Marvel's Spider-Man Review

Very much a fan of this new format

This format doesn't work for me at all. The video/audio does not function as a reference and this write-up feels empty, even lazy. You might as well just mention the game on the Bombcast and move on.

i gotta say i dont really see the point of this type of review. its basically something you would find on a Bombcast except longer. If it had gameplay footage relevant to what is being discussed that popped in often, i think it would be pretty great but with quicklooks already being a thing...idk.

I love this new format. I like getting peoples individual takes and getting a more in depth discussion on major games. Really would love to see GBeast join for discussions too. Definitely want to see more!

I love the audio format. I rarely read reviews, but I'll listen to them.

Have to agree with the negative comments, I'm afraid. Too long and pointless. I get where it is coming from, I know the reasons, but that is mainly a home made problem. If they do not want to do reviews, that is finr, though sad because I like a well written review from basically everyone on the staff, be it Jeff, Dan, Alex, Ben, if I have to. A review is supposed to be focused and structured, not some guys just rambling about stuff for an hour. That would just be the podcast. You guys just invented the podcast. Let us see where this goes, but I am pretty sure I am never going to watch or listen to those reviews, not as long as there is stil the quicklook and podcast to enjoy.

I like format. As a video I can’t see me watching it, but as a podcast I did listen to it. Maybe make it a bit more structured.

I know the views probably aren't anywhere near comparable, but I really wish they would do more of these at the end of the year instead of GotY.

I like the idea of the new review system, but if this one is the norm they are too long (while the written one is too short).

One of the best things about written reviews is that they are a concise read. Not too long, not too short and structured in a way that makes sense. All of those qualities are lacking here.

If you want to go with audio reviews only, maybe do one podcast style like this one and another one with bullet points and a length of 3 to 5 minutes.

This small text review big video/audio review with the score at the top is awesome. <3 this format!

This is a really cool way to review a game, thanks a lot!

The idea of this works but perhaps there is too much redundancy with the podcast and then an hour long interview style review.

This video review could use some game footage otherwise this may as well be a podcast

Personally I don't mind having the audio available, and the conversational format is nice, however I would prefer having the longer written review available. A written format lets you skim portions of the review that you may find less important or want to find out for yourself. For example, I can glance over plot discussion to get to gameplay or combat mechanics details. I think just by nature the conversational format will tend to meander more than a written review that can be more easily organized.

Great Idea. Needs more bomb in it. This should feel as relaxed (gb relaxed) as a Quicklook or the Bombcast.

It is good that the site is going in this direction.

I don't think this format is terrible, but since we already have Quick Looks to show off gameplay and the podcast for long, in-depth impressions about games being played, I don't really know where an additional hour-long conversation fits into everything. I understand not everyone listens to the podcast, so if these are here for redundancy that's totally fine and I respect that, but since Im a regular listener to the Bombcast I don't really see myself seeking out an additional long conversation on a new game.

A couple of times on Giant Bomb now they have discussed the possibility of a Marvel game universe and a potential Avengers game.

That Avengers game has already been announced.

https://www.crystald.com/projects/the-avengers-project

It's weird they seem completely unaware of it.

RE: the format. It should be a written review and then a discussion of that review like Polygon's Quality Control feature. Not doing that actual written review is just kind of odd really.

Wow, this is a really cool idea! Now I can enjoy the review while at work!

Personally I’m not really interested in listening to an hour long review. Personally I can do the long bombcasts because there are many topics. I

I’m not really interested in listening to an hour long review I don’t need that much discussion on a $60 product. Personally I can do the long bombcasts because there are many topics discussed.

I appreciate the new format, but have a couple suggestions:

- An hour just seems too long, especially if the video is just you guys talking.

- These should be formatted like Unfinished videos, where footage plays over the discussion, but you can tailor it to emphasize the point being made (like footage of combat playing over a discussion of how combat feels and plays). These should be more produced and edited than the traditional Quick Look because the reviewer has specific things they want to highlight for the review (both positive and negative). I just don't think the usual GB "turn on the camera and talk" format works.

Overall I enjoyed this format and thought Ben did a good job articulating his thoughts about the game. I do worry that it could cannibalize the Bombcast discussion and vice-versa, but if there's more of a focused, in depth discussion about the game and its mechanics, then it should be unique enough from the more free-form Bombcast conversations.

I'd love to see crossover with the East cost, if they have a particular interest or perspective on the game/review. And having a brief Q&A session with the community via email would be great too.

Love this format! I can listen to audio all day long, so this format works well for me and I hope it can continue for new big games. I imagine it is easier than writing and editing a full review like the old days, and I like the multiple viewpoints angle! Nice job!

Thumbs up to the format idea, thumbs down for this execution. A nice concise video would be better, or wait until more people have played the game and can chime in. Maybe add some gameplay if doing a video. I like the idea of a small summary, a score, and then a video/audio discussion, just not an hour of rambling that could be on the Bombcast.

After having played a chunk of the game, I can say that, this game is NOT that great. In fact, it's really mediocre.

About a half hour into the game there is a boring ass puzzle a la pipe dreams with a dumb twist. Really takes the wind out of your sails.

Not to mention, the combat from jump is kinda lame and repetitive. The comparisons to Arkham games are unjustified. Hell, the Shadow of Mordor games got it more right. This is just a cheap knock-off.

Well done chaps. This is fresh.

The only problem with this format for me is that it's difficult to show this review to someone who isn't as interested in games as me. I can get someone to read a 2 page review, but no one will watch an hour long video unless they're already invested in some way.

The intro to the game is an instant all time top favorite. If you know you won't be playing it, at least look that up on youtube. I love the tone it sets and just how the environmental story pan across the different parts of his life in his room, as an eviction notice comes through the door. The way they handle the next parts kinda gave me chills. It was better than anything the spiderman movies have done, probably ever?

I am really really digging it. I only worry with what they fill end game content with or if the story is long enough to carry just how detailed and nice looking swinging around the city is. It's a lot of fun, and from memory, this definitely improves on the best of the swinging mechanics, the combat works well and has a weightyness to kicks, which look fairly realistic in contrast to the high-action web-ability string bridges. SO many cool little details. I find the NPC's in the city to be at times surprisingly realistic, and then see a double of a person, and spiderman's interactions with people are a little hit or miss. I will say that atmosphere wise, this game is maybe in arms with The Division as far as mapping what you know new york to look like and in Spiderman's case, what it feels like. It looks incredibly accurate as far as lights during the day with the slight haze, I was able to find what I think was my dorm from college, i recognized many many locations and in the engine they've gone with, it looks rad.

also spidermans cool. I just hope it's not short.

I do like the hour long impression dialogue, but I honestly believe this is similar to a quick look, in terms of delivering long term impressions. Although the quick looks are more engaging because of the actively occurring gameplay.

I would definitely be okay with this format in addition to a written review, but please do not do away with in-depth text reviews. You have launched careers of some of the most talented games writers in the industry (Patrick and Austin), and a lot of you are very strong writers that I love to read impressions from (Brad and Alex deserve praise in this department, IMO)

Prioritizing the video interview, and knocking the review text down to the complexity of a YouTube video description just seems like a bad idea in my honest opinion.

This was cool.

Maybe, if it's not too much work, some game footage would be nice for reference. Not all the time, more like clips, IDK.

I really like this style of review because I can listen to it while working, driving, or doing other things. I stopped reading most reviews years ago and started skimming the text for the intro, the conclusion, and a number score. A person’s feelings about a games is similar to ones feeling about food, drink, cars, etc etc. It all comes down to personal tastes and preferences, although some things in life completely suck for everyone. Jeff hated The Saboteur and I really enjoyed that game even with some of the flaws Jeff found with it. So reading reviews haven’t been valuable to me and my time. I like the number score just for a quick reference if how the reviewer felt about the game. With this style of review I would actually listen to a review while doing other things even for games I don’t have any interests in. I might even discuss what I heard with people who are actually into the game.

I don’t mind reading but I do enough for work and for my other interests that reading a game review is something I couldn’t care less about.

I appreciate that some still want to read a well written review but this works better for me.

@2kings: Your opinion is valid and an example of why reading a review isn’t worth my time to me. I have seen quite a few numbered scores that rated this highly. (4 Star, in the high 80’s on the 100 scale, or 8 on the 10 scale) Listening to a review allows me to know what the reviewer’s opinion is; but I can do maintenance on my aquariums or be driving to work while taking in the opinion. After reading a lot of comments here I can relate to the concerns of these reviews affecting the podcasts. Will we be listening to the review twice or will the game play talk disappear from the podcasts when they know a video review is being considered.

Others have mentioned if these should show game play video. I personally don’t want visual spoilers with the review. Quick looks are good enough for that.

I think the format works really well and is very much thematically in line with Giant Bomb as a whole.

If this format allows for more reviews to come out of this editorial team I’m all for it.

My only suggestion would be to tie the written component more closely to the main conversation bulletpoints to be addressed in the round table, that way it would feel more like a cohesive summary.

This works for me. I dig this a lot

edit - PLEASE just have a podcast feed for just reviews, that would be INCREDIBLE. Scrolling through "audio reviews" would be really fun. I don't have an issue with the length but imagine that will change from game to game.

Edit 2- I see it on GB presents but would still prefer a separate feed once scale is achieved.

I'm sure they will create a dedicated feed if they decide to keep doing this in f´the future.

I don't mind the 4-star rating but I wish the written review included a more detailed explanation for why it's not a 5 star game. Congrats on the new and interesting format, keep it going!

There were some people in the comments in the Quick Look saying traversal looks too floaty and kind of slow, but I cannot disagree more. It's going to be a little while before I get my hands on this game, but I'm very much looking forward to it!

I can understand why they explore this route. It fits with all the other stuff they do. That said, the balance is way off at the moment. The audience gets a very dry 1 minute read about the features the game has (story? yes. upgrades? yes, swinging? good. stealth? Bad.) and a 1 hour interview that does contain some great points but due to the nature of a conversation will be less succinct and more rambly. If there was no score above the written part, you wouldn't know exactly how positive Ben felt about it, because there are just 8 sentences to cram the most important information in. So if you actually want to know what this game is about, you're being steered towards the 1 hour interview. Unless 'The story is conventional in some ways, and surprising in others, but for the most part it handles the Spider-Man canon with a high level of care and attention to detail.' is enough for you. You'll miss out on Spidey working with Dr Octavius, the faux Alex Jones Jameson podcast & MJ having to figure out how this relationship with a superhero works. You wouldn't even know that it's set in current day New York.

Another issue i have, is that when a game gets the table discussion & quicklook treatment, the quicklook will pretty much contain the same information but be superior because of it's visual nature. Ben can actually show the gadgets instead of trying to explain what the gadget wheel looks like. Or show off what the tricksystem is like. Honestly, i can't come up with something that Ben said in the discussion that was not adressed in the quicklook already. There should be some distinction between what you get out of a quicklook & what you get out of this review discussion. Ideally, you'll get to dive a bit deeper in what this game does storywise & for the genre at large compared to the quicklook. Or have a discussion whether certain aspects are done well or not.

In a perfect world, the quicklook would be the first meeting with the game, the written review would be a full review by a person , and the process would end with a roundtable conversation with people that have played that game as well , based on the written review. When i think about my favorite recent bombcast 'review' , it's where Jeff dives into metal gear survive and keeps the audience up to date from week to week how he feels about that game. That chronology where he eventually figures out there's no payoff was quite valuable i feel, and it would be cool if we could look back at a game after completion. The spoilercasts are pretty much always great.

I also wonder how the bombcast changes based on this. That's where the lion's share of the audience is located, and they probably want to hear about the latest biggest game. Either they put the same material out twice, or they'll refer to this other piece of content and might draw some ire from people that want the bombcast to be the one stop place where they get to hear the crew talk about games, instead of tracking down this other video to hear that stuff. For this week, they chose to repeat themselves which makes 3 pieces of content contain pretty much the same information at a similar depth & scope, with 1 written piece that is very surface level.

I genuinely love this format :)

I think for this sort of video review I'd prefer a more distributed and structured round-table discussion rather than relying on a single reviewer to meander their way through the content of what would otherwise be a written comprehensive review.

Dan recalled recently EGM's review format - I wouldn't mind a video discussion version of that which provides a Giantbomb (west+east) consensus, and doesn't require waiting ~3-10 months for GotY (which ends up being highly repetitive and circular, and generally too late to serve as a review.) They obviously can't do this for every release, but there's probably no more than a few games per year that warrant an hour long round-table discussion anyways. With a staff of ~10 full-time employees with more resources than your average Youtube reviewer or podcaster, Giantbomb ought to be able to produce something that those sources cannot.

Perhaps something like the following:

-Open the video with everyone providing a TLDR blurb about their expectations going in, the amount of hours of playtime they had, and brief impressions given how far they are in the game. This could serve as a thumbs up/down based on whether they want to continue playing or not.

-Then open the floor for back and forth discussion and debate over the merits of the game. Perhaps include bite-sized clips and screenshots to serve as visual aids to justify having the video format. Having a video review of a video game without any video of the game seems weird.

-End the round-table by having a final thumbs up/down in case anyone's changed their minds as a result of the discussion.

This would still leave room for GotY, but give it more focused purpose as a year-end addendum for the staff, rather than a mix of skin-deep first impressions, reviews, and follow-ups. The fact that the staff even has room to speak coyly about their in-progress ranking of favorites in the lead-up to GotY strikes me as a failing of the site's communication with the audience. There really shouldn't be that much room for ambiguity from a staff of reviewers.

For example: If Abby is enjoying something like CoD:WW2 or Battlefront2, but happened to not be the one to formally review them, it'd be nice to hear about it other than for 20 seconds in a random Beastcast. If there's listeners out there that feel their tastes are similar to that of Abby's, then they should have a review resource other than 12 hours of GotY some months after a game's release.

I like this review format idea for the big hitters.

I was skeptical at first but I really love the format.

I like this review format. Please keep doing them like this.

I recently started reading through the old reviews and was amazed that I did not start earlier as you guys have a good style of writing overall. However, the audio version was a welcomed surprise and I hope the trend continues as most of us here are not just for the "personalities" but also for the interaction of said personalities. Great prep for game fo the year as well, as you guys pull voice clips from these >.>

Is anyone else's right pinky and ring fingers cramping up playing this game? Or am I devolping arthritis.? Semi serious question

I like the format of an audio review like this because you can detail the pros and cons of the game in detail.

Be more than happy to see other games get this treatment.

Love this format for a review

Now that I've listened to most of it, I think I'm not a fan of this. It's pretty much one person explaining how the whole game works. You can just watch some gameplay footage and get the basic gist. It's really slow and boring having someone essentially go down the old fashioned style list of Graphics, Sound, Gameplay etc and explain all of them. A lot of that is also subjective.

A Quick Look functions much more like a review for me. I can watch how the game looks, sounds, performs etc while listening to at least one person who has spent some time with it and voices their opinion so far. Having this separate audio/video one feels redundant.

I'd much rather they have an long postmortem discussion about the game. All of their opinions on it, section for spoiler discussion, and then general discussion like..

Where do they go from here with this game, if at all? Do they switch to a different super hero entirely? Should a different dev handle that? Do we want an Marvel Game Universe or is that just going to create the same problem in the game industry that the movies have now (every other movie is a super hero movie, and nothing else gets a budget.) Would it be better or worse to have a game where you play multiple super heroes through a story or something more open ended where you can pick from maybe 6 super heroes and switch around to whoever you want, whenever you want?

I think there is a lot to talk about around this game. But this discussion doesn't really go into any of that.

My suggestion is to ditch this review and instead do a long form open ended discussion.