Vidjama Gmaes Work

I want this ride to end.

I’m kinda powering through the Spider-Man DLC at this point, and by powering through I mean I’m completing it 100% and hating myself more and more for doing it. Going from not playing Spider-Man for the last three years and then deciding to hammer down the entire game over the course of a couple weeks was a bad choice.

The second DLC episode takes place right after the first and is related to Hammerhead and the continuing aftermath of Sable and the theft/loss of their gear all over the city. Turns out having a military contractor show up on the streets of NYC was a really stupid idea as was having them pull out just as fast, but I also imagine Norman Osborne is a shareholder in Sable and probably got a big kickback in hiring them.

But the focal point of Episode 2 is Yuri and her downward spiral into madness. And I 100% get where she’s coming from because being a cop in the Marvel or DC world must be stressful as shit. You have to sit back and watch your officers get murdered time after time by villains and their henchmen only to have the system and even the alleged super hero stop you from dealing with the problem directly by putting a bullet in their head, so they can be taken off to a “maximum security prison” that has mass breakouts more common than the Sunday paper.

One big positive I will say about this DLC is that while Screwball’s challenges are just as annoying and just as poorly designed, with photobomb areas routinely put in places where enemies aren’t even near, they are a lot easier this time around. I managed to perfect several of the five Screwball challenges when I think I’d perfected maybe one before that in the base game and first episode, and it wasn’t even a big challenge. I believe we find and arrest Screwball in episode 3. Too bad we can’t throw her in a giant furnace.

My compliment on episode 1’s enemies is gone, because episode 2 brings back all of the worst of goon powers including the chain whips. It’s actually much worse because we get these shield guys that fly around and ram you, and leave behind a trail of red energy that disables your web powers for a period of time. When you get a variety of enemies all in the same place the game becomes a massive shit show of competing area of effect and charge attacks that just knock you around repeatedly. It’s not fun.

But combat in Spider-Man continues to get easier, due in part to leveling up past 50 and getting more buffs to my attacks.

Episode 2 is the usual map stuff; 5 districts are active with five crime missions each, one Screwball mission per area, and some stuff to collect like new suits. I came out of the DLC with only a few more things left to unlock; the Episode 3 skins as well as needing two more challenge tokens to unlock all of the suits and gadget upgrades which I will easily be able to do in Episode 3.

Screw the challenges in this game, they suck. I did get a laugh out of the game soft-locking during one of Screwball’s challenges because it was probably rushed to finish. The game forces you to watch a demonstration of the two powers it will give you by showing them on a henchman. For this Screwball challenge you can only use the web bomb and sonic blast, and the game failed to actually defeat the guy. So it just hung there until I reloaded the checkpoint. A+.

Only one more episode left.