Topic: Insomniac's Spiderman

@Tasuki i wouldn't be surprised in the slightest

Got all the backpacks, pigeons, and lab research stations. I’m only about 60% through the story, but I’m mopping up the icons first.
Most annoying thing so far was the research station where you have to swing all over town in a lightning storm and adjust the antennas. Absolutely awful side activity. Thankfully it was my last one. The frame rate dropped horribly with all the lightning striking, and getting caught in the lightning was so unavoidable and frustrating. I could live with the difficulty of the task, but the technical hiccups of frame rate and lag made the section nigh unplayable. Somehow I powered through and got the trophy for all the stations. Most of the other research stations were pretty decent little side activities.
Catching the pigeons was the 2nd most annoying thing in the game so far. Those stupid critters. The car chases are bad enough, but trying to chase the pigeon darting through the skyscrapers is also pretty maddening at times.

So I think I read on here that there are not enough tokens of everything to be able to purchase all the suits, all the powers, and upgrade all the gadgets? That’s disappointing. I’m hoarding my tokens for upgrades until I level up high enough to get all the suits because I don’t want to miss any of those.

@Th3solution Yeah, the pigeons was really annoying!
I didn't have much of an issue with with 'lightning' level - but pretty much all of the side quest stuff just felt like recycled and familiar Infamous/other Spider-Man game stuff anyway.

I think post-game you can get everything upgraded - but if you're playing for the plat and then stopping, make sure you spend your tokens on skills and suits. You don't need all upgrades.

GOTY editions are always tempting for me since I rarely buy games at their launch, but this is lazy as hell: vanilla game on disc, a voucher for the DLC and 18 GB of patches to be downloaded.
If they'll ever open a restaurant, I'm sure they'll ask us to enter the kitchen and cook for ourselves.

@andreoni79 it's not just lazy but it's also really cheap too but i DO kind of understand from a business stand point why it would be done this way, it save having to go through the hassle and cost of getting the game re-certified and re done by the ESRB (or other relevant government bodies), it also saves on the time and cost of authorising new Discs to print plus it also means they don't have to scrap any unused discs of the original release which lets be honest they would have a LOT of

like i said, it's lazy but i understand why they do it

@FullbringIchigo In that case, just lower the list price of the game. Calling it "GOTY Edition" is not fair to all the other devs and publishers that sell real GOTY Edition of their games. Techland, for example, did a great job with Dying Light, and the same did CDPR with The Witcher 3.
They can sell me a frozen disc of dough with a splash of tomatoes and some slices of a strange cheese on it, calling that a pizza, and I understand why they do that. Still, they are cheating me and it doesn't taste good.

Trophy question:

So I hadn’t planned to get the platinum for this game, but as I am progressing through naturally I have realized that the platinum is pretty automatic for those of us whose playstyle is to mop up all the side quests and icons on the map. There appears to be very few trophies that require much special planning except for the one for unlocking all the suits. I’m hoarding my tokens so I think I might be able to squeeze by for that trophy with just enough tokens — However, when I looked over the trophy list I discovered I haven’t obtained the “Overdrive” trophy. This is the one for completing 10 vehicle take downs. Apparently the neighborhood crimes are randomly generated and some of them are those vehicle chase ones with the take down of the vehicle at the end. I might have died once or twice while doing one of those. Well, if you do, I think the mission resets and you don’t get credit for completing a crime activity, but then the next crime in that district is randomized and may or may not be a vehicle chase. In my exuberance and compulsiveness to complete all the crimes as they pop up during my exploration, I wasn’t keeping track and I have now cleared all 5/5 of the thug crimes and demon crimes in all the districts, so there aren’t anymore that randomly pop up ... yet I apparently didn’t get at least 10 of the vehicle take down type. This wouldn’t bother me, except it’s such a simple thing to do if I would have known to wait and be sure to do enough vehicle chases before locking myself out of any more crimes. Now that stupid simple bronze might be the only trophy to keep me from the platinum. I’m sure I did somewhere around 8 or 9 of those vehicle ones.
Does anyone know if there is a way to do more vehicle take downs after having completed all the crimes? A quick google search on trophy guides suggests the trophy is not a “missable” type, so maybe after the end game the crimes reset?

The only reason I want to know is that if it is impossible to get that trophy now, then I won’t be as inclined to do the optional tasks on the bases and try to get higher rankings on the Taskmaster challenges in order to get excess tokens for suits. I’ll probably still clear the districts for the 100% trophy just because it’s fun to do so, but mastering the challenges is not particularly fun for me.

Anyway, sorry about the long post for such a simple question. I’m surprised I’m even considering platinuming the game, honestly.

Er... heheh, nevermind. I’m now in act 3 and it’s all good. Got “Overdrive” trophy now. I might just go for the platinum after all.

But dang, the difficulty really spiked now. Some of these swarms of enemies with all their crazy skills and defenses are tough!

So I just happened to notice that when you’re talking on the phone with someone (like MJ) the voice work for Spider-Man is different if you’re standing still or if you’re swinging or running. And it will change in the middle of a conversation. I can be standing still and MJ calls me and start a conversation and then I can start jumping and swinging and when I speak the voice is grunting a little and breathing a little harder with the exertion of activity. Very realistic, and a small attention to detail. So the voice actor had to record all those conversations at least twice and the programmers had to account for which audio file would play depending on what you are doing at the time. And it will switch back and forth from “resting voice” to “exertion voice” and back to “resting voice” if you stop swinging again. Impressive.

@Th3solution It is well done. I think there was an article mentioning it somewhere in the pre-release hype phase.

How far in are you?

@KALofKRYPTON I must have missed that detail in the media hype. Honestly, the weeks leading up to the game release last year kinda turned me off because it got to be too much information. There were so many articles and advertisements that I lost track. (I think we’re about to see this happen with TLoU2 over the next 4-5 months)
I just discovered that little tidbit about the voice recordings on my own.

I’m very near the end. Not sure if I’ll have a lot of gaming time this weekend, but I’m knocking on the door of the platinum. 90% finished with story and only thing left on the map are a few scattered Crimes to finish off. Got all suits and all the other random trophies like webbing two people together, visiting the cemetery, etc. I’m trying to decide if I want to clean up the map first or finish the story missions first. Either way, I’m almost done. I’m not usually a DLC sort of person, so although I am curious about the DLC packs, I’ll probably skip them (at least for now)

I will make this other unrelated observation — I wonder why there was not as much backlash about the character models not looking like their MCU counterparts like there has been for the new Avengers game. None of them are remotely close. I’m perfectly fine with it, but Insomniac did put in the several MCU suits and obviously the nods to the recent Tom Holland movie (backpacks, etc) and even Spiderverse references. Granted, the game takes place like what, 6-8 years afterwards? Parker is in his early 20’s and graduated from college I think. But even accounting for time, Aunt May still is nothing close to looking like an older Marisa Tomei, even if Parker could resemble Tom Holland if you squint really hard. Perhaps people are fine with it because Spider-Man/Peter Parker is more of a longstanding character whose been represented many times over the years. Thor, Black Widow, Cap America - they don’t have the cinematic and gaming history Spidey has.
Anyways, it doesn’t bother me, one way or the other. It is a little weird to have MCU references though when the game is not really related to he MCU.

@Th3solution Well, RE: Avengers vs Spider-Man, it's worth keeping in mind that Spider-Man has been played by a LOT of different people over the last couple of decades, whereas all of the MCU Avengers characters have retained their same actors over the entire Infinity Arc. Maybe that's the reason?

Also, I think people just found the character models in the Avenger games to be kind of generic and unattractive in general.

@Th3solution because regardless of the MCU, Spider-Man is culturally top-tier; Batman and Superman levels of cultural significance. The Avengers are absolute C-listers in comparison - they need the MCU look to be interesting to non-comic fans.

Also, Holland is a terrible Spider-Man, isn't a good actor and MCU Spider-Man is a terrible Spider-Man in general 😁

@Th3solution I guess we've had three Spiderman film series now plus Spiderverse so people are less attached to one model/world (Raimi suit ftw though) and the MCU May is pretty off piste for the character.

As for the DLC, I've said it a few times on here but I would just describe it as fine. It's pretty much more of the same with a few new enemies so it's just more of the same. I could have done without it but I bought the Gold Edition.

And with regards to your first thought, I picked this game up later on in a sale and it was nice to come into it away from the hype (although I steer away from watching copious videos and previews of things). The cheaper price was a bonus too! The Division 2 is the only thing I've bought week one this year because of the online component.

@Ralizah @KALofKRYPTON Yes, I think you’re probably right about the relative second tier nature of the Avengers and their short lived popularity in the grand scheme of comic based media, when compared to the faces of Marvel and DC like Spider-Man and Batman.
I will agree to disagree on Holland as Peter/Spider-Man - I think I like him better than Toby Maquire and the Garfield kid, but it may be due to recency bias.

@Thrillho Thanks for the DLC advice. That pretty much supports the inkling I have had to skip it. And I agree with you that I think I enjoyed the game more having waited and played it without as many large expectations. Sometimes playing with the masses at release enhances the experience, and sometimes it only leads to disappointment. I knew going in that the game was good, fun, and technically solid, but not groundbreaking or innovative. So I didn’t expect a transformative gaming experience yet I’m pleasantly surprised how much I like it — despite agreeing with about a 7 or 8/10 type of score. (I still haven’t finished so the score could go up or down based on the ending)

So I've played a few more hours of this. As mentioned previously the web slinging is ace.

Also like the combat which has the right balance of being accessible and deep. Don't get me wrong its not competing with something like DMC on the combo meter, but there is enough variation there to keep things from getting stale.

The story is only ok so far, I'm finding it a bit predictable. It was cool to see the Miles Morales character, all though that would have gone right over my head unless I had seen Into the Spider-Verse! The voice acting is top notch, with some excellent delivery.

I'm not too keen on most of the side activities, the ones that are go here collect/photo feel a bit dull to me. The lab ones are ok though. There are also far too many of them for my liking and I doubt I will finish them all off unless I have to.

@JohnnyShoulder I started off thinking I’d not do all the side activities and mop up all the icons and then before I knew it, I was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the platinum so persisted. It’s not too bad to 100% the map if you mix the side activities in gradually as you swing around town.
I will say the pigeons were my least favorite, by far. You probably haven’t unlocked those yet, but it’s not really a spoiler.
Glad you enjoy it. The story picks up a bit toward the latter half.

@Th3solution Yeah I've unlocked chase the pigeon. Not great. I wouldn't say revealing a side activity is trying to catch pigeons is a spoiler either. 😂

Don't think the story is awful or anything, just that I've seen most things coming a mile off. And I always try not to second guess stuff. Finished Act 1 yesterday and the set pieces have been cool too.

Like all the different suits, it would have been nice if they came with a bit of history or something.

@JohnnyShoulder So Yeah, spoiler alert — the pigeons have absolutely nothing to do with anything. They play no role whatsoever in defeating the final boss. 😂

And yes, the story was decent but not earth-shattering. There’s some really cool moments though.
And the suits are fun to collect but I used the same 3-4 throughout most of the campaign. Favorite suit was the one called Mark III, I think, and favorite power to put with it was Spider-Bro. When I had a group on a rooftop I’d switch it out for the guitar one or the other one that blasts everyone far away from you since that would knock most enemies off the rooftop to their presumed demise.
Collecting the suits is the way they trap you into doing all the side activities to get those tokens to unlock them.
By the way, if you’ve read any of the thread you might have already seen this advice, but if there is any chance you want the platinum then you’ll need to buy/unlock all the suits. There is a trophy for that. There is not a trophy for unlocking or maxing out all the gadgets. So you’ll need to ration your tokens appropriately toward prioritizing buying suits instead of gadget upgrades. Otherwise you’ll have to score “Ultimate” or Gold on the most of the Taskmaster challenges, which would be a super pain, especially if you don’t like the pigeons since there are some of the challenges that are a similar thing where you’re chasing something around trying to get to a moving obstacle in an allotted time. Bronzing the challenges is pretty easy and if you at least do that and do all the crimes, gang camps, and landmarks, etc then you’ll have enough tokens to get all the suits. So try not to blow too many tokens on the gadgets if you can help it. I think I upgraded the first 2-3 levels of most basic gadgets and still had enough though, but it was pretty close at the end with one of the types of tokens, I forget which.

I have a question for anyone who has purchased the GOTY edition. Is the dlc on the disc or does it come with redemption codes?

Thanks in advance