Well, it only took me a regrettable amount of time, but I finally beat all three of the Spider-Man DLCs. I think subconsciously I must have been delaying them for good reason. Don’t get me wrong, Spider-Man was a great game. It was beautifully executed. It was fun, and it provided the right amount of a challenge to make it fun for a casual gamer such as myself.
Insomniac’s latest game is in my top favorite for 2018, but the DLCs were a bit lackluster for lack of a better word.
The main game didn’t have a solid plot, to begin with. While it was fun, campy and brought to life one of my favorite superheroes, it also felt rushed and tried to spread itself too thin by introducing so many supervillains alongside the origin story for Otto.
The DLCs tried to do what the main game did not. It gave us a more in-depth look at Peter’s personal life and some of his relationships. I did a more detailed review for The Heist which you can access here. I did that for good reason because The Heist was by far my favorite. Turf Wars and Silver Lining on the other hand…
The Heist showed us this peek at the fact that Peter is an adult, and he has very adult things to worry about despite his constant attempts to negate everyone from thinking him as such. His humor is stuck in high school, and his lack of general hate for the world as we adults tend to have makes it easy for us to forget that this rendition of Spider-Man is not a teenager. The Heist gave us some exciting content to think about. At this point, Peter has had past lovers, and we are introduced to the concept of Peter becoming a father. Peter reacts to this in a very real way which was something I really enjoyed. He gets scared and angry, and towards the end of the DLC, he even begins to think he might be blessed and favors the idea of becoming a parent. I liked that. I liked The Heist.
The Heist showed us this peek at the fact that Peter is an adult, and he has very adult things to worry about despite his constant attempts to negate everyone from thinking him as such. His humor is stuck in high school, and his lack of general hate for the world as we adults tend to have makes it easy for us to forget that this rendition of Spider-Man is not a teenager. The Heist gave us some exciting content to think about. At this point, Peter has had past lovers, and we are introduced to the concept of Peter becoming a father. Peter reacts to this in a very real way which was something I really enjoyed. He gets scared and angry, and towards the end of the DLC, he even begins to think he might be blessed and favors the idea of becoming a parent. I liked that. I liked The Heist.
Turf Wars and Silver Lining tried to throw too many women into the mixture of Peter’s life. I get that he has a past and probably a long line of complicated exs but neither of the DLCs provided any further insight into Peter’s personality or past. Rather, they felt more like a chore, and the plot lines had me wanting to tear my eyes out.
In Turf Wars, Yuri Watanabe butts heads with Hammerhead and ends up going rogue, angry bitch-cop in order to avenge her fallen comrades. I don’t know how more cliche a plot could possibly be. Is the point of all superhero movies and games to be a cliche as possible?
Peter worries about Yuri while Yuri goes all “dark” and threatens him to stay out of her way. She doesn’t actually do anything. The few encounters you get with her during gameplay, similar to the main game, are the conversations Peter has with her on the phone.
Other than the terrible plot line, Turf Wars offers nothing else new. It’s more of the same brawler combat with one new enemy introduction who I like to call ass hole with shield.
Fighting with these guys kept me more on my toes than prior enemies due to the fact that they can charge towards you with Sable shock tech. Normal webs or web bombs don’t work on direct hits, so it’s either wait for your focus bar to charge, or hit them with a lightning web and move as quickly as possible.
Uninteresting enough, the extra missions added to both Turf Wars and Silver Lining was more Screwball challenges. I don’t like the brawler challenges –which was the majority of her games, but Turf Wars did give me a sneak takedown challenge which was 100% my favorite. I will always prefer the stealth missions above all.
In Silver Lining, Yuri gets put in the corner and Silver Sable shows up with a bug up her ass about her weapons and tech having been stolen by Hammerhead. Okay, I can understand her wanting to be involved in getting her tech back, but how she goes about it is more annoying than anything. Unfortunately, Sable is a poorly written character. Her anger, while justified as Peter later finds out, does nothing to help herself or Peter and instead makes any mission involving her a total facepalm moment.
I get that there are shoot first, ask questions later type characters, but Sable was quite ridiculous.
The new enemy for Silver Lining’s DLC was not simply a new ass hole with a new weapon, but rather the game directors gave everyone super suits robotic suits. Upon first seeing these men, I was half tempted to turn the console off and walk away, but thankfully they weren’t that bad to deal with.
In actuality, it seemed that Silver Lining was really the cap of what more they could introduce to make the game a bit more challenging in progressive steps.
There was a lot of things I wanted from these games but to be fair in the end it still is just a superhero game and superhero content doesn’t have to be as in-depth and thought-provoking as I want it to be. But I still want it……
So did any of you enjoy the DLCs? Which ones were your favorites if any?