@nodima: Yeah I was surprised at the lack of criticisms of God of War's boss fights. They weren't great. Spiderman seems like a perfect game for big fight set pieces so I hope they're impactful.

Friday feels so far away at this point.

@emohobo: Tell me about it! The wait will be even more annoying once the preload starts at midnight.

I'm excited to play this! I never played the PS2 game that everybody raves about, so I'm excited to finally get to web-sling my way around NYC.

I mean, don't take that as being completely down on them. I thought the two boss fight midway through the game on NG+ on Give Me a Challenge was legitimately a test, which was a surprise since I found that fight pretty ho-hum on the normal difficulty when the game first came out. I also died during the final battle on NG+ (after switching back to regular difficulty) which didn't happen the first time around and was entirely due to the mechanics and challenge of the encounter. And, again, there are the Valkyries to contend with. But my first time through the game I felt like Alfheim, a couple of the Muspelheim challenges, and anything involving Dark Elves were the game's only true tests with the boss fights mostly acting as epic set dressing. This could also be a criticism levied at the God of War series in aggregate, though, as it's often been more about Great Bosses than great bosses, and the 2018 title more than supplied that sense of scale and wonder I'm hoping Spider-Man can latch onto a bit. The bosses in GoW were kind of standard in terms of mechanics but man did they look and feel like superheroes and villains going at each other.

@handlas: I don't know about Xbox, but on the ps4 it preloads on the 5th.

@ouchmyfingers: For Xbox it preloads... Never :(

@meierthered: Awesome. Gonna grab this and Hitman 2 to get that $15 PSN credit.

I really, really can't wait to play this on Friday.

I didn't think I was hyped for this game. But then I got super wasted last week and pre-ordered it. So I guess I must have been pretty hyped subconsciously? Then again, I pre-ordered WWE 2K19 that same night.

What a shame there's going to be so few villains and boss fights. Like others have said, God of War should have gotten way more flack for that than it did. Hopefully this doesn't become a trend that Western developers think players would rather fight the same mooks over and over again the whole game than memorable bosses. The combination of those two things it's kind of the core of any character action game. Turn the knob too much in either direction and you have either a really short boss rush (fine at the right price point) like Furi, or something that feels overly bloated with very little real substance like God of War. Seems like a lot of people were able to overlook it thanks to the story, but to me with the gameplay being such a slog I might as well just watch a movie.

I'm not entirely convinced to buy this day one. I'm sure by next year there will be a complete edition with all the DLC they've announced recently as well, so I'm down to get that at a discounted price.

I mean... everything that we've seen so far reminds me so much of the Spider-Man 2 game on PS2 that I have this weird feeling of "been there, done that". Of course, there's a lot more complexity to this game, but it generally seems like something I've played before.

I'm pretty set on waiting for a sale/complete edition of most of this fall's AAA releases, but this is the one I'm most on the fence about playing at launch. I definitely would if I wasn't neck deep in WoW right now, and the announcement of Black Cat DLC makes me want to wait. But I could see myself making an impulse buy in the coming weeks.

I feel like I know way too many details about this game just from listening to the Bombcast and watching Jim Sterling's review. I'm not even a big spoiler person but both of these felt like they were needlessly spoiling details while making their larger points. It kinda bugged me on a deeper level with Sterling as he's so anti-pre order/wait for reviews. If you're going to yell at players to wait for reviews don't drop a bunch of fun things/story details about the game needlessly in your review.

I was watching Digital Foundry's video of it. Not necessarily because of what I saw graphically (though it does look good for the most part), but it got me more excited for sure. That said, I'm not going to get it on release, I really want to wait until I got a Pro to get the most out of it visually speaking. I'm curious if this is the next big comic book game that people get super excited about. I wasn't a huge fan of Arkham City, but that seems like the last one people were losing their minds over. Lastly, from the looks of it, in Spider-Man the city streets look well detailed which excites me. I was just thinking about games that do the best New York setting as I've been playing The Division on and off. I wonder how good Spider-Man is at it.

@ntm: I was wondering the same thing recently, in an age of realism and detail I wonder how far they went to map out the streets and landmarks and such

Is it Friday yet?

@atastyslurpee: Preload is up at least. xD

Really excited for this game. Spiderman 2 on Xbox was a comfort food game for me. When I was feeling down or stressed as a younger individual I'd just boot it up and swing around Manhattan for a while. Didn't even do any missions as it was usually on a completed save.

Are all of his costumes unlockable? I pre-ordered and got the 3 costumes I think but I'd actually rather unlock them in-game if that's how you can also get them. I'm not sure why I always find that stuff appealing.

GBEast is gonna be covering this one primarily, right? Doesn't Dan love Spider-Man 2 (the game) but hate super hero movies or something?

This game looks solid based off the DF analysis. The only thing that bummed me out is that there's no free roam where theres a dynamic day-night cycle. But I can see why there isn't - it looks like all the art and resources are very tightly designed.. It would take a lot of work and processing power to put that in place...

@kknialler: best not to try and logically calculate the reasons for Dans likes and dislikes. He generally likes sci-fi stuff but didn’t want anything to do with Infinite Warfare cause it was lasers and spaceships. Go figure.

I don't think so. Seems like Brad and Ben are on it, and I suspect they'll do the quick look.

Yeah, hearing how they both talked about it on the Bombcast, I'd imagine it'll be a Ben/Brad and Jeff (or all three) quick look. I wouldn't mind a Playdate from GBeast too, though, *wink wink* @vinny@alex

I'm getting increasingly more excited for this myself, possibly even more than I did for God of War and I loved that game! Physical copy got sent early, so should already get to play tomorrow.

@handlas: oh shit lol, this is how dark I went on this game, I don't know shit about it, I Completely forgot it was ps4 exclusive...

Ps.

How do I quote someone's post? I also need info on posting YouTube videos on comments.. I'm on mobile

@handlas: They are all unlockable yes.

@jamesyfx: You are right there is no day night cycle but you are able to change the time of day on the fly once you complete the game.

Not quite the same though.

Yup, straight from an official source:

even if you do not pre-order, you can earn these suits in-game as well.

I was going to pre-order, but beyond the costumes I saw it also gives you skills point and early access to an ability. I'm worried about it ruining progression, so now I am definitely not going to pre-order.

Pre-order bonuses that speed up progression are terrible. It makes you question whether the game is excessively grindy without them, or whether it's well balanced and the bonuses actually then harm the experience by trivializing it.

At least with a physical copy you can choose not to enter the code, but if you buy digitally (which is how I buy all my PS4 games, I don't have a single PS4 disc and am happy about it) you don't get a choice.

@sweetz: The add-on is a separate download:

I like how there was a huge backlash about how the game has been downgraded since the E3 demo based off one image that was shit quality, then Digital Foundry comes in and finds that the game has actually been upgraded since the E3 demo. Internet gonna internet I guess.

Ditto, Seems like they nailed the look and the feel but from reviews and impressions the missions are sectioned stories that are things you do between tons of open world icon cleanup. Might be fun to try it out later on but with the games that are coming out I think I'll hold off for the mean time.

Was there actually a huge blacklash or was this just the press exploiting the posts of a dozen idiots for controversy (as they do) and making the problem worse? I genuinely don't know; didn't bother looking into it.

I'm hoping my physical copy arrives tomorrow. This wasn't majorly on my radar but the clips and reviews have sold it for me. I think it will more than tide me over until the October releases.

All of the coverage I saw of the alleged "downgrade" was from people making fun of whatever backlash there may have been. I'm sure there were plenty of people unironically claiming they wouldn't buy it now, but those same people will probably playing the game the moment it goes live.

As long as there's some way for me to swing around at night, I'm happy.

Man, having put a few hours into this game I can't help but think of peoples hypocrisy when it comes to this style of open-world games. Just because the title says Spiderman and the developer doesn't say Ubisoft this game is getting high praise all over the place when it's pretty much just another run of the mill collectathon with all the bits and bobs people complain about being old, boring busy work. Not that I'm complaining, I've come to terms with the fact that I enjoy all these "bad" features.

@ares42: I think many people did complain about those issues actually. The thing that people are taking away from it is that the swinging is a blast, and the story is interesting. Some have pointed out that the side tasks are hit and miss, and that the bosses while fun, are pretty generic.

@ntm: I know people have mentioned it, but the difference is that it's usually used as a major argument as to what makes the game experience of these games suffer. You have other collectathons trying to do fairly interesting things but getting dinged purely for being collectathons and then this game does extremely generic things and it gets mostly swept under the rug. From what I've played so far this game would've struggled to compete with a game like Prototype if it wasn't for the fact that you're playing Spiderman and doing Spiderman things.

I'm happy for Insomniac. They won't have to make another Ratchet and Clank for a good long while, maybe never. I'm sure they got really sick of the series. I've been kinda weird about them as a studio for years now 'cause nothing seem to really hit commercially except for R&C. It's not like they were making bad games but this will surely sell well. I guess the bad news in the long run is that they're stuck being the Spider-Man studio for a decade or more now probably.

Having played about 8 hours of it now, these are my impressions. Minor spoilers follow:

• The swinging feels okay? I dunno, it's not really taking me by storm. You can kinda just hold R2 and occasionally push X, it doesn't exactly exhilerate me. You don't move as fast as I'd imagined, and it feels odd that I can't do loops. I've heard people in the previews being overwhelmed by how good it is and I can't see it, personally. Does the job though.
• The combat is so Arkham it hurts. He might travel farther distances, but you've got this very simple attack/counter thing going on where Spidey automatically tracks to an enemy as you mash unless you're half a kilometer away. There are differences in execution - it doesn't rely as heavily on finishers for instance, and enemies have a lot more defenses against general attacks than in Batman, but you've also got more ways of beating them. In Arkham City you get maybe a few dudes with shields and shock batons and big bruisers near the end of the game. Here you've got all these sorts of dudes from the begining, but instead of being weak to one specific thing you can also use area of effect moves or throw dudes and pieces of the environment at them to get them to open up. It's fine. I started out hating it, 'cause it was so simple early on, but 8 hours in I've got enough gadgets and they've got enough different dudes that it's alright. It's not my favorite, though. Spidey dies fast so it's not like it's a complete pushover or anything, but it feels so locked in. I'd prefer something more open and character action-y to this.
• The loading screens during fast travel are hilarious.
• So far I've only seen two measly boss fights, both of whom they showed off before the game came out, in trailers and demos. They're both as Batman-y and bad as expected, but are helped by an always available environmental attack. You don't really do anything different from a regular fight, which helps avoid the Bane boss fights so far. They're inoffensive, I'd say.
• The open world stuff is dull, like open world stuff usually is. Some of the writing is okay and all, but you're not doing something spectacular here. Worst so far was a side activity where I had to fly through smog and take pics of cars to report pollution.
• The presentation is hellbent on being cinematic. The music that plays whenever you start to web around is basically the sam raimi spider-man movie theme. You've got a straight up Stan Lee cameo, like it's a marvel movie. You've got walky talky segments, straight up walking sim segments, and some light stealth through extremely scripted events. Everyone's got a "realistic" look - but nobody here's got Until Dawn faces or anything on that level. Instead you've got some kinda Horizon Zero Dawn-level faces for the most part, with a lot of pores on them. I get the feeling they hired actors to mocap for all these faces - I can't think of any other reason they all look so mundane. Aunt May, Octavius, Pete and Sable stand out as the worst. Martin Li, Watanabe and Kingpin all look good. Osborn, surprisingly, is pretty alright. He at least looks evil as all hell. Mary Jane, while she's a completely different character, is pretty cute and looks nice. I like the way they portray her relationship with Peter. These characters all get a ton of cutscenes, some pretty filmic scenes, too. It kinda feels like another movie reboot stretched out to video game length - I've played 8 hours and feel like I'm barely at the end of introductions and the early low point for the heroes.
• As a movie, I'd call it decent but bland. The most interesting things come from the inclusion of newer characters like Miles and Mr. Negative, who haven't been around for very long. Because everyone already knows everything about Spider-Man, everything else can have happened already as we jump into these new characters. This is both good and bad. So far, Miles isn't any more interesting than he was in his own comic, and I dread ever playing as him with powers. And Mr. Negative's story is both unclear and vague(what and how are his powers? What are his goals, hopes, dreams? Where even is he?), and feels dragged out. I've been fighting his demons for hours without getting to try my hand at the man himself, making it feel like those parts of Metal Gear Solid V where you just do missions that are in some way related to Cipher for hours. Just feels like padding. Dr. Octavius is one fo the few characters who haven't been a villain already, which is a shame - he is incredibly fun as a mad scientist and very bland as a nice prosthetic doctor. I'm alright with not doing Osborn till the sequel, I'm getting the idea that Dr. Octopus is gonna be the mastermind here. But I hope he's not gonna be some heartfelt stuff. That's not Doc Ock's strong suit, never was. His characterization is maybe most similar to his Spider-Man 2 incarnation. And while that's a stellar movie, that Doc Ock is not the Spider-Man nemesis I know and love.
• I'm having a pretty great time, all told, but so far I definitely agree with a 4 star score. Its quality and care is above a 3, but it's not some exceptional innovation or anything. It's just a boilerplate movielike story that takes Arkham as a base and makes it way more Spider-Man. It's by all metrics a good Spider-Man game, crafted with obvious care and love and talent. It's a good game with a good presentation. But it's not a new Spider-Man canon that's so good it's become my favorite the way Spectacular Spider-Man did, and it's not a game with some amazing new design that you have to play at any cost. It takes all the tropes of videogames for the last generation, adds a layer of Spidey on top, and made it very pretty and polished. It's something you should play if you're a Marvel fan or a Spider-Man fan, the videogame equivalent of a marvel movie even more than God of War was. But if you're neither you're probably better served by a more niche experience.

Glad to see Greg Miller made it into the game

I don't own a PS4, but my roommate who is currently in Vietnam for a month does, and he is letting me use it while I'm here. I bought Spiderman on the way home from work. I've gotta say, it really sucks that there appears to be an hour wait for installation. I knew that this is a thing, but it sucks to sit through.

I love the game but it makes my ps4 pro fan so loud I almost don't want to play it. It is ridiculous. I have never heard anything like it.

@tradee9691: Same here buddy, my Pro sounds like it’s going to explode at times playing this. I’m not worried though as my Pro from day one has always been loud.

What’s especially odd about Spider-Man though, is that the fans will sometimes kick into full gear out of nowhere for a while and then stay quiet for ages.

I put in 6 or so more hours today, and it's gotten better. It's a pacing issue. You spend so much time just chasing Mr. Negative, helping doc ock build his stuff and getting introduced to open world sidequest timesinks, that it feels like nothing is happening in the plot. Then you beat Mr. Negative, and then suddenly hell breaks loose and there are supervillains all over the shop, like they showed in that one trailer.

I think this works in a movie setting. Setup, payoff, three acts, all that jazz. But in a game it means ten hours of dicking around until you suddenly get to do all the cool shit, which is awful. It also means that I've gotten tired of beating up thugs waaay before the story is starting to wrap up. I've seen some reviews say that there are few villains, and I don't agree with that. So far I've beaten Shocker, Kingpin, Mr. Negative, Tombstone, Vulture and Electro. I'm expecting three more, with perhaps two or three more boss fights. That's 9 bad guys. It's plenty. The problem is that you get most of them at the end, with the remaining few doled out in uneventful ways early on, or relegated to sidequests.

Still, the plot does pick up, and I think it's pretty neat. If you know any Spider-Man at all I think you can see it all coming easily, but the devs put the effort in to make you care about the characters as they are in this universe. I'm even starting to warm up slightly to Miles, which is unprecedented. They're trying very hard with him, lol. This version of MJ is still... she is the way she is because they want to have this conflict with Spider-Man where she wants to be proactive and heroic too, and not just get saved. And I while I like their relationship and even her character, I still don't feel like she's MJ at all. She's young Lois Lane. There's so few similarities to MJ besides basic features that Pete might as well have been dating a new character, which is a little frustrating. Ultimately though, I like her. The game puts so much effort into not only the spectacle, but into humanizing and humorous moments and relationship issues, and that combined with the rendition of New York really makes me feel like Spider-Man. For all my nitpicks, I think it's a huge success at what it set out to do, and I wouldn't forego this much sleep for many other games.

@redhotchilimist: I'm guessing you're not using air combat ? I said it in the other thread too, but comparing it to Arkham feels wrong to me. In Arkham you have three different defensive moves you have to switch between depending on attacks, in this game everything is answered by dodging, and if you take it to the air 90% of the dodging is done automatically for you. Also, everyone but the big guys are vulnerable to the air launcher. Even the shield guys which are supposed to be resilient to it gets knocked up by the web swing.

Yea IDK this isnt exactly clicking with me. Its more then decent. It ticks all the boxes, but its not quite there. Game looks great, and "generally" plays pretty well in the Batman vein. Which kinda hurts it imo as I am less agile then Batman was esp in dodging. Prob 5-6 hours in.

Ive done like half story?/?half to 3/4 side quests, which are generally the old school BS waste of time. In this day and age I consider that to be pretty poor side quest wise. Game said I was at like 15% complete? Its getting better as I unlock stuff, but sadly just not what Im looking for so far.

Really seems like the poor mans Batman/Disney version. I am just not interested in whats going on. And I guess no real plot has been even shown at my point. Its been a lot of nothing, and well Shocker is loose AGAIN, go here. Id probe score at 7 at this point.

Anybody getting crashing issues? Had the game just crash in the middle of game play twice now. I've never had this happen with any other PS4 games so that is kind of weird.