PixlBit

I couldn't disagree more about the side content involving drones and the bombs; those were agony. At least with the combat and stealth challenges, there's a reason to level up, gain new abilities and come back ready to nail it. The drone sections especially suffer from the same issues I had with the Gravity Rush games, where geometry gets in the way at exactly the worst moments in exactly the worst and most annoying possible ways and it's more difficult than it needs to be to course-correct. 

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with this review, except that I wished they'd hept Mr. Negative as the main villain or used someone else as the last boss instead of going so far into famiiar territory with the ending. Also, I was annoyed by the MJ and Miles stealth missions as well (except for the apartment, because it was interesting to explore from a fan service standpoint), but it didn't feel like a whole quarter of the game to me. Maybe 10-15%? Either way, I agree they weren't great, and were extremely linear. 

I thought stealth felt VERY similar to Arkham games, though harder to execute without any night vision gadgets and sometimes missions that ask you to use stealth in the open world just don't lend themselves to it. 

I thought the combat was very much unique to Spider-Man, which I didn't mind at all, and like you I found a reason to use most every gadget. 

As far as traversal, I agree with what everyone has said so far, but I'm just a bit underwhelmed compared to all the glowing reviews of it. This seriously could have been fixed for me by simply making L2 a left swing button. Everything else is pretty much perfect (also I hated those science missions where you plugged water towers, etc. ... even with slowing down, those never feel natural within the game's geometry and how traversal interacts with it). 

I actually rode the subway quite a bit ... mostly when I ran out of pictures of NY to take in an area, cause that was one of my favorite things to do. The level of detail is incredible. 

Anyway, I'd say it's a pretty good Spider-Man game with more potential, if for completely different reasons than you found to say so. I'm looking forward to the DLC. 

I don't mean literal system slowdown, just that to color those trees, the game stops and everything goes black and white for a moment for you to do it, and I kind of wish they'd have assigned a button for something you do that often.

I'd love it more if it didn't slow the game down (both cases). 

I could be wrong, but I don't think this reboot is quite AS combat heavy as the PS2 games (which I honestly might end up preferring for that reason), or at least the combat is more strategic than button mashy. Never played any of the OG GoW games though, so I could be all wrong. 

It's still a bit clunky now, to be honest, re: Okami. That camera's lack of inversion is ... off. And there are a lot of dialogue boxes I really wish it let you speed up. It has its issues, but it's calming enough. 

Yeah, not jumping sometimes trips me up, but I do like the albeit weird control scheme otherwise. My only issue with the camera so far is where "boy" shoots arrows. Just finished getting to the peak of the mountain, if that tells you anything. It was weird to fight a giant boss and still have to climb. 

Good to know about the armor. I think I've more or less been doing what you said to and I've so far been enjoying the inverse difficulty, but that's cause I just started feeling more powerful. 

Your description of DQXI reminds me so much of Yakuza ... weird. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is definitely one of my most wanted games, but I have such a backlog I may get it on sale. Same with Detroit. 

Look forward to the updates. Happy birthday, Pixlbit!

My current gaming laptop is ASUS ROG Strix, which was about $1000. I recently had issues with the keyboard that were resolved by customer service telling me to uninstall the ATK drive and install the driver they gave me. While it was quickly fixed once I complained, I'm still upset there was even an issue this close to when I bought it in May. 

Most Spider-Man games are pretty average, but can be fun. I definitely think Insomniac elevated pretty much every aspect of the franchise, even if parts of it are still so-so. Looking at you, challenge missions. 

Persona 5?

1) Damn. In my defense, MC and Doom guy look similar. Still need to get 2016 Doom on PC. 

3) Wouldn'ta got that

6) Son of a bitch, I knew I recognized that character! That one I shoulda known ... even though I've yet to play a Silent Hill.

9) Not even familiar with that franchise/game, but I've heard of it

Yeah, Katamari looked like* it used the most original assets. What was painful about Doom reflection? I may* or may not* be able to help

*I taught this program, but not really for stuff like this (pretty much used it for photography or ad/mag cover designs), so take anything I say with a grain of salt.