(OBS takes time until it starts recording the game)
Alright, my hipster cap is on, I'm ready to tackle this game.
I hate the story, I hate the plot, some characters, and I've never liked the zombie-apocalypse settings.
Pretty sure 2007-2008 were the years where the gaming industry was plagued with alot of zombie games.
(Nothing comes to mind right now except for Prototype)
The idea of having 2 suits with different combos is neat, but the black suit simply overpowers the red in every aspect.
The red suit has long and weak combos, while the black suit has short and powerful combos.
The mission structure is also lacking. Everything feels like a shopping list rather than having a true objective.
"Defeat X enemies", "Perform this attack X times" and so on.
On the good side, the game has my favorite swing controls, both casually and speedrunning-wise.
Some other moves drag it down *a bit*, usually moves the don't allow me to do precise jumps.
Combat is fun, but REALLY broken.
He thinks the city will be saved, how cute.
To swing fast, hold the swing button, then boost&release with jump and do a jump in the air.
Attempting this on console would freeze the game to render the city. The consoles simply can't keep up with Spidey's speed.
You can try to do a swing kick or an air attack instead, but they usually don't kill everyone at once and scatters them around instead.
I was holding the swing button to immediately jump to the wall.
In this section, I make sure that the symbiotes don't scatter around or knocked off into another building or to the ground.
They always spawn at the side that's far wawy from you.
You'd think that *2* dedicated wall grab buttons are enough, but you can also attach to walls by pushing against them.
This is a huge step back from the previous games, this can lead to accidental wall grabs that you didn't want to do.
The game taking control from the player is bad enough, The game taking control from the player and doing something he doesn't want is even worse.
You can't hold B in this section unlike the previous one, you have to mash it until it works.
I'm not gonna beat this dead horse, we all know this is the worst voice for Spidey ever, so let's move on.
Here's another bad design, the locking camera. It just sometimes refuses to lock on the one enemy you're actually trying to lock on.
That's because the game has hierarchy on who to lock on first. Pods are at the bottom of the hierarchy, which are usually the objective of the mission.
Liar.
Alright, say goodbye to the red suit, you won't be seeing it that much anymore.
Optimizing this fight is pretty hard. Venom is dodgy at times, so you have to prey on the cars to hit.
Going melee on him will not work, he's super aggressive when you're close to him.
Holding the suit-change button to immediately change suits.
My goal is to reach level 6 by the time I fight symbiote Wolverine, though level 5 is still okay. Level 7 and beyond are not worth the time to collect the tokens.
There are 2,160 tokens in total. I collected them all in the past, twice.
"Only" 2,000 tokens are required to reach level 11, the highest possible. Once you reach level 10 (after 1,000 tokens), the remaining tokens are marked on the map.
If anyone, over 10 years after the game's release, still thinks webs stick to objects, they need to get their eyes checked.
The game doesn't even try to hide this.
But believe it or not, I don't mind this so much, because it was done to give the player more control and freedom.
4 kills in one throw is really good. I usually only get 2-3.
I honestly wish Luke was not here, he interrupts my combos more often than not.
Throwing the car before the thugs get out of it.
I will only buy some upgrades. Not because I'm tight on points, but because the other moves are useless.
Doing Ground-Pound in the air hits the enemies multiple times, which guarantees a kill on weaker enemies.
AFAIK, this doesn't work on console, don't know why.
To do the fly-kick trick, press jump>kick in sequence. You'll see this in its full potential later in the run.
This one IS possible on console. In fact, it was found by a console player named mattmatt.
The kick move is the same key as web-strike. The fly-kick trick is impossible if there's an enemy nearby.
It's not as fast as spamming swings, but sometimes it's just not worth to drop down to swing.
Mashing start and jump to scroll through the dialogues faster.
A whole mission to teach you how to spider-sense, really?
Trying to hit them both with the car, which rarely works.
I'm changing back to the red suit to enjoy it as much as I can before I go full-black. So I guess the goodbye is delayed for a bit longer.
This "mission" is so asinine. You need to spider-sense 10 enemies.
Not only its existence is stupid, but it's totally luck-based. You pretty much swing around and pray that the game will finally spawn enough enemies.
The drawback of mashing both jump and start is that you inevitably open the pause menu.
In the first practice, you can only web-strike him twice. In the second practice, you can web-strike him 3 times.
Normal web-strikes are simple enough, you press the button right before the impact.
I guess it makes sense the game is teaching you to abort web-strike...
But why do I need to practice this twice?
To counter-counter your enemy, just mash the key to guarantee the hit.
The game doesn't punish you for pressing it in the wrong time. Rather, it only punishes you for *not* pressing it in the *right* timing.
Oh great, more homework! Now I have to web-strike 10 enemies.
Sometimes, the locking camera changes to a different target after a web-strike by its own, even if the previous target is still alive.
Do I even have to explain why this is annoying?
This will be even more annoying later when I have to deal with symbiote pods.
It's possible to chain web-strikes faster than this, but it messes up with my timing and I really don't want to fail this mission.
6*
Reaching the goal before Luke triggers the cutscene with a weird camera angle. hehe
You can still move during the black-out until the missions is loaded.
I assume what most people do is to try to throw the cars. This never worked well for me, so web-strike it is.
I try to come from the side, because it flips the cars and makes them explode immetiately.
If it doesn't work, I can just do another web-strike.
This and the next mission are the only times you're gonna see me doing swing-kicks.
They had to make at least one other mission where swing-kicks are useful.
I cringed too. You're not alone, Luke.
PC version has significantly less enemies than on console in this section.
As you see, swing kick doesn't always kill them.
Epic token miss
Immediately after this mission, I load the auto-save to skip the call from MJ.
Look, I know that guy from IGN sucks at this game, but he's still right about this mission. It's repetitive and boring.
I feel bad for the Wii players that have to do this mission.
Web-strike in my opinion is a bad mechanic that renders the need to approach your enemies manually.
And as demonstrated earlier, there's no risk due to how easy it is to counter-counter your enemies.
Web-zipping here to skip the message that tells me how to... web zip...
This is no different than real QTEs, you just press Y over and over and over without challenge.
I debated whether or not to stop and collect the tokens that are around here, but I ultimately decided against it.
Swinging here to skip another message on how to web zip.
Choosing red means you only watch a cutscene. Choosing black means you have to fight them first. I choose red for obvious reasons.
It takes a while until the game registers your choice.
This is the only red choice I'm making in the run, because I want to go the black path.
In addition to the game counting how many choices you made for each path, there's also an ally-alignment feature.
Ally-alignment determines if you can call "good" or "evil" allies. Choosing a path pins you all the way to the choice you made.
This is why some choices you make later in the run are a bit confusing to the nature of each suit. Most notably, Vulture and Electro.
Ally-alignment can be altered over time by fighting with one suit more than the other. It doesn't affect the story
It's much faster to just fly-kick all the way to Fisk Tower instead of dropping down and spamming swings.
It's also not worth trying to squeeze a few swings, because they're not enough to gather more speed.
Landing directly on the roof to skip a message from the game about... I hoestly don't remember.
Her AI is quite clumsy. If you're unlucky, she may get stuck and take alot of time until she can move again.
I had a few runs dying to her AI struggling to move properly.
Oops
I wish I could just doublejump to align myself better for the token, but pressing jump will make Spidey do a sligshot to the air instead.
(I was just holding the suit change button)
Doing the beatdown move, but with one hit less because it's enough to kill them.
I try to do ground or aerial combos as much as I can. If I'm too far or if I'm on a wall, I'll web-strike instead.
Of course I'll also use Beatdown whenever I can.
lol
lol #2
Yeah, don't do that...
Yes, you're supposed to web-strike then until you reach Cat. Don't do that either.
Oh hey, QTEs! They're much simpler than in Tobey 3.
I'm about to reach Cat's place before Cat, meaning that I have to wait for her.
Choosing red gives you missions from Moon Knight, choosing black gives you missions from Black Cat. I'm choosing black for *two* reasons... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
#1 - The overall choices before the end have to be mostly black path.
#2 - Moon Knight is located somewhere near Time Square/The Daily Bugle.
While some missions are closer to his location, you still have to do the first travle on foot [literally (I mean fly-kick)].
Then there's the Vulture fight, which is much closer to Cat's location.
I made some tests in the past and concluded that Cat's path is faster by around a minute or so, but it's still up for debate.
I have no idea why I can jump here. First time this happened to me.
Every drill is grouped with 2-3 Tech Heavies. If I see that the 3rd guy was damaged, I'll proceed to fight him. If not, I'll go look for another drill.
Turns out I missed another guy that was already damaged. Oh well...
In this mission, all you need to do is to defeat a glider-guy and hope that he's the one to complete the mission. It's purely luck-based.
Sometimes I finish the mission after the first guy.
I let go of the controller already. Once the voice line starts, the game keeps pressing your last input.
Instead of waiting for the bombs, you can simply kill the tech-heavies.
Look on the mini-map for dark-blue dots, these are gliders that carry the heavy guys.
While waiting for the next bomber to spawn, I try to collect as many tokens as I can.
I know the locations for some tokens around here, but there are probably more that I don't know about.
The tanks are very much luck-based. You need to throw cars at them before they hit you with their missles.
Throw as many cars as you can. Once you're out of cars, hit them with melee attacks.
Don't trigger the QTE. It deals no damage and frees them from the stun caused by the car.
...Hello?
I called for Cat's help (hense the "ally mechanic). She helps a bit, though sometimes she (and all other allies) can ruin my combos.
The game is forcing you to do the dodge move before you can hit him.
Hey game, if the only way to make players use your mechanics is to force it on them, perhaps you mechanic is not so good...
Just like every other boss, you spam web-strikes and add aerial/ground combos or use the Beatdown move when you can.
Oh geez, how am I ever gonna be able to reach you? If OnLy I cOuLd FlY...
As stated earlier, this is one of those choices you make just to determine your ally alignment.
You could choose red path, slowly aligning yourself back to the evil allies and call him later.
Fly-kick interrupted by an enemy...
My strategy is to first beat the tech-heavies with beatdown, then charge the special meter by fighting the glider-guys.
This is where the game is starting to lose its appeal to me.
The tech-guys may attack you, but ignore them if they ignore you.
In hindsight, I should've called for Vulture, but neither make much of a difference.
It doesn't matter, but I'll give you the correct answers anyway.
X/Square/Attack - Richard and Mary.
You can't damage Wolverine until the voice lines are over.
X/Square/Attack - Ned something
Correct answers give you more red points. I honestly have no idea what these points even mean.
Hitting the zomb... I mean symbiotes gives you +3 red points for each. Hitting Wolverine instead gives you +10 black points.
Maybe its purpose is to be a tie-breaker in case you made 4 red choices and 4 black choices?
A/X/Jump - Battle World
B/Circle/Web Attacks - Daredevil (Get it? It's a red button and Daredevil is... ah, forget it)
I guess you were supposed to clear the symbiotes up to this point, so they added a second wave...
A/X/Jump - A Mutant
A/X/Jump - Aunt May
I thought I beat him. Turns out he was one hit short. Good thing the symbiotes finished the work for me.
I'm getting tired of typing "symbiotes", so from now on, I'm calling them what they really are - zombies.
I gave Wolverin a hand. Not everyone can overcome a few boxes and barrels.
The problem in this mission is that the locking-camera likes to lock on Wolverine instead of the enemies.
I wonder if there are more tokens I can grab before Wolverine arrives.
You definitely want to call for Vulture over Cat here (Moon Knight over Luke Cage if you're in the red alignment) to deal with all the zombies on the wall.
I gave up on using the locking-camera. I just spam web-strikes instead until I land on something.
I managed to talk to him before he went to wait for me at his usual spot.
Sometimes the game just refuses to spawn zombies at you.
Saving+loading helps to deal with this issue.
Locking camera co-operates! It's a miracle!
You can damage Venom only after the pod is destroyed.
Fun fact: During this cutscene, Spidey is stuck in the state he was before the cutscene started. I unfortunately happened to bee off-camera.
You need to damage him to make him proceed to the next checkpoint.
I was helping him get over these obstacles.
You need to let Venom eat some people (random number every time). A good indication to whether or not you can attack him is if you can web-strike him.
Or if you see that he's starting to attack you...
When you get hit by this weird move, that means you no longer need to damage him until the next checkpoint.
Going to his destination before him to immediately trigger the fight.
what
You see? I havn't killed the pod, yet it changed targets. Good thing i managed to lock-on it easily.
Now you're supposed to destroy 3 pods located in specific locations (the 3rd being in 1 of 2 set spots), but I have a better idea.
Once the pod is destroyed, I save and load to respawn it.
Autosave doesn't count the kill.
Make sure the counter goes up before saving.
You can damage Electro to a certain amount.
You can still hit him after you damaged him enough , he just won't take damage.
I don't know how exactly much you can damage him in every phase.
I attack him whenever he stops to make him keep running sooner.
Definitely dealt the max damage I can now.
I tried to hit them all with this ground-pound.
Now you can deal some more damage to Electro, though there isn't much opportunity right now.
Looks like the Beatdown attack from earlier was all the damage I can deal this time.
Now the actual fight is starting. He's still scripted to warp a certain amount of times, so you can spread the damage around the whole sequence.
Dealt the final damage. Now you just need to do single hits to make him warp to the next spot.
Not exactly all necessary the damage, but enough to change tactics to short hits.
Now the chase is scripted. There's nothing I can do to make him move faster.
This is an excellent opportunity to grab some tokens.
Almost grabbed the token :(
This cutscene is unskippable, unfortunately.
At least you get to see why I hate Black Widow in this game.
Everyone in this cutscene is downright stupid and annoying.
I'm not sure if she's supposed to sound badass or funny. Regardless, she failed in both aspects.
Tendril-Whip, Wall-Smash and fully-upgraded Beatdown are gonna be really broken attacks from this point.
You can load the auto-save immediately, but the time save isn't significant enough in my opinion.
I use this conversation to grab some tokens instead.
In my opinion, it's worth the 5-10 seconds you sacrifice with the conversation.
(Shoutouts to the Tobey soundtrack callback)
This plotline is sooooooo stupid. Because no good genius is available, Spidey wants to break into a prison and free the Tinkerer.
This is stupid and wrong in so many ways
Not to mention that it leads to the worst mission in the game.
This is a very moral choice. I choose Vulture because Moon Knight is an ass that questions Spidey's plan.
I mean, I'm with Moon Knight on this one, but I'm sure Spidey truely ran out of options.
(not really)
Don't jump straight to the control room, you'll skip the trigger for the cutscene.
Here it comes, the worst part in the game...
So far so good, you just web-strike him and ride him to the other room.
You'll have to deal with his rage meter later.
The game decided that Rhino doesn't need priority when it comes to the locking camera, for some reason.
To consistently destroy the generators, try to aim for the corners.
I was super lucky to get them all in one ride.
Sometimes, Rhino bonks into the generators instead of destroying them.
"Maximum Scurity" - When the switch for the lift is out of reach for one person.
I could choose the red path, then aligning myself back to the black side and summon Rhino later, even though he's canonly still in prison.
I just wanted to show the graphical glitch that only appears in the black cutscene.
DO. NOT. SKIP. THIS. CUTSCENE. You end up where the cutscene takes place, away from where you need to be.
Sometimes the cutscene isn't even skippable, it just mutes some audio.
EPIC FALL FAIL (I was trying to land on the marker and talk to her while Spidey is getting up)
This is just an appetiser of what the Tendril-Whip can do, even when not fully-upgraded.
I bet you're expected to chain web-strikes on them, but A) every strike slows down time - and the car with it, and B) - It's just more convenient to approach them on foot.
Took them forever to spawn...
Wall-Smash is also absurdly strong, but it's not as strong on console as it's on PC.
On PC, it's fairly easy to just bring the humans to the caravan, but enemies are way more aggressive on console, putting the caravan in danger.
Yes, I'm still carrying an invisible person.
You can detour from the caravan to collect some tokens, but don't go too far or you reset the mission.
Follow the red arrows and look for nearby tokens.
Oh right, black suit...
I avoid Tendril-Whip and any other attack that slows-down time so the humans won't lag.
You can lose up to 2 humans before failing escort missions. This will lead to some... questionable strats much later in the run.
Better
You can carry the humans yourself to the caravan, but the distance is too short to make any impact.
Once the cops enter the caravan, that's when this wave ends.
...Sir?
This is a really bad spot. The humans comes from inside the neighborhood.
Took me a while to realize I should've carried them myself to the caravan in this situation.
This is just swing speed 5, by the way.
Just like Kingping, the trigger to this mission is very fat. (...I'll see myself out)
You can't attempt to flip the switches until you're clear of enemies.
I was alone for a short time, but another enemy got close to me.
Now that you disabled the generators, you need to immediately enable them again. Yeah alright.
The procedure is exactly the same, only in reverse.
Buuut, the upper generator is attacked by the zombies, so you have to do a small detour before the third generator.
I tried to enable the third generator before the upper one is destroyed, but I had no success so far.
OK Spidey, whatever you do, don't fall of the hover.
FUCK
This is bad, this is so bad, I'm gonna fail the mission!
(Kappa)
The yellow dot is the center of the mini-map, make sure that you (the tiny blue arrow) don't leave its boundries.
Focus on the blue zombies, they are far more aggerssive towards the tech-guys you need to protect.
oh hai cat
Electroling are really annoying to kill. Until you finally manage to web-strike them, they will hit you with electro balls before you can hit them.
One way to bypass this problem is to abort the web-strike and immediately do another.
Alternatively, you can use Beatdown against them if you feel like wasting special meter on them.
Sometimes the electrolings glitch out of existance. In such cases, you should load the latest autosave file.
I think you're supposed to hit the electrolings first, but sometimes I'm able to immediately hit him.
Like now. I have no idea why I can hit him.
Fully-upgraded beatdown deals around half of his healthbar, this is so powerful (and broken)!
This fight went downhill, but I managed to recover, I guess.
So because Electro is an evil ally, he's saved in the black path be passes out in the red path, which to many people feels odd.
Seems like killing the zombies triggers the next phase of the mission, but I'm not entirely sure.
The hovercraft can only carry up to 5 people at a time, but for some reason, you can squeeze dozens of people in the caravans.
It takes time for the zombies to climb to the top of the building and the soldiers can protect themselves for a while.
I use this to munch on more tokens.
If I could only remember the spots of all the tokens around here...
Well, what can I do? Rescuing less people=time save.
Joke's on me, I still need to wait for another cycle.
If you are going for this strat, make sure they don't land on another roof, costing you time as a result.
Also make sure that you don't lose more than 2 people.
I got excellent RNG. In both rescues, I got few enough people for only one cycle.
Just like the previous mission with the hovercrats, I'll ditch them to grab some tokens on the way.
Let me understand, there are now Vulturelings, which are made from Symbiote Vulture, but you can still call Vulture as an ally?
30 Vulturelings is a bit overkill, but I'll take it any time over 15 Electrolings.
I don't know what's the deal with the ghost vulture. perhaps is was spawned inside the building.
Killing or not killing the zombies at the gate doen't change the outcome of the mission.
You need to wait exactly 5 minutes until you can call the aerial forces, regardless of what you do.
I usually detour more to get more tokens, but I'm already level 6.
Eh screw it, I'll brcause why not.
All I did was to push against this wall...
Here, even the game calls them zombies now. Did it happen earlier without me noticing?
I read somewhere that the game started as a "Marvel Zombies" project (can't find the source), maybe it's leftovers from that.
Exactly 5 minutes past and I can finally call for the aerial forces.
And this is swing speed 6. I feel a bit of difference, nothing too major.
Level 6 is important not for the faster swing, but to make the special meter bigger.
Skipping this cutscene glitches out the audio, unfortunately.
On PC, you only need to beat 20 zombies, while on console you need to beat over 30.
Last chance to grab some tokens to get level 6, if you havn't already.
Wolverine killed the 20th zombie.
The visual effect of the web-strike caused the cutscene to look like this.
This long-ass QTE just for 2 buttons.
oh hai rhino
This is what Rhino does as an ally, you just ride him uncontrollably as he randomly slams into enemies.
I guess all other allies behave the same for a reason...
It's very tempting to just jump into the pods ahead, but if you're too far from the bus, it loses health quickly.
Last-last change to get level 6 if you happen to be exactly 1 tokens short.
Game, are you trying to force me to use web-strike again? You know I can just wall climb, right?
Now MJ joins in to "help you", but of course now you need to make sure the zombies don't kill her. Gee MJ, you're so helpful.
Luckily, the fight ends quick enough before anything happens to her.
At this point it doesn't matter which path you choose, but I prefer the ending with Black Cat, so... black it is.
DON'T. SKIP. THIS. CUTSCENE. The game will black out for a long time, in which you have to hold on to your swing or you'll fail the mission.
Oh good, so now that there are  planes around, I have something to anchor my webs on. It's not like I've been cloud-swinging the whole time or anything.
The choice is made for you by the game, depending on how many choices you made for each path.
Red path means you can't use the black suit and vise-versa. Why would I want to give up on the objectively better suit?
I understand this goes well with the "giving in to the dark side" narrative, but gameplay-wise, it's just picking between the weak or the strong suit.
Oh yeah, this cutscene in unskippable.
Reach and destroy the first device before enemies manage to hit you.
For the second and third devices, you need to kill everyone around that might interrupt you.
Especially the red zombies and the flying soldiers.
Fun fact: You can stand on the engine that kills venom in the ending.
So um, you know how I dislike the web-strike mechanic? This is the whole fight.
All you do is dodging his zombies and web strike the next head that pops out.
This is easily one of the worst bossfights in Spider-Man games.
In the first cycle, his heads pop for 9 times. If done right, you're supposed to destroy one head by the end of the cycle.
Coffee break before Venom lets me destroy the remaining heads.
Break is over, time to go back to work.
The second cycle is significantly shorter. If you fail to destroy the remaining heads on first try, Venom takes another break.
Reminder that you can stand on this engine.
Choosing red path because Venom's sacrifice is the only good an emotional plotline in the whole story.
(It's also funny how you can suddenly change back to red suit)
Seriously, this ending is really good!
Look, I don't think this game is bad nor do I hate it, I just... have some issues with it.
Aside for nitpicking the controls, the mission structure is way too repetitive.
And if the game does try to do something different, it's usually even worse. Case in point, riding Rhino.
The only extra content the game provides is tokens and side missions. Side missions, sadly, are just more of the same chores you do in story missions.
It's a shame there arn't any trick races. I'd really like to try them with these amazing swing controls.
For a game that was developed in around a year, Shaba did a good job.
The game is both underrated and overrated at the same time. I get why people like or hate this game.
I'm standing somewhere in the middle, leaning tawrads liking it more than hating it. The swing controls alone give this game alot of points
I still prefer 2, USM and (please don't chase me with torches and pitch forks) 3 over this game, but overall, a good game.
I havn't played Spider-Man games beyond Web Of Shadows, so don't ask me about those.
That's all I have to say. Enjoy the rest of the credits.
