Marvel's Spider-Man 2

[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of The Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Cameron Warren, and I'm joined by the fantastical, the generational, the once in a lifetime, Jacob Price. It's me.

[00:00:27] I like how I'm found fantastical and generational, yet I have the most generic name on this planet. Which don't get me wrong, I like my name. Jacob Price is a great name. Folks, you Google search me and you're going to find 13 other dudes who are well more accomplished

[00:00:41] than I am before I show up. Before little of me shows up on the Googles. I have accomplished nothing in my life. Folks welcome to The Pre-Order Bonus Podcast, a depressed episode where Cameron and I talk

[00:00:56] about the misery that we are wading through in our lives and how we... It's the holiday season. It's time to be depressed. It's the holiday season. Isn't that a Frank Sinatra Christmas song? He goes, he's like, it's the holiday season. Whoop-de-doo.

[00:01:15] It's the Santa Claus in the new pool. Yeah, dude, whenever he sings the whoop-de-doo part, I always personally interpret it as something sarcastic. It's the holiday season. Whoop-de-doo. No one cares. Even though I know that's not what it is. But that is Framing tonight's episode.

[00:01:37] Cameron and I, we're old, we're approaching... Well, I don't know. We're middle-aged now. We're old, we're sad, and we're sorry for everything. But video games are there and it's a nice glimmer of hope and a good distraction from the world. Dude, I am getting old.

[00:01:54] I had to go to the dermatologist for like the second time in a month. Oh dude. That is aging for real. I'm sorry. You know what's funny? I don't go to any other doctor ever, but I go to the dermatologist like, I don't know,

[00:02:10] man, Utah, it's too dry here. Dry skin problems. Well, so my morning workout this morning was push my push set and now I have the slightest soreness in my elbows. And I'm like, where did this come from? Nice. There we go. I've never been sore.

[00:02:30] I did push myself harder. Tennis elbow. No, we don't want this. Were you doing pull-ups? No, what was I even doing that would sore? It was a push day. Yeah, probably do something wrong. I'm broken guys. My body's broken. Well, good luck with that.

[00:02:46] You'll probably have that for like a month. We talk about video games. 35 years old. Yeah, video games are better than... We do talk about video games on this podcast occasionally. Cameron and I, we're just going through it right now.

[00:03:00] It's midterm for me, which means I'm stressed and I have a ton of grading to do. My students are stressed. They have a ton of assignments to do. Cameron's stressed for a lot of different reasons, right? Here we are. But yeah, video games. Here we are.

[00:03:19] So we've had some news. Oh my gosh. Sorry, I'm dying. Folks, I'm just loopy today. I'm tired. I'm losing it. Well, let's just... You can do your news, but I had just a couple, I think we should chat about real quick.

[00:03:38] So the first one's obviously the big one. Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer is coming. Jason Schreyer leaked the news. I don't know how I feel about this one. I think Jason is great and does great reporting. I have a ton of respect for the guy.

[00:03:54] I've been listening to him following him for years and years. I don't know if I'd love it when he jumps surprises like this. I totally get it and I totally respect... I don't know if I respect it, but I get it because he's going to get his outlet.

[00:04:10] I crapped on a views and he's breaking like... Any news around Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to do numbers beyond anything that you will ever do because it's the biggest game ever or will be the biggest game probably ever.

[00:04:26] Grand Theft Auto 5, I think recently just hit 140 million copies sold. So yeah, man, Grand Theft Auto 6. I think it's finally happening. Do you think it comes next year? I think maybe fall of next year. I think it's the big holiday hit of next season.

[00:04:44] I think we're also probably going to see it coincide with a console mid-gen refresh. Maybe I'll save that for our predictions episode in January. Do you think it's on Switch 2? Yeah, Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to run on Switch 2. Switch 2 better have some intense DLSS going on.

[00:05:14] DLSS 4.7 or something. Well, people don't know that GTA 6 is actually going to go back to its top-down roots. That's how it's going to run on Switch 2. Top-down? Yeah, there we go. I remember those top-down days. Yeah. Jake, did you play Grand Theft Auto 5? No.

[00:05:34] I haven't played Grand Theft Auto since 2007. Yeah. The last Grand Theft Auto I played was, I think, Vice City. Okay. And it was for a very brief time in high school or even middle school. And then I haven't played it since then. Never touched Grand Theft Auto 5.

[00:05:55] However, when it hit Game Pass, I did, believe it or not, download it because I was like, you know what? I just need to play this thing. It's the biggest game of all time. Let's just hop in here and kind of see what this is all about.

[00:06:08] And then I never did. So... Okay, I'm looking at the Grand Theft Auto timeline. I played Vice City. That was 2002. Did I play San Andreas? Maybe. I might have played San Andreas. I know when we were in high school, that was the hot shiz for a long time.

[00:06:32] Yeah. I feel like this is taking me way back to the days of Guitar Hero. You'd go to a friend's house. Was it Xbox 360? Maybe playing Guitar Hero 2 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Does that sound about right? That sounds about right. Yeah, okay.

[00:06:50] So I take back my comment early. The last game I played from the Grand Theft Auto series was San Andreas. I'm pretty confident I played this one. 2007 is about right, but that game came out in 2004. So maybe closer to 2005 or 2006.

[00:07:05] Jake and I both, however, did play a crap ton of Red Dead Redemption 2. So, you know. And not necessarily by choice 100% of that time. That being said, incredible game. Amazing. Just fantastical achievement there.

[00:07:22] So Grand Theft Auto 6, if it's being poised to one up Red Dead Redemption 2, kind of insane. Some numbers getting thrown around is that this game's costing like 1 to 1.5 billion. I mean, and this is one of the few studios that I think could drop that much on a game

[00:07:40] and actually get it back. Right? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, even if this game is mid, which it won't be, but even if it is mid, it'll still make like $5 billion. Yeah. So yeah. And that's a fun 140 million copies, 140 million copies.

[00:07:59] The game still remains in the top 10 of the sales charts since it came out a decade ago. That to me is wild. Wild, wild, wild. Speaking of like live service games, which we've talked about recently, Grand Theft Auto 5

[00:08:12] just keeps on going right and shows no sign of stop. Well, I guess Grand Theft Auto 6 might be the first and final sign of Grand Theft Auto 5 slowing down. But yeah, I just haven't been attracted to this franchise for a super long time.

[00:08:27] And I couldn't even tell you why. I just think like to put it in super vague terms, like I'm just not feeling the vibes. I'm just feeling the vibes of this game for a long time. It's about the same time I also dropped off of Call of Duty.

[00:08:41] I think I played Call of Duty a few years later after I last played Grand Theft Auto. But yeah, I just, I don't know man, just haven't really been into this franchise. But that being said, I am the fringe case here.

[00:08:57] This game is going to sell insanely well. And with the news that came out right, so you have this big leak and yeah, it's a shame for the devs that they don't get to sort of present the game and announce it on their own terms.

[00:09:09] So it's been revealed that they're going to be showing more in December. In our Discord, we've been speculating whether or not that this was supposed to be like the Game Awards grand finale trailer.

[00:09:19] I still kind of think that it probably was supposed to be and it will be. But yeah, anyway, we're getting more information very soon. I'm with you Cameron. I think that it is going to launch like fall or holiday 2024.

[00:09:34] The other piece of news that I saw was Warner Brothers releasing a statement that they're shifting their business to live service. I don't know why, why is that so funny? But it's just read the room guys. Like read the room.

[00:09:52] Are they like eight years too late on this? You know what I mean? Yes. Yes. Guys, like it's too late, man. It's too late. You haven't even released your seminal live service title Suicide Squad, which I don't even know when that game is coming out.

[00:10:14] We haven't heard a single peep since that trailer got absolutely crapped on by the internet and then they released this statement saying they're shifting their business model to be 100% live service based and it's like, man.

[00:10:28] It's just wild to me that we're seeing and we've talked about this on other episodes, right? With like streaming services and live service games that they're incredibly expensive to make and to maintain.

[00:10:40] And it is really hard to get a piece of that pie in terms of the gaming demographic who's interested in committing to a single live service game. That yeah, it just feels at this point like dude, you got to come up with a new monetization model.

[00:10:54] You got to come up with a new way of getting players money because the pie is has the slices are getting thinner and thinner, I feel like. You can't it's it's now become trying to push a square peg through a round hole or the other way around, right?

[00:11:11] Where it's like they're not making the games to make the games, which I get that it was never really about making the games that it was always about the money totally get that. But if you just stop and think about it for two seconds, even if you're an

[00:11:26] executive who knows nothing about video games and you just got hired because you're you went to Harvard with the CFO and you know, you get put on as a VP on the executive team at Water Brothers Games and you know nothing

[00:11:38] about the video game industry other than they make a lot of money in certain respects. And then you look out at the models that are that are making a ton of money and you see the live service titles.

[00:11:49] And that's the reason that all this happens, that these executives shift and say, hey, we need to shift to this model because it's way more revenue. It's higher profits when it works is the key phrase though, is when it works. And if you just stop and look around.

[00:12:09] You can see that like it doesn't work very often. And there's just not enough room in the market for these games. And so doesn't seem like a very smart strategy. In fact, I'm just going to just go on and say like it is not a smart strategy.

[00:12:24] And I will be shocked if Suicide Squad is successful. OK, so last we heard about that, it was supposed to come out right February 2024, but it's kind of been delayed again to some moment in 2024. Is that correct? Does that sound right?

[00:12:42] Uh, like February March, I think is what they said. Something like that. Is that right? It got delayed. Wait, it got delayed out of this year to like February March 2024, Q1 maybe is what they're shooting for. Q1 2024, but who knows at this point?

[00:12:55] Yeah, Cameron, let me ask you. I'm looking. I'm on the Warner Brothers site right now and I'm looking at their games and I just got to know, Cameron, which like which one of these games,

[00:13:09] which one of these franchises would make the most sense to turn into live service from WB games? Oh, yeah. Like, what do you do? You make like a Hogwarts MMO. I mean, that's the thing I don't get, man. Like Hogwarts legacy sold 12 million copies like it's phenomenally successful.

[00:13:40] So they think, oh, let's pivot that to be live service. And we'll make even more. So I don't know. That's like what they basically the statement said, we're looking at how to turn every franchise that we own into a live service game.

[00:13:55] So instead of getting like cool Batman games or like cool DC superhero or cool Lord of the Rings stuff, you're getting you're going to get weird live service stuff and it's going to be like take a take a license and try and like squeeze it into this model.

[00:14:12] And it just yeah, just not smart. Yeah, what I have zero. I have like five percent confidence that they can pull this off even for Suicide Squad, which they've been already working on for eight years. And so that's the even more wild thing to think about is like

[00:14:30] if they're just starting some of these projects now. I mean, what? So five years from now, you're going to be using the same model. It's like, no, like you got to be thinking about way ahead of time, like way into the future. It just seems so short-sighted.

[00:14:45] It's like so short. And I think if 2023 has taught us anything about the video game industry is that despite it being highly profitable, it is still really volatile. Right. And so I agree with you. Like looking to current models and current trends,

[00:15:01] like I understand like the thought process in that. But if these big studios are taking upwards of five years to make a game, the trends are different. They're going to be different in five years. Right. I mean, we remember that now infamous statement from EA

[00:15:16] about how single player games don't work anymore and they don't sell. And then since then, you know, there's been this massive list of single player games that sell or have sold incredibly well. Right. I mean, I just feel like video games as an artistic medium

[00:15:32] is still pretty dang young. It is one of those artistic mediums that is very deeply married to the technology that produces it. Unlike some other artistic mediums like poetry, for example, it's an artistic medium that's been around for millennia

[00:15:46] and it really requires quite little technology to produce it. Right. And you can still be innovative in the in the medium without having to rely on technological changes. Now, I think video games because obviously there's room for innovation and creativity with different levels of technology.

[00:16:03] But the industry, I feel like it's young. The medium is young. It is closely tied to technology. So really trying to like pigeonhole what the vague term of success for video games I think is so difficult. Right.

[00:16:18] I mean, how many of how many people would have predicted in like 2014 that Stardew Valley was just going to take the Internet and gaming sphere by storm and still be releasing content eight years later, you know, and still be considered like a touchstone game.

[00:16:37] I don't think people would have predicted that at all. Yet here we have people trying to essentially prolong the past into the future with with this type of model. It's totally bonkers to me. It's totally bonkers, especially like with the with the right

[00:16:57] like the timelines for everything just makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me. Even even even if I stop and go like, oh, let's pretend I'm a executive and I'm sitting in meetings like you're telling me this is as much thought

[00:17:13] as they're putting into this like it can't man, I just can't be. There's got to be something out there. Got to be something weird. Like I don't I mean, I understand the financials of it. But those are financials again, like when everything is firing on all cylinders

[00:17:30] and these are and these are like pipelines that started five, six, seven years ago that are you we're at the top of right now. And it's already coming. No, we're already not even at the top. The top is we're past the top. We're coming down now.

[00:17:45] So anyway, it's crazy. Yeah, it's totally crazy. And I think this is why Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox are really just going to be the heavy hitters that stick around. And we've had this conversation before, but mostly I'm just repeating

[00:17:58] what Cameron said because he understands this stuff much better than I do. But if you just think about like those three companies, as much as they are competing with each other, they all sort of excel at their own thing at this point.

[00:18:09] Right. Nintendo, the Switch as hardware, we know it's underpowered. We know it doesn't compete in Nintendo knows it doesn't compete with PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Yet the Switch is still highly successful because it is doing something different. It is doing mobile gaming or, you know, handheld gaming.

[00:18:28] In a way that PlayStation and Xbox aren't even really touching Xbox, you know, really pushing this cloud gaming, really pushing the game pass subscription servicing. That's what's working for them right now. PlayStation. I mean, PlayStation, they've just got some tried and true.

[00:18:44] Brent and Butler sort of like, hey, let's put out these really gripping cinematic single player experiences. You know, I feel like I feel like PlayStation really has dominated like the demographic of people who are buying two to three games a year

[00:19:01] at full price and they're going to spend their sweet time working through these single player games and they're going to play like 80 percent of them, you know. So these companies and these executives, when they make these decisions,

[00:19:14] it just makes me wonder like what part of the market are they really trying to chase after or are they really just chasing people's wallets? And I think the answer is kind of clear. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there was another big news thing.

[00:19:32] And we have to folks. Sorry, we're taking a while. We will get to Spider-Man 2, but it's been a big news day. And obviously, Cameron and I have a lot of opinions. For example, Cameron, who do you think should play Link in the newly

[00:19:45] announced live action Legend of Zelda movie? Chris Pratch for sure. I just think he's perfect for the role. He just really nailed. I believe I read somewhere. So this is just so I don't know, shady information.

[00:20:03] But supposedly Link is five foot even in Breath of the Wild, tears of the kingdom. Like that's his size. And so I imagine Chris Pratt, who's a pretty stocky dude, right? Timothy Chalamet. Listen, I think Timothy Chalamet would look terrible as a blonde first.

[00:20:26] But I do think that he would play a silent protagonist quite well. He could not speak and do a pretty good job. Dude, there's just no way that this can be good. I'm sorry. There's just no way, man. There's no way that this can be good.

[00:20:44] They should have given it. You had the best comment, which has been on the internet before. But it's like, why don't you partner with Ghibli? Yeah. Like that's the obvious connection, right? You look at something like Princess Mononoke. Yeah.

[00:21:00] And then you kind of think, like, what could they do? With the Zelda franchise, like knowing what they've done with. I mean, that would be insane, like what they could do there. But. I don't know, dude. I don't know, man.

[00:21:16] I don't know how you could make it good. Maybe there's a creator or director or somebody that like has a crazy vision or maybe Miyamoto's vision is, you know, all I know is, is if Link has a lot of dialogue, that's going to be a problem.

[00:21:34] Yeah. My sort of comments on this is I am. I'm, I don't know. What's the opposite of cautiously optimistic, like overwhelming, overbearingly pessimistic, maybe? Oh, yeah, I'm definitely a super pessimistic. I don't know. Like, I think the live action angle is interesting.

[00:21:55] I think most people would have expected this to be animated and I'm not entirely certain why I think the Studio Ghibli partnership makes sense because I think Studio Ghibli handles silence incredibly well, right? And they're masters, I think of when there needs to be dialogue

[00:22:11] and how dialogue needs to be handled and when you just need to see something happening on screen, right? So. I think that's why it would have been a good or what seems like a straightforward way of translating a lot of the silence

[00:22:27] that is in The Legend of Zelda games. And I'm not just talking about Link as a silent protagonist, but I mean, if you're playing through The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, you are spending the majority of your gaming, you know, in dungeons,

[00:22:40] fighting enemies, not sitting down and chatting with them. You know, there's really sparse dialogue, I feel like, in those games, except for when you're in like the village areas. And I think that's true, I would say of pretty much all of The Legend of Zelda

[00:22:54] games. I'm sure there's some exception out there. But you spend a whole lot. I mean, I think Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom like really drove this point home. When you are wandering Hyrule, you hear like light, sprinkling

[00:23:07] piano in the background and you hear a whole lot of nature sounds and then sword switches from when you're attacking, you know, Bokoblins or whatever it is. And my biggest concern, I think with the live action film has less to do

[00:23:20] with the live action, but more with the details that they told us about the producer and sort of some of the people that have involved. The guy who was behind the Maze Runner film adaptation of that. I think it's a YA dystopian series. My wife has read it.

[00:23:37] I couldn't get into it, right? And I don't know how. How do these writers get chosen, man? I don't like to meet. Dude, the same the same thing happened with. Just to interject really quick and I assume the same thing happened with with Star Wars Rise of Skywalker.

[00:23:58] They hired the guy who wrote. Who wrote The Justice League movie. And it's like, dude, that bombed. Why are you hiring this guy? That makes no sense. Literally no sense. But same thing here. I don't get it. I mean, I I also don't get it.

[00:24:16] Hold on story by did it. Yeah, OK, here it is. Funny that you should mention that because one of the writers on the Rise of Skywalker is attached to the live action legend as all the film. Oh, good. That's that's that's perfect. Just another one. Yeah.

[00:24:35] Is it the same guy? Well, I mean, Rise of Skywalker has like, I don't know, four people credited for writing because it went through such awful. Yeah, it's like JJ Abrams and then they had Colin Trevorrow and then he got fired and then they had. Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:51] So a lot of people there. So he's one of, I believe one of the writers listed on Rise of Skywalker. Anyway, and then you have the people who made the maze runner. And this just is leading me. Oh, yeah, those were incredible.

[00:25:08] Cameron, I mentioned this before and folks, I hate using this word, but I think it is actually quite appropriate to describe how I feel like this movie is going to turn out. I think it's going to be incredibly mid.

[00:25:18] I think it is going to be the absolute safest PG 13 movie ever made on this planet and it is going to try to appeal, obviously to a wide audience, but I'm thinking not necessarily Zelda fans, but just anybody who is looking

[00:25:35] for a flick to catch on the weekend. And that's what's got me most worried, right? Not like I said, it's not even the live action part because I think you, Legend of Zelda, I think could translate really well into live action.

[00:25:49] I'm actually thinking of maybe this isn't the best film to be thinking of this, but I'm thinking of The Green Night. Like the because the Legend of Zelda has some really weird moments in it, like as a franchise, Majority.

[00:26:03] I think that's a good call out because that's when I thought of like, OK, how could you make the live action Zelda good? I was trying to think like what are some what are some films that are really good at using like silence and symbolism and kind of

[00:26:19] you know, just wacky, not wacky is the wrong word, but just Green Night's a great tone, I think. I think you nailed that. That has to be something like that in order to be good. But knowing Miyamoto, you know, he's got to appeal to kids too.

[00:26:34] So like it's not going to be that deep, right? Yeah, it won't be Art House at all. And it never was going to be, right? And despite Studio Ghibli's, you know, massive popularity and widespread popularity, I think it would

[00:26:47] Studio Ghibli's to Art House, I think for this type of goal that they have, unfortunately. But yeah, I'm just thinking like the Legend of Zelda as a franchise shines not just because it's a really good retelling of the tried and true trope of the hero's journey.

[00:27:07] There are other aspects to this franchise that make it super unique and like reflecting upon, for example, Ocarina of Time, it gets freaky, dude, like the catacombs, like all that aspect like the Shadow Temple. Like that stuff is weird and you are diving into like holy crap.

[00:27:26] Like the Hylian Royal family, like what is going on underneath here? Right. And I think a lot of that is, I don't know. I just think there's a lot of opportunity there. I posted something stupid on Twitter, but I kind of half believe it.

[00:27:41] Imagine if we had David Lynch direct a live action version of Majora's Mask. Like that's the weird Art House Legend of Zelda live action film that I want. But let's have Robert Eakers directed. OK, you don't act. Leave your watch. Did you ever watch the Northman?

[00:28:04] No, but you were telling me about it. Or the witch watched the trailer for the. No, no, we're done. And then get back to me. You know, you know who'd actually would be the worst director. And this is a director that I like.

[00:28:16] Mind you, the worst director for the Legend of Zelda would be Wes Anderson. Could you? He's going to he's going to cast what's his name as? Owen Wilson, Owen, what? Owen Wilson as Link, the hero of time.

[00:28:39] Owen Wilson as like the King and Timothy Chalamet as Princess Zelda. Oh. I don't know. I'm just thinking. Well, what Scarlett Johansson as Princess Zelda shoot, who would Bill Murray be? Sersha Ronan as Princess Zelda. Actually, that's pretty good. That's pretty interesting.

[00:29:02] I would be very interested if that was the case. Dude, what if Greta Gerwig directed the live action Legend of Zelda movie? I'll watch anything Greta Gerwig directs. So but she's starting filming in a few months on The Chronicles of Narnia. Oh, that's right. That's right.

[00:29:21] So she's busy. They couldn't. Is this a movie podcast now? We've just totally transitioned. And it's been like 30 minutes, folks. We're so sorry. I hope you're interested in the Zelda movie because we've been talking. I mean, I think like most people

[00:29:38] all eyes are on this and I'm going to be, you know, voraciously eating any sort of news that comes up related to this film because I am just so morbidly curious how this is going to turn out at this point.

[00:29:52] And if it even releases, dude, I wonder if like they're just like, you know what, screw it, let's just scrap the thing. It's like two months out from release. There's been like four trailers and they're like, you know what? Nah, we'll just eat the money and be done.

[00:30:07] There's too much money on the line. It'll come out. Well, Jake, let's transition finally into our main part of the show. We're going to be talking Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac PlayStation exclusive. Jake, tell everybody how we do it.

[00:30:26] All right, to keep this brief because we spent a lot of time opening. And this is especially for first-time listeners. The way that we will be talking about Spider-Man 2 is into four different categories. First, we'll be talking about the narrative, the story, the characters,

[00:30:41] how they develop and how they change and sort of what they're doing to move the plot forward. However, we just we don't really talk spoilers, but typically the first like fourth of a game is fair game for what we will be discussing in the narrative portion.

[00:30:56] Next, we'll be talking about mechanics. So these are all the different nitty gritty moments, details, the systems that you're interacting with, things that you're leveling up, how abilities, function, combat, etc. Next, we have the gameplay loop.

[00:31:09] And so these are sort of the big patterns that get you engaged with the game and engage with like what's going to keep you coming back to the game and maybe what a typical PlayStation would look like. And then finally, impact on the industry.

[00:31:23] Cameron and I, we like to speculate more when we get to this category and we start thinking, OK, how are people responding to this? What is Insomnia going to be doing in the future? What sort of notes do we hope the other studios are taking as they are

[00:31:37] seeing Spider-Man 2 launch in its reception? So yes, that will be how we're talking about it. And first, we will start with the narrative. Spider-Man, yeah, this is another Sony first party, highly cinematic, very expensive, story driven third person action game. It is a story of

[00:32:10] Spider-Man Peter Parker and Spider-Man Miles Morales and them teaming up to fight crime, to save, you know, to protect the city, to protect New York and expanded New York this time around. They both have had their own standalone games,

[00:32:28] Spider-Man spoilers for the first game he was working for a bro named Doc, Doctor Octavius, and that didn't work out. And yeah, so Doc goes off the wall. He's his mentor. He's his he considers like a father figure, like a mentor, a very respected person that he Peter

[00:32:56] Parker loves and cares for and he turns turns on him and kind of goes crazy. And anyway, ends up Peter Parker saves the day. And so and then Miles Morales, these are just quick spoilers for the first game. But Miles Morales, he somehow gets bitten.

[00:33:15] They don't really explain it, but he becomes Miles Morales. And then he has his own standalone game where he kind of comes into his own, learns his powers. That's pretty much all you need to know on that one. And so this game basically jumps in where

[00:33:29] this game is really largely about how Peter Parker and Miles Morales are having a lot of trouble balancing their lives as Peter Parker and Miles Morales versus their lives as Spider-Man. And how they and how they feel like

[00:33:49] they're failing the like people closest to them because they have this obligation to go out and to save the world, essentially. And and like they're kind of falling through on that. And then Peter's friend, Harry, shows up who in the first game you learn has

[00:34:10] either been away, but then you find out that he wasn't actually a way that he was like in a coma and was healing and he comes back and he seems like he's better. And that kind of kicks things off.

[00:34:18] So you really can't say much more than that without spoiling a lot other than like if you've watched any of the trailers, this isn't a spoiler. Venom is in this game. And so you know, kind of like that the story is going to evolve and you know,

[00:34:34] Craven is in this game. So we can't it's too fresh to like reveal exactly how those things that are twined and the reveals on that. But those are the villains. But I don't think the game is really about them as much as what I just said,

[00:34:48] which is that theme of I don't know if it's a tried superhero theme. It certainly is like in comics. But it's this idea of like, how does a superhero balance like their family and their friendships and the people closest to them and kind of their goals

[00:35:03] and pursuits as individuals versus like their obligation to be superheroes because they have superpowers and they can do things that nobody else can. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's one of the wonderful things about Spider-Man is a superhero.

[00:35:16] Long time listeners, you know that I'm not like a really big superhero guy, but you ask me who my favorite superheroes and it's Spider-Man. Right. Spider-Man always felt much more relatable, you know, personable, more down to earth than a lot of the other superheroes.

[00:35:31] He's just a New Yorker trying to get through his day to day as well. But on top of that, you know, he feels his obligation and responsibility to protect the city that he loves and to fight crime because he has that capability.

[00:35:44] And I think what's what's awesome about this game is especially with both Peter Parker Miles, more Niles, but especially with Peter, I feel like you really get a sense of the toll that kind of stress it takes on someone.

[00:35:58] And maybe this is just because Peter is closer to my age, right? And so I'm relating more because I'm in more of a similar life scenario as Peter Parker, just without those cool super abilities. You know, I just feel like, man,

[00:36:14] when that stress really starts to take a toll on you and it starts to impact you negatively, like what happens when when a superhero's like psychology and mental health really starts tanking. And what happens, like what do you do? Like what really is their obligation?

[00:36:31] Right? I mean, the city of New York existed without Spider-Man for decades. And if Spider-Man is, you know, in a moment of weakness, is it really fair to keep demanding more of your superheroes? And I just love how like intimate and personal that really gets with Peter

[00:36:49] story with a Miles Morales story. I think it's also I think it's also really good. You're just dealing with a different time of life, right? So this is he's like a senior in high school.

[00:36:59] He's a big recurring part of of this game is that he is working on his college admissions essay, his personal statement, and he's struggling with it. And I really like that because there's so much that he really wants to say

[00:37:13] in that personal statement that he can't because he wants to try to keep himself and once he loves safe by not really talking about who he is. Spider-Man, you know, his little side gig. But anyway, I think just Spider-Man as a character is always been,

[00:37:28] you know, has this wonderful emotional depth and just has to deal with the everyday human struggles in a much more relatable way. And so I think the game does a really good job of expressing that. And then all these different stressors really get thrown in.

[00:37:43] The other main villain, which this is not a spoiler at all because it's in all the promotional material is Craven, the hunter, right? Decides to come to New York and sort of make it his new hunting ground

[00:37:55] and try to take down all these super powered people, whether they be villains or not in the city as sort of part of his, you know, he's trying to create a hold on, I was about to spoil something. And so I'll just leave it there.

[00:38:11] But Craven, the hunter is another main intact. He has specific motivations that the game doesn't tell you outright what they are. So like, you have to learn that by playing. Yeah, I think the most I think the best parts of this,

[00:38:28] I'll just say first off, I don't think the plot and the kind of general story is as strong as the game, like the individual games on their own, Spider-Man one and Miles Morales, which was its own like sort of one of those mini standalone

[00:38:45] that it sounds like Sony's leaning into a little bit are these like shorter standalone experiences. I don't think it's as strong and I don't necessarily know why. I think I can potentially and I don't even know if this is right,

[00:38:59] but some things I thought that maybe fed into that was the fact that you you are playing as both characters in this game. Yeah. So it's switching back and forth all the time, which is cool. But it also just moves the focus around.

[00:39:15] And so when you get in a vibe and kind of getting a groove with kind of what's happening with one character, suddenly you get switched to the next character. Yeah. And I don't know if that transition always works super, super well.

[00:39:26] I think it does in some cases, but in some cases it feels sort of jarring to kind of just move off to the other character. So there's sort of a lack of focus there. And then I do think it does a good job of telling

[00:39:44] telling that story of like balancing the priorities in your life and how stressful and how problematic that is as somebody who has superpowers. And it was relatable in the sense that like figuring out how to have balance in your life and like prioritize things is

[00:40:00] extremely hard as an adult, not even as like a high school kid, right? Because Miles Morales is this senior in high school. Like you said, Jake, he's trying to like do his colleges. And the game kind of does a good job of communicating.

[00:40:14] Hey, like the personal relationships and the school stuff. It's so important. It's like just as important as the stuff you're doing to like save the world or is it right? And that question gets asked. And it's this like hard balance of like he has friendships and he has

[00:40:29] personal relationships and Peter Parker the same thing. He has a girlfriend and he has, you know, he has a job. He he has a job. He's trying to get a job and he's trying to have like a stable life,

[00:40:40] but he's having a super hard time balancing that with obviously saving people all the time. Where it sometimes falls off, though, is like when you're in those moments, I think those are really impactful. But then you'll be in another moment where you're doing like a side

[00:40:55] quest to help some girl at your school like finish their school project. And it feels like you miss priorities there, Miles. Yeah. And I get that those are like fun things to include in the story. And that's sort of part of the core of Spider-Man, right?

[00:41:11] Like your friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man, like that has to be there. But it does take the emotional core away sometimes because of the nature of the story and what's happening and this constant stress of like balancing your life and then suddenly you're out in the open world

[00:41:26] and you're helping someone like fly their drones around for their school project. Right. And it's that's cool and like fun and quirky. It just kind of shifts the tone. I don't know, it's like tone that gets shifted around too much. I'm having a hard time communicating it,

[00:41:40] but that's something that sort of happened to me as I play through this. Yeah, it's interesting. I will get into this when we talk about gameplay loop in more detail. But I want to say, like in terms of the narrative,

[00:41:53] I kind of really just wanted to stick with Peter Parker and Miles Morales for the most part, right? Those are the characters that I'm most invested in. And there's obviously side characters that come into the main quests that are interesting and compelling as well.

[00:42:07] But yeah, I'm kind of with you where, I don't know, maybe is a narrative whip lash between going through these really, you know, what appear to be trivial or inconsequential side quests, you know, and then going to the main story is like a good reflection of the kind

[00:42:26] of emotional whiplash that the Spider-Man have to deal with. I think, sure, yeah, so from an artistic standpoint, it makes sense. But I agree with you that it doesn't necessarily translate super well to a gameplay experience. And I don't think I have a solution to that either, right?

[00:42:43] And so I kind of just made the decision where there are certain side quests that I chose to admit because I wanted to simply get a different experience out of the game, you know. And I'm glad that the game has a breadth to do that.

[00:42:56] The last thing I want to say about the narrative and obviously like Peter, MJ, Harry and Miles, they go through a lot and they go through a lot together. And that's really the story is based off of them.

[00:43:09] But I do want to mention what I thought was probably the coolest and strongest part of the narrative. And it is the theme of redemption and second chances where in this I'm going to keep it to the first fourth of the game.

[00:43:22] But essentially early on in the game, you will come into contact with some of the supervillains that were arrested and put away throughout the course of Spider-Man. And I didn't play Miles Morales, and I'm assuming in his game as well.

[00:43:38] And they don't just they don't just sit in a cell and rot. I mean, you have interactions with them and they become key to certain parts of the story. And this, you know, Peter and Miles, right? They're always like, well, we Spider-Man doesn't kill, you know.

[00:43:57] Miles talks about quite often like, well, Peter really believes in second chances and he wants these people at a chance to have a chance at redemption and rehabilitation. And I just think that the way that the game deals with the villains narratively and with those themes in particular

[00:44:16] was really cool to see because I feel like a lot of times and not just in superhero movies, but in just like action movies broadly, right? The villain really only serves the purpose of of helping push for the characterization of the protagonist of the hero.

[00:44:33] And so in this game, we finally see like character characterization of the antagonists as well in a way that I thought was really neat. So that was probably one of my favorite parts of the game, which is sort of seeing those stories get time as well.

[00:44:48] Yeah, that's a good call out. That was a really great part of the narrative. I think there's all these great moments, right? There's these super great moments littered throughout this game. It's just how they all come together. I just don't think it doesn't quite work

[00:45:03] as well as the first games. That being said, this is a great game, like fantastic game, great story, like really excellent. I just don't think it's as good story. Why it didn't keep me as engaged even though there are super cool moments and moving into

[00:45:21] talking about mechanics like and this is sort of a combination of the two, but the most insane set pieces of any game, right? Like it's just wild set pieces like. And this is just what Sony Studios do. And this is their calling card

[00:45:37] and they continue to prove that they are the best of the best in this area. Like nobody can touch them on this on these just incredible set pieces, you know, thinking of Uncharted 4, thinking of this game, thinking of the first Spider-Man,

[00:45:50] thinking of these other first party tiles that they have. There's these cinematic set pieces where some gamers don't like these, right? Because you're not in complete control and it's it's more cinematic in nature and there's like, you know, button prompts and stuff like that.

[00:46:04] But I think when you're doing it at this level, I don't care because it's just so fun to watch. And it's just so fun to see the animators and the, you know, and the production and like all the production that goes into it

[00:46:16] and just massive flex that these teams have to show off. Hey, here's these insane visuals. We can do this. Nobody else can do it. Yeah. Yeah. I 100 percent agree. The best the games with the best spectacle this year so far for me would be Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy 16.

[00:46:35] Final Fantasy 16, of course, is Square Enix, but it's PS5 exclusive for now. And those two games, man, holy cow, and Spider-Man, I think does a wonderful job. Like after I got through the opening section of the game, I immediately texted Cameron. I was like, my heart's racing.

[00:46:50] I'm 100 percent in this game because that opener is incredible. And there are just so, so many cool moments like that. I actually this will be the last thing I kind of say that's related to narrative. But I actually felt a lot of nostalgia playing this game.

[00:47:08] Several years ago when I was doing my PhD, I lived in New Jersey, so I didn't live in New York and all the New Yorkers listening are scoffing right now and hey, it's totally fine. I get it, right? But I actually felt a lot of nostalgia

[00:47:20] for like the East Coast and for New York. And I just got a hand at Toon Someniac. This representation of New York City is so, so cool. And one of my favorite parts of the game, this is one of the mechanics of the game as well.

[00:47:33] So this is kind of my segue, is you have to do different like photo ops. Like they're different sections of the city where you're supposed to go like open up photo mode and take a picture and then you are like texting it

[00:47:45] to somebody for like for just like a few bucks because your Spider-Man, you're broke, right? And then this, the person that you send it to can't remember their name. They'll just give like a brief like story about, man, that is so New York, the way that this is.

[00:48:00] And I got to say that those moments kind of resonated for me just as somebody who has been to New York City a lot, just thinking, man, they really nailed the vibe of the city in a really cool way. So I really appreciated that.

[00:48:13] But yeah, that's like one of the many like collectathons that are baked into this game, you know? Yeah, let's dive in on that part. So mechanics, I mean, this is a third person action game I think just starting right off.

[00:48:33] First game already proved that like this is the best, I think probably maybe inarguably the best reversal of any game, like it's just the most fun sort of just basic movement of any like just zipping around, swinging around. They just, they nailed the feel of that.

[00:48:58] And it's, and I think it's even better in this game. And then they've added, this is also not a spoiler. They've added essentially flying, like you can just fly now. And so you have like the web swinging which they've made some just little slight tweaks

[00:49:15] and upgrades to, but then they also add like you can just fly. And so when you combine those two you get some really wild like fun traversal moments. That being said, you're doing this incredible reversal in, and this is a little bit gameplay loopy

[00:49:29] but like you're in and we'll talk, we'll go deeper in this part when we talk about the gameplay loop. But you're kind of doing it in basically like a pretty boring world to be honest. Yeah, I just, I didn't, yeah.

[00:49:44] And one of the reasons for that is I think, and so we can just start off here. I mean, this game is, it's a beat them up, right? Essentially, like for lack of a better term you drop in on a group of guys and you beat them up.

[00:50:00] And in this game, this is my number one complaint with Spider-Man 2, guys take way too long to kill, like not kill, to knock out, whatever. Way too long. Dude, you are beating on these guys like dozens and dozens of hits to break these guys. I mean, it's crazy.

[00:50:21] And it breaks the feel and flow of combat in my opinion. And I actually looked this up and it's legitimately guys are just way harder to kill in this game than they are in the first game. And I think that doesn't add additional fun.

[00:50:37] It doesn't really add any additional challenge. It just adds slog to the combat. And it just kind of sucks. And it didn't ruin combat for me, but it definitely did not feel as good as the first game. And I think that's the main reason. All right, whoa.

[00:50:52] Big words from Cameron. I gotta ask you, what difficulty were you playing on? Just normal. Okay, yeah. I also played the game on normal and also had similar thoughts, right? Where especially towards the end game, holy cow.

[00:51:08] It takes you forever to be able to take out a dude. And it's interesting because most scenarios, it's all about crowd control. Like how can you, because the individual enemy takes so long to knock out, you have to be able to crowd control

[00:51:25] and then focus on one or two enemies and then knock them out. And you have some abilities that can do like damage to multiple enemies at once. There's actually quite a few abilities that do that. But rarely are you gonna be able to be in a scenario

[00:51:39] where you knock out multiple enemies simultaneously. Like, you can't really like take out big chunks of a group. It almost always comes down to like, you whittle everybody down through like your crowd control abilities, but you were doing one-on-one boxing matches

[00:51:54] in order to actually take out the entire group. I'm with you, man. First thing I noticed about this in comparison to like Spider-Man 1 is I felt like everybody had a gun and like everybody had a shield, you know? Whereas in Spider-Man 1,

[00:52:09] I felt like you were dealing with more just basic mob enemy types. Whereas here they're like, you know what, let's throw these enemy types that like special enemy types at you and make them more prevalent or more common just in all these different mobs of enemies you're fighting.

[00:52:26] Now there are scenarios where you can do stealth. Most of the combat scenarios when you're just like traversing the open world, everybody like is alerted to you pretty quickly. But there are like one of the series of collectathons would be taking down hunter bases.

[00:52:44] So the hunters are the minions that work for Crave and the hunter and you find them typically on rooftops and they're just out there kind of doing their operations not really looking for you. And so you are in a scenario to set up

[00:52:57] for a lot of stealth takedowns. Best mechanic they added to this game is that you can create like a zipline or tight rope pretty much from any surface to any other surface. Which made I felt like the stealth approach to like taking down hunter bases

[00:53:13] so much more enjoyable where you weren't really just stuck on specific paths that are predetermined by the game or level design. But rather you had so much more freedom of like, okay here I know there's a bunch of four people.

[00:53:26] I could probably get one out of this group but if I create a line over here then I could distract this one so it separated from the group and then take them down. And I just felt like having that freedom made that the stealth takedowns infinitely more enjoyable.

[00:53:39] But yeah maybe the sacrifice was that when you're just going in you're like, you know what I don't want to do stealth I just want to beat the snot out of everybody. It was quite a slog. Yeah and it still looks cool.

[00:53:52] I mean you could, you still look crazy. You can do dope stuff and if you're good at the combat right you could jump in around and you're flying across the screen and like and you're doing all that. The problem is it just takes too freaking long

[00:54:04] to kill stuff. It takes a long time. So yeah there's some balance that I just think was not tweaked quite right for that when they added in you know some of the new abilities and some of the new enemy types that obviously add challenge to the combat

[00:54:19] but not necessarily challenging a good. I think the most obvious new mechanic is that there's another block type when there's like an unblockable attack you have to use a different kind of block so it adds another element to the combat which I think was fine.

[00:54:37] I think it did add like an element of challenge to it but again it just comes back to just, it's just a slog. And I think as Spider-Man, especially as a superhero it's that careful balance of like and here's the biggest example

[00:54:51] is that slight spoiler there are parts where you play as Mary Jane which somewhere to the first game. Mary Jane has this gun cause also slight spoiler in the last game or in between this game in the last game she apparently was trained by Sable.

[00:55:07] Dude is she one hits these guys? Yeah. She literally one hits these guys when you're playing and it's like, oh my gosh, like she's stronger than Spider-Man. Yeah. And there's this end game sequence that I also won't spoil but you play as her again

[00:55:22] and she is like one hitting or three hitting dudes that take you like 19 hits to take out and you're like, this is wild. This is like just weird balance. It's just weird balance. So anyway, it was just pretty funny like you're playing as her

[00:55:40] and then you switch to Spider-Man who's a super and that's the thing with superhero stuff is I think there's a tricky balance. As a superhero, I wanna feel like a superhero. I wanna feel incredibly powerful, right? I don't wanna feel like I'm an underdog.

[00:55:52] As a superhero, I should feel incredibly powerful. I feel like I can like dominate these guys and I think they just needed to tweak it just slightly in that direction. Yeah, you're right. It is a really, really tricky balance because you don't wanna necessarily make it a cakewalk

[00:56:06] but at the same time, you want the power fantasy. And I think the attempt there was in the combat mechanics with the different skill trees that are available. So Peter Parker and Miles Morales, they have their own individual skill trees and abilities.

[00:56:21] And I actually found Miles Morales' abilities much easier to use in most scenarios, especially for crowd control. They are slightly different and I don't know for whatever reason, his set of abilities I was able to master much more easily than Peter Parker's.

[00:56:40] So they have their own skill trees and their own sets of abilities. And a lot of those will come down to different combat maneuvers. And then there's a shared skill tree that they have, which is just a little more rudimentary. So obviously not quite as specialized

[00:56:57] because both characters share this skill tree. And then you can upgrade your gadgets. So this is like, you have two weapon wheels. You have one weapon wheel, which is your combat abilities and that's specific to each player. And then your second weapon wheel are your gadgets,

[00:57:13] your spider gadgets. And you can upgrade those and they're shared between both characters. And that's like most of your web abilities, right? So you'll shoot out like a drone that shoots out like extra enemy or excuse me, extra web shooters to help with crowd control.

[00:57:31] One of the ones that it's unlocked very early will pull all the items and enemies together at once. And so it's a really great way. I use that ability a ton because it was a really great way to get enemies

[00:57:43] that are trying to surround you into one area and then they would take, all take damage simultaneously. And then you can set up for other combos that might do damage to multiple enemies at once. So those, unless I'm blanking on some,

[00:57:59] those are like primarily what you're leveling up. To do that, there are just super random currencies. Essentially it's like rare tech parts. There's like city tokens, there's hero tokens, and then there's like I think super rare tech tokens. Maybe I couldn't remember them all,

[00:58:15] but essentially it's just a way to incentivize the player to go to different types of side quests or different missions just so you can get these different types of tokens and level up all of your abilities. I found there to be a little bit of a bottleneck

[00:58:32] just because of my play style, not necessarily because of design on hero tokens. So I think I finished the game with all of my abilities, excuse me, all my weapon gadgets kind of locked out like two thirds or three fourths of the way to full

[00:58:48] because I was just like in short supply for that specific tokens. So yeah, you're highly incentivized to go around the whole city, but this is probably my biggest criticism of the game. You're incentivized to like go around the city but not really like intimately explore

[00:59:05] the same way that you would with finding the backpack since Spider-Man won. And it was a shame because like finding these like rare token parts, you just randomly find like a chest sitting on top of a building, you just swing over, click triangle, collect and then run off.

[00:59:22] And it helps streamline the experience, but I don't know. I think most people would like this. For me, I kind of wish that the experience was actually slowed down a little bit, like in that regard. I don't know. Yeah, let's move. I think talking about the other mechanics

[00:59:41] is moving into the gameplay loop, which you basically have the open world. And this is an expanded open world that includes now Brooklyn and Manhattan and then one other part. Queens is there. Queens. So you have all those. So it's a bigger world

[01:00:04] and then scattered throughout our tons and tons and tons of these little side activities that consist of like fighting enemies, doing like races, flying through rings, like all these sorts of different little like playground elements, right? So you have all those and then in between those

[01:00:26] that basically you're traversing and you're going to the next main mission. And then in between those you can do all these like little side missions. And that's pretty much how the loop works. I skipped all the side stuff. Oh, like all of it? Not all of it.

[01:00:40] Now I mean at the beginning I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to do this stuff. And so I started kind of doing anytime I would come across something I would go do it. And I just got to a point where it's like I just, I don't care.

[01:00:53] Like it's just not, it's not fun. It's just not that fun, right? It's not that engaging. It's not like adding stuff to the story for me. I think the best ones are probably like the actual side quests, side quests where you kind of get a message that's like,

[01:01:09] hey, Spider-Man, come help me. And then it's these little sort of friendly neighborhood Spider-Man missions. Those are definitely the best ones. I think those are the ones probably worth doing. But the other little sort of side activities I just, they just didn't do anything for me.

[01:01:22] And I think that lead led to kind of the open world just feeling a little stale for me. Like it was basically just traversing from one main mission to the next. And I don't know. And again, I don't have an answer for this.

[01:01:37] And it's not that it's necessarily bad. It just didn't delight me. I don't know. Yeah, I understand that similarly, like when I was first playing the game I was doing everything left and right. I kind of ended up doing, like you said

[01:01:53] the bigger side quests and some of these involved more important secondary characters to the Spider-Man world, you know? And it was some of them I really liked. Some of them it was like, oh, you were in the first game and here you are in the second game.

[01:02:11] You just instead of being in the main quest you're like in one of these side quests. And those were the kind of ones that I tend to follow. And there's a few that I followed through to completion with some cool mini stories going on there as well.

[01:02:26] But yeah, gameplay loop. I mean, you boot up the PS5, you hop into the game, play through a few main missions. I feel like none of them really took that long. Maybe 15 to 20 minutes per main mission. Some of them might be a little longer than that.

[01:02:44] But that's it. And then you kind of explore the open world and do things here and there. Like I said, I mainly towards the end of the game kind of looked up the activities on my map and was like, hey, which ones are gonna reward

[01:02:55] the tokens that I need? This one? Okay, I'll go do it, right? So I was very much doing it based on need and not just based on the pleasure and our enjoyment of kind of going through New York City. There are some things like there's fast travel, right?

[01:03:11] I think I use fast travel two or three times actually. I was gonna ask you, how many times did you use the fast travel in the game? Not a single time, never used it. Yeah, so you part of the gameplay loop, and this is a mechanic too,

[01:03:25] in each district of New York City, you can level them up and I'm doing that with air quotes by just accomplishing different side quests or sort of these collectathon types of things within that area. And there are three levels and the second level unlocks the fast travel.

[01:03:45] And I remember on social media, maybe a few days before Spider-Man 2 released, everybody was showing clips of how cool the fast travel was. And let me tell you the fast travel is super cool, but it is not as cool as just swinging around to Spider-Man.

[01:04:01] So like I said, I rarely, two or three times I use the fast travel most. I was just really content, just kind of swinging through the city. You can hold square in a direction on the thumb stick and do tricks and that was enough kind of for me.

[01:04:16] Doing that and then gliding on the web wings, which is a super welcome addition, I would say because the parts of New York City that they added to the game have some, not very tall buildings and it's kind of hard to swing around.

[01:04:30] And this is, sorry, side note, I've always thought about this, what if Spider-Man was from Lawrence, Kansas where there are no tall buildings? Like Spider-Man would be bored out of his mind. And a part of me was like some of these sections and like Queens and like,

[01:04:45] yeah you needed the web wings or the player was just gonna lose their mind trying to run on foot through some of these neighborhoods. Anyway, yeah, gameplay loop. I thought it was satisfying. I do love that this game does accommodate a lot of people

[01:04:59] in terms of how much time they can dedicate one night to a game. It's 30 minutes, you know, do one or two main story missions or just explore the city and gain some tokens, level up some abilities for 30 minutes and or sync five hours into a single play session

[01:05:14] and get a whole lot done. You can kind of do whatever in this game. Let's talk about the impact on the industry. So as we know, Sony has announced as of like a year ago now or whatever. And I guess I actually have to be like slightly careful

[01:05:38] of what I say here because technically Sony is my parent company. Oh yeah, yeah. Careful, careful. So I just thought about that right now but so maybe let's talk about it in broad terms. There's this shift generally and I can say this, right? There's this shift generally,

[01:05:55] I mean as we talked about with WB, right? Yeah. And Sony has made this very clear that like the focus is on live service but they have said they are gonna continue to make these like single player titles like Spider-Man.

[01:06:11] I guess I don't know if this game really has like an impact one which way or another. I don't think it does anything crazy wild it's gonna change anything and you know, it's not gonna change how anyone else is like working on their game.

[01:06:24] It does make me kind of just think about depending on the success of Spider-Man too. Right. How does that impact things looking forward for Sony especially as there's been, you know, for without going into the detail some hiccups in the live service strategy that they're attempting to do

[01:06:45] and like putting all that focus is that, you know, is that potentially putting too many eggs in one basket? I don't know. That's sort of the ongoing conversation. There's some concern about that. So yeah. Yeah. I don't know. My sort of takeaways were not super related to this

[01:07:06] but they were really just that, I don't know, superhero games they can be really fun and I think Spider-Man, I'm kind of repeating what I said and then our last, in our episode on Spider-Man 1 Spider-Man as a superhero translates incredibly well to the video game experience.

[01:07:23] Swing from swinging around to just punching people to web abilities like it makes it just the one to one is there I think from the comic book hero and what he can do and what a player can do via a controller,

[01:07:38] you know, or game pad as they are playing a game. So very cool there. But yeah, the future for Insomniac, right? They are working on Wolverine. And I'm really curious. Obviously Insomniac is on fire right now. They haven't put out anything except bangers within the past few years.

[01:07:59] They're highly praised for their quality, for the spectacle, for the craftsmanship that is so obvious in their games. I don't know. It really makes me wonder what Wolverine is going to look and play like because Wolverine is, you know, how does Wolverine translate from the comic book hero

[01:08:20] to a video game? And I'm curious if it will translate as well as Spider-Man does. But also this makes me wonder just like the broader scope of superhero games broadly, where are the other superhero games? Where are they? Are they out there?

[01:08:39] I guess Midnight Suns, Gotham Nights, right? Where's our superman game? Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is on its way, right? Nemesis System game, yeah. Okay. Who knows when that's coming, but yep. Do we get, we never got a gameplay for that, right? We just got the announcement, yeah.

[01:08:59] Yeah, I mean, superhero is definitely not a tired out IP. I don't, but Spider-Man is the epitome of the superhero game, number one, like By-Far. I am extremely excited to see what they can do with Wolverine, with Wolverine. And knowing Insomniac's track record,

[01:09:19] I could see this even coming out next year, which is kind of wild to think. Either next year, no further than the year, than 2025, but I could even see it potentially coming next fall. And yeah, I'm super excited for that.

[01:09:39] But yeah, I mean, we'll see what this Wonder Woman game is. I think, I don't know. Suicide Squad. Like people just want games with cool mechanics and interesting stories. And so if you're gonna make these, like I think that you have to do that.

[01:10:02] And I wonder if there's too much danger or a lot of like big companies are afraid of these licenses because you're giving away so much money to Marvel or to DC in order to like build games in their universes, that if the game is not super,

[01:10:22] super, super, super, super successful, then you're kind of screwed. And so it's just taking on more risk, which you hope that the license can get you. But what we found is like, if you don't make a great video game, it doesn't matter.

[01:10:34] You can't just slap Guardians of the Galaxy on it and have it be amazing. Now, Guardians of the Galaxy was a pretty solid game, but it wasn't widely critically acclaimed and it wasn't popular and so it didn't sell enough. And so anyways, yeah, I just,

[01:10:50] Insomniac's doing it right. So and I hope it would be awesome to get other studios. And we know they're coming. EA is making a Black Panther game. There's another studio making a Black Panther Captain America game. There's an Iron Man third person action game coming.

[01:11:07] There's that Wonder Woman game that we just mentioned. And I'm sure there's other ones in the works. Yeah, case in point about popular IPs. Have you, I don't think you played it. Have you looked at Skull Island Rise of Kong? Yeah. No, I have not.

[01:11:31] I have seen screenshots of this. I mean, the game has been memed to death, right? Metacritic score is 23 out of 100 for PC. That is, oof, that is bad. I almost feel like getting that low is like better than getting like a 60.

[01:11:46] Cause like it'll, it's like, oh, this game is so, this game is so bad. I need to go like check it out. Dude, you know what? Here's the problem is that that's totally right. Like what was there a super crappy Jared Leto movie that came out? Superhero-ish.

[01:12:04] Oh yeah, totally. It was like bad classic example. More Morbius. Morbius. Is there R in there? Morbius. I don't know. Morbius? Morbius. Morbius. No, fun facts DLC character in Marvel Midnight. Oh really? That is a fun fact. Anyway, that's on my watch list on Netflix

[01:12:27] cause it came to Netflix and it was like, I have to see why this movie is so bad. You know, I just have to. Yeah, it's like, you know, it works. You can't look away. Anyway, back to Spider-Man 2, right? Folks, I don't know.

[01:12:43] Maybe the biggest impact on the industry it comes back to worker conditions. Insomniac games is, you know, make lousy employees to work from home. They have significantly reduced crunch. They are on record as saying that Ratchet and Clank, the one, shoot, I forget the subtitle,

[01:13:04] but it's Ratchet and Clank 5, right? Was made with zero crunch. And a part of me just thinks if you invest in a team that really wants to make video games and you retain that team, you get better quality video games.

[01:13:19] And so, aside from that, like, I don't know. I don't know what the impact on the industry is. Maybe it is that, hey, with the right studio, you can make these really expensive IPs worth purchasing. And they can be money makers.

[01:13:35] But I think the lesson to be learned is that maybe not every studio is equipped to handle any popular IP and crank out, or just like print cash really quickly. Like, and I think maybe that's, we're coming full circle with our conversation earlier

[01:13:53] before we started talking about Spider-Man 2, where it's just like there's a reality here and that things take a long time. And you have to allow time for quality to come through in these games, right? And I bring up Kong, I really don't wanna dunk on those devs, right?

[01:14:10] Because they did it the best that they could. I read that they had just over a year to make this game or something ludicrous, right? And to me, that is not like the dev who's working on the game. That's not their decision, right?

[01:14:28] And to give people little time, I mean, we shouldn't be surprised with the results that have happened there, right? So I bring that up as an example just to reiterate, I really don't wanna dunk on the people who made that game

[01:14:38] but on the people who maybe were pushing for that game to be done so quickly. And the big contrast here is Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac. Obviously this is sequel, they're building upon things that they have already created, but they were given time and space

[01:14:52] to create quality for this sequel. So I love to see that. Yeah, that's actually a great, that totally is the big impact on the industry. I think you nailed it. It's a great point. I can't believe I forgot to talk about that

[01:15:08] because yeah, this studio is the shining example of AAA development. 100% work from home based studio. They are pumping out game after game after game and they are doing a fantastic job with scope and there was a conversation around like, is Spider-Man 2 too short?

[01:15:29] And I think those conversations are idiotic. They're dumb, they're just dumb. Like if the game is good, the game is good. It does not matter how long it is, straight up. You may disagree with that opinion but that is better for gamers, that's better for developers

[01:15:47] that makes these projects like actually workable and doable when you only have 25 hours of content for a platinum. How much more time, effort and energy can you put into the quality of a title, right? When you limit the scope that much and then allow these,

[01:16:06] you allow these teams to just do more. I think more teams need to be doing this 100%. The days of 90, 120 hour, games that just suck the life out of people. I think those days need to end and I realized that some gamers like that

[01:16:25] and they want like the endless open world but I'm gonna tell you right now, that endless open world is gonna be generated by AI very, very soon. And so the quality of that world is not going to get better, it is going to get worse

[01:16:38] because teams are wavering, teetering on the edge of triple A development costs and these companies are gonna do whatever it takes to lower those costs and that's how they're gonna use AI. They're gonna use it to pad out the worlds.

[01:16:52] So I for me would much rather have smaller, shorter, more condensed, high quality, handcrafted curated versus massive endless generated by a computer. That's just me though. I like that and I think that's a good idea to conclude the episode. I just, just to echo that sentiment,

[01:17:14] yeah, quality is awesome. We love quality and quality comes in a lot of different packaging's in a lot of different sizes, right? I know this is example I always go to but like a short hike, you can beat that game in 45 minutes in an hour.

[01:17:30] If you want to 100% it could take you maybe three hours maximum but that is one game that I do not think needs anything else added to it. It would become bloated. It would be over saturated and the experience would be diminished because of it.

[01:17:44] And so I agree with you here, like in Spider-Man 2 I don't think anything else needed to be added, right? Especially for Cameron and I and how we play games. In fact, we didn't even get to all the side content.

[01:17:56] I'm definitely gonna hop back in like to this game and that actually is my final point that I wanna make. When a game is super high quality, I am much more likely to go back and do a second playthrough of a game.

[01:18:10] I am much more likely to go back and do more of the side content to try to 100% things, to earn extra trophies, like all that stuff to do achievement hunting because the game is high quality and fun, right? Whereas games that are, that just are too overwhelming

[01:18:27] because there's too much going on. Yeah, I'm just less likely to go back into that world. Well, Jake with that, this has been another episode of the pre-order bonus podcast talking Spider-Man 2, PS5 exclusive. This is a great game folks.

[01:18:44] I think we were a bit more critical on this one than maybe the general media audience potentially. So hopefully we gave you some food for thoughts and good analysis of this Spider-Man game. If you like the podcast, please help us out.

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