Some the captions here are taken from a different run.
Punch-Kick-Punch for maximum damage.
Another Punch-Kick-Punch combo, but the first punch misses.
Finishing with a third Punch-Kick-Punch combo.
If you mash fast enough, you skip the flee animation and can hit him immediately.
In case the last combo doesn't beat him, you can squeeze one last hit with another combo.
You wallrun by TAPPING the grab button instead of holding it.
This wallrun+wall jump saves ~3 seconds.
Web zips are pretty powerful, but it's still faster to swing whenever you can.
If you hit boost (punch) and let go of swing with perfect timing, you get massive boost.
Combine them with double jumps to gain even more boost.
I also hold climb (kick) all the time for smoother swings.
If you play with a controller with the default control layout like me, this method of swinging makes your thumb really busy.
(Punch for swag)
Stay close to Shocker to make him shoot faster. If he rolls, he will shoot even faster.
Tying them all fast enough to skip the message box.
Knocking this guy to the invisible wall (out of bounds) to automatically kill him.
Point Spidey and the camera to the West to make him look that way in the transition.
I'll explain combat in detail later during the combat tour.
I'll use this race to point a few things.
Web-zips are useful to slingshot yourself upwards. If you need to gain some hight, do it by dropping down a bit before you web-zip.
Unlike any other major Spidey game, this is the only one that wall crawling isn't affected by the camera.
Up will always make you go up, right to the right and so on.
The only other game I know that does that is the PS2 version of Spider-Man 3.
There are also the PS1 games and the first Movie game, but the first 2 don't have camera controls and the latter has limited camera controls.
People often criticize this game for being "a dumbed-down version of SM2".
I agree with that to some degree, but I also think the devs created content that compliments these controls very well.
For example, the races. They are so fun to play, dare I say more than the actual story.
The people that do praise this game often praise the story, graphics and everything else that is not gameplay.
Except for NickonAquaMagna (called Nick on Planet Ripple these days), this guy actually looks at the gameplay. Nick, you're awesome.
Look North-West at the last checkpoint to point the camera to where you need to go.
Enter this race quick enough to skip a message box (it's about city goals).
Here I'm doing a move called "Swing Cancel". I interrupt Spidey from shooting a web by double jumping.
This allows me to keep the momentum from the leap.
I only collect Comic Book Tokens to avoid more message boxes.
It also makes it easier to keep count.
This city event is far from ideal. Gang wars are okay if they come in smaller numbers.
In total, you need 17 tokens, 6 race medals (including the Johnny race), 5 combat tours (including the tutorial) and 20 random city events.
Here I'm about to do a death warp to my destination.
Depending on where Spidey dies, you spawn in either Peter's house, The Daily Bugle or Empire State University.
Make sure to point Spidey at this angle to have the camera point at this direction when respawning.
Now I can web-zip foward to the marker.
Chaining multiple attacks in the air boosts Venom's Hulk-jumps a bit for every attack.
The downside of this is that it's harder to steer Venom in the air, so I avoid attacking when doing precise jumps.
No, my profile pic!
Venom has 3 attacking moves: one is tentacles that deal [1] damage, have great range and and have a 5-hit combo.
The other is punches/claws, they deal double damage but have smaller range and have a 3-hit combo.
There are also jump attacks that deal the same damage as claws.
Mash the grab button to throw the bike quicker.
Jumping to this spot for the upcoming infinite stun.
Chaining 3 tentacles+2 punches while Wolverine is pushed against the wall keeps him stunned forever.
Note that there are also different attacks with the grab button, but they all have long animations for mediocre damage, so they are ignored with one exception.
Losing the mashing test on purpose.
(Pretend I got ultimate medal)
When entering combat tours, you can already move before the message box appears.
Spidey keeps stacking damage for every hit by altering punch-kick-punch-... combos AND by constantly changing targets.
Morever, you can do extra damage on the first hit if you hold the direction key towards another target before the first hit lands ("early stacking").
When the punch-kick... combo is done, you can finish with wall bounces or web attacks that keep the damage stacked so far.
Spidey is often depicted to switch between enemies and different styles in fights.
The developers did an amazing job conveying Spidey's style through gameplay.
I like this combat style alot. Instead of learning patterns that end up as mashing fest, you only need to know the rules to get maximum potential.
The lack of a dodge button is a bit of a bummer, but I can live without that.
Completing city goals, such as collecting tokens and completing races, seems to spawn random city events more frequently.
For that reason, my route spreads city goals throughout the whole story.
(Sometimes the bag despawns, causing the event impossible to complete)
Short message means it's only a civilian diver and not a gang car.
Cars have either 10 or 20 HP.
Grabbing the pedestrian in the air to skip the grabbing animation.
Well-timed web-zip+double jump allows you to clear this gap with an ease.
The boost from the swing allows me to reach this spot before the small cutscene starts.
Rhino rams into the thugs at random. Sometimes he hits them all, sometimes none.
You have to lure him into the cement floor with 2 punches.
Attemping to lure him with one punch will bore him and he will run back to the container.
Don't jump on Rhino's back immediately. Jump only when he charges his second punch.
This allows you squeeze 5-6 additional hits per cycle.
Grab the nearest wall to you, it skips some animations Rhino does before the next cycle.
Don't jump off his back, just take the hit. There's a slight chance you'll get to stay on his back for longer.
In rare cases, you won't from his back at all, allowing you to finish the fight in that cycle.
Rhino has 61 HP. You need to deal at least 49 damage before the 4th and final cycle.
That's because Rhino's behavior changes and doesn't allow you to extend your combo.
For the final cycle, stand far away from him to skip the roaring animation.
In the final cycle, you can only hit him up to 11 or 12 times, depending on how fast you mash.
Shocker blocks most of your regular attacks, chain wall bounces to bypass that.
In this mission you need to kill a certain amount of soldiers in each area.
In this area, you need to kill 9 soldiers.
9 soldiers here.
12 here.
I usually lose count from this area onwards. I just keep fighting until the arrow appears.
Throwing cars with the soldiers still inside make tham all count as kills.
Each area from here on requires either 14 or 15 kills.
Soldiers from the previous area do not count as kills for the next one.
Soldiers in eah area count as kills even if the arrow still appear.
I either chain tentacle attacks or jump attack for maximum efficiency.
It's worth noting that killing soldiers with claw attacks make them despawn slower than with tentacles.
If you're doing this mission efficiently, you don't have to feed on soldiers.
When entering combat tours, I always move the camera behind Spidey's back. Otherwise, he may jump to where to camera was pointing to before the transition.
You can only enter 2 combat tours of each gang (except this gang, which you can only enter 1 of their tours).
Once you reach the max number of tours for a gang, the rest disappear until you unlock the next set of combat tours.
We avoid the Mei Hua Bang gang tours all around, since they're far away and are brutally powerful.
Wall bounces+punch-kick-punch-kick+2 wall bounces is the combo I use aginast him.
Alternatively, you can also do 2 punch-kick-punch-kick combos, but Venom tends to attack between the combos.
Venom becomes invulnerable after he loses 25% of his health.
You also need to back off before you get stunned by your spider-sense.
I used to do a combat tour right after this fight, but I made some changes to the route.
With the old route, I prepared a death warp between the combat tour and this race.
Now I simply swing back to Queen's to complete the city events in that area.
I'm doing that to avoid unwanted events on this side of the city, such as hospital carries that take you far away from your destination.
Falling people is the 2nd best city event after single thugs.
Hospital carries are fine on this side of the map since everything is so close to each other.
Now I'm doing a save warp. Depending on where you are in the story, loading save files spawn you in different location of the city (same locations as in death warps).
This is the only useful save warp in the run.
This combat tour ends far away from where I need to be, but again, I can just save warp.
I should've picked this event. Even thogh it's double hospital carry, The hospital is very close to this place.
You don't have to tie thugs that fall off a building. (let's face it, Spidey just murdered these guys)
There's a high chance that the game will crash after this save warp. Luckily, it didn't happen.
The first proper chase of the game. Electro moves faster the closer you are to him.
It's possible to manipulate Electro to skip his burst animation.
I'm yet to figure a guaranteed setup for that, but what I'm doing is to reach a stopping spot before him and spam attacks.
Each skip saves around 7 seconds.
This is where beginners usually fail the chase. just drop down slowly, then jump to the building to the west.
Skipping a burst at this spot usually guarantees a skip in the next spot.
Unfortunately, I got neither skips.
4 skips is okay, but I aim to get at least 5 nowdays.
I did not realize I missed the orange sign.
I want to destroy all 8 signs before the next phase for better convenience.
Some runners like to keep the last sign right before this phase ends. I don't.
This sign has a weird hitbox. Aim to the wall that it's attached to for higher success rate.
Throw a car at him when he stops moving.
Try to knock him into the exploding car for more damage.
Throwing a car at him when he burst is a risk worth taking.
The fight dragged for longer than I'd like. The longer the fight goes on, the dodgier he becomes.
Until now, this race was affected by an obstacle right inside the sphere checkpoint because of the damage Rhino caused.
It is gone once you finish the Electro Mission.
You can web-zip on the top of the tunnel. You have to visualize its shape in your head.
Avoid hitting Bettle. This will only slow him down.
There's a glitch that causes Beetle to go super slow. If that happens, either wait until he moves fast again, reset the mission or reset the run.
Beetle busts through the windows in the 4th row above the platform-thingy.
Web-zip and double jump in a way you hit the ceiling to drop faster.
Stay behind him to make sure he continues to move. If you outrun him, he will wait for you next to this alley.
Same as previously, stay behind Beetle to make sure he moves on.
Do air attacks to push him into the roof then do as many wall bounces as you can.
Wall bounces deal more damage than air attacks.
If possible, use regular punch-kick... combos for more damage.
Once Beetle his this amount of health, the fight is over. Wait for him to run away afterwards.
This is the final combat tour in the run.
This tour ends right next to the bridge. That's good because I want to do the city events across the other side.
You can only hit Sable 3 times in a row. Then you need to let her stand up and make a move before you can hit her again.
Mashing really hard to chain those jump attacks.
You can do 3 punches instead, but I find it tricky to do right.
I'm throwing cars at her for the chance she gets hurt by the explosion.
If you keep hitting her right after she's knocked back, she'll just stay invulnerable for longer.
In this runaway section, you need to kill some soldiers until the game tells you to go to the next area.
If you die anywhere in the runaway, you have to start it all over again.
There's a theory the game despawns soldiers by killing them. Manipulating that somehow will save alot of time.
It's worth noting that pedestrians give more more health than soldiers.
Stangely enough, I didn't get any helicopters here, except in the beginning.
Helicopters despawn before I get the chance to destroy them myself.
Helicopters are destroyed either by a single car or by 5 jump attacks.
Now the S.H.I.E.L.D. hellicarier joins the haunt. Avoid the missles that deal tons of damage.
Final race in the run.
Notice how after the final race required for the story, you get a message that tells you about rematching Johnny.
This is a clever design by the devs to make sure you don't miss the rematch.
Also worth mentioning is that I avoid collecting the 17th token until after this mission.
People often fail to dodge the fireballs. Just jump sideways right before the ball is about to hit you.
If you're fast enough, you'll end lifting the last sign before Goblin throws at you fire balls again.
It's possible you end this fight in 4 cycles (2 for each phase).
Getting hit between cycles makes him stop and laugh, extending the cycle a bit more.
The grab animation cancels the knock-back, allowing you to immediately hit him.
Do punch-kick-punch-kick-punch+wall bounces and repeat.
Sometimes, you can keep stacking damage in the 2nd combo. I'm not sure what causes that.
I barely managed to finish him in the next cycle right before he set himself on fire again, thanks to over-stacking.
Unfortunately, this means I cannot perform the half-cycle trick. There's link in the description for example.
Here you really want to avoid his attacks, because the cycle resets if you get hit.
Managed to get over-stacking again, which means I can finish the fight in just 4 cycles.
The standard fight takes 5.5 cycles. 3.5 cycles is possible in theory, though not done yet.
Collecting the 17th (and final) token immediately to trigger the remaining city events to appear faster.
Done with all city goals at last.
Beetle waits for you in several spots to keep luring you to his trap (bad decision by him).
This specific movement allows me to manipulate his movement as well.
Otherwise, he waits for me a bit higher here, forcing me to jump towards him before jumping to the left.
Once Beetle reaches this amount of health, he'll move around, tossing grenades until the next phase starts.
Grabbing this forklift before the cutscene starts.
...Which carries on to the next phase. It usually missed him, but not this time.
Another clever design by the devs. Since you're already done with all city goals, you're encouraged to rush to the next story mission.
There arn't buildings tall enough on the other side of the bridge, so I'm doing a setup for the coming death warp to Queen's.
The bridge is high enough to drop the final health needed.
This is the only remaining death warp to Queen's with the current route.
Sable can only be hit twice in a row before she starts to block your attacks. Let her charge at you 3 times or hide behind a car and wait for her to charge at you.
I keep the soldiers alive so I can hit her with stacked damage.
Like that.
Hitting her any further will make her heal until beat the new soldiers.
Could you please...
Since you don't have web shooters, you can't swing, therefore you can't do swing cancels.
This wallrun+jump is a bit tricky, but once you know how to do it, you'll nail it more often than not.
On the 2nd and 3rd mashing bars, don't mash too hard. Keep the arrow around the middle of the green part.
Final chase, skip ahead to 58:45 or read what I have to say.
The game has much more depth than people realize - both in movement and combat.
The game has an "easy to learn - hard to master" approach, with accessible control schemes that take skill to fully utilize.
Some of depth is intentional, some depth is from exploits and unintentional stuff.
Movement is basic and fluent for beginners, but advanced players can challenge themselves with boosts and precise jumps.
Spidey's combat style involves planning ahead and good reaction to deal optimal damage to enemies.
Venom's combat style involves trying to group as many enemies together and using his different attacks for either better range or higher damage.
I don't like the chases very much, but at least YOU determine how long they last, depending on your skills.
They're also very convenient for reading donations ;)
Bosses are pretty "meh", but the Venom fights are all really good.
I'm not a fan of combat tours in this game, especially Mei Hua Bang. This gang is just cheap.
People often criticize this game for being very short. The current world record for Spider-Man 2 is under an hour, just saying.
...Which probably says more about me than the game...
There's less variety in content than its predecessor, but the content that does exist is focused and well designed for the most part.
I wouldn't mind having more costumes though. There are only 4 different costumes with 2 slight variations of existing ones.
Another thing is that, with the exception of Arachno-Man, all costumes are models that already exist for the story.
Do punch-kick-punch-kick-punch with jump attacks and back off.
Once Venom finishes his 3-hit combo, you can attack him again.
Lure Venom next to walls or cars so you can finish your combos with wall bounces.
If you stay close to him for too long, your spider-sense will stun you.
Spine-breaking (claws/tantacles+grab) doesn't deal much damage, but it skips Carnage's burst animation.
Normally, Carnaged is knocked after 4 hits, so plan your combos accordingly.
If I can chain jump attacks in sequence, I'll ignore the animation skip.
Once Carnage reaches this amount of health, he will burst again and proceed to the next room.
You know, it's really dumb that you can't feed on Carnage, but that's exactly what happens in the cutscene once he's defeated.
When game mechanics and story clash with each other...
Oh yeah, mash really fast so he heals less.
I avoid spine-breaks unless I know for sure I won't grab a guard by accident.
2nd phase already done.
Hitting him before he enters the next room to get the "early kill".
In the last room, when Carnage loses half of his full health, he will flee in an attempt to heal himself.
Since he doesn't have half health to lose, he will never flee from you.
Taking damage deliberately to make him jump to the helicopter immediately.
Do a combo and hide where I do.
I'm luring him to attack me so his behavior isn't messed up.
If he roars without attacking, he will immediately hit you the next time you approach him.
I may have missed the sub minute, but I got a much cooler time if you ask me.
In general, IGT in unreliable, but I like to check it anyway.
Thanks for watching. Cya, don't die (Clappy)
