Eighteenth game of 2024: Spider-man 3 for PS3. Played on original hardware, because the font demanded it. bsky.app/profile/ivan...
And that really is the long and short of it. This game tries to do so much, but never focuses on doing anything well enough. And the technical issues do add up to what can be a frustrating experience. I give it a no pizza missions out of 10. 🧵
Compared with the Wii/PS2 version, I can say that this feels like a huge step forward. But at the same time, even if those versions ain't perfect, they offer a more tightly made experience. This one meanwhile, feels like it's constantly try to bite more than it can chew.
But credit where credits due. This is a very ambitious game, even if most of that ambition never came to fruition. Like, the Scorpion Story line feels like it could be a whole game on its own, but one we only got glimpses of.
There's a lot more to this game, like the very choppy story, which is not their fault exactly, and the missions/crime system. Which to be fair, are not bad by themselves. But since they rest on these 2 systems that barely work, they suffer in the implementation.
The fundamental problem with it is that, even if the combo system is rather deep and definitely an improvement over previous ones, hit detection and enemy balance is extremely imprecise. So even if you have a lot of tools, none of them are effective against more than 3 enemies.
As for the other big side of the gameplay, the combat, things are also not great. They introduced a far more elaborate combo system that it's great on paper, but kinda falls apart in execution, which does make for a tedious experience.
That is the big downside of having the bigger and better hardware. They could make a bigger city, but that ended up working against the gameplay. Remember kids, an open world is only good if it's fun to play in it.
Still, I think the biggest issue with the swinging is, curiously enough, the city itself. I've said this before, but part of why the swinging worked so well in the previous game is because the city was perfectly scaled for it. But in here? The buildings are too big and too far apart.
For one, while the controls are fundamentally the same, the whole process is a lot easier. Which I get, Spider-man 2's swinging was really good, but also really hard to master. In here that barrier is lowered significantly, but it is done at the expense of control and precision.