I like this game a lot. I'm about 35% of the way through the story, but I have some thoughts on the game systems and controls.
I like the swing system a lot more than I thought I would. It's a lot of fun and still has a sense of speed. The speed just feels different than past Spider-Man games. I think it has to do with the closer camera and seeing things at street level move really fast in a real blur, not the blur effect that*past games had.
This is also the first Spidey game where I really felt gravity as a constant force. Falling off buildings is a lot of fun, and you really feel some of the weight of Spider-Man as he swings. I can feel him kick at the bottom of his swings and see the difference it makes when you let go of the webline. This swing system captured the pendulum-like motion of the swinging the best for me.
Now, there are some issues I have with the game and some suggestions. I really get the reason why they put in the hold the swing button to continuously swing feature. With SM2, they created this great, intricate system that I wonder if a lot of casual gamers just never really mastered. I feel this must be the case since they have kept trying to make the swinging easier.
I don't mind this feature, and would actually like to see it stay. Sometimes it's nice to just hold the swing button and point where I want to go while I look around and get my bearings. But I really miss the ability to do 360 degree loops and other things like that. I thought the system of holding the left trigger while swinging inside to swing higher worked pretty nice, so what if they took the same controls outside and made holding the left trigger cause Spidey to hold onto his web? Then they can keep the simple swinging controls and give advanced players another option to hold the left trigger to hold onto the web so we could swing higher and do 360 degree loops.
The other thing I miss about past swinging systems is the back and forth, left to right motion of swinging. TASM is always just straight ahead, which isn't quite as exhilarating as the other motion. I'd like them to add back in the ability for webs to attach to the left and right sides of the street so you can go back and forth sometimes. Work it into the automatic system when you hold the swing button so Spidey alternates attaching his webs to one side or the other when it makes sense, but also make it so when I push towards the left with the joystick and push the swing button, that my web attaches to the left side of the street. I don't mind at all if the webs attach to the sky like in Web of Shadows, I would just like to see the fun of alternating on different sides of the street return.
Jumping is pretty useless in this game. I hate that jumping happens when you press the button and not when you release it. That just feels very unnatural to me. It's also a weird jump that tends to go higher rather than forward. I feel like if the Web of Shadows jump was in this game, it would be awesome. That system let you jump just after landing from a swing or another jump, and that jump would go farther than usual, like the charged jump from SM2. There are many times where I'd like to push jump just after landing on a perch point in TASM, but the jump goes too high for my liking and not forward enough. A better jump would serve as a better linking system between swinging and web rush. I'd like to see the WoS jump return, with a charged jump that actually goes higher than 2 stories.
I'm also a little disappointed that the game isn't a true open world game, but rather Manhattan is a hub world where predefined stuff happens. I want to see them get back to a true open world game and have random events that use the different elements like police deadlocks, car chases and snipers in a more dynamic way.
Also, in some ways this Manhattan is the best-looking one in a Spidey game yet, but it's a little too generic for my tastes. There aren't enough landmarks in the game. I have a feeling this was due to technical limitations. You can see the same buildings repeated all over the city, and I would wager that it was easier for performance to just load in some pre-defined building assets in multiple parts of the city instead of more unique buildings. It makes every part of town feel too identical. Past Spidey games have had similar issues, but the building designs in this game were so good and unique that it's easy to see when they are repeated.
well, from what I understand euros are a pretty valuable currency right now
