Antihero

Spider-Man was one of the first games I played on my fam's HP Pavilion machine running XP. The little Celeron that could played the game well, but I could never get past that helicopter stage. So the game sat in the back of my mind, gathering dust as I grew older. Sure, I liked Spidey well enough, but it took me awhile to give this one a shake again. Given how far tech's advanced, I sure as hell knew my PC was gonna make this game run at warp speed. So I opted to emulate it via ReDream.

What awaited me beyond that dreaded helicopter chase was a short, enjoyable romp chock full of frustrating jank and trial and error. But it's so damn charming! From the opening of level 1 alone you see the Fantastic 4 building, the Human Torch himself shows up later on to talk with Spidey after Mary Jane ends up kidnapped by Venom. Cameos range from fun blink and you'll miss it moments like Ghost Rider riding down the side of a building into the resource saving fog that covers New York's streets, to familiar signs for Roxxon Corp. There's even a cheeky billboard for a certain skateboarder's second professional video game outing.

If you enter a cheat code, you can get a "What If?" mode where you get even more cameos and silly shenanigans! See, this is where the game is best. Neversoft truly cared when it came to bringing forth an enjoyable story, and to nerds like me who are somewhat familiar with Spidey, it makes for a great outing between dealing with the game's sluggish controls.

Venom alone makes this game worth your while. He is, without a doubt, the best part of the story and easily the character who gave me the most laughs. Play it for low poly Venom, he's comedy gold.

The other day, I decided to bite a bullet and check out War for Cybertron after years of having intrigue, but never planning on it since this game, like most licensed properties, finds itself stranded without a remaster or any legal way to play them aside buying someone's used copy off eBay. Growing up, my only experience with the series was those mindless Shia LeBouf explosionfests by Michael Bay, so to say I'm rather casual in my toy robots that turn into cars field of knowledge. Mild familiarity with G1 has me blown away by the style, the cartoony aesthetic with a darker edge, that's some good eatin' for me right there. It manages to work superbly.

War for Cybertron is pretty kickass, to put it lightly. While a pretty standard third person shooter at its core, the gameplay loop is fun and there's enough fun set pieces to take my mind off the oft tedious level design and so-so graphics. It looks pretty, given it's an Unreal Engine game, but the environments are samey. One could argue given it's a robot planet, of course the environments wouldn't look anything special, but they do start to have some cool ideas towards the end. The penultimate Autobot level sees you within the belly of a massive Decepticon, which admit it, that's pretty killer.

Can't tell you about the online mode or Escalation, but the latter seems to be a horde/zombies mode from what I've gathered, and I absolutely would've wasted time had that been working. While not a huge fan of those kinds of modes, they are something I would enjoy from time to time in Halo, booting up a Firefight map with my little brother and blasting away hordes of Covenant.

Recently, there were listings on the Xbox store spotted for its sequel, Fall of Cybertron, and it has me wondering what might be in store. I can't wait to give the sequel a shake, as War is a promising, if standard shooter with some tedious graphics and level design, but a baller story and great visual style for the characters.

Rift Apart was so much fun. Currently, I'm occupying myself with a NG+ run which lets me wield my beloved Bouncer, but now that I'm done with the story... damn, this game was great! Combat was superb, graphics pure eye candy, everything worked out there. Clank and Glitch gameplay sections could've been a bit more, and I did sorely miss the ship exploration from A Crack in Time, but overall the game's a hell of a time. Insomniac's gonna be busy in the Marvel mines for the next decade, so who knows when we'll get another R&C? But when we do, I look forward to it.

If Rivet has the Marauder armor, it's only fair Ratchet gets to wear the suit from my favorite of the PS2 trilogy.