Let's talk Activision's Spider-Man games. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows? Garbage. Spider-Man 3? Sucked. Spider-Man: Friend or Foe? Nonsense. Spider-Man: Battle for New York? Drivel. Ultimate Spider-Man? Spider-Man 2? Trash.
Hey, don't shoot the messenger, guys. Instead, look at Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who in a recent Game Informer interview admitted that the publisher's Spider-Man titles have been less than acceptable over the years.
"Our Spider-Man games have sucked for the last five years," he tells the magazine when talking about learning about commitment to quality from Blizzard. "They are bad games. They were poorly rated because they were bad games."
"We went away from what is Spider-Man," he continues. "It's about web-slinging. If you don't do web-slinging, what is the fantasy of Spider-Man?"
Oh boy. I hope he's not hinting that we can expect a bunch of Wii/Natal/Sony motion controller Spider-Man games. You know, to capture what it's like to really sling, uh, webs. Didn't work out so great for Tony Hawk, though. Might I suggest a Spider-Man: The Musical game using the Guitar Hero engine?
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Contest:
9:40 AM on 01.19.2010
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LIES!
Spiderman 2 was good for the time. Had some annoying boss battles but by far the best web slinging out of all spider man games!
Regardless of the Movies questionable entertainment value, i remember the first spider man games to 'swing' through were pretty epic in a "hey, im spider man!" kind of way.
Ultimate Spiderman was pretty cool. Needed a sequel to iron out the bugs but yeah it was quite fun and looked good.
I don't follow this, should I turn my monitor upside-down to try and see what Kotick REALLY means?
That's what Web of Shadows fixed. The combat was specacular fun and really fluid and tight. I wasn't expecting anything from Web of Shadows but it was a surprisingly well made game.
'course he does! With our *money*.
(Facetious.)
The Game Informer interview with the guy is actually pretty decent, and if he's being genuine in it (which it certainly seems like), he's a hell of a lot more savvy than he lets on, and isn't quite the evil corporate tyrant he's been made out to be thanks to several quotes taken out of their very sarcastic context.
But it was nice of him to remind us of this everytime he tried to sell us a Spiderman game.
Activision have a knack of turning the most fantastical of superhero ideas flat. Whilst I enjoyed Web of Shadows, and every other Spiderman game, he deserves better: Why am I fighting the camera more than the on-screen enemies?
Compared to inFAMOUS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Spiderman need s shot in the arm.
If you want good web slinging, take SM 2 and go from there.
Since the 10th of July 2004 to be precise.
Ultimate Spider-Man was very fun and almost as good as Spider-Man 2.
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, while not perfect, was perfectly enjoyable and featured some really innovative combat mechanics.
Then again, none of these games came with plastic guitars. I can see by Bobby Kotick does not approve.
Play it if you haven't -- especially if you like Metroid and Castlevania.
Man, talk about spitting in the face of the guys who brought Spidey back to being a good game.
Sigh, so I guess the next Spidey will be a Natal using rhythm game? Because obviously Web Of Shadows couldn't have been Activision's lack of ads and dumping it with Christmas releases fault. Seeing as Activision never does anything wrong themselves.
Bobby Kotick? Garbage.
No, that is incorrect, web-slinging is only a portion of the Spider-Man fantasy. How about focusing on good combat using his unique agile fighting style? How about fine tuning his Spider-Sense to work like Batman's sense in Arkham.
Why does every single Spidey game need to be set in an open world sandbox. For once I'd like to see them make a nice Action Adventure game for Spidey... Batman and Wolverine both were given very enjoyable Action games last year, it's time for Spider-Mans. Get a good story, some good mechanics and for the love of god some good voice acting. This shouldn't be that hard for one of the most popular characters in mainstream media right now. Give it Ubisoft or Bioware or something. Activison has failed just like Sony.
You know what would be good using the 'freeflow' style combat? Blade.
I created this account just to comment...
That being said, I have HATED most of the past Spider-Man games. Okay, so maybe hate is a strong word. STRONGLY DISLIKED. The Spider-Man games for the N64 and PS1 were awesome, but after that I havent found a game I really like, and am very dissapointed by this. I felt the movie-based games were good, but still werent all that great due to having Tobey Maguire as the voice and working within the confines of the movie stories. and Spider-Man 3 was just plain terrible. I was soooooo buzzed about Web of Shadows, so was dismayed when I realized it was pretty bad too. It had lots of potential but fell rather flat. The lack of bonus content, the poorly handled cameos, weird attack effects, lame attempts to cash in on the symbiote hype, and the ever-grating fact that the character of Peter Parker was horribly handled, and Mike Vaughns voice makes me want to rip my ears off and fill the holes wih adamantium spikes so as to pierce my eardrums and never hear him again. I also didnt like having the dark suit. DEVELOPERS NOTE THIS PLEASE: SPIDER-MAN IS NOT A DARK CHARACTER. If you want to experiment with a badass mo-fo hero, try Punisher, not the Web-head. All the dark BS just irritated me. A hero who makes such choices....hmm I dunno, WOLVERINE!!!!! how about a game where you are tracking down Sabretooth, and all your decisions can be decided as humane or animalistic. Then by the end, it will determine if you stab him cleanly or tear him to shreds. THAT would be a game that actually uses the design of the game to portray the character himself. Spider-Man is not the place.
Moving on, people have also mentioned Ultimate Spider-Man. AMAZING GAME!!!! but still cant ever be my favourite as its set in the Ultimate universe. sad but true.
In closing, if they want to follow the general model of Spider-Man games as they have been, then they should spend more time to figure out what their doing, IGNORE SYMBIOTES (at least for a while) and for the love of Stan Lee, GET CHRIS BARNES OR RINO ROMANO OR JOSH KEATON BACK!!!! If Mike Vaughn, Ben Diskin, or Quinton Flynn are back, I may be forced to kill myself.
They could just try some new formula all together, but somehow I doubt they will.
Sorry for the rant guys, I just needed to get that off my chest.
---SpiderBite