Game Talk: Building a Better Spider-Man game

I don't know if I have said this before but Spider-Man is my all-time favorite hero/superhero of any genre ever in the history of eternity; I resonate with his personality and struggles and I think he has a really cool and unique power set. Now that I've gotten that out of the way I get can to what I really want to talk about; Spider-Man games are awful and in like the million times he has been in gaming he has only had 1 fun game ( Spider-Man 2 The Movie) and I think it's high time I give some help to the powers that be on how to make a worthy Spider-Man game.

Step 1: NO MORE ORIGINAL STORYLINES

No, no more damn symbiotes. He has other villians

This may sound stupid as I am saying that I do not want an original story but hear me out. Spider-Man has been in print for over 60 years and has a ton of stories so why pass up the opportunity to adapt some of his best stuff in lieu of another symbiote storyline or some half baked time travel element? Why not adapt the early years of Spider-Man's career into a game? Start from when he gets his powers, introduce his iconic rogues ( Sinister Six members), and then have the finale be an epic battle against all 6 forcing us to use all the skills we have acquired throughout the course of the game? That could cover the formative years of  Spider-Man and then you could just build on that for the sequel. It's not a super flushed out idea but it's better than the stuff we've been getting, " Oh let's have a symbiote infection situation and have everyone become like Venom".....horrible.

Step 2: REMEMBER WHO HE IS

A big part of Spider-Man is that he is always making quips, mostly to hide how scared he is but also to throw his enemies off balance. This has been missing from pretty much every Spider-Man game, I mean yeah he says stuff but they aren't funny and are often just generic phrases and have almost nothing to do with what is actually happening at the moment. Developers need to remember that this is a Spider-Man game and he is not like other heroes so he shouldn't play like other heroes; I should be able to tell that I am playing a Spider-Man game and not simply a game that has Spider-Man as the main character. If you have played any of the Arkham series games then you know what I mean by the previous sentence, you know full well that you are Batman and that you are in his world; everything from the music to the design and music reinforces that fact, you never once feel like you aren't Batman and that is what Spider-Man games have been sorely missing. Speaking of Arkham....

system from the Arkham series but that's not what I mean by learning from them. The reason why Rocksteady has produced better games is because they followed the advice I stated in the previous paragraph; they understood what makes Batman, Batman and how to create a world around that very idea. Beenox and other future developers of Spider-Man should not just copy n' paste the formula from Rocksteady because

Step 3: LEARN FROM ROCKSTEADY'S GAME

We interrupt this Batman game to bring you Spider-Man's spidey sense

I am aware that the recent Beenox games based of Amazing Spider-Man have pretty much copied the battle system from the Arkham series but  IT DOES NOT WORK FOR SPIDER-MAN,  what does work is seeing how they made Batman look like a freaking monster because they understood his capabilities ( I mean look at that FreeFlow Combat System...so satisfying). Spider-Man has some pretty awesome abilities but they have never been fully realized, I should be able to move around the city with the greatest of ease and dodge bullets and fists  like bill collectors and yet I found myself having to retreat from fights in The Amazing Spider-Man just to catch my breath; that should not happen in a Spider-Man game against some non boss characters. That doesn't make me feel like a man who has reflexes 10 times that of a human and could take out a group of superpowered baddies in seconds....not even close. Understand your character, build around your character, make me feel like I am a freaking superhero. Also, populate the damn city with some personality, the people never have any life in them and are just these plastic assortment of polygon's that I occasionally need to take to the hospital....that is a waste of my spider powers.

Step 4: REDO THE SKILL PROGRESSION

See those skills on the left? Replace them with strength,reflex,spidey sense,agility and durability

There's this game called Crackdown that came out for the Xbox 360 in like 2007 or something and it was super fun; you could blow up a bunch of stuff, defeat mob bosses, punch freaks...all good stuff but the best thing about that game was it's leveling system. In Crackdown you got to level up skills by either using that skill for extended period of time ( getting into fights would increase strength, weapon kills would improve accuracy and damage, etc..) or by collecting orbs, especially those agility orbs, and it was fun...this is what Spider-Man games should do. Imagine the possibilities of a system like that, you could have a lvl 1 spidey sense that slows down time for like a sec and by the time it's at lvl 4 it slows down time, shows you hidden enemies, auto counters non boss enemies and allows you to dodge super fast gunfire or something...you get what I mean right? I get so sick of the " punch people to get xp and unlock moves" formula because that means I have to fight a lot and the combat system is usually crap and that makes the whole thing more a chore than a reward, but if they went the Crackdown route I would get every ability because I spent hours jumping on rooftops in Crackdown trying to collect every agility orb I could. Oh yeah the combat system needs to do away with the light/heavy moves and realize that Spider-Man is light on his feet and heavy with his hits, I should never slow down to perform a move as him....ever...unless I'm like stuck or something idk.

In Summation

Spider-Man is my favorite hero and he should be wizard in videogames given all his powers, but this has not been the case and I am tired of crappy Spider-Man games. Developers need to realize that there is more to a Spider-Man game than just different costumes and wall crawling ( like decent voice acting..ugh just thinking of Web of Shadows angers me). Look at how Rocksteady took the time to craft a Batman game and look at the result of that, shouldn't you want the same for your game? Then quit messing around and give us an awesome Spider-Man game, we have been waiting since 2004...haven't we been patient enough?

 Feel free to add comments on to what you would like to see from a future Spider-Man game