Recent reviews by G/7

This is almost identical to the first game. Which, yeah I get it, it's a sort of mini sequel with the same setting like Arkham Origins, but considering I didn't even like the original game to begin with that's kind of a problem.

The venom powers don't really innovate on the combat that's already stupidly stacked in your favor and fairly repetitive; they just exist to make the already easy game even easier. There's no depth or nuance to these abilities: if you have da glowy punch, use da glowy punch. There's like a few specific enemies that you need to use specific venom powers on (and all of them are instantly deleted by the Chaos Blast power that also fully restores your health) but by and large the game isn't exactly challenging by any stretch of the imagination. I didn't even come close to dying once even on Ultimate difficulty (which, for the record, idk even why I attempted as it didn't really provide a satisfying challenge and you don't even get an achievement for beating it like you did the first game).

The stealth sections are still just as mindless and now there's even less tension and stakes as the invisibility powers basically allows you to screw up or go as hyper aggressive as you want. Who cares? You can just cloak at any point and wait for the enemy AI to start looking for you again. The nicest things I can say about these sections is that there's no MJ stealth equivalent and there aren't really any extra waves of enemies after you've already cleared out a room.

The open world design is still just as exhausting, chock full of mindless unrewarding busywork and stupid trinkets dotted all over the map. None of the side quests were particularly interesting (the cat one was kinda funny I guess?) and it overall just feels like they've learned nothing from the first game. The only reason I put it above the first game at all personally is because of the story. Don't get me wrong, the story can be stupid and the writing can be hilariously forced at times (especially with Rhino near the end of the game) but I did think Miles' interactions with his friends and the people around him was pleasant enough to sit through.

I feel nothing but apathy at this point.

This is a game that feels constantly at odds with itself, trying to do too many different things at once and only succeeding at a select few. The swinging is by far the best thing out of this entire package. While I don't think the swinging is AS free flowing as Spider-man 2 on the GameCube, it has some nice flow to it and requires a lot of finesse to get down so I'm very much satisfied with it. Everything else though...not so much.

The combat is...fine I guess. It feels more comparable to a watered-down hack and slash if anything else. You get a very small handful of moves to start out with (exactly one grounded combo, a launcher, and an air combo) and a few more smaller techniques added on later. It "works" yeah, but there's just not a whole lot of variety, and the game essentially brow beats you into air combo-ing everything in sight over and over again because that's the best way to clear rooms in an effective way. It deals more damage, it charges focus faster, it makes a vast majority of enemies helpless, and it just gets stale after a while. The bosses aren't anything to write home about and the enemy variety is sorely lacking. The gadgets aren't well implemented in combat either and a lot of them just feel like they're there for the sake of being there. There's only so much joy I can mine from cannonball kicking the same faceless goon for the umpteenth time before I lose interest and go back to swinging around the city.

The stealth sections don't get any praise however, they SUUUUCK. These try and ape off the Arkham predator sections without understanding what made these sections work to begin with: enemy AI, level design, and tension. All of which Marvel's Insomniac's Disney's Stan Lee's Spider-Man spectacularly fails at. There's no thought or strategy behind any of these sections, they feel so forced and tacked on and utterly dull, and what makes it worse is that after you clear the room by stealth takedown-ing everyone the game just spawns enemies in already alerted to your presence anyway so like...what exactly was the point in using stealth to begin with? The MJ and Miles sections bring the pace of the game to a screeching halt. They aren't fun or interesting, they're the generic "sneak behind bushes and throw distraction items to avoid being instakilled" stealth gameplay that's already been done to death (and done better) in a variety of other games.

The open world isn't even fun to explore either. It's filled to the brim with the typical open world busywork schlock; copy pasted enemy base assaults, radio towers, collectibles spewed everywhere. Even when I have this desire to pick the game back up again I'm reminded that outside of the swinging, there's nothing here for me to really enjoy.

The nicest things I can say about it is that it looks really nice and it's competently put together. That's really about it. I would hope the sequels do a much better job at innovating and improving what didn't work prior but judging from gameplay footage, not really. Quite a shame

Spending $60 on this was a mistake

The big fat zombies in this game are called "whoppers" btw

game's competent at least so if you can get it for cheap I'd recommend but it's exhausting. It's literally the length of a Kingdom Hearts game when it has no reason to be

tried to copy and paste my review of this game from backloggd but this was evidently the first time I found out that my overly long 5 page essay style reviews won't fit in a Steam review format, so I guess I'll have to condense my thoughts as brief as I possibly can.

The story, while ambitious, is a bit of a mess. The interlocking stories don't really mix well with each other, cutscenes get repeated and recycled a LOT, and the stories themselves individually range from "kinda good" to "pretty terrible". None of the characters besides Knuckles actually connect with the story of the Echidnas told in the background and, while that's not too bad as it's mainly a background element to the interconnected stories themselves, by the end it immediately becomes the main focus, and the scenes of Tikal talking to characters that have no connection or reaction to anything that's going on just comes across as clumsily spoonfeeding information to the audience in an inorganic way, and this isn't taking into account the terrible voice acting or awful cutscene presentation.

Rapidfiring my thoughts on the playable characters: Sonic is fun and is bar none the best part of the entire game, Tails is boring because his stages are just recycled Sonic stages that weren't built for his abilities and he breaks these stages in half and can clear them in like 3 seconds, Knuckles is boring because there's barely any gameplay happening throughout the boxed in arenas he's in, Amy is flat out terrible with her sluggish movement and with there barely being any platforming to be had, Gamma sucks due to how repetitive and inconsequential his entire gameplay loop is, and Big is fishing but bad. The boss fights are pathetic, the hub areas are somewhat charming but offer little more than a drawn out commute to drag stones over to place in holes, the camera is horrendous and is something you actively have to FIGHT against most of the time no matter what setting it's on, and some stages just aren't fun no matter who you pick.

It's currently $1.99 as of the time of writing and is typically under $10 so I still think you should try it out at the very least, but even with mods this was incredibly mediocre. There are far better games out there, heck there are far better Sonic games out there more worth your time.

Nah man, this ain't happening

It's an ok game at best, and I'm glad it exists because it ended up kicking off a genuinely great series of games, but there is no reason to go back to this one. Transformed blows it out of the water in every single way imaginable

I got spooked

aw rats

You know a game is absolutely incredible when the only complaint I have with it is "some of the side missions are kinda lame." Amazing game 10/10

Phenominal game overall and a great introduction to get anyone into the Arkham franchise. Fast paced energetic combat, fantastic stealth sections, a plethora of secrets to find and uncover and an unsettling atmosphere, my biggest gripes mainly stem from the very limited enemy variety, the bosses, and the fact that City pretty much does everything this game does, but instead does it like a million times better. It’s best to experience this game first, THEN go on to City, but otherwise incredibly solid game all around.

Very fun and engaging puzzle game despite how short it is. Plethora of extra tougher challenges will keep you coming back, but overall as good as it is I still prefer the second one.