HA! I finished it!

[JasonPratt]

Finished the campaign for Amazing Spider-man 2 last night -- thought I'd be able to finish it over Thanksgiving weekend, but there were some Decisive delays for other Campaigns that... okay, I can't figure out how to fit Barbarossa in my wit there, so moving on...

At first I didn't understand the level of hate this game has received; by the end I did, but not the degree of hate. There's nothing wrong with the game at all. Even the arguably worst design decision, forcing Spidey to scramble around doing side missions or be constantly harassed and playing at a penalty, must have seemed good on paper, and might have still worked had it been toned down a bit: after all, crimes don't sit around in perpetuity, eventually the crime 'happens'! The problem is the J Jonah Jameson effect, where if a crime expires then Spiderman's public image takes a hit. Had that hit been toned down a lot, the system could have worked for its purpose yet been less annoying. As it was, once this system plops into place in chapter 2, I realized I might as well forget actively trying to pick up the floating comic pages to collect and read some classic Spidey issues, or trying to get photo ops (which open up text sideplots that tease other things happening) but I eventually found a way to balance this game motivation with moving the main plot along: I would zip around doing maybe 8 side missions to max my reputation up (and max my suit benefits), and then rush madly across the city from main to main mission, occasionally stopping to do a side mission or two when a bunch of them expire all at once. 

Even now that the game is over, I can't leisurely swing around the city doing whatever I want, which means if the nieces want to play Spiderman they'll have to stick with Amazing1 (on the PS3), which is fine I guess, though the city looks a little better here.

Common gripe 2: the control system is broken, because now you have to swing with both hands and actually be near places you can web to. But in practice I found that doesn't matter much: in most places you can still easily swing with one hand (now left or right whichever you're more comfortable with), and the previous game already had instituted the rule that you've got to be within a certain height and/or near buildings to swing. So that really hadn't changed any. And people have been complaining about skyhook webbing since the sainted Spiderman 2 (the movie adaptation, not the previous Spiderman 2 from the same developers which few people remember), despite this also not actually being true in the previous sandbox Spidey game Web of Fear. (A truly epic game, by the way; but the real control problem there was fiddly webbing mechanics for web-zipping and wall running/crawling, not swinging. The devs have long since solved the web-zipping problem, and wall running. Still some problems getting Spidey to recognize he ought to stick to a wall now, but the devs did try to Gerry-rig a way around that in Amazing 2 by allowing the player to y-button onto a wall manually rather than wait for the computer code to decide.)

Common gripe 3: bugs in the game. I never ran into any. Not sure whether that's thanks to a lot of previous patching, or because the problem was rather poor code optimization and my system is beefy enough not to be bothered by that.

Common gripe 4: combat is too samey all game long. This I have to agree with, and the forced focus on side missions doesn't help. There are about five common enemies the whole game, two or three of which only unlock toward the end, and the only notable common enemies are actually expies of some of the bosses (or maybe vice versa, some of the bosses). The boss fights are almost uniformly uninspired and, by virtue of the problem I just mentioned, terrible for feeling like more of the same. Amazing 1 had great boss fights and much more mission variety in the main plotline. This was clearly a step backward. I suspect the common theory of the game being rushed to market for the Amazing 2 movie, is correct.

Common gripe 5: the story is too disconnected from the movie(s), and also from Am1 (which I thought was a great sequel to the first Amazing movie, rather better than the movie if anything), and doesn't stand up well on its own merits. Well, after the imaginative previous game I can understand the sentiment, but under the circumstances I thought technically the writers did a serviceable job providing a legitimate sequel to the previous game and also an alternate version of the movie's story. If anything, despite their minimal plot-time, I thought the Goblin and Electro characters were written (and for Harry Osborne even performed) somewhat better than in the movie. Gwen is completely missing (only mentioned in passing), which highlights the impression that the devs were working on their own sequel when forced to incorporate some chunks of movie plot, and yet quite a number of movie plot beats are integrated into a game that's more about Kingpin, Kraven, Carnage, and the Black Cat. (The Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, has a dreadful voice actor; the last time his character appeared in this series, back in Web of Fear, the mighty Kurgan / Lex Luthor himself, Clancy Brown, did the honors, so admittedly anyone would be a step down -- hell even Vincent D'onofrio in the live-action Netflix show was a step down from that! This makes the dreadful voice design and dodge performace stand out more by contrast, although I'll give whoever was trying it props for doing the best he could. It was decently written, too.) The Kraven side of the story was one of the best I've seen from that character, and definitely the best version of Kraven I've seen in a video-game so far. Heck, the writers even tied up a dangling plotline that the movie writers flat-out abandoned, and introduced the game's plot by virtue of finding Uncle Ben's killer! The Spider-wit was reasonably good, too, although hearing the same combat quips so often (sometimes activated during boss fights when they made little to no sense), started to quickly grate -- but to my surprise, the writers doled out new quips into the random rotation as the game went along, and I appreciated that.

Admittedly, despite the city sandbox gfx being noticeably better than Amazing 1, I'd still rank this lower than some earlier entries: Am1 and WebFear (despite its age) both vie for top place in my experience, with Shattered Dimensions landing a strong second place (for its mission design and story variety). But I went in with fairly low expectations, just wanting a reasonable story excuse for more Am1 gameplay, and I got enough of that to justify, for me, the still-pretty-steep Thanksgiving sale price. I'd recommend those other games first (probably in order of release: WebFear, Shattered, Am1), but I wouldn't dis-recommend this one.

[Anguille]

I've finished two campaigns of Armada 2526 Supernova during my field trip to Cuba....

Both games were with the humans and the 12 races scenario:

- First game as number 2 (loss)

- Second game as number 1 (victory) with 2'303'819 points

[Rayfer]

I've finished two campaigns of Armada 2526 Supernova during my field trip to Cuba....

Both games were with the humans and the 12 races scenario:

- First game as number 2 (loss)

- Second game as number 1 (victory) with 2'303'819 points

Well done! It's a game I keep going back to from time to time. You got me thinking of doing it again.

[BanzaiCat]

- Second game as number 1 (victory) with 2'303'819 points

Do your commas have helium in them? ;)

[Anguille]

- Second game as number 1 (victory) with 2'303'819 points

Do your commas have helium in them? ;)

Lol...it's way it's written in french....

[BanzaiCat]

I figured...I was just giving you a hard time.  ;D

[Anguille]

I've finished two campaigns of Armada 2526 Supernova during my field trip to Cuba....

Both games were with the humans and the 12 races scenario:

- First game as number 2 (loss)

- Second game as number 1 (victory) with 2'303'819 points

Well done! It's a game I keep going back to from time to time. You got me thinking of doing it again.

It's a classic...so well done. It's an evergreen.

[Con]

Ha I finally got my decisive victory as the Germans for the Elsborne Scenario in Command Ops 2.

This has been my white whale.  I must have played this scenario either in parts or to conclusion over 20 times.  Its a ball buster of a operation with many moving parts that require precise timing.  I had to make it a bit easier for me by giving better supply and reinforcements to the Axis.  I also reviewed a great CO2 player Daz's notes and strategies to see how he did.  No two games are alike with too many variables so someone else's strategy may or may not work for you.  Lastly I found out that the reason I was not getting a decisive victory was the different objectives for the Allies versus the Axis.  I didn't take the village of Elsborne because it was not an objective for me and I was not going to throw away my troops lives (and give enemy additional points for destroying my troops) for no objective points.  Turns out that I need to take the village to deny enough points to the US or there is no way to get better than a marginal victory.  Only way to find that out was by playing as the US and reviewing the objectives carefully. 

[MetalDog]

Awesome, Con!  I always love the feeling you get from victories like that.

[Sir Slash]

Congrats Con on the big win.  O0

[JasonPratt]

And so, an epoch finally ends (maybe?) The final Arkham Knight DLC was released in time for Christmas, which will mark the final material for the series (unless someone other than Rocksteady picks up the baton, the obvious candidate being the team which developed Arkham: Origins and as it turns out did most of the work on Arkham Knight -- or so Rocksteady blamed for the bugginess.  ::) But aside from the bugs endemic to both games, the team did fine on stories and in expanding the gameplay.)

Unlike previous DLC, these four entries are provided as side missions in the game itself -- essentially cutting out fan favorites to provide something extra to sell later.  But whatever.

I shall rate them objectively, in ascending order, according to how I objectively felt about them.  ;D

1.) Killer Croc: it was great to finally have an actual fight with Croc in a more mutated form! The first and second games (in production order) teased this fruitlessly, Croc's mission in the original Arkham Asylum being instead arguably the most annoying low point of the whole game. In City he shows up for a brief cameo if you're lucky -- I think I played the first time without seeing him at all -- just to say, entirely out of character, "I don't have to fight you because you're going to die anyway, cya," or words to that effect. Origins starts with him as the first boss, but he isn't fully Croc yet, so it's more of a clear match. This game not only provides a match against a fully mutated Croc (with Nightwing's help), but explains why his mutation continues to get worse. Which I won't spoil, but if it isn't comics-canon yet it ought to be. Also, the "Iron Heights" superprison in Bludhaven (Nightwing's haunt) is given a brilliantly literal interpretation quite fitting for this series' style.

The downside is that Croc's fight is kept to the end of a mission that barely features him at all (instead of an epic battle of inventive wits against his various powers) fully half of which involves rescuing some guards not even in the 'mission area' anymore, and one of them has nothing to do because it's too late to rescue him. Also Croc is given a fairly shallow story (though the writers do what they can with it in his characterization), that even with its lack of depth hints at things apparently coming which don't show up at all. Maybe that's a setup for something to do in a sequel when-if-ever.


Any of the missions can be chosen to start in any order once they unlock -- I don't know when they unlock during a normal playthrough, as I had already beaten the game, although the captured foes are given their own post-ending dialogues which are clearly separate from their usual ending dialogue options, and which seem clearly to 'trigger' like the others if the game is already 'over'. (I won't spoil details on this just in case.) But anyway, I chose the Croc mission first because I wanted to save the last two for last, and as it happens 'leaving' the Croc mission segues directly into an opportunity to start:

2.) The Mad Hatter: He's still looking for someone to be his "Alice", and this story sort-of completes an arc that developed schizophrenically out of order in game production (fittingly enough) where he has chosen Batman to be his new and bestest "Alice". Which plans involve dressing him up and giving him a wig. Which given the psycho-sexual mind-raping theme of the villain (hit quite hard in the third game, the first in continuity, Origins), amps up the threat to even ickier levels.

The plot this goal is aiming for, however, doesn't seem to fit the claimed end-result, which makes me wonder if there were multiple writers on this little side mission and if they were on quite the same page. It's a clever enough plot I won't spoil its details, but it involves Tetch voluntarily surrendering to police custody in an attempt to get Batman to kill a police officer; and it adds a further bit of functionality to the twin-stick hacking device Batman has been using since the first produced game. Also, the finale trades on the gonzo dream imagery familiar from previous Scarecrow or Hatter missions (in Asylum and Origins respectively -- filled by the Ra's mission in City, and not as well), but not in nearly such epic fashions (even compared to the Ra's entry). That's my main complaint about the mission, and that it doesn't feature even as much of a resolution as the Croc one. (Spoiler: Batman powers through and punches Tetch again.) Still, the writing was much better that with the Croc mission, and the gameplay a little more varied. And those pop-up book sets with the attendant artwork, man that was great!


I could have gone with either of the next two next, but I chose:

3.) Mister Freeze: surprisingly, this turned out to be a mission based entirely on various kinds of fights against the Arkham Knight's militia -- except without comments from either the Knight or his out-of-nowhere replacement, whom I won't spoil in case. Which to be fair made sense, since this was post-game during the cleanup before the big finale. I couldn't help but wonder if either or both of them had special dialogue for this mission that I was missing by being post-game. Certainly, when I was going into a Freeze mission, I wasn't expecting to fight in two predator stalks, a brawl, and a tank battle against the occupying militia! The basic plot's as thin as ice, too (groan): the bad guys (Scarecrow et al) have kidnapped Nora to try to blackmail Freeze into helping them fight Batman.

So why am I rating this next to best? To explain why, I'd have to spoil how the story turns out. Which I don't want to ruin, although I'll say it involves Freeze finally teaming up with Batman to save the city (and Nora). This is the side story with the most closure out of the four.

Moreso actually than the one I'm rating highest:

4.) Ra's Al Ghul: I trust I'm not spoiling things with this since HE'S PROMINENTLY FEATURED IN THE ART AND DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE DLC!  ::) But this mission ties up what happened to him and his body after the end of City. As expected, his followers Lazarus'd him. (Although I can't recall why he would have such a headwound, from what I remember.) Unexpectedly, they didn't Lazarus up his daughter Talia, which I was fully expecting, but I don't want to ruin the continuity squee for who's leading the civil war rebellion among the League over not... well, I don't want to spoil too much. This mission had generally the best fights of the four, and also the most extensive use of gadgets to progress. It also features a truly twisting moral dilemma at the climax -- which reminds me that I want to check Youtube soon for videos showing the other possible ending. My one complaint is that its ending (or the one I chose anyway!) doesn't have as solid a closure as Freeze's story, but then again it could be setting up sequel material for when-if-ever.

[Bison]

So you finished the game?

[JasonPratt]

I've beat the main game twice (once on the harder New Game +, just to see if it changed much of anything -- aside from the opening cinematic, it didn't); and all the DLC missions now.

[BanzaiCat]

So you finished the game?

;D

[Jarhead0331]

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. First game I've finished in years. Absolutely fantastic campaign experience.