1+1＞2
[Text: Three Days Moon Row: NE]
Note: This article was first published in Nomad Starfield
preface
Thanks to the invitation of SIE, the author had the honor to go to Los Angeles, USA on behalf of Nomad Starry Sky to try out "Marvel's Spider-Man 2", which will be released on October 20 this year. Its demo includes four main story missions and a small part of the big world exploration, which is the tip of the iceberg that shows us the entire content of the game, as for how this "corner" performs, let's take a look.
"Changeable" combat system
If the player has played the first two games, the battle in this game can be said to have no threshold for mastery. The basic logic of combat basically follows the cycle of the previous game: accumulate focus slots through general attacks, combat devices, and evasion, and when the focus slots are full, you can "execute" enemies or restore HP; After executing the enemy, the number of times the combat device was used can be restored. This simple set of loops forms the tone of the first two games, which is that as long as the player performs well enough, stays as harmless as possible, and keeps combos, the player's speed of destroying enemies can be multiplied.
On this basis, the game "adds" a new active ability, and the operation mode is L1+◯//✖▲/. ◼ The double quotes are because this is not actually a new system, which was introduced back in Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales. This game has made some adjustments to this ability, changing it to a cooling system, which means that you need to wait for a period of time after each use before you can use it again. And this system is no longer exclusive to Miles, and Peter has added new abilities; Robotic arms and symbionts. The former has already appeared in the previous game, but at that time it was only a "big move" attached to specific clothing, and this game has become one of the permanent attack skills; The latter is better understood, after all, as one of the selling points of this work, the symbiote will naturally not have fewer scenes.
Many of the cool "big moves" seen in previous demonstrations are actually a kind of active skill
Similar to the Combat Device, the player can adjust the active skill of the current equipment for up to four of the four keys, which means that the player can equip and use up to eight attack skills at the same time (if the device is also considered a "skill"). Although it may sound like nothing new, the actual experience is very enjoyable. "Cooldown" is well integrated into the old combat cycle mentioned above, and the official method is very ingenious to make a qualitative leap in the cheerfulness of combat without adding any new elements.
There is actually only one new combat gameplay in this work, and that is blocking. The game has added a special enemy that can use heavy attacks (Heavy Attack), the specific visual representation is that the enemy's attack will first appear a yellow circle, then the yellow circle will turn into a red circle, and when it becomes a red circle, press the L1 key to "perfectly block" the enemy's attack. As skills are unlocked, Perfect Blocks bring more benefits, such as the ability to instantly disarm enemies.
In addition to heavy attacks, other melee attacks can actually trigger parrying
Since this mechanism is so common, I don't need to introduce you to the benefits of perfect blocking, which is nothing more than "no damage + enemies fall into a hard straight". Almost all melee attacks in the game can be blocked, except for special attacks that appear as a blue aperture, which players can only avoid in the face of this attack. Judging from the experience of the demo version, it seems that not many miscellaneous soldiers will use this attack, and the author only encountered it in the boss battle with the lizardman.
From the experience point of view, the judgment of the block is very loose (at the default difficulty), and for players familiar with action games, it is basically "just have a hand". The effects and visual expression are very good, and for a game where the previous game basically relied on the ◯ key to avoid it, the addition of blocks greatly enriched the combat experience.
Flying Spider-Man
Similar to combat, the game's movement greatly changes the player's experience through a simple mechanic, and that mechanic is flying. Players can fly by pressing a button at any moment in the air. It's said to be flying, but most of the time it's more like gliding, and the player's altitude actually keeps decreasing. Compared to the general oscillation, the flight speed is more stable, but the maximum speed and acceleration are lower than the oscillation.
For players to truly demonstrate their flying advantage, they need to find the airflow in the city. As long as it enters the air flow in flight, it can move quickly without lowering its altitude. In order to encourage players to use more flying in exploration, a number of airflow routes have been prepared in the city for players to explore and use, as long as the route is planned, players can easily fly a long distance.
The system is also used in side missions, such as tracking drones, where players need to follow the wake of the drone in front of them in a flying attitude. In the demo game, the author completed this side line several times, and I have to say that although the experience sounds a bit single, which is also a common problem of open world side quests, the speed is still very refreshing when quickly passing through the route set by the system, such as the subway tunnel in New York.
Here's a bite of the game's side stories and collections. One of the points that the most criticized players in the previous game is that there are too many side stories and collections and the gameplay is single, but in fact, to put it bluntly, almost all complaints come from only one point: criminal incidents. The bad news is that there are still crimes in this game, and the good news is that crimes are not counted towards regional completion.
The crime event becomes a random side story that simply takes a reward, and is no longer tied to regional completion
Although I don't know all the types of collections, judging from the number given in the demo, the total number of all collections (including side quests) in each area is mostly less than 10. For now, the categories include collecting spider robots, taking pictures (each photo has a story, not just an attraction), Craven's drone, and Craven's arsenal. The setting of the arsenal is similar to a stronghold, except that this time the player needs to find all the small strongholds before they can attack the large ones.
To be honest, the gameplay of the development world is quite the same as the previous game, but due to the reduced number, the experience (especially the Platinum experience) is naturally much better. In addition, there are actual rewards for improving area completion, the most important of which is fast movement. Once unlocked, the player's fast movement can quickly move to any location in the area, but only if it needs to be unlocked first, that is, to complete a certain number of collections. Fortunately, a flight has been added, otherwise the running chart in the early stage of this work must be very tormenting.
The reward in the middle of the figure is to move quickly
About other aspects of the demo and the disadvantages
As one of the biggest selling points of this work, the actual performance of the two protagonists is actually not too surprising. For example, the two protagonists have their own skill trees (mainly attack skills) and share upgrades, such as suits and equipment. The two protagonists have their own separate main story and side quests, and at other times than that, the player can switch between the protagonists at any time.
Although the speed of switching is very fast with the support of PS5 functions, from the visual effect point of view, it is to black the screen and then switch characters, and players who are looking forward to "seamless switching" like GTA5 may feel a little disappointed. In contrast, the transitions after moving quickly are much more impressive. By the way, when the player controls one of the protagonists, the other protagonist will appear and fight alongside the player during random side quests (crime incidents, raiding strongholds). The combat experience of two spiders attacking at the same time is very interesting, but unfortunately it is triggered randomly.
The focus of the two men's stories is also different. Peter's story focuses on the impact of the symbiote on it, which triggers the dark side of Peter's personality, which becomes the catalyst for the deterioration of events such as the attack of the hunter Craven, the disappearance of the lizardman (Dr. Connor), and Harry's serious illness again, which also affects the relationship between Peter and the other characters.
Officials claim to have spent a lot of ink portraying the villain of Craven, and part of the setting is a reference to the classic comic book "Craven's Last Hunt"
Miles' story is still inseparable from "growth", as a college student, he begins to think about his future, and what to do when he clash with his dreams and protecting important people and becoming Spider-Man. And when Miles was troubled, Peter's personality as a mentor changed greatly, and the escape from prison of Mr. Negative, the biggest villain of the previous work, was even worse.
The plot takes place 10 months after the original finale, and Miles is still a newcomer as a superhero
In addition to Spider-Man and the villains such as Lizardman, Craven and Venom, judging from the official trailer announced on the scene, new and old villains such as Mysterio and Prowler will also appear in this work, but I don't know if they will appear in the main plot or simply in side quests.
The demo part is mainly based on the demo announced in June, and on top of this, two main quests corresponding to Peter and Miles are added, and after the demo, Peter and the Lizardman boss battle in the sewers. There is nothing to say about the two main quests, and regardless of the changes on the system, from the perspective of process design, the progress of this game is not obvious. But the performance is as good as ever, such as the final chase with the Lizardmen, which spans half of Manhattan, during which hunters come over to add to the chaos, and the scene is both exciting and chaotic.
It is worth mentioning that the boss battle, due to the addition of blocking mechanism and attack skills, the combat experience of this work has been improved, naturally including boss battle. Compared with the routine boss battles in previous works, the boss battles in the new work are closer to mainstream action games, that is, the enemy has more routines, more variable movements, and naturally greater difficulty. In the case of the Lizardmen, players need to flexibly use blocks and evasion based on enemy attacks, and use scene elements and devices to create opportunities for output.
Judging from the experience of the demo, the difficulty of the boss battle has increased a lot compared to the previous game
Judging from the performance of the demo version, the most obvious problems with this game are the number of frames and the viewing angle. In the game's performance mode with all effects fully on and light tracing, the frame rate is not stable, which is especially serious in special effects battles.
And the problem of perspective also exists in the battle, because many skills will adjust the perspective when they are launched, and Spider-Man's battle is originally non-stop, resulting in the battle, the perspective will be constantly pulled by the system, not to mention the dizziness, the battle process will become very chaotic.
epilogue
Judging from the performance of the demo alone, this game is an excellent sequel. Under the premise of improving some shortcomings of the previous game, the combat and exploration have been innovated and adjusted, and after the trump card of "symbiote", the plot is even more worthy of what players look forward to.
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning, no matter how good the demo is, it is only the tip of the iceberg, and the final performance of this iceberg will be known after the game is released on October 20.