offer and scrambled to add more stuff to try and extend the runtime. I think it's possible that a lot of the narrative issues I've talked about could have been fixed if the story had more time to breathe but unfortunately, we're stuck with what we have. The third and largest problem is that it is simply not a good Avengers story.
And this game's story been focused on the Avengers team working together to fight evil throughout the entire campaign, then all the other issues in the story could have been overlooked. This is where the real issue of Kamala Khan being the main character arises. The issue isn't that the story focuses on her, but the fact that she draws so much time and attention away from the other Avengers. The only two Avengers to get a decent amount of screentime are Iron Man and Hulk. Black Widow has some screentime but Cap and Thor are basically glorified cameos. Some of the best parts of this game's story are when the Avengers are allowed to interact with each other but because the full team is only present in the intro section and the final boss, this rarely happens. As a result of this, the campaign does not feel like an Avengers story that focuses on Kamala Khan and instead feels like a Kamala Khan story that just so happens to feature the Avengers.
Before I get to the gameplay, there are a few post-launch narratives that are added with the DLC characters so I'd like to run through those quickly.
Kate Bishop Taking A.I.M.: Kate Bishop uncovers a plot by A.I.M. that involves time travel. Nick Fury and Clint Barton are working together with Monica (as well as a future version of Monica) to develop a super weapon called Project Omega to stop the upcoming Kree Invasion. Clint then is sent on a mission into the future by Monica, but Kate manages to bring him back to the past. Clint tells the Avengers everything he knows about the incoming Kree Invasion and then passes out from uh... time sickness?
Hawkeye Future Imperfect: Clint wakes up six weeks after the events of Taking A.I.M. He and Kate go to the future to look for Fury and they end up finding Clint as an old man and the trio work together to find Nick. Their search leads them to Maestro, an evil future version of the Hulk. After defeating him with the use of gamma arrows, Maestro tells them that they need to go beyond the storm to find Fury. The two Clints find an area encased by a massive energy field where everyone inside is frozen in time. Fury is there, as well as Monica who's holding the Project Omega superweapon, the Cosmic Cube. The story then just kind of ends but it's followed up in the "Beating The Odds" mission. The Avengers find where Monica is holding the cosmic cube in the present and fight her and ultimately defeat her, sacrificing old man Clint.
Black Panther War for Wakanda: The Avengers arrive in Wakanda to inquire about the origin of corrupted Vibranium compounds that have started to sprout around the world. T'Challa helps them fight A.I.M. and in turn, they help him fight Ulysses Claw. T'Challa passes over his role as leader of Wakanda to his sister Shuri in order to join the Avengers full time.
There's also Spider-Man, my favorite superhero of all time, who I've never even seen in the game because I play on PC. I'm not buying the game twice to play as him. Screw that. His gameplay is boring and sluggish and he doesn't really have a story other than mentioning Liz Allen and Molten Man. That's it. What a disservice.
Anyway, these post-launch mini stories aren't awful but they aren't particularly impressive either. Both of the Hawkeye stories feel like a two-parter special episode from a TV Show and really should have been included together as one story. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the original plan, seeing as how Clint was revealed before Kate. There's also the fact that Monica's boss fight fits squarely as the finale of Clint's campaign which ends awkwardly. Otherwise, again, I would not be surprised if that mission was originally intended to be released earlier as part of Clint's campaign but had to be pushed back due to time constraints. The time travel aspect is not something I think is integrated into the story in a meaningful and logical manner. The original campaign is relatively grounded and normal, so seeing such a complicated concept like time travel show up in these later stories with very little fanfare feels incredibly weird. I also don't think that the concept of time travel is utilized well. For example, one of the most fun elements of time travel stories is seeing characters interact with themselves from different points in time, but we only really get to see Hawkeye interact with his future self. Future Monica kind of disappears after a little bit and then there's Maestro. Banner losing control of the Hulk and becoming an evil intelligent maniac is only briefly touched on and not explored at all. This is an incredibly interesting story beat, one that could carry its own game and yet, nothing really comes of it. The War for Wakanda story is comically detached from everything else in the game and doesn't follow up on any storyline. Realistically, it could take place at any point in time in the Avengers' history (just like the main campaign honestly). Also, completely ignoring the fact that Crossbones (who's always been human in everything ever) has fire powers now was a missed opportunity. The Avengers had never met him prior to this and it could have lead to some interesting dynamics but it all got swept under the rug. Once again, you have to piece together who Crossbones is or why he has powers. The story doesn't address it at all and it makes it hard to care about the narrative and the characters, because they just don't feel real. They feel like videogame characters inhabiting a videogame world, where nothing really matters because it's just a videogame.
Normally, after discussing a story, one would talk about the characters and/or performances in further detail, but I can't do that because there's nothing to say. Most of the characters are just... Fine. There is genuinely zero to talk about because they are all so generic, bland or straight up boring. The only characters that are actually fully fledged out and that I CAN talk about are Bruce, Tony and Kamala.
I liked Bruce a lot, Troy Baker does a really good job at making him seem shy, insecure and really intelligent. A great depiction of Bruce Banner. The other two, I really disliked. It's not an exaggeration to say that this game might have the worst rendition of Iron Man ever made. He never comes across as particularly intelligent. His jokes are never funny, he never does anything interesting and worst of all, he has no redeeming qualities. I don't think this is Nolan North's fault, he's an incredible voice actor and is probably one of my favorites of all time. He almost seems like a good fit for Iron Man from time to time, and you almost wanna believe he CAN be, but I think it's more of an issue with the writing that anything else. Especially in gameplay, where you're bombarded with borderline vomit-inducing "quips" that get repeated every time you do ANYTHING. I swear, if I have to listen to "All I do is win, win, win" and "Piece of cake, or pie. Pie is good too" one more fucking time I'm gonna blow my brains out. Kamala, funnily enough, has the opposite problem where I don't really like Sandra Saad's performance in the story, but she's okay in gameplay for the most part. In cutscenes, she always comes off as far too over-dramatic, as if she's doing theater while everyone else just acts normally. In gameplay though, she seems much lighter and natural. As far as villains go, MODOK and Monica are all performed well by their respective actors, but that's about it. MODOK would be a decent take on a modernized and serious version of a comic book character, if it wasn't for the fact that he acts beyond idiotic and that makes it difficult to take him seriously at all. Monica started as an alright idea for a villain, but really overstayed her welcome, apparently somehow STILL being alive even though she was seemingly erased from existence with the Cosmic Cube.
And then, there's the most important part of ANY game. Gameplay. Yes, I have put off gameplay for close to like 5000 words of this review because I dreaded this moment. So, how IS the gameplay?
Before we can jump into combat and loot, there's a few other gameplay aspects that I'd like to adress. The level design of this game is awful. The environmental aspect of the various areas is lifeless and boring and the actual design of the gameplay areas themselves feel algorithmically generated even though I know for a fact that they're not. People have already addressed this criticism in nearly every review for this game ever made but I just wanted to confirm this issue hasn't changed at all. There are a few stages from the campaign that are exempt from this but even then, those stages are extremely few and far in between, not nearly being great enough in quality or number to nullify this problem. As far as mission types go, they're all pretty standard stuff. Destroy X objectives, protect X point, defeat X boss and that's about it. These aren't necessarily bad mission types but they're quite bland and basic with absolutely no variety, and when combined with the generic environments, it creates a generally unexciting experience. After beating the cmapaign, you're left to face theREAL game of the Avengers Initiative. AKA, the multiplayer section. I say the REAL game because this is clearly what the game itself treats as the most important aspect. The entire campaign is, in actuality, a tutorial for this section. No, seriously. The reason the cmpaign gives the heroes such little screentime is because it makes you unlock very little of their skill trees and as such (you literally play a tutorial for Captain America in the FINAL BOSS) you only have the basics down before proceeding with the main duration of your total playtime. That being said, the Avengers Initiative is incredibly lazy, tedious and FAR worse in quality when compared to the story. Earlier when I said the story wasn't good by itself, I was still agreeing with the fact that it's one of the best parts of the game. This is why.
It's not enough to just say that it's bad, WHY is it bad? There are a few reasons, ranging from the mission types I spoke about earlier being repetitive lacking of variety, but the real reason is simply that there is no incentive to actually play this game mode. There isn't any real story progression here and you can't unlock alternate outfits or new takedown animations. Additionally there's no PvP element at all. I need you to understand that I'm not asking for a full fledged PvP battle mode between players, as I understand that would be hilariously unbalanced and legitimately impossible for these developers to implement, but a simple ranking system with a leaderboard and season resets would be enough, yet nothing like that is present. The only real reward you get is loot, but it sucks and here's why.
Avengers is a looter. There's no getting around that. Loot is the only reason you continue playing after you've finished the campaign. SO then, why is the system so bad? I won't claim to be a total expert on the subject, as I personally don't care for loot-based games in general. So many more experts have broken down the system somewhere else, so feel free to check those out. But these are the reasons as to why I feel that the loot system sucks.
Reason #1. The loot system does not make sense for these characters, and thus ruins the fantasy of "being" the Avengers. It just doesn't fit. The very simple fact of the matter is that the loot system does not make sense for these characters. It doesn't make sense for a team of superheroes to essentially be robbing their enemies and re-purposing enemy technology into equipment of their own. It doesn't make sense for naturally super-powered beings of vastly different origins to find trinkets in the same objects that boost their power. It doesn't make for characters to have status effect that don't match who they are or what their abilities are. The system simply does not make sense for these characters. This game should have never been a looter in the first place.
Reason #2. Gear does NOT change your character's appearance. Since the character's appearance in Avengers is dictated by solely what cosmetic skin you have equipped, there's no room for gear to affect your look. This is a massive mistake, as having your character's appearance change with gear is the easiest and most surefire way to keep players engaged. I've played tons of game that allowed to completely customize my character simply because of that. People like me, who love visual customization, will instantly be turned off by the gear system and not care about a major part of the game.
Reason #3. Gear does not provide enough gameplay difference to be meaningful. There's a rampant misconception that the gear in this game does not affect the gameplay in any meaningful way. This is not true, it DOES affect gameplay. There's various different perks and status effects granted by gear that directly effect how you play. The issue though, is that these changes are not nearly significant enough for most people to care about. At the end of the day, these statuses and perks are simply modifiers tacked onto your existing movesets. They don't change any of that and as such, are unsatisfactory.
Reason #4. The Battery Effect. The Battery Effect is a product of the gear system that's so bad, it ruins any kind of potential build diversity. Because using it is the strongest option at all times. Basically how it works is that there are eight different status effects that you can apply to enemies. Of these eight, they're divided evenly into two groups, hot and cold OR positive and negative, whichever you prefer. The Battery Effect happens when you apply one effect and then apply the opposite effect which then deals double damage. As I said before, building your characters to be able to use the Battery Effect is the best course of action because of how much damage it does. And thus, it negates the need to try and build characters to do anything else. It also kinda of completely ruins the combat. Oh yeah, combat.
Outside of the story, Avengers' most praised feature is its combat and, like the story, it's praise that I feel is overblown and largely unwarranted. In short, I DO believe that the individual character's movesets are satisfactory and fun but combat as a whole is not. First, I will break down the basic components of the combat. Every character has a light attack, a heavy attack and a ranged attack. There's a dodge on circle and a counter-like ability except for Spider-Man who for some reason doesn't have one? You know, the character with a sixth sense that warns him of any kind of danger? Yeah. You have a lock on and some characters have different kinds of weapons. There are three super attacks called heroics, that charge up on a timer and can be used to either buff or support a teammate, a stronger attack, and the ultimate ability which activates the strongest ability of any character of course. It's usually pretty much a super mode. For traversal, you can sprint and for some characters, you can fly. That's pretty much it. You unlock new moves by leveling up and acquiring required skill points to get new abilities on the skill tree and, in addition to that, there's a specialty skill tree that grants optional changes to abilities. There's also the mastery skill tree which has little to zero importance. The moveset variety that these mechanics allow is actually kind of surprising. While none of the characters have the amount of depth and complexity as something like Devil May Cry, each of them can bring something different to the table. I'll admit it, they are kind of fun. However, combat is not JUST what moves they have. There are other things to consider, such as enemy design, general gameplay feel, additional combat mechanics and, in this game, the loot. The enemy design in this game is atrocious and almost single-handedly ruins the entire combat system. There are basically two different enemy types. Cannon fodder, that can be killed with basically anything, and the ones so irritating that they drive rational people to commit extreme acts of violence. The cannon fodder enemies can be bashed pretty easily, which is kind of its own problem but at least they aren't frustrating and they provide the feeling of being a superhero. The aggravating ones don't get staggered by your attacks, usually only being staggerable if you parry them. This leads to a player having only two options when dealing with them: Engage in hit-n-run tactics which make you feel like a wimp instead of a superhero OR stop dead in your tracks in order to slowly wait for a parry opportunity. There's even an overshield mechanic that makes every enemy unstaggerable until it's removed, effectively rendering every enemy irritating. Also, there's a bunch of horrible effects that can hinder your fun and basically turn the game into just a patience contest. One effect drains your heroic meter, which sucks major ass since they already take a long time to charge. Another enemy effect removes your ability to dodge which is probably the most baffling debuff I've ever seen in a videogame. Thankfully, neither of them show up often but the fact that they're in the game at all shows the inconsiderate approach that the combat team took when designing enemies.
So we have our enemies (which seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have the Avengers only fight against AIM in this game? They're the Avengers, what can't they take down 1 evil megacorporation? They just look incompetent, with AIM somehow getting away every time like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. I understand that game development is hard and it's not as easy as just putting in an entirely new villain faction, but come on) and we have our playable characters. Now then, how does combat actually function? Essentially you hit all the enemies until they die. In most other games that statement would be an oversimplification, but here that's literally all there is to it. The overall combat experience in this game is hollow, underdeveloped and lacking in options and creativity. There are several reasons as to why this is. The first is that Avengers does NOT have a combo counter of any kind. In nearly every other action game, there's a combo meter of how many hits you've landed, ow much damage you're doing or simply how cool your combo is People have this notion that all they do is provide an ego boost by telling players how good they are, but this isn't true. Combo counters always serve an in-game purpose, most games have enemies drop higher amounts of resource upon defeat when you're at a higher combo count, other games like Insomniac's Spider-Man grants more super-meter and higher combo counts, and the Arkham series makes Batman faster with a higher combo multiplier. Since Avengers lacks such a mechanic, there's not much reason to experiment with the combat system outside of player's own desire to do so. There's no real difference between a fight where the player can only string together a 5-hit combo and a fight where a player can string together a 1000-hit combo. Not that you would even know that you've accomplished that since the game doesn't tell you. The second reason is that there's a surprising lack of synergy with your teammates. For a game that's entirely based around a superhero team, there's no real mechanic that makes use of your teammates. Only one I can think of is Iron Man reflecting Captain America's unibeam. Outside of this, team combat and synergy don't really exist. I already mentioned the Battery Effect, but I need to bring it up again here as it really does ruin combat. The absurd amount of damage dealt with this mechanic removes the need to try and do any kind of combo that takes full advance of your movesets, because statuses only apply on certain attacks. This allows for the fastest way to dispatch enemies, which is really the only thing that matters. Lastly, there are just a lot of general missteps in this game design, such as Iron Man and Thor being the only characters that can dodge mid-air (I assume it's because the developers thought they would be the only characters that would be able to realistically perform them, putting aside the fact that it's a poor choice to let realism dictate the design philosophy behind a game where Cap can shrink people with his shield, the issue that this brings is that aerial combos for all other characters become an inherently bad idea, unlike most action games), Iron Man's repulsors can run out of juice (I don't even have to explain why this is fucking stupid, in what universe would Tony Stark go to a fight with barely enough energy to get through a number of fights? And this also makes Iron Man a bad ranged character and thus, even Thor becomes a better ranged character), takedowns are handled in a very bizarre way (each individual enemy has a bar that has to be filled up in order to use a takedown, which forces you into focusing on one enemy at a time instead of giving the freedom of switching freely between targets in combat, also for some reason takedowns don't even KO an enemy... WHY?), the way healing acts is archaic (while performing takedowns does grant health, the main way to heal is by finding health pickups scattered around the stage, which takes you out of combat, breaking the flow of the game and making the player feel like a weak coward), the amount of ranged enemies makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything else, there's a serious lack of variety that makes combat difficult to get engaged in (there is a small pool of Aimbots that you will be forced to fight over and over and over and over again, if there were more enemy factions that at least changed a bit it wouldn't have been as bad) and finally, there are no invincibility frames during characters' knockdown and recovery animations, meaning you can get knocked down once and then stunlocked afterwards. This is basic videogames 101, even if you've never played an action game before, this should be an obvious thing to consider, and the apparent fact that it wasn't shows a supreme amount of ineptitude and incompetence on the developer's part. With all this being said, let's take a look at this game's gameplay in its entirety.
TL;DR Marvel's Avengers is one of the most depressing happenings in superhero related videogames ever. With all of the hopes and hype surrounding it, it almost feels unfair that it ended up being this bad. The gameplay is repetitive and mediocre at best, the story is fine but nothing special, the missions are annoyingly repetitive and the multiplayer aspect is so under-developed and buggy that it makes release Cyberpunk look like the Citizen Kane of videogames.
When Crystal Dynamic's Avengers game came out in September of 2020, it was almost instantly met with pretty negative reviews and subsequently promptly forgotten about. Seriously, the game has been getting semi-consistent updates ever since its release yet no one seems to care. The playercount has barely been in the triple digits for about a year now and yet, I don't think this is a game that deserves to be forgotten. Not because I think it'll make some kind of miraculous turnaround and become an underrated gem or anything like that, GOD KNOWS THIS GAME HAS NO CHANCES, but because I think this game is a rare example of a game that made the worst possible decisions at every turn.
When the game was first revealed in 2019, there were a lot of first impressions that came out. Everyone knows that first impressions are everything, and people had of a lot of things to say. The biggest criticism was mainly about the character design and how each of the main Avengers looked like a bootleg version of the MCU. This, in fact, is probably the biggest complaint people STILL have whenever they see the characters. Hell, even my best friend has asked me multiple times about why the characters look like the cheap knockoff versions of the movies. And while I personally have no beef with characters not looking like their movie counterparts (see Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy & Spider-Man), I think there's a huge point to be made about the abhorrent design choices the developers went with. I am by no means an expert on character design but I have never seen an in-depth explanation about why they're THIS bad so I'll try to explain it to the best of my abilities.
First off, the designs are closer to the MCU than the comics. There's no way to get around the fact that the designs in the game bear an awful resemblance to those seen in the movies. For example, taking a closer look at Captain America it's clear to see that Marvel thought giving him the weird feather/scale-y texture on his live action costume would have looked awful and silly, so they decided to go for a very militarized look. He doesn't have scales, he doesn't have wings on his helmet, the iconic lower torso stripes are pretty much missing, he has a bunch of pouches and belts, dark fingerless gloves and boots instead of the colorful red ones and he has a chinstrap. Overall, it's a generally muted color palette that tries to adhere to reality to make it more believable. But they steer far away from Cap's original comic book design and, looking at Marvel's Avengers, it's clear what the developers' inspiration comes from. Sure, he may not look like MCU Cap, but he still looks like him a lot more than his comic counterpart which, in turn, invites immediate comparisons. This also goes for the other characters in the base roster to varying degrees. Some try to be bold, like Iron Man, but they just end up looking derpy.
Second reason is... The faces are so awfully generic. And while some people might say this is subjective, I have a pretty strong reason to say this. I don't think this game uses facial models, a practice that has become widely used in the past few years and that I appreciate a whole lot, because the faces look too "computer-generated", if that makes sense. Devil May Cry 5, The Last Of Us Part II and Marvel's Spider-Man, to name a few, are whole-heartedly enhanced by the fact that each character has a face that I can pinpoint as looking like an actual human. So why do I think Marvel's Avengers doesn't use them? Well, just look at the differences between pre-release Black Widow and final release Black Widow. She was judged for looking too "manly" (YIKES!) and as such, was changed. You wouldn't be able to do that with a face model, or at least not to the degree that they did. So that leads me to think that the faces in the game are not those of real people, and it severely hurts their credibility. They have no real discernible imperfections or details that come with having a real face. So while people say that the faces look like off-brand versions of the actors, the truth is that the faces are so generic that they really could look like anyone.
Thirdly and lastly, the designs are just plain bad. I know that this will fall into subjective category and in all honesty, I don't hate the designs as a whole. But I want to make an argument that the designs of this game's characters are subpar, specifically the Iconic suits, which is ironic in itself. And yes, I know you can change suits, but I'll talk about it later. Also, the Iconic suits are the canonical ones that were specifically made for this game, so that's my main gripe. I will be using Captain America once again since he's one of my favorite avengers and probably the only one besides Tony that I like in the game. Before I get into the costume, something worth pointing out is that this version of Steve Rogers has a 5 o'clock shadow. And while this may sound like I've gone absolutely batshit insane (which may very well be true), it's something that I feel is important to point out. Captain America is supposed to always be perfectly clean shaven. It's a part of his design so when he isn't, he looks weird. I think CD made this change in an attempt to make it look more realistic (which I get) but it still falls flat because it's very much misguided. Steve Rogers is supposed to be the human that everyone looks up to in the Marvel universe, similarly to Superman in the DC universe. So having him be the spitting image of perfection (hell, he's a nazi's wet dream when you think about it) is the whole point of the way he looks. Changing that small detail not only looks wrong but it also adds to the feeling that this isn't Captain America and it's actually just some guy wearing a Captain America inspired costume. And that's not even mentioning the fictional symbolic meaning of having facial hair. In fiction, and especially Marvel cause they love that shit, having a stubble or just some overgrown beard is usually a sign of having fallen on hard times. But I digress, it's very off-point. My first main problem with Cap's suit is that it's too bulky. Steve is a super soldier with a god-like physique that comes with it, but the bulky costume hides his muscles and makes him look out of shape. Additionally, there's not much reason for his suit to have so much padding and armor. Captain America already has the best protective item known to man, his shield, he has superhuman levels of durability and he should be agile enough to dodge any incoming threats. So why would he be covered in armor and padding? Wearing that much armor is admitting that, well, he NEEDS that much armor, which makes him look weak and inefficient. Then, we get to the fact that the costume looks too generic. I understand that the idea is that the suit is supposed to look like modified military gear because Cap is a soldier, but the problem is that the costume no longers looks like a costume and now looks like a normal, real-world military gear that was painted over in an attempt to cosplay as Captain America. And that's not to say that the suit is comprised of real world military gear because it's really not, but it looks like it is. And that's the problem. To make another comparison, MCU Cap's costume is clearly inspired by military and tactical gear and yet, although it looks believable, it still looks like a uniquely designed super suit. It also accentuates Chris Evans' body, whereas the game version makes him look too bulky. My last and largest problem is the stripes that I mentioned earlier. Or more accurately, the lack of them. The suit has iconic white and red stripes on the lower torso and they are quite literally the american flag plastered all over him. That is the entire point of that choice, to emulate America on him. But the Iconic suit doesn't have any of them, instead choosing to opt for small white lines and barely noticeable red pinstripes. That makes the lines feel more like an easter egg than an active part of the design. Again, this largely absent part of the design lends credence to the feeling that these are not the actual characters we know and are instead knock-off versions of them.
Onto bigger things that actually interest the majority of the players instead of nerds like me who make a fuss about Thor's hair being the wrong shade of blonde.
When discussing this game, it is common to see people say that the story is not only the best part, but that it's a genuinely good story all by itself. Well, I'm here to say... That last part is completely untrue. While the story is relatively one of the best parts of the game, its plot is still nonsensical, poorly explained and too short to be of any real substance. I'll try to rapidly go through the story to explain my biggest issues with it, so buckle up.
The whole A-Day scenario that the game opens up with is already a massive narrative misstep. The premise of it just doesn't make sense. The Avengers are unveiling a new untested power source while ALSO announcing the winner of their fan fiction competition. I have so many questions, the biggest of them being WHY?! These two events don't exactly go hand in hand, especially because of the severe risks involved with it, yet the story expects the audience to believe that this is a totally rational and normal thing to do. There's also this weird feeling that this parade of self celebration is not exactly something a team of honest heroes like the Avengers would do. If anything, it feels more like something out of a parody or some other form of media that depicts superheroes as narcissistic and self-indulgent. But let's suspend our disbelief and move on. The whole level is seen through the eyes of Kamala Khan, the game's main character. And while many will say that Kamala's inclusion in this game is sacrilege by itself, I'll outright state that I don't exactly hate her. She's fine. If anything, the real issues will start further down the road. Anyway, Kamala meets all the heroes (which is very convenient) and then an explosion in the distance interrupts everything. The Avengers fly off to deal with it and the attention shifts off of Kamala and onto the characters you actually bought the game to play as. That being said, they don't really do much gameplay-wise because this section is more of a tutorial than anything. Narratively speaking, that's because not much actually happens until Taskmaster shows up on the bridge with a truck full of sonic bombs, which can apparently liquify the city. But even with Taskmaster defeated and the bombs disarmed, the Chimera seemingly gets hijacked (little sidenote, I think the Chimera doesn't even get properly introduced and the game just starts referring to it and you have to sorta play along and not question it but nonetheless, the Chimera is a helicarrier powered by Terrigen, the new energy source the Avengers were unveiling) with Dr. George Tarleton and Captain America onboard. Cap mentions that the ship seems to be getting pulled to some sort of heat signature underground (keep this in mind, it'll be important later) and, after Taskmaster is dealt with, the rest of the Avengers try to go to the helicarrier and help Cap. The Terrigen reactor detonates and blows up the Chimera completely, taking Cap down with it.
This leads into a glorified slideshow presentation where the game shows what happens in the five years between this event and the rest of the game. Captain America is declared dead and the Avengers are blamed for the tragedy. They disband, Stark Industries and SHIELD get put out of business and rebranded into A.I.M. by Dr. Tarleton and a woman named Monica. A.I.M. is basically a mega-corporation that seemingly controls the world, unlike its comic counterpart. Anyway, the mist emitted from the Terrigen crystal gave birth to a race of superpowered individuals called Inhumans, and A.I.M. now seeks to find and cure every Inhuman.
So, a lot of things have happened, and very little make ACTUAL sense. Captain America is presumed dead and yet, no one finds a body. This is brushed off like it's a minor thing, but that is a MAJOR thing to be concerned about. It's basically an unwritten rule in fiction that if there is no body, then the person isn't actually dead. Yet no one ever mentions how it's weird that a body was never found. It's absolutely insane to me that none of the remaining Avengers consider this and that they all just believe that he died. And that's just... Depressing. Seriously, none of his close friends even thought to go looking for something to bury? None of them even considered that they were being lied to? I guess Hulk found his shield, but still. It's just weird. I'd want someone to try and find my body if I was presumed dead instead of just stealing my favorite frisbee. But again, none of this is brought up or discussed as a possibility. Next, my issue with it is... Stark Industries and SHIELD have their assets ceased and given to Tarleton and Monica. I can understand SHIELD being dismantled and maybe having those two acquire it later, but how on Earth does it make any sense at all that Stark Industries are given to them? I am by no means an expert of this subject, but how is it possible for a company to fail so miserably that they get completely taken away from their righteous owner and given to a third party? And even if this is how that works, is the game seriously implying that Tony Stark doesn't have any kind of backup? At all? He just goes back to his crumbling family home with no money, Iron Man suits or even JARVIS? How? Tony Stark is either the unluckiest bastard in the world when it comes to the legal system or he's incredibly stupid and didn't have any money or assets saved up. Both of which make 0 sense. There's also the confusion on how A.I.M. as a company was created. I originally though that it came to be after Tarleton and Monica seized Stark's assets and money, but apparently A.I.M. existed as a company before that and was just much smaller. It's not a huge deal I guess but the lack of clarity is still a little confusing.
Then, there's the use of the Inhumans in the story. While not exactly a problem, it's baffling that this game deals with Inhumans at all. I mean, after the colossal failure of the TV Show and their general lack of popularity in the comics in like, ever, it's confusing that they would be such a seemingly large part of the game's plot and world. I say "seemingly" there because the real issue of the Inhumans in this game is that they barely matter at all. Their existence basically kicks off the main plot of the game but outside of Kamala, I can only remember two other named Inhumans. The fire-powered Dante (who has one scene and basically does nothing) and Theo, the guy with the portal powers working for the Resistance. You never have to fight any Inhuman enemies, only one Inhuman is playable and most confusing of all, there is no appearance or even reference to the Inhuman Royal Family. I'm not saying that the story would be better or more complete with them in it, but it's still incredibly odd that they don't feature at all. It would be like writing a story where mutants are front and center and yet never having a single appearance from any of the X-Men.
And finally, the biggest and I mean BIGGEST problem with this setup is how the Avengers are blamed for the destruction on A-Day. In the story, the characters say that the public needed someone to blame so they blamed the Avengers, but there is already someone to blame: Taskmaster. Taskmaster is the one who led the attack on A-Day, Taskmaster is the one responsible for the bridge collapsing, Taskmaster is the one who brought a bomb capable of liquefying the city, so it ultimately was Taskmaster who caused the destruction on A-Day. I understand the Avengers getting some of the blame but how is it possible that they got ALL of the blame and the actual culprit seemingly takes none of it. To make a comparison, this would be like blaming first responders for the events of a terrorist bombing. And what's even more strange is that Taskmaster (again, the character who practically sets the entire plot in motion) is only mentioned one other time after A-Day, when Cap and Widow realized that it was Monica who hired him. Taskmaster should have been a key figure in the A-Day hearings, being thoroughly investigated for his actions and motivations, but instead he disappears almost entirely from the game's story.
So already, we have a lot of stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense and this is just for what essentially is the prelude of the story and even the ACTUAL story itself. It's clear to see that a lot of the narrative decisions in the game were made not because they make sense but because they were necessary for the story to progress. The A-Day celebration has a new power source unveiled AND a fan fiction competition at the same time in the same place despite being an obviously terrible idea, not because it's something that makes sense but because it allows for Kamala to be there and get her powers. The Chimera goes into the air, despite supposedly being non-operational, not because it makes sense but because Cap needed to be separated from the team so he can die. And NO ONE questions it, because if he was alive then he would have rallied the team back together and the rest of the game wouldn't have happened. Tony Stark gets his company taken from him and given to a pair of lunatics not because that's how the legal system works but because the developers thought it would be cool if Tony didn't have any money and had to start back at square one. Taskmaster isn't investigated for his actions on A-Day and found to have been working for whoever because that would have prevented Tarleton and Monica from taking over Stark Industries, which would have prevented the story from happening. He needs to be forgotten about so the Avengers can take the full blame for A-Day and the story can progress from there.
It's clear to see that a lot of the story beats seem to have been made backwards. The developers came up with an effect they wanted to see (small fangirl meets every Avenger withing a small timespan + gets powers) and then wrote the cause for it (there is a fanfiction competition that happens at the same time the Avengers unveil a new energy source) afterwards regardless of whether or not it made sense. This problem is something that continues to persist throughout the rest of the game and it's incredibly annoying.
Now that the opening is out of the way and I've only spent 18 paragraphs talking about it, it's time to start the story proper. It's been nearly 5 years since A-Day and Kamala has gone from a small child to a teenager. There is now a resistance that is formed in response to A.I.M.'s global control and subjugation of the Inhumans and Kamala finds a link to Tony Stark's uh... Work accounts? on the Resistance subreddit and after correctly guessing his password which is just "I Am Iron Man", she is able to access his account and this somehow grants her access to A.I.M. servers where she copies the available files onto a thumb drive. During the data transfer, purple electricity surges from her computer and boots her off the server. With her computer bricked and A.I.M. literally right outside looking for her, she decides to go into her "headquarters" to take a look at what was on the flash drive. So what's wrong with this story beat? A lot of things really.
What exactly is the account that Kamala is trying to access? It's Tony Stark's account, yes, but his account for what? I hesitated to call it his work account because it's not an account for Stark Industries, it's an account for A.I.M. I guess it could be that Stark's account with Stark Industries was changed to an A.I.M. account once Stark Industries was absorbed into A.I.M. but that still doesn't make any sense. Because Tarleton and Monica should have deleted his account or at the very least changed his password or limited what his account can access once they acquired his company to prevent him or anyone close to him from using his account to do something like this. Additionally, it's baffling that Tony Stark hasn't tried to look into this account himself, especially because we learn later he's still furious at Tarleton for stealing his company. So it only makes sense that he would want to do something about it and yet he just doesn't for some reason? People have gotten pretty angry about Tony Stark's password being "I Am Iron Man" because that's really stupid but I'm largely fine with it, Tony Stark is a pretty big moron in this game so something like that is perfectly in character for him.
As Kamala heads off to her headquarters we notice something else: The game completely skipped over Kamala getting her powers. You're thrust into gameplay and she just has them. There's a ton of narrative potential that is completely wasted here. We know from the slideshow intro that the Inhumans become wrapped in some sort of cocoon and emerge with their powers. What was Kamala's reaction to going through that? How did she hide becoming a human cocoon from her family? or do they know that she's an Inhuman? To make a comparison, this would be like if in the first Spider-Man movie, Peter was bitten by the spider and then after that, it cuts directly to the wrestling scene. I can absolutely see how it would confuse casual players when she just shows up with powers in this section of the game.
Moving on, Kamala is able to get to her headquarters and access the files on the thumb drive. There's a video of the Terrigen Reactor on A-Day where Tarleton seemingly shuts Captain America in the reactor just as it's about to blow. Kamala is convinced that this is the smoking gun that could take down A.I.M. and Tarleton, since in Tarleton's testimony about the A-Day event he claimed to be on the Chimera's command deck when the explosion happened. So not only did he lie about that, he also seems to have killed Captain America. After this, Kamala gets a message on her computer from a person named "tiny_dancer" who says that A.I.M. is on to her and she needs to get out ASAP. "tiny_dancer" then tells Kamala to meet them at Heroes' Park near the
Captain America statue. Kamala does as she's told yet when she arrives at Heroes' Park instead of finding tiny_dancer, she encounters a group of men bullying a guy. Kamala interferes with her honestly kinda disgusting gigantic hands and forces the bullies away. The guy she saves isn't very thankful and scurries away. With tiny_dancer nowhere in sight, Kamala is forced to flee and after seemingly getting away through the sewers, she is found, knocked out and taken captive. She awakens in a limo seated opposite Tarleton and Monica. This is where we see the beginning of Tarleton's transformation into MODOK. His head is considerably larger than normal but it's not quite there yet. It's also here that we see that Tarleton has acquired a superpower: Technokinesis AKA the ability to control technology. Tarleton offers to help Kamala by finding a cure for the Inhumans but she refuses and escapes. She runs away from some aim-bots and as she does so, she encounters a human in A.I.M. gear that is seemingly able to teleport. This person tells Kamala to stop running but she refuses and keeps going (keep this in mind it'll be important later). When Kamala is cornered in a building, she's forced to fight her way through some Aimbots and once that's finished, she gets on a bus to go to Utah. Utah is where the Resistance is rumored to be so Kamala figures it's her best bet to find someone to show the drive to. After this, we get a brief cutscene with Tarleton and Monica. Monica is showing Tarleton a variety of powers possessed by the Inhumans they have captured and are now experimenting on. One of these Inhumans is a woman who is able to clone herself near perfectly but the only difference being the clone has differently colored eyes (keep this in mind it'll be important later #5). The pair talk about how they plan to implement these powers into their programmable adaptoids, before Monica tells Tarleton he's due for another shot of her regenerative formula. After injecting it into him, he seems to get a boost in power.
Kamala makes it to Utah and when she gets there, she finds the Chimera stranded in a canyon. So uhm yeah quick side-note, how did the Chimera get here? The last time we saw it, it was on A-Day, San Francisco. So how did it cross Nevada without its Terrigen power source and get to Utah? The game doesn't act like this is a concern at all and just moves along so I guess I have to, too. Kamala looks around the Chimera and sees that it's deserted, but while exploring she finds Captain America's shield. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of the Hulk, who chases Kamala through the Chimera. Hulk corners her and after almost scaring her to death, takes back the shield and disappears. For some reason, after this, Kamala mentions that Hulk is "probably back to Banner now" which is just... A little odd? Like, how could she know that? Anyway, she tries to escape but just as she's about to, she's cornered by Aimbots. Even though she's somewhat dealing with them, she still has a few weaknesses and kinks she hasn't worked out about her powers. In fact, the begins to pass out mid-fight. Lucky for her, Hulk comes back and defeats the remaining Aimbots. When she wakes back up, she's laying on a bed besides Bruce Banner, who tends to her. Kamala shows the video on the USB drive to Bruce, who still isn't 100% convinced to tag along with her. The video is also corrupted and doesn't have any audio, which certainly doesn't help. Kamala then gives some speech about being Inhuman that I slept through and finally, Bruce agrees to help her. Their plan is to go to an old SHIELD bunker to find JARVIS and then use JARVIS to find Tony. Once they get there, they're ambushed by Aimbots and have to fight their way through. Kamala manages to find a hard drive copy of JARVIS but not before finding a picture of the original Avengers. A picture that includes Hawkeye.
So, quick side-note... Where is Hawkeye? Obviously the real world answer is that he came into the game later through DLC, but I'm asking about the narrative of the game. The story doesn't give any explanation as to why he isn't present during the events of A-Day and nobody even WONDERS where he went. This is incredibly bizarre as the Avengers are supposed to be very close friends other than teammates. But not a single member of the team says anything about him. If you weren't already familiar with these characters, you'd probably be confused by the random guy in that picture. Say what you will about the Marvel movies, but those films have an incredible attention to detail when it comes to these kinds of things. When a character's absent, they usually give an explanation on what they're doing and why they aren't available. It doesn't have to be a full fledged 10 minute explanation, but just a single line of dialogue could have explained this away. But instead, we get absolutely nothing. Moving on, Kamala turns to leave and comes face to face with the Abomination. There's no buildup or anything, he just appears. Hulk then ALSO appears out of nowhere to tackle Abomination away.
Quick meaningless side-note, there's this really odd line Abomination has here. He says something to the effect of "you're not looking well" to Hulk. Which I thought meant he had fought Hulk before, hence his comment. But if you look at the in-game character bio, it says he only became Abomination AFTER A-Day. So that means that this is the first time Abomination has ever fought Hulk. Not only that, this is basically the first time ANYONE has seen Abomination in this world. Yet no one comments on this. Kamala doesn't look especially surprised to see him, she doesn't even ask Bruce if he knows him or if they have a history. Then, there's the fact that Banner doesn't really have a reaction to Abomination either. At least in the comic books, one of Banner's greatest fears is that the military will try to turn the Hulk into a weapon. And here stands that fear made flesh and Banner says nothing.
Anyway, Hulk defeats Abomination and Kamala arrives. She finds a video that shows a seemingly successful Inhuman cure. With that, the two leave the facility and head back to the Chimera. When they get back, Kamala has a little speech about not fitting in and not really liking her powers (TO HULK OF ALL PEOPLE) and Bruce just sort of goes "there, there, okay bye". With JARVIS restored, they can finally-- Wait, hold on. JARVIS isn't fully powered yet, so you first have to go around the Helicarrier and push a few buttons and levers. Not that JARVIS is restored, we can-- Wait, not yet. JARVIS needs something called a neural up-link to have full access to his files. Banner contacts Mariah Hill and asks her where they can find it. She gives them the info about a stash hidden somewhere up the mountains. So Kamala and Bruce head to the SHIELD vault, see a message from Nick Fury about these things called "SHIELD Protocols", get back to the Chimera, give their protocols to Mariah Hill and then give the neural up-link to JARVIS. So NOW he can find Tony. But wait! First, Kamala has to use the "HARM room", which is literally just the Danger Room from the X-Men, to play the game's second tutorial as Iron Man. Then, they can finally go and find Tony.
All of what just happened was completely pointless padding. None of that needed to happen, I could cut that part out of the review and nothing would change in the overall narrative. Why couldn't the story just have JARVIS able to locate Tony as soon as he was plugged in. While this is more annoying on the gameplay side, it accomplishes nothing on the story side but make the campaign a bit longer.
So JARVIS pinpoints Tony's last location to the Stark's Ancestral Home of Nevada. Kamala and Bruce head there and find a disheveled Tony living in a trailer in front of his decrepit family home. Tony and Bruce have a heated altercation that ends once Kamala shows Tony why the two are there. After watching the drive's contents, Tony realizes that what seems to be video corruption is actually clever encryption. But before he can decrypt it, a message from tiny_dancer appears on the screen, warning that A.I.M. has found them and that they don't have much time. A few seconds later, they do in fact appear and force the heroes into battle. Tony dons a make-shift armor to help out and they ultimately emerge victorious. With that, we move back to Tarleton, who's frustrated with his loss. Abomination comes into the room, complaining that Tarleton's choices and leadership are being challenged by Monica. Tarleton interjects and what follows is an incredibly bizarre and baffling scene. Tarleton tells a story about how, as a young boy, he found a wolf cub in the wild. His father told him that it was too dangerous to keep, yet Tarleton refused to listen and decided to raise the wolf cub. He explains that he thought that if it could instill the proper rules and boundaries within the wolf, he could make use of its abilities. One day, the wolf snapped and attacked Tarleton. As he gets to this part, he begins to choke Abomination with his mechanical claws. He continues and explains that his dog fought off the wolf long enough for Tarleton to call for help, ultimately ending with Tarleton's dad shooting the wolf. Monica then interrupts, telling him to stop choking Abomination by saying they "need him". Tarleton then seems to get out of this trance and he lets go of Abomination and apologizes. Abomination leaves, never to be seen again. So like, what was the point of that story?
Clearly Tarleton is trying to use it as some sort of metaphor, but again, what point is he trying to make? Is Abomination the wolf in the story? Because if that's the case, he's making a point on Abomination's insubordination. Why does he not repeat the events of the story and once again, kill the wolf? Maybe he would, had Monica not stopped him. But... Why does she? She claims that they need Abomination, yet he never appears again in the story so clearly that isn't true. What would they have needed him for, anyway? Or is the wolf the Inhumans (or even all super powered people in general)? If that's the case, then it kind of makes sense, given Tarleton's hatred for super powered people. But that just raises the question of why he's even employed Abomination in the first place, if he already held this disdain towards superhuman abilities. Also, there's the issue that his story and the message behind it have a glaring flaw: The fact that you can domesticate wolves. I just don't know what the writers were trying to say. All they're doing is draw attention to how stupid and nonsensical Tarleton's mistrust of super-powered beings is. But like, I already knew that. This doesn't give him depth by showing that his ideology has flaws, it just makes him look like a complete moron. So once again, I must ask, what was the point of the story? I honestly don't know and I don't think the writers knew either. I think they only reason this scene exists is that they wanted to give Tarleton some sort of villainous speech, so they wrote something that sounded profound and just went with it.
After this, Tony, Bruce and Kamala need to do some busy work before they can progress the story. Tony goes and finds some components in order to repair the Chimera's fabrication machine. Narratively, he does this so he can get his normal iconic Iron Man suit. Gameplay wise, this machine is used to acquire new costumes. Then, Tony splits up to look for initiator cores in order to power up the Chimera to the point where it can fly. Tony searches a city and finds an oversized arc reactor, which he promptly destroys. He then has an odd moment of self-reflection, where he realizes he can't just sit back while other people use his tech for nefarious reasons. A lesson that I'm not sure how he hasn't already learned, as it's literally supposed to be the entire reason he even becomes Iron Man. Regardless of this, he does... NOT find any initiator cores. Neither do Bruce and Kamala, who look everywhere through the Utah desert. Tired and feeling defeated, the two take a breather. Kamala once again voices doubts and disappointment about her powers TO THE HULK and then she asks where the other Inhumans are and why they aren't fighting A.I.M. With almost laughably goofy timing, a portal opens that leads right to the Inhuman Resistance. The Resistance lead by former Ant-Man Hank Pym. There is this base called "Ant-Hill", a name curiously NOT suggested by Hank but instead by tiny_dancer, who is confirmed here to be an anonymous hacker working for the Resistance. The place is full of Inhumans and salvaged A.I.M. tech, including initiator cores.
Before we continue, there is something a little strange I want to address. Hank Pym is present but there is no mention of his wife, Janet Van Dyne AKA The Wasp. Janet was one of the founding Avengers and has been The Wasp for decades since then. However, she is not mentioned at all here which is just... Incredibly bizarre. I mean, the story goes out of its way to explain why Hank doesn't suit up as Ant-Man (apparently, he was captured by A.I.M. at some point and experimented on, where his biology was messed with and he cannot manipulate his size any more). With such an incredible limitation to his abilities, you would think he might ask his wife for help. Her absence in this story doesn't really make any sense, unless the character just does not exist, which might honestly be the case. In the game's CODEX, Hope is mentioned, Hank's daughter (who is The Wasp in the MCU). I would not be surprised if the developers of this game decided to completely ignore Janet's decade long existence in order to copy what the movies have done. To avoid confusion, it seems that Hope is The Wasp in this universe and Janet simply does not exist, as weird as that sounds.
Anyway, after doing a mission that I completely forgot the point of, we go back to the main point of the story. Kamala talks to an Inhuman called Dante (a kid you've already met in the opening of the game but it's never addressed for some reason), who's practicing his use of his fire powers. He tells her that his mom is still in one of A.I.M.'s Inhuman prisons and that there's no way to save her because by the time the Avengers get to her, all of the prisoners will have been moved to another location and there will be no way to find them. Kamala's distressed about this and goes to talk about it to Bruce. He's with Hank, who's using an AI called ROY to send the initiator cores to the Chimera, so that issue's finally addressed. Kamala tells Bruce that they need to hit the prisons now, but he reassures her that Tony will be with them in less than a day and they'll be able to do it then. Kamala then has a small freak-out, but Bruce shuts her down and tells her that she's not ready.
So, quick side-note, why can't they just attack the prison now? Because they attack the prison later anyway once Kamala gets captured. Bruce says they can't do it now and that it's too risky and that it would be better for Tony to arrive with the Chimera. When they attack the prison later, Tony only gets there with the Chimera after the prison has been liberated. Surely they would have been fine if both Kamala and Hulk had struck at the same time. I'd even go as far as to say that the two of them could have liberated the prison by themselves without the Resistance's help. What's even weirder is that Bruce arrives at the scene of the breakout in normal clothing, which to me implies that he didn't even help as the Hulk. So that means that the Resistance could have freed the prison at any time without the Avengers, so why didn't they? The only reason I can think of is that they might have wanted to use the Chimera to transport and house these escaped prisoners, but they already had an Inhuman who could make gateway portals to ferry people out, rendering the Chimera pointless if that's what they were planning on using it for.
Anyway, Kamala ignores Bruce's demands and sneaks out at night to try and liberate the prisoners single-handedly. She gets help from Theo, the portal guy, who teleports her over to the prison's back entrance to start the assault. So uh... Why can't Theo just teleport Kamala directly inside the prison? The most reasonable assumption is that his portal powers work the same way that they work in most other media. That being that he needs to see or know where he's teleporting to in order to avoid teleporting into a wall or something. If this is the case, it's never stated and the logistics of his powers are never discussed. How did he teleport to Kamala and Bruce when the Resistance found them if he, as HE HIMSELF SAID, had never been to that place before?
Nevermind that, Kamala goes to the prison and gets captured after she tries to grow larger again and passes out due to the strain. She wakes up tied to a table inside the A.I.M. prison and Monica is there. She discusses generic villain stuff with a senator over some kind of holographic Skype call, where he demands to see progress on her cure. Tarleton appears and he assures the senator that the cure is coming along nicely. Then, the call ends. Monica and Tarleton briefly discuss how they both know that the cure is bullshit and while Monica still wants to keep working on it, Tarleton tells her to shit it down. Tarleton leaves and Monica starts messing with stuff on her holographic iPad and Kamala begins squirming. Monica puts Kamala to sleep with some sort of drug and then we cut to tiny_dancer. Surprise surprise, it's Black Widow. She's infiltrated A.I.M.'s prison and has informed the Resistance that it's time to strike, as she needs backup in order to try and rescue Kamala. So yes, not only had Black Widow been tiny_dancer this whole time, she was also the teleporting A.I.M. agent who pleaded with Kamala to stop running back in New Jersey. So this raises the question... How is Black Widow able to teleport?
It's actually explained in an elevator conversation that Widow was using A.I.M. tech in the uniform she was wearing to teleport and, once she was found to be a spy, A.I.M. remotely locked away the teleportation ability of the suit, so she threw the suit away and stopped using it. Before hearing this conversation, I was incredibly confused as to how Widow was teleporting and the explanation of how she was able to do it and why she stopped doing it is literally in an option conversation outside the main story. So, you know... Cool.
So, Black Widow traverses through Monica's lab and sees the truth of what she's doing. Monica's "cure" is made from D.A.R.K. Terrigen. What is D.A.R.K. Terrigen? What is D.A.R.K. supposed to be an acronym for? Who knows, don't ask. She forces the Inhumans to use their powers to the point where they seem to die from burnout and this process somehow allows for Monica to copy their powers onto the new adaptoid robots. After learning this, Black Widow goes deeper into the facility, facing off against the adaptoids and then against Monica herself in a mech suit. Widow defeats Monica and the day is won, or so it seems. Kamala isn't with the other escaped Inhumans so Widow goes looking for her. She finds her sulking in the compound, blaming herself for her failure and poor decision-making. Widow goes "there, there, okay bye" and Kamala feels better. With Monica captured, she's brought to the Chimera for interrogation. Bruce says he can handle this and very much DOESN'T handle it. He does very poorly and is unable to find out any information about A.I.M.'s secret lab, which prompts Monica to say "scour the Earth, you will not find our lab" which in itself should basically give away the obvious location of the lab but whatever I guess everyone in the game has the IQ of a spoon. Oh yeah, also, the story is now about trying to find Monica's secret lab. I'm not exactly sure when this becomes a priority. This whole interrogation scene brings it up as if it's something the audience is supposed to be aware of, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time the story says that Monica even has a secret lab.
Anyway, before Black Widow can go in and continue the investigation, the Chimera is attacked by A.I.M. forces. A large-scale battle ensues throughout the Chimera and Monica escapes. During the confusion, the A.I.M. robots damage the Chimera's power source, which makes the entire ship bound for a crash landing on the city of Manhattan. Luckily, Thor just decides to be a hero again (after having appeared maybe twice in the whole story) and shows up to help. He uses his lightning to power the Chimera back up so he can avoid crashing. Once everything has calmed down, Thor approaches the rest of the team and they all bicker a bit. Thor calms down once they explain al the evil bullshit that Tarleton and Monica are up to, and they have evidence of what really happened with Captain America on the Chimera thanks to Kamala. In an oddly sweet and well-done moment, Thor shows the he remembers Kamala from their brief encounter on A-Day. Just thought I should mention it because it was probably my favorite part of the game. The team then watches the fully decrypted video from Kamala's thumb drive (heyyy remember that? that was only like 8 hours of gameplay ago) and see that the footage shows Cap actually ordering Tarleton to leave and shut the doors to the reactor room while Cap purposely detonates the reactor. Shocked from that revelation that Cap's death wasn't orchestrated by Tarleton and that it was Cap who caused the explosion, Bruce and Tony get into a heated argument. Thor and Black Widow decide to leave as Bruce and Tony argument escalates and the two begin to fight. Also, can I just mention how absolutely fucking cool it is that the team breaks up for the SECOND TIME in the story. It almost feels like the writers were trying to have the Avengers together for as little time as possible. Like, Thor and Black Widow leaving the instant Tony and Bruce start arguing is super funny cause neither of them join on the argument or try to stop it, they just leave. Wow, what a great team.
Bruce and Tony burst out of the Chimera and have an off-screen Hulkbuster battle. Yes, you heard that right. They have an OFF-SCREEN HULKBUSTER BATTLE. I'm absolutely stunned that we don't get to play this fight or even as much as see it. The Hulkbuster is in the game already, it's not like adding a section with them fighting for 3 minutes would have taken that much. Anyway, Kamala gets sad and accidentally calls her father. He pleads with her to come home, saying that he misses her greatly. Due to a mixture of sadness, guilt and fear, Kamala doesn't speak until he hangs up. Something interesting, though, is that the father says "I should have never told you to hide your powers", which shows that he was aware of her Inhuman powers. That would have been nice to know much earlier in the game but you know what, that's fine. It's nice to see it addressed at the very least. Kamala re-watches the tape of Bruce questioning Monica and she focuses on her "scour the Earth" line. Realizing that this means that Monica's lab is no on Earth, she rushes to tell Tony and Bruce about her discovery. Once she tells them, Tony realizes he'll have to don a space armor and head into outer space to reach A.I.M.'s secret satellite lab. But before he can do that, you have to play a filler mission so that Tony can get the necessary components to complete the suit. Once that's over, Iron Man rockets into space and just barely makes it to the satellite. After traversing the inside of the satellite, he finds the source of Monica's regenerative formula. A living being kept there inside a chamber. Iron Man opens the chamber containing the formula source and it's none other than Captain America.
So, quick side-note, how DID the regenerative formula derive from Cap's blood to give Tarleton his powers? The super soldier serum in Cap's blood should basically just be a very powerful performance enhancer so I'm not sure how something derived from that could give a person the power to control machinery with just their thoughts. It could have been reasonable to assume that the formula CAN make someone incredibly smart and even increase the size of their head in a similar vein The Leader or something like that, but I think that the technokinesis is just a stretch too far.
Steve and Tony share a moment and then work together to escape the satellite. Also, I just want to point out that when I played through the scene, Cap's shield appeared on his back even though it's not supposed to be there. This seems to be a pretty common bug and I just found that funny. Monica appears on a holo-screen and threatens the two. While Tony pieces together that Monica is so adamant to stop them because Tarleton doesn't know about the satellite or what's on it, Cap manages to find an escape pod. They both get off the satellite just as it blows up, but the explosion seems to damage the escape pod's system, so the two are left to drift in space with seemingly no way to get back to Earth. So while the two have a moment to breathe, Tony asks Cap why he smashed the Terrigen reactor. Cap explains that the Terrigen was being pulled towards a subterranean heat signature and, if given more time, the entire San Andreas Fault would have collapsed and millions would have died.
In all honesty, I have to say that the intrigue behind Captain America and the Terrigen reactor's destruction is the most interesting in this game's story. At first you're led to believe that Tarleton sabotaged the reactor and killed Cap on purpose because of course he did, he's the bad guy. But then, the rug is pulled out from under you once it's revealed that Cap actually tried to get Tarleton to safety and then detonated the reactor himself. The Avengers, like you as the player, are left reeling wondering why on Earth Captain America of all people would do something like that and then, when this scene happens and Cap's noble reasoning is revealed, it's a nice resolution that makes you wonder why you ever even doubted Cap in the first place. Furthermore, it plants another seed of mystery, as you now wonder what that underground heat signature was. It's just a shame that this next mystery isn't resolved very well.
Anyway, Thor miraculously shows up to save Tony and Cap (which like, if Thor could have done this at any time then why didn't they get him to go up to the satellite in the first place? And why is Thor's reaction to seeing Cap alive again so subdued? Cap's death had such an effect on him that he literally left his hammer on Cap's grave and stopped being a hero, yet when he sees his thought to be dead friend again, all he says is "Welcome back"). We cut back to Monica in her lab, where sh'es confronted by Tarleton who now has completed his transformation into MODOK. He angrily accuses her of infecting him and stealing his hope. And while she tries to spin the situation to her advantage and calm him down, her attempts fail and MODOK injects her with her own regenerative formula, killing her. So, two things to point out here. Number one is that Monica doesn't actually die here (I know what you're thinking, no way!). As she's injected with the formula, we get a close-up of her eyes that show they are actually two different colors, whereas they have previously always been the same color. Remember that? That's what we call a "callback" in the showbiz. As we saw earlier in the story, there was an Inhuman that could duplicate herself near perfectly, the only imperfection being that the duplicate had different eye colors. Monica has seemingly been able to copy this power onto herself and the Monica that dies here is actually her clone. Meanwhile, the real Monica is alive somewhere else. I've seen a lot of people express confusion as to how she's still alive after this but this is the explanation. As with a lot of things in this game's story, I don't think this is ever flat out stated to be the case, instead you have to piece it together yourself. The second thing I want to address is Tarleton, or I guess MODOK now. The subtitles refer to him as MODOK now and in a later scene he admits that is now what he's calling himself, but I have to ask why? In the comics, MODOK is an acronym that stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. Is he using the same acronym here? If so, he doesn't explain that. If he's not using that acronym, and MODOK instead means something else, he doesn't explain that either. There's also the fact that now, he has his iconic incredibly oversized head. But there is an issue with that. Over the five year time skip from the opening, Tarleton's head only increased in size by a little bit, but over the course of what, a few days, maybe a week, he has now had a far more dramatic cranial size increase. I guess it isn't a huge issue but it's still a little weird and shows to me that there wasn't a lot of thought placed towards this aspect of MODOK.
Back on the Chimera, Cap reunites with his shield and Black Widow. It's here that the two of them piece together that it was Monica who hired Taskmaster with the intent of stealing some of the Terrigen Crystals. But this doesn't make any sense. Taskmaster's attack on A-Day seemed far more like a personal attack on the Avengers with the express purpose of discrediting them. Taskmaster was literally planning on liquefying the entire city, how was that an attempt to steal the Terrigen? And if Taskmaster WAS just a distraction while his goons were meant to steal the Terrigen, that doesn't check out either because the goons made no apparent attemp to steal anything. Why would Monica even go to these lengths in order to try and steal Tarrigen anyway? She worked on the project with Bruce and Tarleton, if she really wanted to steal some then all she needed to do was discreetly stash them away when no was looking. Regardless of any of that, the fully reunited team is called to the Chimera's wartable, where they see that A.I.M. is making their big final play. They have deployed gunships over major cities, holding down conventional military forces using their adaptoids. The Avengers decide that enough is enough, and that they're taking the fight to aim in order to end this once and for all. Except... Not yet. Because before you can do that, you have to do a resource hunting side quest so that Tony can build these "Stark Tech" outfits for the whole team in preparation for the final assault. Not, at this point, I have to be honest and say that this is where I stopped playing the game. The absurd level of boring padding wore me down to the point where I had no interest in playing anymore. So from this point forward, everything I speak on will not be from first-hand experience but instead from watching the cutscenes online.
Before moving onto the story though, I do have a quick side note to make here. Why does the team need the Stark Tech outfits for the final confrontation with MODOK? As far as I know, there's nothing particularly dangerous about him that necessitates the use of a more powerful suit of armor. And if MODOK was strong enough to warrant new suits, these new suits shouldn't be used for Thor and Hulk. Thor is literally a god, the god of THUNDER, and Hulk is power made flesh. It doesn't make sense for there to be any kind of technological suit that could boost their power beyond what they're already capable of. But that's another issue right there! The Stark Suits are technological suits, MODOK's power is the ability to control technology... Is no one concerned that he might be able to use his powers to affect that Stark Tech suits? Or maybe even control the heroes through them? The entire premise of these new costumes makes no sense whatsoever and it feels as if the only reason they even exist is because the developers saw how Insomniac's Spider-Man had him get a new costume for the final boss so they copied that idea without factoring in the reasoning of what made that decision work (and also be very cool).
Anyway, the Avengers gear up and head to where it all started. San Francisco. While I understand the attempt to make this a poetic thing, ending where the story started, the final area looks nothing like the starting area so this might as well be a completely different part of the plant. The team confront MODOK, working together to defeat him. Just as it looks as if MODOK has been defeated, he reveals the hear signature that has been underground is a gigantic extraterrestrial robot. It emerges from the Earth and the only reaction we get from that is Captain America asking what it is, only for Thor to reply "A Kree sentry". And that's it. How long has it been there? Why is it there? Keep in mind that this Kree sentry is basically the reason this entire story even happens and we know next to nothing about it. How is that even, like... Allowed?
MODOK gets the upper hand as he starts to directly pilot the sentry, which is powerful enough to battle away Iron Man like he's a house fly, sustain no damage from Thor's lightning and even overpower the Hulk. So how CAN the Avengers win the day? Perhaps by working together through their combined strength, defeating this villain like they've always done? Nope. It all comes down to Kamala, who uses her shape shifting powers to grow to the size of Kree sentry and fight it (despite growing to a much larger size than she ever has before and being able to sustain this form for long enough to defeat the sentry before passing out).
So quick side-note, I think this might honestly be the worst part of the entire story and what completely makes it barf-inducing and borderline literally fanfiction-esque writing. Kamala suddenly being able to grow as large as she wants without suffering from the drawback that had been set up twice by that point is nonsensical. Kamala being able to defeat the Kree sentry all by herself even though we've seen it tear through Iron Man, Thor and Hulk is flat out indefensible. This scene indirectly establishes that Kamala is the strongest member of the team which just feels incredibly bizarre and kind of unnecessary. People complain about Kamala a lot in this game, often saying that she feels like a fan fiction self-insert character and, as a person who doesn't really like Kamala, I have to say I don't think is true for the most part. For most of the game, she's fine, a reasonable and somewhat fun addition to the team. However, her being able to take down the Kree sentry by herself after the other heroes are unable to do so is the exact type of thing a fan fiction self-insert character would do and it makes everything so much worse.
Kamala is praised by the other Avengers once she wakes up and she has a little hart-to-heart with Bruce. She is then sent home, where she reunites with her father. There's also another scene that shows that Monica is alive and in full control of A.I.M. and then, to top it all off, there's a short post-credits scene showing the fallen Kree sentry send out some sort of pod into outer space. While this is the end of the campaign, there's still a little bit left for the story. After completing the "Reigning Supreme" mission chain, Kamala is officially inducted into the Avengers and with that, the main story is over. Also, I found it funny that at the end of all this, Cap says the iconic "Avengers Assemble" even though in a previous scene they said that they "don't really say that". What was the point of being embarrassed to say it earlier if you're just going to have the characters say it later? It's not like in the movies where there was a gradual build up to the line, they literally make fun of it in this game like it's something stupid. But then they say it anyway? Like, it would have made more sense for Cap to say it during the final fight, and for Kamala to say it at the end since she's not an official Avenger. Oh well, I don't even know what I expected. Anyway, story is completely done. That was quick, wasn't it?
I think the main campaign suffers from three fatal flaws. The first is that there's a severe lack of world building and characterization, hardly anything is properly explained and it's up to the player to either figure things out for themselves or simply create the answers they want in their own head-canons. Ideas and plot lines that should be entire stories are either shortened to a single line of dialogue or flat out ignored (The Kree sentry's origins, Black Widow being a mole, Hank Pym being captured, etc...). Furthermore, there's this bizarre disconnect where the game tries to establish itself as being different from the comics and the films, yet at some points forgoes explanations because it expects you to know things from the comics and the films. This leaves the game's world and characters feeling confusing, hollow and artificial. The second biggest issue is that the campaign is very short. Due to its short length, not a lot really happens and nothing is given the proper amount of time to be established. As I've already said, there's a lot of pointless busy work that you have to do between missions, which tells me that the developers were aware of how little their story had to offer and scrambled to add more stuff to try and extend the runtime. I think it's possible that a lot of the narrative issues I've talked about could have been fixed if the story had more time to breathe but unfortunately, we're stuck with what we have. The third and largest problem is that it is simply not a good Avengers story.
And this game's story been focused on the Avengers team working together to fight evil throughout the entire campaign, then all the other issues in the story could have been overlooked. This is where the real issue of Kamala Khan being the main character arises. The issue isn't that the story focuses on her, but the fact that she draws so much time and attention away from the other Avengers. The only two Avengers to get a decent amount of screentime are Iron Man and Hulk. Black Widow has some screentime but Cap and Thor are basically glorified cameos. Some of the best parts of this game's story are when the Avengers are allowed to interact with each other but because the full team is only present in the intro section and the final boss, this rarely happens. As a result of this, the campaign does not feel like an Avengers story that focuses on Kamala Khan and instead feels like a Kamala Khan story that just so happens to feature the Avengers.
Before I get to the gameplay, there are a few post-launch narratives that are added with the DLC characters so I'd like to run through those quickly.
Kate Bishop Taking A.I.M.: Kate Bishop uncovers a plot by A.I.M. that involves time travel. Nick Fury and Clint Barton are working together with Monica (as well as a future version of Monica) to develop a super weapon called Project Omega to stop the upcoming Kree Invasion. Clint then is sent on a mission into the future by Monica, but Kate manages to bring him back to the past. Clint tells the Avengers everything he knows about the incoming Kree Invasion and then passes out from uh... time sickness?
Hawkeye Future Imperfect: Clint wakes up six weeks after the events of Taking A.I.M. He and Kate go to the future to look for Fury and they end up finding Clint as an old man and the trio work together to find Nick. Their search leads them to Maestro, an evil future version of the Hulk. After defeating him with the use of gamma arrows, Maestro tells them that they need to go beyond the storm to find Fury. The two Clints find an area encased by a massive energy field where everyone inside is frozen in time. Fury is there, as well as Monica who's holding the Project Omega superweapon, the Cosmic Cube. The story then just kind of ends but it's followed up in the "Beating The Odds" mission. The Avengers find where Monica is holding the cosmic cube in the present and fight her and ultimately defeat her, sacrificing old man Clint.
Black Panther War for Wakanda: The Avengers arrive in Wakanda to inquire about the origin of corrupted Vibranium compounds that have started to sprout around the world. T'Challa helps them fight A.I.M. and in turn, they help him fight Ulysses Claw. T'Challa passes over his role as leader of Wakanda to his sister Shuri in order to join the Avengers full time.
There's also Spider-Man, my favorite superhero of all time, who I've never even seen in the game because I play on PC. I'm not buying the game twice to play as him. Screw that. His gameplay is boring and sluggish and he doesn't really have a story other than mentioning Liz Allen and Molten Man. That's it. What a disservice.
Anyway, these post-launch mini stories aren't awful but they aren't particularly impressive either. Both of the Hawkeye stories feel like a two-parter special episode from a TV Show and really should have been included together as one story. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the original plan, seeing as how Clint was revealed before Kate. There's also the fact that Monica's boss fight fits squarely as the finale of Clint's campaign which ends awkwardly. Otherwise, again, I would not be surprised if that mission was originally intended to be released earlier as part of Clint's campaign but had to be pushed back due to time constraints. The time travel aspect is not something I think is integrated into the story in a meaningful and logical manner. The original campaign is relatively grounded and normal, so seeing such a complicated concept like time travel show up in these later stories with very little fanfare feels incredibly weird. I also don't think that the concept of time travel is utilized well. For example, one of the most fun elements of time travel stories is seeing characters interact with themselves from different points in time, but we only really get to see Hawkeye interact with his future self. Future Monica kind of disappears after a little bit and then there's Maestro. Banner losing control of the Hulk and becoming an evil intelligent maniac is only briefly touched on and not explored at all. This is an incredibly interesting story beat, one that could carry its own game and yet, nothing really comes of it. The War for Wakanda story is comically detached from everything else in the game and doesn't follow up on any storyline. Realistically, it could take place at any point in time in the Avengers' history (just like the main campaign honestly). Also, completely ignoring the fact that Crossbones (who's always been human in everything ever) has fire powers now was a missed opportunity. The Avengers had never met him prior to this and it could have lead to some interesting dynamics but it all got swept under the rug. Once again, you have to piece together who Crossbones is or why he has powers. The story doesn't address it at all and it makes it hard to care about the narrative and the characters, because they just don't feel real. They feel like videogame characters inhabiting a videogame world, where nothing really matters because it's just a videogame.
Normally, after discussing a story, one would talk about the characters and/or performances in further detail, but I can't do that because there's nothing to say. Most of the characters are just... Fine. There is genuinely zero to talk about because they are all so generic, bland or straight up boring. The only characters that are actually fully fledged out and that I CAN talk about are Bruce, Tony and Kamala.
I liked Bruce a lot, Troy Baker does a really good job at making him seem shy, insecure and really intelligent. A great depiction of Bruce Banner. The other two, I really disliked. It's not an exaggeration to say that this game might have the worst rendition of Iron Man ever made. He never comes across as particularly intelligent. His jokes are never funny, he never does anything interesting and worst of all, he has no redeeming qualities. I don't think this is Nolan North's fault, he's an incredible voice actor and is probably one of my favorites of all time. He almost seems like a good fit for Iron Man from time to time, and you almost wanna believe he CAN be, but I think it's more of an issue with the writing that anything else. Especially in gameplay, where you're bombarded with borderline vomit-inducing "quips" that get repeated every time you do ANYTHING. I swear, if I have to listen to "All I do is win, win, win" and "Piece of cake, or pie. Pie is good too" one more fucking time I'm gonna blow my brains out. Kamala, funnily enough, has the opposite problem where I don't really like Sandra Saad's performance in the story, but she's okay in gameplay for the most part. In cutscenes, she always comes off as far too over-dramatic, as if she's doing theater while everyone else just acts normally. In gameplay though, she seems much lighter and natural. As far as villains go, MODOK and Monica are all performed well by their respective actors, but that's about it. MODOK would be a decent take on a modernized and serious version of a comic book character, if it wasn't for the fact that he acts beyond idiotic and that makes it difficult to take him seriously at all. Monica started as an alright idea for a villain, but really overstayed her welcome, apparently somehow STILL being alive even though she was seemingly erased from existence with the Cosmic Cube.
And then, there's the most important part of ANY game. Gameplay. Yes, I have put off gameplay for close to like 5000 words of this review because I dreaded this moment. So, how IS the gameplay?
Before we can jump into combat and loot, there's a few other gameplay aspects that I'd like to adress. The level design of this game is awful. The environmental aspect of the various areas is lifeless and boring and the actual design of the gameplay areas themselves feel algorithmically generated even though I know for a fact that they're not. People have already addressed this criticism in nearly every review for this game ever made but I just wanted to confirm this issue hasn't changed at all. There are a few stages from the campaign that are exempt from this but even then, those stages are extremely few and far in between, not nearly being great enough in quality or number to nullify this problem. As far as mission types go, they're all pretty standard stuff. Destroy X objectives, protect X point, defeat X boss and that's about it. These aren't necessarily bad mission types but they're quite bland and basic with absolutely no variety, and when combined with the generic environments, it creates a generally unexciting experience. After beating the cmapaign, you're left to face theREAL game of the Avengers Initiative. AKA, the multiplayer section. I say the REAL game because this is clearly what the game itself treats as the most important aspect. The entire campaign is, in actuality, a tutorial for this section. No, seriously. The reason the cmpaign gives the heroes such little screentime is because it makes you unlock very little of their skill trees and as such (you literally play a tutorial for Captain America in the FINAL BOSS) you only have the basics down before proceeding with the main duration of your total playtime. That being said, the Avengers Initiative is incredibly lazy, tedious and FAR worse in quality when compared to the story. Earlier when I said the story wasn't good by itself, I was still agreeing with the fact that it's one of the best parts of the game. This is why.
It's not enough to just say that it's bad, WHY is it bad? There are a few reasons, ranging from the mission types I spoke about earlier being repetitive lacking of variety, but the real reason is simply that there is no incentive to actually play this game mode. There isn't any real story progression here and you can't unlock alternate outfits or new takedown animations. Additionally there's no PvP element at all. I need you to understand that I'm not asking for a full fledged PvP battle mode between players, as I understand that would be hilariously unbalanced and legitimately impossible for these developers to implement, but a simple ranking system with a leaderboard and season resets would be enough, yet nothing like that is present. The only real reward you get is loot, but it sucks and here's why.
Avengers is a looter. There's no getting around that. Loot is the only reason you continue playing after you've finished the campaign. SO then, why is the system so bad? I won't claim to be a total expert on the subject, as I personally don't care for loot-based games in general. So many more experts have broken down the system somewhere else, so feel free to check those out. But these are the reasons as to why I feel that the loot system sucks.
Reason #1. The loot system does not make sense for these characters, and thus ruins the fantasy of "being" the Avengers. It just doesn't fit. The very simple fact of the matter is that the loot system does not make sense for these characters. It doesn't make sense for a team of superheroes to essentially be robbing their enemies and re-purposing enemy technology into equipment of their own. It doesn't make sense for naturally super-powered beings of vastly different origins to find trinkets in the same objects that boost their power. It doesn't make for characters to have status effect that don't match who they are or what their abilities are. The system simply does not make sense for these characters. This game should have never been a looter in the first place.
Reason #2. Gear does NOT change your character's appearance. Since the character's appearance in Avengers is dictated by solely what cosmetic skin you have equipped, there's no room for gear to affect your look. This is a massive mistake, as having your character's appearance change with gear is the easiest and most surefire way to keep players engaged. I've played tons of game that allowed to completely customize my character simply because of that. People like me, who love visual customization, will instantly be turned off by the gear system and not care about a major part of the game.
Reason #3. Gear does not provide enough gameplay difference to be meaningful. There's a rampant misconception that the gear in this game does not affect the gameplay in any meaningful way. This is not true, it DOES affect gameplay. There's various different perks and status effects granted by gear that directly effect how you play. The issue though, is that these changes are not nearly significant enough for most people to care about. At the end of the day, these statuses and perks are simply modifiers tacked onto your existing movesets. They don't change any of that and as such, are unsatisfactory.
Reason #4. The Battery Effect. The Battery Effect is a product of the gear system that's so bad, it ruins any kind of potential build diversity. Because using it is the strongest option at all times. Basically how it works is that there are eight different status effects that you can apply to enemies. Of these eight, they're divided evenly into two groups, hot and cold OR positive and negative, whichever you prefer. The Battery Effect happens when you apply one effect and then apply the opposite effect which then deals double damage. As I said before, building your characters to be able to use the Battery Effect is the best course of action because of how much damage it does. And thus, it negates the need to try and build characters to do anything else. It also kinda of completely ruins the combat. Oh yeah, combat.
Outside of the story, Avengers' most praised feature is its combat and, like the story, it's praise that I feel is overblown and largely unwarranted. In short, I DO believe that the individual character's movesets are satisfactory and fun but combat as a whole is not. First, I will break down the basic components of the combat. Every character has a light attack, a heavy attack and a ranged attack. There's a dodge on circle and a counter-like ability except for Spider-Man who for some reason doesn't have one? You know, the character with a sixth sense that warns him of any kind of danger? Yeah. You have a lock on and some characters have different kinds of weapons. There are three super attacks called heroics, that charge up on a timer and can be used to either buff or support a teammate, a stronger attack, and the ultimate ability which activates the strongest ability of any character of course. It's usually pretty much a super mode. For traversal, you can sprint and for some characters, you can fly. That's pretty much it. You unlock new moves by leveling up and acquiring required skill points to get new abilities on the skill tree and, in addition to that, there's a specialty skill tree that grants optional changes to abilities. There's also the mastery skill tree which has little to zero importance. The moveset variety that these mechanics allow is actually kind of surprising. While none of the characters have the amount of depth and complexity as something like Devil May Cry, each of them can bring something different to the table. I'll admit it, they are kind of fun. However, combat is not JUST what moves they have. There are other things to consider, such as enemy design, general gameplay feel, additional combat mechanics and, in this game, the loot. The enemy design in this game is atrocious and almost single-handedly ruins the entire combat system. There are basically two different enemy types. Cannon fodder, that can be killed with basically anything, and the ones so irritating that they drive rational people to commit extreme acts of violence. The cannon fodder enemies can be bashed pretty easily, which is kind of its own problem but at least they aren't frustrating and they provide the feeling of being a superhero. The aggravating ones don't get staggered by your attacks, usually only being staggerable if you parry them. This leads to a player having only two options when dealing with them: Engage in hit-n-run tactics which make you feel like a wimp instead of a superhero OR stop dead in your tracks in order to slowly wait for a parry opportunity. There's even an overshield mechanic that makes every enemy unstaggerable until it's removed, effectively rendering every enemy irritating. Also, there's a bunch of horrible effects that can hinder your fun and basically turn the game into just a patience contest. One effect drains your heroic meter, which sucks major ass since they already take a long time to charge. Another enemy effect removes your ability to dodge which is probably the most baffling debuff I've ever seen in a videogame. Thankfully, neither of them show up often but the fact that they're in the game at all shows the inconsiderate approach that the combat team took when designing enemies.
So we have our enemies (which seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have the Avengers only fight against AIM in this game? They're the Avengers, what can't they take down 1 evil megacorporation? They just look incompetent, with AIM somehow getting away every time like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. I understand that game development is hard and it's not as easy as just putting in an entirely new villain faction, but come on) and we have our playable characters. Now then, how does combat actually function? Essentially you hit all the enemies until they die. In most other games that statement would be an oversimplification, but here that's literally all there is to it. The overall combat experience in this game is hollow, underdeveloped and lacking in options and creativity. There are several reasons as to why this is. The first is that Avengers does NOT have a combo counter of any kind. In nearly every other action game, there's a combo meter of how many hits you've landed, ow much damage you're doing or simply how cool your combo is People have this notion that all they do is provide an ego boost by telling players how good they are, but this isn't true. Combo counters always serve an in-game purpose, most games have enemies drop higher amounts of resource upon defeat when you're at a higher combo count, other games like Insomniac's Spider-Man grants more super-meter and higher combo counts, and the Arkham series makes Batman faster with a higher combo multiplier. Since Avengers lacks such a mechanic, there's not much reason to experiment with the combat system outside of player's own desire to do so. There's no real difference between a fight where the player can only string together a 5-hit combo and a fight where a player can string together a 1000-hit combo. Not that you would even know that you've accomplished that since the game doesn't tell you. The second reason is that there's a surprising lack of synergy with your teammates. For a game that's entirely based around a superhero team, there's no real mechanic that makes use of your teammates. Only one I can think of is Iron Man reflecting Captain America's unibeam. Outside of this, team combat and synergy don't really exist. I already mentioned the Battery Effect, but I need to bring it up again here as it really does ruin combat. The absurd amount of damage dealt with this mechanic removes the need to try and do any kind of combo that takes full advance of your movesets, because statuses only apply on certain attacks. This allows for the fastest way to dispatch enemies, which is really the only thing that matters. Lastly, there are just a lot of general missteps in this game design, such as Iron Man and Thor being the only characters that can dodge mid-air (I assume it's because the developers thought they would be the only characters that would be able to realistically perform them, putting aside the fact that it's a poor choice to let realism dictate the design philosophy behind a game where Cap can shrink people with his shield, the issue that this brings is that aerial combos for all other characters become an inherently bad idea, unlike most action games), Iron Man's repulsors can run out of juice (I don't even have to explain why this is fucking stupid, in what universe would Tony Stark go to a fight with barely enough energy to get through a number of fights? And this also makes Iron Man a bad ranged character and thus, even Thor becomes a better ranged character), takedowns are handled in a very bizarre way (each individual enemy has a bar that has to be filled up in order to use a takedown, which forces you into focusing on one enemy at a time instead of giving the freedom of switching freely between targets in combat, also for some reason takedowns don't even KO an enemy... WHY?), the way healing acts is archaic (while performing takedowns does grant health, the main way to heal is by finding health pickups scattered around the stage, which takes you out of combat, breaking the flow of the game and making the player feel like a weak coward), the amount of ranged enemies makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything else, there's a serious lack of variety that makes combat difficult to get engaged in (there is a small pool of Aimbots that you will be forced to fight over and over and over and over again, if there were more enemy factions that at least changed a bit it wouldn't have been as bad) and finally, there are no invincibility frames during characters' knockdown and recovery animations, meaning you can get knocked down once and then stunlocked afterwards. This is basic videogames 101, even if you've never played an action game before, this should be an obvious thing to consider, and the apparent fact that it wasn't shows a supreme amount of ineptitude and incompetence on the developer's part. With all this being said, let's take a look at this game's gameplay in its entirety.
2018
Dude... Fuckin' BANGER.
I expected literally nothing and as it turns out, this was much much better than I expected. Me and the boys had so much fun and we will definitely be replaying it a FUCKTON after we're done with Monster Camp and Monster Roadtrip.
Buy it if you love to aggressively make out with big muscular oily black men OR if you like the idea of a funny COOP visual novel. One of the two works.
I expected literally nothing and as it turns out, this was much much better than I expected. Me and the boys had so much fun and we will definitely be replaying it a FUCKTON after we're done with Monster Camp and Monster Roadtrip.
Buy it if you love to aggressively make out with big muscular oily black men OR if you like the idea of a funny COOP visual novel. One of the two works.
One of the most fun times I've had playing a split-screen game in like forever since they don't make them anymore. Me and my friend were laughing our ass off because it is very bad and janky but that's a good piece of the fun of it. Very repetitive and I also FUCKING HATE FAMILY GUY IT'S SERIOUSLY NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING FUNNY but I did this for my best friend who really likes it so that's okay.
Also you can use Cheat Engine to give yourself infinite money and spam infinite Joe Swansons.
ALSO also the 1v1 between Peter and the chicken with me and my best friend was funny as FUCK and I loved it.
Also you can use Cheat Engine to give yourself infinite money and spam infinite Joe Swansons.
ALSO also the 1v1 between Peter and the chicken with me and my best friend was funny as FUCK and I loved it.
2021
Bridget is NOT a GUY. I will NOT tolerate any SLANDER towards her. I am NOT gay.
The game in its current state should be advertised and labeled as early access.
"Hope is a first step on a road to disappointment." - Actual in-game quote that represents it in an uncanny way.
From prioritizing cash shops with micro transactions over promised missing features on launch, to not really addressing optimization issues plaguing the beta and launch until people screamed loud enough to drown out an astropathic choir, Warhammer Darktide spits on the good name of not only the previous Warhammer videogames, but the concept of Warhammer as a whole. If you're looking for a good game of this genre, the very best you can find is probably something along the lines of Vermintide 1&2. Other than that, you're out of luck. Because the people who made this game just don't care about the playerbase.
And it's hilarious that Lead Developers keep looping around backtracking on the reneged promises and gaslighting the fans. "Crafting doesn't fit the 40K narrative"? I guess sitting around every hour for the armory to restock praying to RNG that you get a weapon you want, then praying to roll for good attributes that you spend materials and currency on that aren't shared across characters is the better alternative. I mean, it certainly fits the grim dark narrative of stagnation and standstill to progression.
Let's also not forget how weapon customization and attachments were talked about then ~data expunged~ from the records, oh and how talks of the premium cash shop currency, "Aquilas", could be earned by playing in-game were ~redacted~. On the subject of the premium currency, I liked how the community immediately realized how scummy it was to make the purchasable packs from premium currency just not enough for a cosmetic set, so you'd have to spend extra to get the right "2400" amount to be able to buy one, or you'd buy have to buy a bigger more costly pack. Either way, the outcome was always spending more to beat the FOMO timer! It reeks of the Tencent Midas shit touch, where whatever Tencent gets their grubby hands on starts to smell a little stinky. I mean, what a great first impression for first time players to be greeted with a fully flushed out cash shop way before any other promised features or bug fixes were implemented in the release. Bravo! How did we go from what Vermintide 2 is (granted it took 2 years for it to eventually "get there") to this? Did we not learn anything?
The in-game penances. (achievements for characters and other aspects of game play) This one sentence alone is enough to make some abase and flagellate themselves, and rightly so. It's what whoever designed them would probably want out of those who are trying to get them done. The Lead Developer(s) made it clear that some aspects of this game were implemented/removed to be less toxic than Vermintide 2, when in fact these penances did a full 180, crazy! They completely go against the nature of this co-op game. Class specific penances, let me be clear, are the bane of the player's existence. For some of these penances, you have to actively grief or just be a detriment to your team by screaming at them to not do their jobs or by not doing your job as (x) class. For the more ridiculous penances, you need to have a team of four people all collaborating together coming up with the most asinine and insane ways to get them done that no normal/casual player ever could get done by themselves. On very rare occasions, queuing with randoms will get you a screamer. Someone who screams at you through voicechat then quits because you messed up their "take no damage, complete the level in under 20 minutes, or blow themselves up to kill elites" bullshit ass penance, because 3/4ths of the team wouldn't go along with them. I mean that's just the cherry on top to be yelled at for wanting to just play the game. Before private games were introduced, trying to play normally on Heresy+ difficulty would almost be impossible since you'd always run into one or two people trying to get penances done instead of wanting to play the missions.
Also, mission/map selection still hasn't been implemented into the game as I write this review. I know some people who just gave up for certain penances, because a Heresy+ difficulty repair map they've been waiting for would never show up. I did all of the class specific penances and I'll be honest, if you can cheat/cheese some of them as I did, do it before they patch it. This game doesn't deserve the time you'd put into doing them legitimately since it doesn't even respect your time in the first place. I will always remember those who have helped me and those who I have helped getting these penances done because we are all troopers for not deciding to put the barrel of a shotgun in our mouths after each of them.
The major W's of this game. The sound design is absolutely amazing, the deep staccato barking of the bolter, that snap hiss of las guns, the enemy sounds that let you distinctly know which ones are coming to eat you alive, to the sounds of bodies being torn apart by chain swords. The music, Jesper Kyd is a Rembrandt! He will always be an absolute god, ever since Assassin's Creed 2. The voice acting and dialogue is brilliant, it really brings to life the characters you've created into this 40k setting. Speaking of which, I love me some decent character customization and this game has it. The combat, the meat of this game and what keeps me coming back, is definitely not perfect but it's so close and so very satisfying. Map design, the environments, world building, ambiance, lore, the scale of it all is very imposing in a good way, its screams at you in a good way that you are in this universe. All of the aforementioned is an easy 9/10. I was ecstatic when I heard that some of my favorite writers for the series were working on the story aspect and world building of this game. Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski Bowden, and Matthew Ward just to name a few. Even though the story is lacking, the world building and dialogue between characters more than makes up for it. But also, a campaign would definitely make up for the current lack of story.
If this game didn't have the Warhammer IP backing it and its $40 price tag, it would've been dead/dying a lot sooner than it currently is. It's sad and ironic that WH40K die-hard fanboys refuse to accept valid criticism and see how this game is a shell of what it could have been. Valid criticism, comparative analysis and discourse is crucial to improving the quality of this game. These die-hards will lash out at you for even the slight hint of a sleight against their precious IP, never have I been more ashamed to be apart of this "community" after participating in and viewing many open/closed discussions with "like minded individuals". Ironic since they'll probably keep the player base statistics up and this game alive long enough for it to gradually improve. I know because I could see myself being one of these die-hard look at everything through rose-tinted glasses fanboys, but I will fight not to be.
I despise how the norm now is "stop hating on a game that just released" to just accept something I paid for to be unfinished, but that's here to stay. Every game nowadays sucks gorilla balls and we all sit in silence and accept that that's fine and that it'll be "good eventually" but I'm just so tired of that. If a game comes out half-completed, I should only pay half the price. It only seems fair. It's absolutely disgusting that games like these keep coming out in a state that wouldn't have been acceptable 15 years ago, let alone now.
I would like to end this on a more positive note. There is so much potential for this game, I can see the passion and effort poured into this game by the devs and artists who are passionate about this IP. The core game play is a lot of fun with friends and is what will bring me and others back. It's also great that updates with bug fixes and features are now and hopefully continually being implemented to address the issues. I understand that game releases/launches are not perfect now, and I understand that devs are not machines, they are humans too and have lives and families outside of their occupation (what some fail to realize). As for the cash shop, I do want the people who worked on this game to get paid, but a more clear road map would be nice to have. Instead of relying on people to spelunk and data mine the game to gleam hints at future content. If you enjoy this game in its current state then I guess more power to you, it's your money and your time not mine. I am not telling anyone that they can't have fun. Will this review age like milk? I surely hope the negative aspects of it do.
TL;DR Game is unfinished, still in early access with a lot of missing features/content we were lead to believe would be on launch. If you love RNG and loading screens, this game is gonna be your Goodfellas. It's fun with friends, but it doesn't justify the horrible state it was released in.
"Hope is a first step on a road to disappointment." - Actual in-game quote that represents it in an uncanny way.
From prioritizing cash shops with micro transactions over promised missing features on launch, to not really addressing optimization issues plaguing the beta and launch until people screamed loud enough to drown out an astropathic choir, Warhammer Darktide spits on the good name of not only the previous Warhammer videogames, but the concept of Warhammer as a whole. If you're looking for a good game of this genre, the very best you can find is probably something along the lines of Vermintide 1&2. Other than that, you're out of luck. Because the people who made this game just don't care about the playerbase.
And it's hilarious that Lead Developers keep looping around backtracking on the reneged promises and gaslighting the fans. "Crafting doesn't fit the 40K narrative"? I guess sitting around every hour for the armory to restock praying to RNG that you get a weapon you want, then praying to roll for good attributes that you spend materials and currency on that aren't shared across characters is the better alternative. I mean, it certainly fits the grim dark narrative of stagnation and standstill to progression.
Let's also not forget how weapon customization and attachments were talked about then ~data expunged~ from the records, oh and how talks of the premium cash shop currency, "Aquilas", could be earned by playing in-game were ~redacted~. On the subject of the premium currency, I liked how the community immediately realized how scummy it was to make the purchasable packs from premium currency just not enough for a cosmetic set, so you'd have to spend extra to get the right "2400" amount to be able to buy one, or you'd buy have to buy a bigger more costly pack. Either way, the outcome was always spending more to beat the FOMO timer! It reeks of the Tencent Midas shit touch, where whatever Tencent gets their grubby hands on starts to smell a little stinky. I mean, what a great first impression for first time players to be greeted with a fully flushed out cash shop way before any other promised features or bug fixes were implemented in the release. Bravo! How did we go from what Vermintide 2 is (granted it took 2 years for it to eventually "get there") to this? Did we not learn anything?
The in-game penances. (achievements for characters and other aspects of game play) This one sentence alone is enough to make some abase and flagellate themselves, and rightly so. It's what whoever designed them would probably want out of those who are trying to get them done. The Lead Developer(s) made it clear that some aspects of this game were implemented/removed to be less toxic than Vermintide 2, when in fact these penances did a full 180, crazy! They completely go against the nature of this co-op game. Class specific penances, let me be clear, are the bane of the player's existence. For some of these penances, you have to actively grief or just be a detriment to your team by screaming at them to not do their jobs or by not doing your job as (x) class. For the more ridiculous penances, you need to have a team of four people all collaborating together coming up with the most asinine and insane ways to get them done that no normal/casual player ever could get done by themselves. On very rare occasions, queuing with randoms will get you a screamer. Someone who screams at you through voicechat then quits because you messed up their "take no damage, complete the level in under 20 minutes, or blow themselves up to kill elites" bullshit ass penance, because 3/4ths of the team wouldn't go along with them. I mean that's just the cherry on top to be yelled at for wanting to just play the game. Before private games were introduced, trying to play normally on Heresy+ difficulty would almost be impossible since you'd always run into one or two people trying to get penances done instead of wanting to play the missions.
Also, mission/map selection still hasn't been implemented into the game as I write this review. I know some people who just gave up for certain penances, because a Heresy+ difficulty repair map they've been waiting for would never show up. I did all of the class specific penances and I'll be honest, if you can cheat/cheese some of them as I did, do it before they patch it. This game doesn't deserve the time you'd put into doing them legitimately since it doesn't even respect your time in the first place. I will always remember those who have helped me and those who I have helped getting these penances done because we are all troopers for not deciding to put the barrel of a shotgun in our mouths after each of them.
The major W's of this game. The sound design is absolutely amazing, the deep staccato barking of the bolter, that snap hiss of las guns, the enemy sounds that let you distinctly know which ones are coming to eat you alive, to the sounds of bodies being torn apart by chain swords. The music, Jesper Kyd is a Rembrandt! He will always be an absolute god, ever since Assassin's Creed 2. The voice acting and dialogue is brilliant, it really brings to life the characters you've created into this 40k setting. Speaking of which, I love me some decent character customization and this game has it. The combat, the meat of this game and what keeps me coming back, is definitely not perfect but it's so close and so very satisfying. Map design, the environments, world building, ambiance, lore, the scale of it all is very imposing in a good way, its screams at you in a good way that you are in this universe. All of the aforementioned is an easy 9/10. I was ecstatic when I heard that some of my favorite writers for the series were working on the story aspect and world building of this game. Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski Bowden, and Matthew Ward just to name a few. Even though the story is lacking, the world building and dialogue between characters more than makes up for it. But also, a campaign would definitely make up for the current lack of story.
If this game didn't have the Warhammer IP backing it and its $40 price tag, it would've been dead/dying a lot sooner than it currently is. It's sad and ironic that WH40K die-hard fanboys refuse to accept valid criticism and see how this game is a shell of what it could have been. Valid criticism, comparative analysis and discourse is crucial to improving the quality of this game. These die-hards will lash out at you for even the slight hint of a sleight against their precious IP, never have I been more ashamed to be apart of this "community" after participating in and viewing many open/closed discussions with "like minded individuals". Ironic since they'll probably keep the player base statistics up and this game alive long enough for it to gradually improve. I know because I could see myself being one of these die-hard look at everything through rose-tinted glasses fanboys, but I will fight not to be.
I despise how the norm now is "stop hating on a game that just released" to just accept something I paid for to be unfinished, but that's here to stay. Every game nowadays sucks gorilla balls and we all sit in silence and accept that that's fine and that it'll be "good eventually" but I'm just so tired of that. If a game comes out half-completed, I should only pay half the price. It only seems fair. It's absolutely disgusting that games like these keep coming out in a state that wouldn't have been acceptable 15 years ago, let alone now.
I would like to end this on a more positive note. There is so much potential for this game, I can see the passion and effort poured into this game by the devs and artists who are passionate about this IP. The core game play is a lot of fun with friends and is what will bring me and others back. It's also great that updates with bug fixes and features are now and hopefully continually being implemented to address the issues. I understand that game releases/launches are not perfect now, and I understand that devs are not machines, they are humans too and have lives and families outside of their occupation (what some fail to realize). As for the cash shop, I do want the people who worked on this game to get paid, but a more clear road map would be nice to have. Instead of relying on people to spelunk and data mine the game to gleam hints at future content. If you enjoy this game in its current state then I guess more power to you, it's your money and your time not mine. I am not telling anyone that they can't have fun. Will this review age like milk? I surely hope the negative aspects of it do.
TL;DR Game is unfinished, still in early access with a lot of missing features/content we were lead to believe would be on launch. If you love RNG and loading screens, this game is gonna be your Goodfellas. It's fun with friends, but it doesn't justify the horrible state it was released in.
This probably the most well made piece of trash that has been put out in the past few years and I played it for almost a hundred hours simply because I hate myself.
First, let's talk about the obvious problem that's been plaguing Call of Duty for as long as I can remember.... Hackers. Seriously, the hacking is off the charts, the number of times I've been tracked through walls is absolutely incredible, and if it's not tracking through walls then sweet baby jesus I must be playing against real-world marines with 200+ confirmed kills. They all have the aim of a literal god (Cronus Zen and other aim assist mods that the "anti-cheat" doesn't do anything about) so you either find low-skilled newbies that are not of any challenge or fat neckbearded tryhards that have eighteen different aim assist programs. And the reason those ugly bastards at Activision don't do anything about it is because so many of the big streamers are cheating but of course, CoD cant afford to loose their main source of advertisement so they just shut their mouth and pretend not to see or hear anything.
The second most infuriating problem is the spawning. How does a game developer make the exact same type of game decade after decade and still CANNOT figure out how to spawn people? You will either spawn directly in front of enemies, behind a teammate that is already being shot at, or in the middle of the enemy team and get melted immediately/wipe out their whole team from behind. And if you don't get those spawns, you get the complete opposite and the game spawns you 5 miles away from anyone. Not only that but the game seems to do it on purpose. It's been a common theme that once you start doing well in a game, all of a sudden you start spawning in random spots and it messes up the whole flow and allows the other team to take over areas they weren't able to before hand. On another note, the game really seems to nerf in real time. It is common to hear about this and to experience it yourself, too. Once you start doing well in a game mode or even mid-game, it seems to start taking more shots to kill people, footsteps seems to get softer, you start dying to less shots, it just seems fishy.
The weapons are a whole other issue. They are so unbalanced its crazy. Getting two shot'd (often one shot) by pistols but yet my .308 that leaves a baseball sized hole in your chest doesn't kill because "iTs NoT a HeAdShOt". Not to mention, what is the point of having three different sniper (high caliber) rifle classes if all of them are going to be mobile and easy to use? Why is a full size 338 easier to handle than an SPR even with both having the short barrels? I'm not in the military and am in no way saying that I know how weapons should correctly handle, but if my experience with games that simulate real-life weapons is of any help, I sincerely doubt that a pocket pistol would do the same damage as a fucking Fat Man.
Let's move onto sound, another awesome addition to this garbage fire. I don't have the best headset around but it's pretty decent for my standards, mostly because I luckily also get a pretty silent environment as a whole. But by God if that doesn't mean jackshit. Footsteps in this game are horrendous, you can barely hear yourself think due to your own footsteps but enemy footsteps are so quiet Daredevil wouldn't even be able to fucking hear them. The game even makes your teammates louder. You can literally hear your teammate on the second floor, six rooms down better than you can hear an enemy coming through the doorway half a foot to your side. The only mode where that's not an issue is S&D and even then the sounds don't seem accurate. For example, the map where you can swim has really loud boards when you run, I honestly cant count how many times I've been on that map and been like "oh, that guy is still on the boards" so I pop out to catch him but when I pop out, the dude is like 4 feet down the concrete slab and already pulled up on me. Other times, I'll think I'm right behind someone but as soon as I turn the corner to attack them from behind, turns out they're in Jamaica all of a sudden.
Let's move onto performance. I have never had an issue running anything on this PC but this game eats my GPU like a four course banquet. I mean it, constant 98% utilization is unacceptable. NFS Heat doesn't even get that high and that game is less optimized than Callisto Protocol running on a microwave. Not only that but the game constantly crashes. Want to edit your class mid-game? Too bad, you're going to have to force close the game then boot it back up again. Want to go through the store or battle pass while waiting in a lobby? Too bad, restart the game. Want to lag with 25 latency? Well you are in luck! I've never had any issue with a game as much as I've had with this one. All these fucking Delta, Caserma, Rhino, Charlie and who knows what else errors that the game keeps giving you for simply starting it make my blood boil. I don't care that the game crashed because of Error Turdblossom because, even when I look it up online, there is NO KNOWN FIX.
Last but definitely NOT least, the leveling up. I have never played a game where you basically needed double XP tokens to rank up quickly at all. Perhaps Marvel's Avengers, and that is a bar so low that it's underneath sea level. For example, I remember having three games in a row where I got 30+ kills. Anyone wanna guess how many times my weapons and soldier ranked up in that 90+ kill span? Well, my Orbiter went from level 3 to 5, my Revolver went up half a level, and I progressed one XP level as a whole... I mean come on, what a joke.
The game is all around pretty bad, usually I don't care much for CoD but after paying $100 for this game I really feel robbed. I can't even have fun with my friends because whenever we play, it feels like a kick in the balls. No one has fun playing this game except for sweaty dorito-munching nerds that look like boogie2988. CoD is sadly a shell of what it used to be, now more than ever. If you are a toxic, grass-avoiding, stinky predator that plays literally nothing else but CoD, then this game is perfect for you.
First, let's talk about the obvious problem that's been plaguing Call of Duty for as long as I can remember.... Hackers. Seriously, the hacking is off the charts, the number of times I've been tracked through walls is absolutely incredible, and if it's not tracking through walls then sweet baby jesus I must be playing against real-world marines with 200+ confirmed kills. They all have the aim of a literal god (Cronus Zen and other aim assist mods that the "anti-cheat" doesn't do anything about) so you either find low-skilled newbies that are not of any challenge or fat neckbearded tryhards that have eighteen different aim assist programs. And the reason those ugly bastards at Activision don't do anything about it is because so many of the big streamers are cheating but of course, CoD cant afford to loose their main source of advertisement so they just shut their mouth and pretend not to see or hear anything.
The second most infuriating problem is the spawning. How does a game developer make the exact same type of game decade after decade and still CANNOT figure out how to spawn people? You will either spawn directly in front of enemies, behind a teammate that is already being shot at, or in the middle of the enemy team and get melted immediately/wipe out their whole team from behind. And if you don't get those spawns, you get the complete opposite and the game spawns you 5 miles away from anyone. Not only that but the game seems to do it on purpose. It's been a common theme that once you start doing well in a game, all of a sudden you start spawning in random spots and it messes up the whole flow and allows the other team to take over areas they weren't able to before hand. On another note, the game really seems to nerf in real time. It is common to hear about this and to experience it yourself, too. Once you start doing well in a game mode or even mid-game, it seems to start taking more shots to kill people, footsteps seems to get softer, you start dying to less shots, it just seems fishy.
The weapons are a whole other issue. They are so unbalanced its crazy. Getting two shot'd (often one shot) by pistols but yet my .308 that leaves a baseball sized hole in your chest doesn't kill because "iTs NoT a HeAdShOt". Not to mention, what is the point of having three different sniper (high caliber) rifle classes if all of them are going to be mobile and easy to use? Why is a full size 338 easier to handle than an SPR even with both having the short barrels? I'm not in the military and am in no way saying that I know how weapons should correctly handle, but if my experience with games that simulate real-life weapons is of any help, I sincerely doubt that a pocket pistol would do the same damage as a fucking Fat Man.
Let's move onto sound, another awesome addition to this garbage fire. I don't have the best headset around but it's pretty decent for my standards, mostly because I luckily also get a pretty silent environment as a whole. But by God if that doesn't mean jackshit. Footsteps in this game are horrendous, you can barely hear yourself think due to your own footsteps but enemy footsteps are so quiet Daredevil wouldn't even be able to fucking hear them. The game even makes your teammates louder. You can literally hear your teammate on the second floor, six rooms down better than you can hear an enemy coming through the doorway half a foot to your side. The only mode where that's not an issue is S&D and even then the sounds don't seem accurate. For example, the map where you can swim has really loud boards when you run, I honestly cant count how many times I've been on that map and been like "oh, that guy is still on the boards" so I pop out to catch him but when I pop out, the dude is like 4 feet down the concrete slab and already pulled up on me. Other times, I'll think I'm right behind someone but as soon as I turn the corner to attack them from behind, turns out they're in Jamaica all of a sudden.
Let's move onto performance. I have never had an issue running anything on this PC but this game eats my GPU like a four course banquet. I mean it, constant 98% utilization is unacceptable. NFS Heat doesn't even get that high and that game is less optimized than Callisto Protocol running on a microwave. Not only that but the game constantly crashes. Want to edit your class mid-game? Too bad, you're going to have to force close the game then boot it back up again. Want to go through the store or battle pass while waiting in a lobby? Too bad, restart the game. Want to lag with 25 latency? Well you are in luck! I've never had any issue with a game as much as I've had with this one. All these fucking Delta, Caserma, Rhino, Charlie and who knows what else errors that the game keeps giving you for simply starting it make my blood boil. I don't care that the game crashed because of Error Turdblossom because, even when I look it up online, there is NO KNOWN FIX.
Last but definitely NOT least, the leveling up. I have never played a game where you basically needed double XP tokens to rank up quickly at all. Perhaps Marvel's Avengers, and that is a bar so low that it's underneath sea level. For example, I remember having three games in a row where I got 30+ kills. Anyone wanna guess how many times my weapons and soldier ranked up in that 90+ kill span? Well, my Orbiter went from level 3 to 5, my Revolver went up half a level, and I progressed one XP level as a whole... I mean come on, what a joke.
The game is all around pretty bad, usually I don't care much for CoD but after paying $100 for this game I really feel robbed. I can't even have fun with my friends because whenever we play, it feels like a kick in the balls. No one has fun playing this game except for sweaty dorito-munching nerds that look like boogie2988. CoD is sadly a shell of what it used to be, now more than ever. If you are a toxic, grass-avoiding, stinky predator that plays literally nothing else but CoD, then this game is perfect for you.
2009
I came back to review this game because I genuinely feel the need to talk about just how fucking livid this game makes me feel. It will be a long one but I just write these for myself so I don't really care if anyone else reads. This is more of a personal thing.
I think there's a point to be made as to why we believe that older shows, movies, songs and games are better. Perhaps they remind us of an older, happier time of our lives. Perhaps they makes us feel cozy emotions. Perhaps they help us get back into that era. Perhaps we're just being blinded by nostalgia. Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, they're still that good. There's quite a few example of things that still hold up amazingly even for today's standards, sometimes surpassing what came after them. Whether we're talking about Spongebob, the 2000's Spider-Man movies, 90's Beastie Boys or the first Call of Duty games, many "old" (calling them old makes me feel old) things still feel like they were the best.
League of Legends is the greatest example of that. A game that aimed for the stars, touched them for a bit... And then proceeded to head straight back to the center of the Earth. I'd call League of Legends the game whose biggest enemy is only itself. Because while many companies implement changes to innovate, improve and modernize their games, Riot Games ignores all that and chooses to aim either for the top 0,1% of players or the newest newbies you could imagine. But I want to go step by step to explain why I think this game is the greatest tragedy in the history of gaming.
When League of Legends: Clash of Fates was first announced, it was met with pretty interesting feedback. People seemed excited but also confused because there already was a League of Legends, and that game was called DotA. Or, well, it was a mod for Warcraft III. A mod that got even bigger than the game itself. What truly baffled everyone, though, was the fact that this "League of Legends" was actually free-to-play. For the time, it was unheard of for an indie company to create a game that was completely free and had many chances to fail considering it had its older and more popular brother to live up to. But nonetheless, Riot Games decided to go through with the project and while its start was slow, it eventually started catching on and people fell in love with the game. A tower defender, strategy game that also had a ton of action and characters? It sounded like the dream!
It's incredible to go back and look at the game's first trailers. It truly puts into perspective just how much everything has improved over the years. But back to the main point of the story, the game began to make it VERY big and, after a few years, it became the most played game in the world. Was it because of its characters? Its marketing? Its free-to-play pricetag? Its easy to pick up but hard to master playstyle? The fact that it was so low specs that it could run on a toaster? Probably all of these, but we can't know for sure. What we do know, though, is the fact that League grew more and more until it became a cultural icon. Even people who barely know what videogames are know what League of Legends is. 99% of memes about gamers are about League of Legends players and I think it goes to show just how BIG Riot Games made it and how lucky they were. But there's some merit, obviously, since their monetization tactics were pretty well planned and they still somewhat hold up to this day.
Back then, Riot Games was still a fantastic company. They weren't perfect, sure, but the way they interacted with fans, the jokes they wrote in every patch, the community content highlights they would do and even how much they seemed to know what they were doing all lead to everyone loving them and trusting them completely. The culture they had built around League of Legends was simply phenomenal, despite the negative aspects and general toxicity surrounding MOBA games. They communicated, they were transparent. What I'm saying is, Riot Games was a company that I loved and I truly believed that almost everyone working there was super talented and passionate about the game, and they seemed to always push to put more work into the game than any other competitor. They blew DotA 2, their freakin' inspiration, out of the water completely!
So why do I bring this up?
Because Riot Games isn't that company anymore. And League of Legends isn't that game anymore.
I started playing League of Legends in 2015. I had played it around 2010 but I was too dumb of a kid to actually know what was going on so I just gave up and never opened it again. Until, in high school, my friends (who are still my best friends and my boys) told me to download it. They had been playing it for around two years and they wanted me and the others to join in as well. So I thought what the hell, I'll join in too. And here's the thing...
I HATED it. I hated how you couldn't move with WASD, I hated how you couldn't even tell what item to buy or what the other characters were doing. I hated how there were no tutorials. I hated how everyone I was matched up against had runes and masteries meanwhile I didn't even know what those were. I hated that I didn't have any characters and just had to play Brand and Annie because they were constantly in free rotation. I hated that I kept dying and I didn't know what to do. I HATED League of Legends.
I initially gave it up cause I just didn't find it fun. But to spend time with my boys, I decided to keep playing it and push through. And boy did I push and struggle to enjoy the game. Then, after around half a year, it was almost as if something clicked in me. Maybe it was because I had gotten better, or that my friends were messing around with me and having as much fun as me, or maybe it was the new champions that had released, or maybe it was just a love that had to slowly be grown over time. And so, it started.
I LOVED it. I loved the champions, I loved the lore, I loved the builds, I loved the roles, I loved the community, I loved the events and I loved the skins. I had finally gotten a grasp of the game and I was so happy. I could legitimately play and have fun. I must have played almost a thousand games in 2016. It was like a drug, so addicting and yet it felt SO GOOD. It genuinely makes me smile with sadness to think back to those times and how happy everything was. Life was much simpler. Get home from school, play League, have fun with your boys. And this leads back to what I was talking about at the beginning.
Is all of this lead by nostalgia? Perhaps. Life was different, easier and happier back then. But that doesn't mean I don't like my life now. And yes, I may have grown, but that doesn't mean the game hasn't grown as well. Because boy, it has grown so much. I consider myself so incredibly lucky for having had the possibility of playing this game when it was at its peak in terms of fun and balance. And sure, as all things do, we tend to gloss over many problems we had with them. But I remember them. I remember tank Fizz and tank Ekko terrorizing every lane, I remember how broken Teemo top was, I remember how Thunderlord's Decree could one-shot you from out of nowhere, I remember when Fervor of Battle had a mastery that allowed you to have a 1% crit chance, I remember old Katarina, I remember when LeBlanc getting first blood meant the game was already over, I remember just how broken Brutalizer and Mejai's were. I remember all of these things and yet, I couldn't help but ask myself... Why did I have fun regardless of how absolutely fucking stupid all of those things were?
League of Legends is a game me and my boys used to play religiously almost every day, probably more than 5 games a day. We would be so many that we needed to split up in two groups otherwise we wouldn't be able to play. But nowadays, it feels like no one cares anymore. Most of my friends, including me, have moved on and play other BETTER games. They do sometimes play a game of League but it must be like what, once or twice a month? The one friend I have that plays League just fucking plays TFT, which isn't even League per-se. We've been playing games like Grand Theft Auto Online, Garry's Mod, The Forest, Left 4 Dead 2, Red Dead Online, even WAR THUNDER WHICH I GENUINELY HATE and yet... We find ourselves enjoying them and having the time of our lives playing those games. And so I kept asking myself why? Why can't I enjoy League of Legends anymore and yet I find these stupid ass games fun? But that's not really a question to begin with because I already knew the answer before even asking it.
The biggest problem with League of Legends is Riot Games' philosophy on CHANGE. Back when I first started playing, whenever things changed I imagined it was just all part of Riot's big plan to balance and correct the game up to the point where it would eventually be the way they had always envisioned it. They probably didn't expect the game to become so big and popular, and thus a lot of things were just unbalanced and straight up unfun. I mean, REMEMBER GLOBAL ULTS? PANTHEON TF GANGPLANK AND SHEN ULTING FROM ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE MAP WITH A 1 MINUTE COOLDOWN? You know, I had played World of Warcraft a lot and as such, this concept of constant updates and re-balancing was pretty normal to me. In my mind, I had this pre-conceived notion that this was all part of Riot's roadmap, that they had an endpoint that they were trying to get to. And looking back, I was dead wrong. There is no finish line, League of Legends is and always will be in a perpetual state of development. Hell, even Riot Games itself has admitted to wanting the game to last up to a hundred years (good luck with that, a decade in and you guys are already falling incredibly badly). I remember listening to Riot Ghostcrawler talk about their philosophy on change, saying that they knew there was a certain risk to it, which means that they KNEW and have always KNOWN just how bad they can screw the game up by re-balancing everything just because they can. And we're not talking about small adjustments to weapons in a first person shooter nor drop rates of items in MMOs. We're talking of pages upon pages of patch notes. New champions, new items, tweaked numbers, updated runes, different smites, new drakes, remove this, remove that, bring back this, rework that. It's an endless cycle that will eventually become so laborious and annoying that everyone will just lose interest. And after more than 5 years of constantly staying up to date with everything because I was genuinely in love with the game, it just became such a huge investment of my time and I couldn't be bothered anymore. And that is just to understand what the FUCK is in the game.
This endless cycle means that inevitably there's gonna be something new that's added that completely breaks the game in some form or another. Remember release Yone? Buffed Yuumi? Release Sylas? Zeri as a whole? APHELIOS??? And even further back, remember when Kha'Zix could go perma-invis by just walking into a bush? Or when you could stack Black Cleaver and chew through tanks like they were nothing? Spear of Shojin? Old Fiora? Change will always bring forth new problems. A busted combo here, a broken item there. So there has never been a point where League was considered balanced. And the worst part of it all is that it's always a meta. What is considered viable changes with every patch. Entire playstyles can become unviable or unplayable after a single update, meaning players have to update. And while this could technically keep the game fresh, it alienates people who have been playing certain ways for YEARS on end and you just take that away from them to appeal to the masses. I mean just look at huge players in the community like Trick2G. His entire playstyle was based around the fact that he played the most useless and funny champions in the game. And what does he have now? A generic but decent Volibear and an absolutely broken and incredibly generic Udyr. When I first started playing, there were around a hundred champions. Each of them had five different abilities. And it takes a LONG time to learn what each one of them does. And now, we're at 160 and it feels like... At what point is there enough variety in champions and abilities and playstyles? At what point does it become too much for the casual player to want to learn every single nook and cranny of every single champion? I mean, just look at Nasus' passive and look at K'Sante. What the fuck is that supposed to mean for how League is now?
And don't get me wrong, change is good! Change is what got me to come back to a lot of games over the years. All I'm saying though, is that all I wanted was for League of Legends to just settle down at some point and find a way to just stay the same. Find its place, you know? Here's another funny thing to think about. As the game evolved, I always had this thought in my mind of "hey, this thing is pretty broken/overpowered, but they're constantly updating the game so they'll fix it soon!" and I kept telling myself that for YEARS. Nidalee spears, AP Master Yi, AP Rengar, LeBlanc when she had a silence, Atmogs, Feral Flare, stopwatch meta (still going strong after 8 years), broken drake buffs, random map changes, funneling, CC chains, Thresh as a whole, the list is ENDLESS. And I've been through it all! League is not meant to be balanced, it's not meant to ever be finished. It is simply a continuous stream of revenue for Riot, who keeps creating new champions and skins regardless of the consequences it has on the overall game. Change for the sake of change.
And money.
Back to what Riot Ghostcrawler said, he talked about how they change things to add freshness to the game and to make it feel less stale. But that's a lie. You can see that they're driven by money in the way they release their skins. Yorick was notorious because he had a 6 year span without a single skin. Ever since he launched up until his rework, he had 0 skins! Same thing with Urgot, Volibear, even Aatrox to some degree. Why? Because they weren't popular champions. So now, new cosmetic content is made for champions that will guarantee a good return in dollars. I mean, you wouldn't want to waste so much time and resources for a skin that won't sell, right? They're what I call priority skins/champions. It's why Twisted Fate has 15 skins, it's why Katarina has 16, it's why Lux has almost 20. Because they've always been popular. And if it's a popular champion, then the skin will surely sell! And I (like everyone else) understand that it's a business, you know, a free-to-play game has to make money somehow, I get that. But that's the point.
Riot's philosophy on constant change and new champions means that inevitably, some just get left in the dust for years and years. I just think every champion should receive a somewhat equal amount of passion, attention and love. Overall, I think by now League of Legends is in a much better spot than when I first started playing it. They fixed so many of the broken things that used to be in the game, whether it was something dumb like Kassadin's mobility or something more technical like Lee Sin's insec abilities. And yet, where they remove the ability for Nidalee to spam Q and do 800 damage at lvl 4, they also add champions like Zoe that are exactly as cancerous as her! And in the wise words of Tyler1, "Riot you're such a shit company dude! How can you get paid to balance the game when there's champions like this? They get paid to balance the game, that's all these retards do is balance the fucking game! That's it! How is Zoe still the same?" The reason League of Legends has bothered me so much for the past 3-4 years is because I've been waiting years to be able to consider it a balanced game. With more and more things getting added, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and adjust the game around those elements, to memorize them as a player, to balance them and to just have fun. For every champion rework Riot gets right, like Heimerdinger or Fiora, they straight up butcher another one.
Now, this is completely subjective, but I really started to question what Riot was doing when they reworked Aatrox. Now I'm going to preface this by saying I was the type of player who LOVED playing what most people considered bad champions, because first and foremost I was in it to have fun. I loved Olaf, Aatrox, Garen (before all of the conqueror bullshit), even Alistar top and Yasuo ADC. And I found out most of the champions many people thought were absolute garbage were actually incredibly fun when played well. And it made it WAY more satisfying when you kicked ass because everyone thought you were just an idiot who didn't know what they were doing. And yes, okay, Aatrox's kit wasn't perfect or all that fleshed out, he was sort of a Tryndamere 2.0 (or 0.5, I guess) but him as a whole was incredible! He was and still is my favorite champion other than Yasuo. Just thinking of his old voice gives me the shivers. "Surpass the frailty of your form", "Pain is temporary, victory is forever", "They will greet you as heroes", "Even those who have nothing can give their lives". And they took this incredible, stoic, terrifying and powerful demon character... And turned him into an angry russian! "Come, so I may split your shoulders from your spine!"? Does that ACTUALLY sound like the same character at all? And I remember Riot saying that he was "largely forgotten" and that he "wasn't really played that much". What...? How does that have anything to do with how badly they changed him? Imagine if they reworked Yasuo and he went from "Death is like the wind, always by my side" to "I'm Yasuo, and it's time to party!". You'd be sitting there like "dude that ain't fucking Yasuo!". But even if you think that Aatrox's new character is good, imagine yourself as someone who mained him, played hundreds upon hundreds of games with him, got attached to that character. And now imagine the disconnect that person felt with what might've been their favorite champion, their favorite part of the freakin' game! And while you personally might not relate to the players upset about whichever rework it might be, just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine if YOUR favorite champion just got completely changed and wasn't the thing you enjoyed anymore. Keep that in mind because it's a recurring concept.
They did the same thing to Maokai for reasons I cannot actually understand. Again, I played Maokai a decent amount, and when they reworked his abilities to scale better and tweaked his ultimate he was in a really good place. But now, they changed him so drastically. Hell, his ult now looks like Nami's with extra steps. His voice sounds awful in comparison to what it was, you used to have all the trees and bark moving and sounding completely evil and awesome and now you're just playing Groot. Maokai's not the same, and I haven't touched him since because of it. Same shtick goes for Dr. Mundo. His rework REALLY pissed me off because his kit was totally fine. It held up decently and other than his outdated model and VFX, it fit with the theme of him just being a weird being that popped out of nowhere and believed to be a doctor. His ultimate was balanced but definitely strong as shit in the right context and team composition and it could turn the game around if used correctly. He wasn't broken, you could counter his ultimate pretty easily with one item (that costed 800g) and he was a lot of fun to play. He could be a powerhouse if played correctly and against the right enemies. But Riot reworked him because, again, he "wasn't really played that much". To me, Dr. Mundo wasn't a champion you mained. He wasn't someone played every game, but could be the best pocket pick against an AP heavy team. But now he's just some generic tank who heals and does a fuckton of damage who nobody cares about. Volibear too had a rework and the same thing happened, they didn't just change his kit but they changed his identity as a whole. And it just kills my drive to play them.
These are just examples of champions I used to play and what I'm trying to get across is that when they change so much, I lose the desire to keep playing them and thus I lose the desire to keep playing League. I remember when they did a slight rework to Cho'Gath who was an already powerful and pretty great champion and just... Made it broken for some reason? Allowing his ultimate HP bonus to stack indefinitely and he loses nothing upon death? Why is that a thing...? I thought the whole point of Cho'Gath was the risk-reward of getting stacks but being afraid to lose them. You gain size and HP but if you're killed, you lose half of what you had. There's risk to it! Now you see a Cho get 4k+ extra HP from his ultimate 30 minutes into the game and you just can't help but think of how ridiculous this is. Then his ult scales with HP so you can use Gargoyle's Stoneplate and he can ult you for 5k HP. Yeah, that's hella balanced!
And that's what I'm saying. Riot introduces broken, new mechanics and then don't fix them until later, if ever! And that's a reoccurring pattern. Before these item changes shenanigans in 2019, you used to be able to get Locket of the Iron Solari + Gargoyle's Stoneplate and ult for a total of 6k True Damage and shield your team for 4k HP. And you see, I actually liked Cho'Gath, but I didn't wanna play him anymore because I just didn't feel skillful for walking up to someone and killing them by pressing R. In my opinion, it's not fun to do well in League with something that's unfair and broken. And I'm probably in the minority here, cause 90% of the community loves busted champions and abuses the everloving shit out of them until they get nerfed to the ground. Then, you've got champions like Ryze who Riot just cannot seem to get right. His initial set of spells was pretty braindead, sure, but how the hell do you rework a champion and give him the ability to permanently root enemies? How do you do that? How do you go through testing and not realize that you've created something completely broken (and the saddest thing is I can say that for about the last 20 or so champions that have been released)? Ryze has been reworked so many times that I can't imagine how Ryze mains must feel about him. The issue with some of the champion reworks I listed is that Riot will sometimes completely change the identity and feel of a character people have been playing for YEARS and it can be heartbreaking because people love this game and these champions and these characters so much! So fun moments and memories of you and your best friend ganking mid as Aatrox and Nunu botlane, 2v4'ing and getting the win just become that... Memories. Because you can never play these champions the way you used to play them ever again. That part of the game is forever lost.
But nonetheless, back to my reaction to Aatrox being reworked. He was my baby, my brother, my go-to dude! I loved him to death, he was the reason I had watched Devilman Crybaby even though I dislike anime because I just loved him that much. And even though what they did to him was pretty good and he needed it, not gonna lie, that killed a lot of my drive to keep playing the game. Because the Aatrox I knew and once loved was gone and he would never return. And I was only left with my old games to remind me of what I once had. I love the new Aatrox and have spent a ton of time playing him in the past few years racking up almost a million mastery points, but he is just not... Aatrox. And all these reworks are leading me to the main problem with League of Legends and the reason why I think it will soon fail... It's become streamlined.
I remember a famous post in the League forums (am I the only one old enough to remember those? god I loved them) where an employee talked about meta. Riot itself never forced a meta and never intended to because they wanted players to figure out what worked on their own. You know, players would realize that tanky juggernauts with sustain would work well in the top lane. AP mages who could roam were great in the mid lane. Mobile damage dealers with some Crowd Control were great for the jungle. And ranged AD champions were most effective in the bot lane with someone to support them. This ideology led to some really creative strategies and setups. Some were viable, others weren't, but that was the fun of it! For many years, you could play what was highly considered unviable and still have success! I did that and had a ton of it! It can be done! But this has changed tremendously in recent years, especially after Riot's biggest change after the removal of runes and masteries...
The new items.
I never saw anything wrong with the old item system and, while the new one is still good, it feels so streamlined. As if Riot themselves have been trying to eliminate unusual strategies and picks. The issues with the new item system arise because EVERY champion now needs to have some sort of synergy with the items, and it's inevitable that certain champions will benefit off of them better than others. The stats from the old items were just a way for players to cover up their weaknesses or play to their strengths, while also adding a more strategic element. Full AP team? Go Abyssal Mask, Spirit Visage or Adaptive Helm. Full heal team? Go Thornmail, Mortal Reminder or Morellonomicon. Full tank team? Go Black Cleaver and BOTRK. You had near-complete freedom in what you optimized in. My point is that the old system had way more options and it wasn't that complicated. It was modular and could breathe life into otherwise unviable picks and strategies. If you want an example of how League is becoming streamlined, with certain champions more or less forced into particular roles, I can think of no better example than Pantheon.
Again, one of my favorites! Most people would play him as a support or perhaps a midlaner and he works well in those roles. However, in earlier seasons (both pre-rework and post-rework) it was entirely possible to both jungle and top with him. Hell, I used to play Pantheon top when he was at the bottom of the barrel shit tier in ranked and win. It wasn't meta, it wasn't exactly viable, but it had its perks and with the right items and runes you COULD make it work. Unfortunately, Pantheon Top/Jungle is rarely ever seen anymore. I still play him top but the changes both to his kit and the items have made him frustratingly hard to play in his actual role. You can see this streamlining in how newer champions and reworks are handled. Mordekaiser is now exclusively a toplaner because the usefulness of his abilities no longer depends on having allies or neutral creatures around you. You used to be able to play just about anything in any lane but modern League just hasn't got any of those options. The problem is Riot streamlines the game in ways that make it more boring, and over complicates it in ways that are just confusing. For example, at some point they changed armor penetration to lethality? And I don't really see the point. Armor penetration is simple, you pierce through that amount of armor. But then they changed it to lethality and now it's a percentage and lethality is a fixed number whereas lethality is a percentage based on the amount of armor and it just makes me ask WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT? What's the point?
I mean, let's just take a look at how passives have changed in newer champions. Zeri generates 1 charge for every 40 units she travels by any means and 10 charge every time she casts her Q, up to a maximum of 100 charge. Her basic attacks consume charge to deal modified damage. Zeri gains maximum charge when PLEASE JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME PLAY. There are 4 passives in one. There is more text in this passive than in the entirety of Jax's kit. And then you look at a champion like Jayce, which used to be complicated for the time, and his R is "switch between hammer and cannon and gain a bit of movement speed". I know what that passive does in just 2 seconds. But then you go back to K'Sante and apparently his W has two passives that work with his normal passive? Hey did you know Aphelios has 3 passives on his Severum instead of the normal 2 per-weapon? I didn't and he's been out for 3 years! I mained the fucking guy until Mastery 7 and I didn't even know! You could say that's my fault for not paying attention but that's not an excuse! There's so many unnecessary mechanics, passives and all this bullshit in some of the newer champions that makes it incredibly difficult to memorize and comprehend. Riot's early champion designs were simplistic, easy to understand even if you didn't play them, but always hard to master. Tryndamere is walking towards me? He probably has R, which makes him unkillable. Jax is spinning his staff? He's gonna jump and stun me. Garen is running with his Q? He's gonna attack me and R me. Syndra is holding onto a ball with her W? She's gonna throw it at me and stun me.
Now we've got 160 champions each with 5 different abilities, some with 4 different passives, but it's important that I can just look at those fuckers and understand what I'm playing against from a glance. And it's like nah, you gotta look em up online to see exactly what they do now (unless the game holds your hand cause of course tiny widdle babies who can't use Google to save their life need to know what item is useful to counter Teemo so we're just gonna tell them in the in-game shop instead of them learning from their mistake). Then, somewhere along the lines, Riot thought that influence points (IP) were too complicated or something? So then they added Blue Essence, Orange Essence, key shards, capsules, chests, Masterwork chests, skin shards, ETERNALS GOD FUCK ETERNALS and at this point I just don't care to figure all of them out. I have 81k Orange Essence and more than 200 skin and champion shards because I just don't care to go through them and pay attention to the overwhelming amount of shit that Riot keeps throwing at me.
The streamlining of champions, putting them into specific roles that have labels and overcomplicating the game in other areas (while removing fun and niche ones like Dominion) made League into something much more difficult to grasp even for experienced players like myself. More than half a decade under my belt, man!
To end Riot Ghostcrawler's statement, he talked about how League of Legends was a game about mastery and getting better at the game and that it could be really frustrating when you feel like the developers are just shaking the table constantly and making you feel like all the time you invested into it was just for nothing cause they're simply gonna change everything once more. And if that doesn't speak volumes about how self-aware but also incredibly self-unaware Riot is, then I don't know what does.
But for me, one of the things that broke my heart and just shot down one of my favorite parts of the game was the removal of Twisted Treeline. Okay, sure, nobody played it, there was like 2 people on it and everyone else was bots, who cares well I CARE! At me and my boys' peak, we were playing League anywhere from 3 to 8 games a day. But when we just didn't feel like putting in a lot of time and effort, when we didn't have a full team or when we just felt like messing around, we played Twisted Treeline. Once again, if you didn't like Twisted Treeline, never played it, if you thought it was trash well let me just say that there were people that DID enjoy it! People like me! There was a population. And yeah, we've got ARAM, we've got a (yearly) rotating gamemode, but none of it is as good or fun as Twisted Treeline. It was the perfect thing to play when you didn't have a guaranteed 40-50 minutes for a full match. It took more skill to succeed in Twisted Treeline than it does in ARAM cause ARAM is just a lot of luck. TT you could just pick your champion and just do all sorts of crazy build. There was almost no laning phase and it was all so chaotic but unique and fun. I understand that it was taken off because Riot had their reasons (flimsy ones, but reasons nonetheless) and I'm not dismissing those. But all I'm saying is, it didn't have to be this way. Riot could have tried to make it work, I mean they basically launched the mode, did 3 updates and gave it up afterwards. And that's what has been happening to League of Legends for many years.
The champions, the items, the game modes, all the different pieces as to why people play the game have been systematically changed, altered or removed entirely. And it's not the same game we all fell in love once. The more the game changes, the harder it is for someone who's taken a break to come back to League. Dramatic changes can have a huge impact on players who have spent hundreds of hours perfecting certain playstyles or strategies and it just feels so unfair and unrewarding to have all that stripped away from you. I remember there was a guy I'd often meet called Cool TT who must have had thousands of games in Twisted Treeline. Now how do you think he felt when it was removed? We all get tired of the long games (especially because now more than ever, the real game ends at around 15 minutes and the rest is a boring slog of either ROLFSTOMPING or pure PAIN™) or don't have time for them and ever since TT was removed, that fast-paced action and intensity hasn't been replaced by anything.
You know, it's a difficult thing to explain what has happened to our beloved League of Legends, the game we spent so much time, love and effort on. If my playtime counter app is correct, I've spent more than 15k hours on this videogame. And this may not have been the most comprehensive analysis, after all this is just my opinion on the matter and I'm sure many might disagree (if anyone even cares to read this far). But I'm also sure a ton of people will agree that this game is just a shadow, a shell of its former self. League of Legends has had a lot of good changes over the years and I'm not knocking on the positive things Riot has done, it's their game after all and it's free-to-play so it's not like I can ask for a refund. But you know, I just realized that... It's not that I've gotten bored of the game. I've gotten bored of change.
It's so tiring to get back into the game when there's a new visual rework every patch, 27 new items every pre-season, 4 different champions with 19 passives each and overall just 15 page patch notes that truly do not do anything for the game as a whole. The game has lost that simplistic, easy to grasp charm it used to have. I've lost passion for League after having seen some of my favorite champions and items reworked or removed and being exchanged for something I really don't care about. And it's sad because to me, the game will never be as fun, unique or engaging as it once was. And the reason for that is because League of Legends had to change...
Thank you for reading this far. This wasn't meant for anyone but me but if you've actually read this, props to you! Also, I didn't touch on the general toxicity surrounding the game simply because it's disgusting and so well-known that at this point, I feel like there's really no need to talk about it.
I think there's a point to be made as to why we believe that older shows, movies, songs and games are better. Perhaps they remind us of an older, happier time of our lives. Perhaps they makes us feel cozy emotions. Perhaps they help us get back into that era. Perhaps we're just being blinded by nostalgia. Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, they're still that good. There's quite a few example of things that still hold up amazingly even for today's standards, sometimes surpassing what came after them. Whether we're talking about Spongebob, the 2000's Spider-Man movies, 90's Beastie Boys or the first Call of Duty games, many "old" (calling them old makes me feel old) things still feel like they were the best.
League of Legends is the greatest example of that. A game that aimed for the stars, touched them for a bit... And then proceeded to head straight back to the center of the Earth. I'd call League of Legends the game whose biggest enemy is only itself. Because while many companies implement changes to innovate, improve and modernize their games, Riot Games ignores all that and chooses to aim either for the top 0,1% of players or the newest newbies you could imagine. But I want to go step by step to explain why I think this game is the greatest tragedy in the history of gaming.
When League of Legends: Clash of Fates was first announced, it was met with pretty interesting feedback. People seemed excited but also confused because there already was a League of Legends, and that game was called DotA. Or, well, it was a mod for Warcraft III. A mod that got even bigger than the game itself. What truly baffled everyone, though, was the fact that this "League of Legends" was actually free-to-play. For the time, it was unheard of for an indie company to create a game that was completely free and had many chances to fail considering it had its older and more popular brother to live up to. But nonetheless, Riot Games decided to go through with the project and while its start was slow, it eventually started catching on and people fell in love with the game. A tower defender, strategy game that also had a ton of action and characters? It sounded like the dream!
It's incredible to go back and look at the game's first trailers. It truly puts into perspective just how much everything has improved over the years. But back to the main point of the story, the game began to make it VERY big and, after a few years, it became the most played game in the world. Was it because of its characters? Its marketing? Its free-to-play pricetag? Its easy to pick up but hard to master playstyle? The fact that it was so low specs that it could run on a toaster? Probably all of these, but we can't know for sure. What we do know, though, is the fact that League grew more and more until it became a cultural icon. Even people who barely know what videogames are know what League of Legends is. 99% of memes about gamers are about League of Legends players and I think it goes to show just how BIG Riot Games made it and how lucky they were. But there's some merit, obviously, since their monetization tactics were pretty well planned and they still somewhat hold up to this day.
Back then, Riot Games was still a fantastic company. They weren't perfect, sure, but the way they interacted with fans, the jokes they wrote in every patch, the community content highlights they would do and even how much they seemed to know what they were doing all lead to everyone loving them and trusting them completely. The culture they had built around League of Legends was simply phenomenal, despite the negative aspects and general toxicity surrounding MOBA games. They communicated, they were transparent. What I'm saying is, Riot Games was a company that I loved and I truly believed that almost everyone working there was super talented and passionate about the game, and they seemed to always push to put more work into the game than any other competitor. They blew DotA 2, their freakin' inspiration, out of the water completely!
So why do I bring this up?
Because Riot Games isn't that company anymore. And League of Legends isn't that game anymore.
I started playing League of Legends in 2015. I had played it around 2010 but I was too dumb of a kid to actually know what was going on so I just gave up and never opened it again. Until, in high school, my friends (who are still my best friends and my boys) told me to download it. They had been playing it for around two years and they wanted me and the others to join in as well. So I thought what the hell, I'll join in too. And here's the thing...
I HATED it. I hated how you couldn't move with WASD, I hated how you couldn't even tell what item to buy or what the other characters were doing. I hated how there were no tutorials. I hated how everyone I was matched up against had runes and masteries meanwhile I didn't even know what those were. I hated that I didn't have any characters and just had to play Brand and Annie because they were constantly in free rotation. I hated that I kept dying and I didn't know what to do. I HATED League of Legends.
I initially gave it up cause I just didn't find it fun. But to spend time with my boys, I decided to keep playing it and push through. And boy did I push and struggle to enjoy the game. Then, after around half a year, it was almost as if something clicked in me. Maybe it was because I had gotten better, or that my friends were messing around with me and having as much fun as me, or maybe it was the new champions that had released, or maybe it was just a love that had to slowly be grown over time. And so, it started.
I LOVED it. I loved the champions, I loved the lore, I loved the builds, I loved the roles, I loved the community, I loved the events and I loved the skins. I had finally gotten a grasp of the game and I was so happy. I could legitimately play and have fun. I must have played almost a thousand games in 2016. It was like a drug, so addicting and yet it felt SO GOOD. It genuinely makes me smile with sadness to think back to those times and how happy everything was. Life was much simpler. Get home from school, play League, have fun with your boys. And this leads back to what I was talking about at the beginning.
Is all of this lead by nostalgia? Perhaps. Life was different, easier and happier back then. But that doesn't mean I don't like my life now. And yes, I may have grown, but that doesn't mean the game hasn't grown as well. Because boy, it has grown so much. I consider myself so incredibly lucky for having had the possibility of playing this game when it was at its peak in terms of fun and balance. And sure, as all things do, we tend to gloss over many problems we had with them. But I remember them. I remember tank Fizz and tank Ekko terrorizing every lane, I remember how broken Teemo top was, I remember how Thunderlord's Decree could one-shot you from out of nowhere, I remember when Fervor of Battle had a mastery that allowed you to have a 1% crit chance, I remember old Katarina, I remember when LeBlanc getting first blood meant the game was already over, I remember just how broken Brutalizer and Mejai's were. I remember all of these things and yet, I couldn't help but ask myself... Why did I have fun regardless of how absolutely fucking stupid all of those things were?
League of Legends is a game me and my boys used to play religiously almost every day, probably more than 5 games a day. We would be so many that we needed to split up in two groups otherwise we wouldn't be able to play. But nowadays, it feels like no one cares anymore. Most of my friends, including me, have moved on and play other BETTER games. They do sometimes play a game of League but it must be like what, once or twice a month? The one friend I have that plays League just fucking plays TFT, which isn't even League per-se. We've been playing games like Grand Theft Auto Online, Garry's Mod, The Forest, Left 4 Dead 2, Red Dead Online, even WAR THUNDER WHICH I GENUINELY HATE and yet... We find ourselves enjoying them and having the time of our lives playing those games. And so I kept asking myself why? Why can't I enjoy League of Legends anymore and yet I find these stupid ass games fun? But that's not really a question to begin with because I already knew the answer before even asking it.
The biggest problem with League of Legends is Riot Games' philosophy on CHANGE. Back when I first started playing, whenever things changed I imagined it was just all part of Riot's big plan to balance and correct the game up to the point where it would eventually be the way they had always envisioned it. They probably didn't expect the game to become so big and popular, and thus a lot of things were just unbalanced and straight up unfun. I mean, REMEMBER GLOBAL ULTS? PANTHEON TF GANGPLANK AND SHEN ULTING FROM ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE MAP WITH A 1 MINUTE COOLDOWN? You know, I had played World of Warcraft a lot and as such, this concept of constant updates and re-balancing was pretty normal to me. In my mind, I had this pre-conceived notion that this was all part of Riot's roadmap, that they had an endpoint that they were trying to get to. And looking back, I was dead wrong. There is no finish line, League of Legends is and always will be in a perpetual state of development. Hell, even Riot Games itself has admitted to wanting the game to last up to a hundred years (good luck with that, a decade in and you guys are already falling incredibly badly). I remember listening to Riot Ghostcrawler talk about their philosophy on change, saying that they knew there was a certain risk to it, which means that they KNEW and have always KNOWN just how bad they can screw the game up by re-balancing everything just because they can. And we're not talking about small adjustments to weapons in a first person shooter nor drop rates of items in MMOs. We're talking of pages upon pages of patch notes. New champions, new items, tweaked numbers, updated runes, different smites, new drakes, remove this, remove that, bring back this, rework that. It's an endless cycle that will eventually become so laborious and annoying that everyone will just lose interest. And after more than 5 years of constantly staying up to date with everything because I was genuinely in love with the game, it just became such a huge investment of my time and I couldn't be bothered anymore. And that is just to understand what the FUCK is in the game.
This endless cycle means that inevitably there's gonna be something new that's added that completely breaks the game in some form or another. Remember release Yone? Buffed Yuumi? Release Sylas? Zeri as a whole? APHELIOS??? And even further back, remember when Kha'Zix could go perma-invis by just walking into a bush? Or when you could stack Black Cleaver and chew through tanks like they were nothing? Spear of Shojin? Old Fiora? Change will always bring forth new problems. A busted combo here, a broken item there. So there has never been a point where League was considered balanced. And the worst part of it all is that it's always a meta. What is considered viable changes with every patch. Entire playstyles can become unviable or unplayable after a single update, meaning players have to update. And while this could technically keep the game fresh, it alienates people who have been playing certain ways for YEARS on end and you just take that away from them to appeal to the masses. I mean just look at huge players in the community like Trick2G. His entire playstyle was based around the fact that he played the most useless and funny champions in the game. And what does he have now? A generic but decent Volibear and an absolutely broken and incredibly generic Udyr. When I first started playing, there were around a hundred champions. Each of them had five different abilities. And it takes a LONG time to learn what each one of them does. And now, we're at 160 and it feels like... At what point is there enough variety in champions and abilities and playstyles? At what point does it become too much for the casual player to want to learn every single nook and cranny of every single champion? I mean, just look at Nasus' passive and look at K'Sante. What the fuck is that supposed to mean for how League is now?
And don't get me wrong, change is good! Change is what got me to come back to a lot of games over the years. All I'm saying though, is that all I wanted was for League of Legends to just settle down at some point and find a way to just stay the same. Find its place, you know? Here's another funny thing to think about. As the game evolved, I always had this thought in my mind of "hey, this thing is pretty broken/overpowered, but they're constantly updating the game so they'll fix it soon!" and I kept telling myself that for YEARS. Nidalee spears, AP Master Yi, AP Rengar, LeBlanc when she had a silence, Atmogs, Feral Flare, stopwatch meta (still going strong after 8 years), broken drake buffs, random map changes, funneling, CC chains, Thresh as a whole, the list is ENDLESS. And I've been through it all! League is not meant to be balanced, it's not meant to ever be finished. It is simply a continuous stream of revenue for Riot, who keeps creating new champions and skins regardless of the consequences it has on the overall game. Change for the sake of change.
And money.
Back to what Riot Ghostcrawler said, he talked about how they change things to add freshness to the game and to make it feel less stale. But that's a lie. You can see that they're driven by money in the way they release their skins. Yorick was notorious because he had a 6 year span without a single skin. Ever since he launched up until his rework, he had 0 skins! Same thing with Urgot, Volibear, even Aatrox to some degree. Why? Because they weren't popular champions. So now, new cosmetic content is made for champions that will guarantee a good return in dollars. I mean, you wouldn't want to waste so much time and resources for a skin that won't sell, right? They're what I call priority skins/champions. It's why Twisted Fate has 15 skins, it's why Katarina has 16, it's why Lux has almost 20. Because they've always been popular. And if it's a popular champion, then the skin will surely sell! And I (like everyone else) understand that it's a business, you know, a free-to-play game has to make money somehow, I get that. But that's the point.
Riot's philosophy on constant change and new champions means that inevitably, some just get left in the dust for years and years. I just think every champion should receive a somewhat equal amount of passion, attention and love. Overall, I think by now League of Legends is in a much better spot than when I first started playing it. They fixed so many of the broken things that used to be in the game, whether it was something dumb like Kassadin's mobility or something more technical like Lee Sin's insec abilities. And yet, where they remove the ability for Nidalee to spam Q and do 800 damage at lvl 4, they also add champions like Zoe that are exactly as cancerous as her! And in the wise words of Tyler1, "Riot you're such a shit company dude! How can you get paid to balance the game when there's champions like this? They get paid to balance the game, that's all these retards do is balance the fucking game! That's it! How is Zoe still the same?" The reason League of Legends has bothered me so much for the past 3-4 years is because I've been waiting years to be able to consider it a balanced game. With more and more things getting added, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and adjust the game around those elements, to memorize them as a player, to balance them and to just have fun. For every champion rework Riot gets right, like Heimerdinger or Fiora, they straight up butcher another one.
Now, this is completely subjective, but I really started to question what Riot was doing when they reworked Aatrox. Now I'm going to preface this by saying I was the type of player who LOVED playing what most people considered bad champions, because first and foremost I was in it to have fun. I loved Olaf, Aatrox, Garen (before all of the conqueror bullshit), even Alistar top and Yasuo ADC. And I found out most of the champions many people thought were absolute garbage were actually incredibly fun when played well. And it made it WAY more satisfying when you kicked ass because everyone thought you were just an idiot who didn't know what they were doing. And yes, okay, Aatrox's kit wasn't perfect or all that fleshed out, he was sort of a Tryndamere 2.0 (or 0.5, I guess) but him as a whole was incredible! He was and still is my favorite champion other than Yasuo. Just thinking of his old voice gives me the shivers. "Surpass the frailty of your form", "Pain is temporary, victory is forever", "They will greet you as heroes", "Even those who have nothing can give their lives". And they took this incredible, stoic, terrifying and powerful demon character... And turned him into an angry russian! "Come, so I may split your shoulders from your spine!"? Does that ACTUALLY sound like the same character at all? And I remember Riot saying that he was "largely forgotten" and that he "wasn't really played that much". What...? How does that have anything to do with how badly they changed him? Imagine if they reworked Yasuo and he went from "Death is like the wind, always by my side" to "I'm Yasuo, and it's time to party!". You'd be sitting there like "dude that ain't fucking Yasuo!". But even if you think that Aatrox's new character is good, imagine yourself as someone who mained him, played hundreds upon hundreds of games with him, got attached to that character. And now imagine the disconnect that person felt with what might've been their favorite champion, their favorite part of the freakin' game! And while you personally might not relate to the players upset about whichever rework it might be, just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine if YOUR favorite champion just got completely changed and wasn't the thing you enjoyed anymore. Keep that in mind because it's a recurring concept.
They did the same thing to Maokai for reasons I cannot actually understand. Again, I played Maokai a decent amount, and when they reworked his abilities to scale better and tweaked his ultimate he was in a really good place. But now, they changed him so drastically. Hell, his ult now looks like Nami's with extra steps. His voice sounds awful in comparison to what it was, you used to have all the trees and bark moving and sounding completely evil and awesome and now you're just playing Groot. Maokai's not the same, and I haven't touched him since because of it. Same shtick goes for Dr. Mundo. His rework REALLY pissed me off because his kit was totally fine. It held up decently and other than his outdated model and VFX, it fit with the theme of him just being a weird being that popped out of nowhere and believed to be a doctor. His ultimate was balanced but definitely strong as shit in the right context and team composition and it could turn the game around if used correctly. He wasn't broken, you could counter his ultimate pretty easily with one item (that costed 800g) and he was a lot of fun to play. He could be a powerhouse if played correctly and against the right enemies. But Riot reworked him because, again, he "wasn't really played that much". To me, Dr. Mundo wasn't a champion you mained. He wasn't someone played every game, but could be the best pocket pick against an AP heavy team. But now he's just some generic tank who heals and does a fuckton of damage who nobody cares about. Volibear too had a rework and the same thing happened, they didn't just change his kit but they changed his identity as a whole. And it just kills my drive to play them.
These are just examples of champions I used to play and what I'm trying to get across is that when they change so much, I lose the desire to keep playing them and thus I lose the desire to keep playing League. I remember when they did a slight rework to Cho'Gath who was an already powerful and pretty great champion and just... Made it broken for some reason? Allowing his ultimate HP bonus to stack indefinitely and he loses nothing upon death? Why is that a thing...? I thought the whole point of Cho'Gath was the risk-reward of getting stacks but being afraid to lose them. You gain size and HP but if you're killed, you lose half of what you had. There's risk to it! Now you see a Cho get 4k+ extra HP from his ultimate 30 minutes into the game and you just can't help but think of how ridiculous this is. Then his ult scales with HP so you can use Gargoyle's Stoneplate and he can ult you for 5k HP. Yeah, that's hella balanced!
And that's what I'm saying. Riot introduces broken, new mechanics and then don't fix them until later, if ever! And that's a reoccurring pattern. Before these item changes shenanigans in 2019, you used to be able to get Locket of the Iron Solari + Gargoyle's Stoneplate and ult for a total of 6k True Damage and shield your team for 4k HP. And you see, I actually liked Cho'Gath, but I didn't wanna play him anymore because I just didn't feel skillful for walking up to someone and killing them by pressing R. In my opinion, it's not fun to do well in League with something that's unfair and broken. And I'm probably in the minority here, cause 90% of the community loves busted champions and abuses the everloving shit out of them until they get nerfed to the ground. Then, you've got champions like Ryze who Riot just cannot seem to get right. His initial set of spells was pretty braindead, sure, but how the hell do you rework a champion and give him the ability to permanently root enemies? How do you do that? How do you go through testing and not realize that you've created something completely broken (and the saddest thing is I can say that for about the last 20 or so champions that have been released)? Ryze has been reworked so many times that I can't imagine how Ryze mains must feel about him. The issue with some of the champion reworks I listed is that Riot will sometimes completely change the identity and feel of a character people have been playing for YEARS and it can be heartbreaking because people love this game and these champions and these characters so much! So fun moments and memories of you and your best friend ganking mid as Aatrox and Nunu botlane, 2v4'ing and getting the win just become that... Memories. Because you can never play these champions the way you used to play them ever again. That part of the game is forever lost.
But nonetheless, back to my reaction to Aatrox being reworked. He was my baby, my brother, my go-to dude! I loved him to death, he was the reason I had watched Devilman Crybaby even though I dislike anime because I just loved him that much. And even though what they did to him was pretty good and he needed it, not gonna lie, that killed a lot of my drive to keep playing the game. Because the Aatrox I knew and once loved was gone and he would never return. And I was only left with my old games to remind me of what I once had. I love the new Aatrox and have spent a ton of time playing him in the past few years racking up almost a million mastery points, but he is just not... Aatrox. And all these reworks are leading me to the main problem with League of Legends and the reason why I think it will soon fail... It's become streamlined.
I remember a famous post in the League forums (am I the only one old enough to remember those? god I loved them) where an employee talked about meta. Riot itself never forced a meta and never intended to because they wanted players to figure out what worked on their own. You know, players would realize that tanky juggernauts with sustain would work well in the top lane. AP mages who could roam were great in the mid lane. Mobile damage dealers with some Crowd Control were great for the jungle. And ranged AD champions were most effective in the bot lane with someone to support them. This ideology led to some really creative strategies and setups. Some were viable, others weren't, but that was the fun of it! For many years, you could play what was highly considered unviable and still have success! I did that and had a ton of it! It can be done! But this has changed tremendously in recent years, especially after Riot's biggest change after the removal of runes and masteries...
The new items.
I never saw anything wrong with the old item system and, while the new one is still good, it feels so streamlined. As if Riot themselves have been trying to eliminate unusual strategies and picks. The issues with the new item system arise because EVERY champion now needs to have some sort of synergy with the items, and it's inevitable that certain champions will benefit off of them better than others. The stats from the old items were just a way for players to cover up their weaknesses or play to their strengths, while also adding a more strategic element. Full AP team? Go Abyssal Mask, Spirit Visage or Adaptive Helm. Full heal team? Go Thornmail, Mortal Reminder or Morellonomicon. Full tank team? Go Black Cleaver and BOTRK. You had near-complete freedom in what you optimized in. My point is that the old system had way more options and it wasn't that complicated. It was modular and could breathe life into otherwise unviable picks and strategies. If you want an example of how League is becoming streamlined, with certain champions more or less forced into particular roles, I can think of no better example than Pantheon.
Again, one of my favorites! Most people would play him as a support or perhaps a midlaner and he works well in those roles. However, in earlier seasons (both pre-rework and post-rework) it was entirely possible to both jungle and top with him. Hell, I used to play Pantheon top when he was at the bottom of the barrel shit tier in ranked and win. It wasn't meta, it wasn't exactly viable, but it had its perks and with the right items and runes you COULD make it work. Unfortunately, Pantheon Top/Jungle is rarely ever seen anymore. I still play him top but the changes both to his kit and the items have made him frustratingly hard to play in his actual role. You can see this streamlining in how newer champions and reworks are handled. Mordekaiser is now exclusively a toplaner because the usefulness of his abilities no longer depends on having allies or neutral creatures around you. You used to be able to play just about anything in any lane but modern League just hasn't got any of those options. The problem is Riot streamlines the game in ways that make it more boring, and over complicates it in ways that are just confusing. For example, at some point they changed armor penetration to lethality? And I don't really see the point. Armor penetration is simple, you pierce through that amount of armor. But then they changed it to lethality and now it's a percentage and lethality is a fixed number whereas lethality is a percentage based on the amount of armor and it just makes me ask WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT? What's the point?
I mean, let's just take a look at how passives have changed in newer champions. Zeri generates 1 charge for every 40 units she travels by any means and 10 charge every time she casts her Q, up to a maximum of 100 charge. Her basic attacks consume charge to deal modified damage. Zeri gains maximum charge when PLEASE JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME PLAY. There are 4 passives in one. There is more text in this passive than in the entirety of Jax's kit. And then you look at a champion like Jayce, which used to be complicated for the time, and his R is "switch between hammer and cannon and gain a bit of movement speed". I know what that passive does in just 2 seconds. But then you go back to K'Sante and apparently his W has two passives that work with his normal passive? Hey did you know Aphelios has 3 passives on his Severum instead of the normal 2 per-weapon? I didn't and he's been out for 3 years! I mained the fucking guy until Mastery 7 and I didn't even know! You could say that's my fault for not paying attention but that's not an excuse! There's so many unnecessary mechanics, passives and all this bullshit in some of the newer champions that makes it incredibly difficult to memorize and comprehend. Riot's early champion designs were simplistic, easy to understand even if you didn't play them, but always hard to master. Tryndamere is walking towards me? He probably has R, which makes him unkillable. Jax is spinning his staff? He's gonna jump and stun me. Garen is running with his Q? He's gonna attack me and R me. Syndra is holding onto a ball with her W? She's gonna throw it at me and stun me.
Now we've got 160 champions each with 5 different abilities, some with 4 different passives, but it's important that I can just look at those fuckers and understand what I'm playing against from a glance. And it's like nah, you gotta look em up online to see exactly what they do now (unless the game holds your hand cause of course tiny widdle babies who can't use Google to save their life need to know what item is useful to counter Teemo so we're just gonna tell them in the in-game shop instead of them learning from their mistake). Then, somewhere along the lines, Riot thought that influence points (IP) were too complicated or something? So then they added Blue Essence, Orange Essence, key shards, capsules, chests, Masterwork chests, skin shards, ETERNALS GOD FUCK ETERNALS and at this point I just don't care to figure all of them out. I have 81k Orange Essence and more than 200 skin and champion shards because I just don't care to go through them and pay attention to the overwhelming amount of shit that Riot keeps throwing at me.
The streamlining of champions, putting them into specific roles that have labels and overcomplicating the game in other areas (while removing fun and niche ones like Dominion) made League into something much more difficult to grasp even for experienced players like myself. More than half a decade under my belt, man!
To end Riot Ghostcrawler's statement, he talked about how League of Legends was a game about mastery and getting better at the game and that it could be really frustrating when you feel like the developers are just shaking the table constantly and making you feel like all the time you invested into it was just for nothing cause they're simply gonna change everything once more. And if that doesn't speak volumes about how self-aware but also incredibly self-unaware Riot is, then I don't know what does.
But for me, one of the things that broke my heart and just shot down one of my favorite parts of the game was the removal of Twisted Treeline. Okay, sure, nobody played it, there was like 2 people on it and everyone else was bots, who cares well I CARE! At me and my boys' peak, we were playing League anywhere from 3 to 8 games a day. But when we just didn't feel like putting in a lot of time and effort, when we didn't have a full team or when we just felt like messing around, we played Twisted Treeline. Once again, if you didn't like Twisted Treeline, never played it, if you thought it was trash well let me just say that there were people that DID enjoy it! People like me! There was a population. And yeah, we've got ARAM, we've got a (yearly) rotating gamemode, but none of it is as good or fun as Twisted Treeline. It was the perfect thing to play when you didn't have a guaranteed 40-50 minutes for a full match. It took more skill to succeed in Twisted Treeline than it does in ARAM cause ARAM is just a lot of luck. TT you could just pick your champion and just do all sorts of crazy build. There was almost no laning phase and it was all so chaotic but unique and fun. I understand that it was taken off because Riot had their reasons (flimsy ones, but reasons nonetheless) and I'm not dismissing those. But all I'm saying is, it didn't have to be this way. Riot could have tried to make it work, I mean they basically launched the mode, did 3 updates and gave it up afterwards. And that's what has been happening to League of Legends for many years.
The champions, the items, the game modes, all the different pieces as to why people play the game have been systematically changed, altered or removed entirely. And it's not the same game we all fell in love once. The more the game changes, the harder it is for someone who's taken a break to come back to League. Dramatic changes can have a huge impact on players who have spent hundreds of hours perfecting certain playstyles or strategies and it just feels so unfair and unrewarding to have all that stripped away from you. I remember there was a guy I'd often meet called Cool TT who must have had thousands of games in Twisted Treeline. Now how do you think he felt when it was removed? We all get tired of the long games (especially because now more than ever, the real game ends at around 15 minutes and the rest is a boring slog of either ROLFSTOMPING or pure PAIN™) or don't have time for them and ever since TT was removed, that fast-paced action and intensity hasn't been replaced by anything.
You know, it's a difficult thing to explain what has happened to our beloved League of Legends, the game we spent so much time, love and effort on. If my playtime counter app is correct, I've spent more than 15k hours on this videogame. And this may not have been the most comprehensive analysis, after all this is just my opinion on the matter and I'm sure many might disagree (if anyone even cares to read this far). But I'm also sure a ton of people will agree that this game is just a shadow, a shell of its former self. League of Legends has had a lot of good changes over the years and I'm not knocking on the positive things Riot has done, it's their game after all and it's free-to-play so it's not like I can ask for a refund. But you know, I just realized that... It's not that I've gotten bored of the game. I've gotten bored of change.
It's so tiring to get back into the game when there's a new visual rework every patch, 27 new items every pre-season, 4 different champions with 19 passives each and overall just 15 page patch notes that truly do not do anything for the game as a whole. The game has lost that simplistic, easy to grasp charm it used to have. I've lost passion for League after having seen some of my favorite champions and items reworked or removed and being exchanged for something I really don't care about. And it's sad because to me, the game will never be as fun, unique or engaging as it once was. And the reason for that is because League of Legends had to change...
Thank you for reading this far. This wasn't meant for anyone but me but if you've actually read this, props to you! Also, I didn't touch on the general toxicity surrounding the game simply because it's disgusting and so well-known that at this point, I feel like there's really no need to talk about it.