The post Stellar Blade first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a 2024 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix. It serves as a sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and is the second installment in a planned trilogy of games that remake the iconic 1997 PlayStation classic, Final Fantasy VII.

The game’s storyline picks up immediately after the events of Remake, following the party’s escape from the dystopian metropolis of Midgar. Players primarily control Cloud Strife, a former Shinra soldier who joins the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. Their mission is to prevent the megacorporation Shinra from exploiting the planet’s life essence, known as the Lifestream, as an energy source. Along the way, they must also confront Sephiroth, the legendary SOLDIER who seeks to unite with the Planet for greater power.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth features real-time exploration, combat, and character development. The game expands upon the original while reimagining key elements, offering players an engaging experience as they journey across the Planet to thwart Shinra’s plans and face off against Sephiroth.

The post Final Fantasy VII Rebirth first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Tekken 8

Tekken 8 continues the tragic saga of the Mishima bloodline, and its world-shaking father-and-son grudge matches. After defeating his father, Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya continues his conquest for global domination, using the forces of G Corporation to wage war on the world. The game’s story mode, titled “The Dark Awakens,” takes place six months after the events of its predecessor and focuses on the final confrontation between protagonist Jin Kazama and his father, Kazuya Mishima. Meanwhile, an additional story mode delves into the ancient history of the Mishima Clan and the resurrection of Heihachi Mishima himself.

The post Tekken 8 first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

The Good:

• The sense of atmosphere and horror is masterful
• Really pushes the edge of graphics capabilities
• Clever callbacks to other Remedy games

The Bad:

• The thought space is a clever idea that’s not as good in execution

The Ugly:

• Someone spilled a couple of drops of wokeness into this lake

Alan Wake II

Alan Wake II is a surreal horror story about a malevolent Dark Presence, powerful enough to use fiction to reshape reality but dependent on the creativity of a human author to provide the new narrative. The character Alan Wake is an author caught up in the Dark Presence’s ploy to enter the real world and remake it physically.

In the original game, the Dark Presence trapped Alan’s wife in the “Dark Place” (Think the Upside Down from Stranger Things) to draw him in, then used her as leverage to make him write (sorry if this is a spoiler, but you should play the first Alan Wake the first game before reading this if you don’t like it). Alan’s power to rewrite his story was limited to the rules of the horror genre, which is not known for its happy endings. In a last act of desperation, Alan defeated the Dark Presence by writing an ending that set his wife free but left him trapped in the Dark Place.

Fast forward thirteen years (the same number of real-world years between the release of Alan Wake and Alan Wake II), and Bright Falls once again finds itself host to supernatural events that signal a return of the Dark Presence.

Alan Wake II introduces a new protagonist, Saga Anderson, a young black female FBI agent. She is partnered with agent Alex Casey, the detective whose life became inextricably intertwined with Alan’s fiction during the first game’s events.

For the first part of the game, players play as Saga, though at a certain point, Alan Wake re-enters the story and becomes a playable character as well. Players will then switch back and forth between the two, eventually allowing them to switch between them at will, playing through each one’s unique but interwoven story.

Alan Wake II’s Story

The central narrative of Alan Wake II is a complex, self-referential tale designed to defy the player’s expectations. In one of the narrative’s more meta components, within the story, the story’s story itself is discussed and dissected.  Alan Wake is both a character and the author of his own story.

He has the ability to alter the narrative to change outcomes but is otherwise constrained by the clichés and tropes of the horror genre, for if he deviates too far, the changes that he makes will not hold.

Confronting Enemies in Alan Wake II

While set up as a third-person shooter and classified as survival horror, Alan Wake II tries its best not to conform to any one genre of game.  Combat is only one part of the gameplay.  A good portion of the game is also comprised of investigative work, a variety of puzzle-solving, and interactive cinematic cutscenes.

Most of the enemies are ghosts or the feral “Taken” (ordinary people whom the Dark Presence has corrupted). They are shielded by an aura of darkness, making them invulnerable to conventional weapons.

Players must utilize light sources such as a magical flashlight (which uses consumable batteries), flashbang grenades, or road flares to dispel the darkness. Weaker enemies are outright destroyed by the light, while others need to be killed by physical weapons after the shield is gone.

To do this, players will have access to handguns and other firearms that can be acquired along the way, but because this is a survival horror game, players will be constantly on the verge of running out of needed items.

There simply are not enough munitions in the game to defeat all of the enemies with direct confrontation. Players will have to rely on stealth or occasionally just run for their lives to get to safe spots where the light is too bright for the darkness to enter.

Alan Wake’s Puzzles

As mentioned earlier, Remedy really likes to use the video game medium to present an experience that wouldn’t work as well anywhere else. Although there are some straightforward solve-the-clue-for-the-password-type puzzles, the developers also like to use gameplay loops and optical illusions to keep the player mentally off balance. For example, one area is mostly flat and open, with some free-standing walls to walk around. Players have to weave their way around the walls in a particular order or risk passing the same identical space repeatedly for infinity.

The Mind Place and Writers Room

Both Saga and Alan have special rooms to which they can retreat during the game, and while they both serve the game mechanics as surrogate menu systems, each also offers their own unique gameplay and narrative opportunities.

Character Progression

Although it’s a very minor component, Alan Wake II provides opportunities for character progression. However, rather than being earned through experience or completing missions, improvements in capabilities and weapons come through discovering hidden objects or symbols within the levels. Players who take the time to search every nook and cranny will be rewarded with a slightly more manageable horror experience.

These elusive upgrades are perhaps the only element that lends any replayability to Alan Wake II, as once you’ve experienced the story, there’s not much else to go back for.

Case Board

Investigations on the case board use classic police drama visuals like push pins and yarn to connect Polaroid photos, bad photocopies of documents, and handwritten notes. Players need to arrange these elements in the proper order to complete each case. This can sometimes be frustrating because the placement isn’t always obvious or intuitive.

More often than not, investigations devolve into randomly trying to stick the evidence to the board to find the correct spot. In some instances, casework is an entirely optional part of the experience; if the player can figure out what to do next simply by picking up clues from the dialogue, then they never need put pin to cork.

However, there are times in which progression is completely dependent upon assembling the case on the board.

Controlling Alan Wake

This game uses typical twin-stick third-person shooter controls for combat and getting around. There aren’t any awkward gamepad mappings, and for the most part, both the movement and aiming controls are simple and intuitive.

Regarding other activities, the controls are a little less so.  Moving the cursor around area maps and case boards with a control stick feels clumsy and unrefined. These interfaces were obviously designed with keyboard and mouse controls in mind and not reimagined for a game controller experience.

Graphics

Alan Wake II is a beautiful game. Each environment is unique, fully detailed, and carefully thought out. Everything from tree branches to mud puddles looks so realistic that it’s easy to forget they’re works of art rather than real organic things. Character models are similarly convincing, with well-articulated motion capture that extends all the way down to facial expressions and lip movement.

Shadows play a big part, not just in the visual style but also in its narrative. The interplay of shadows and light is almost breathtakingly dramatic, thanks to ray-tracing and volumetric lighting effects.

However, Remedy is known for marrying live-action recordings with its game graphics. Many of this game’s cutscenes feature the live actors the in-game models were based on, and this jarring back and forth serves to throw the fidelity gap between the computer-rendered and real people into sharp relief.

While real actors certainly do a much better job conveying emotion than their digital avatars, the frequent switches between the two are jarring and immersion-breaking.

Sound

Alan Wake II is a masterclass in sound design. This game features incredibly effective use of multi-channel surround both for establishing atmosphere and for spatial awareness.

Each setting has its own unique soundscape, whether it’s wind whistling through trees, gentle rain hitting concrete at night, or the otherworldly whispers of the dead somewhere in the periphery.

The effects themselves are well-chosen and perfectly implemented. Something as simple as the sound of the water being disturbed somewhere just over your left shoulder as you carefully tiptoe through a flooded basement will likely make the hairs stand up on the back of your head.

Alan Wake II’s original score is nothing short of a phenomenon.  Far from a simple backdrop for various sequences, the music is woven into the narrative.  Each song’s lyrics tell a part of the story, sometimes even serving as clues or instructions for what to do next.

The game designers use a broad spectrum of styles, from etheric trance with crystalline female vocals to pop ballads with compelling hooks and even Swedish metal with melodic vocals and absolutely blazing guitar solos.

As an aside, the metal parts are performed by Poets of the Fall as their in-game altar ego band, Old Gods of Asgard.

Presentation

The horror part of this survival horror game is predominantly psychological. While there are enough elements of gore to justify the Mature rating, the game relies more on atmosphere and disorientation to make your skin crawl.

A pervasive sense of dread and unease is reinforced with dark visuals and creepy sounds throughout. The jump scares are wickedly well-timed to take advantage of quiet disarmed moments, and even the player character will sometimes express shock at them.

Performance

This game offered a relatively polished experience in its initial release build. There were very few obvious bugs or glitches. We only encountered one game-breaking bug during one of the last scenes that required us to reload the game to proceed.

Final Thoughts

Our playthrough clocked in at just over fifteen hours, but it was so densely packed and thought-provoking that it felt like a much longer experience.

This game absolutely deserves the awards it received for best narrative and art direction. Between the foreboding atmosphere, eerie content, and jump scares, the game did more than enough to earn its “horror” label, but the action sequences were also compelling and fun.

Without giving out spoilers, the “Summoning” sequence was one of the coolest things we’ve played in years. The convoluted story eventually rewards you for your time and attention and almost perfectly pulls off the “nothing is what it seems” motif. Despite its flaws, this is one of 2023’s best games.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Barring any deeper investigation into development and casting than what you see below, Alan Wake II rates delightfully low in wokeness. While our playthrough did not necessarily encompass 100% of the optional content, the authors were obviously more concerned with writing a compelling story than advancing a political or social agenda. Every woke element observed feels perfunctory rather than passionate.

On the one hand, Saga is an ever-present reminder that someone caved to pressure to forcibly “diversify” the cast, but on the other hand, it ceases to be distracting very quickly and does not hinder the story or gameplay.

DEI

• Okay, so let’s talk about the big ol’ elephant in the room, Saga Anderson, the black female FBI agent who is the player character for half of the game. Make all the arguments that you want that this was some kind of random creative choice, but we’ve got screenshots that say otherwise. At some point after creating and initially casting the character of Saga Anderson, the developers decided to (or were forced to) race-swap her from a white woman to a black woman to check a box. She’s supposedly a descendant of some of the all-white cast of the original game. We get it, Remedy. There were quotas to be met, and screechers would take away your birthday presents if you dared release a game with an all-white cast in 2023.  While it’s obvious, due to her supposed heredity alone (but mostly because we actually know who the original actress was and have a picture of her in-character with a name label), this role was originally written for a white woman, the writers have retconned a hinted relationship between her and the elusive character Mr. Door to possibly explain her skin color.

Anti-White Racism

• During one of the last sequences in the game, as Saga is struggling against her own inner thoughts, she refers to Alan Wake writing her into the story as “another white asshole deciding what I get to do; how I get to do it.” A single little sliver of anti-white racism is apparently supposed to lend to Saga’s authenticity as a “real” black woman in 2023. Reverse the races in that comment, and there’s no way Epic Games would have dared publish this game.

Misandry/Toxic Feminism

• When we’re first introduced to the character of Saga Anderson, she’s riding in a car with Alex Casey on the way to Bright Falls to investigate a ritual murder. Just before they arrive, Alex places her in charge of the case.  Five minutes later, at the crime scene, the sheriff’s deputy tasked with escorting them assumes that Alex Casey, the male senior agent, is in charge of the investigation and asks him how he would like to proceed.  Saga takes the opportunity to shame him for the assumption, and we are then treated to an awkward moment where the deputy begins stammering excuses and apologies. How dare he assume she was not in charge of the investigation that she literally was not in charge of six minutes ago?

Gay Agenda

• The female agent from the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) finds an opportunity to casually mention, with all the subtlety of a “You know how I know you’re gay?” joke, that she has an ex-wife. It’s completely irrelevant to everything, but box ticked, I guess?

The post Alan Wake II first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Robocop: Rogue City

In 2019, Teyon brought us Terminator: Resistance, which set the new standard for what a movie-licensed game could achieve. With Robocop: Rogue City – a love letter to the first two Robocop films’ dystopian vision of future Detroit, they’ve done it once again.  

When the developers transformed the world of the film into a virtual space for players to explore, no detail, no matter how small, was missed. The story picks up where Robocop 2 left off. Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has successfully shed the blame for the failed “Robocop 2” cyborg going rogue, and they’re just as determined as ever to replace the decrepit Old Detroit with the corporate-run Delta City.  

They also still have an outsized influence on the Detroit Police Department and control of Robocop himself.  In the opening mission, a local gang attempts to get the attention of a new bad guy, creatively called “The New Guy,” by hijacking a local TV station and taking hostages. 

At the culmination of the hostage rescue, Robocop experiences a memory that causes him to hesitate, requiring his partner, Detective Anne Lewis, to step in.  As a result of this “defect,” Robocop is fitted with a new chip that will monitor and try to prevent these “glitches” from happening. If they can’t be stopped, OCP has promised to shut him down for good.

In this first-person shooter, players take on the role of the titular cyborg, Robocop, as he investigates this new threat to Detroit and tries to understand the nature of the “glitches” that are causing him to lose control. To do this, players will have to shoot and punch the hell out of a lot of bad guys and leave a gory mess of broken bodies in their wake. While combat makes up the bulk of the gameplay, players will also need to participate in other police work, such as investigating crime scenes, issuing citations, and even rescuing a cat. 

Nostalgia Factor 9

Several locations from the films have been lovingly transformed from a series of disconnected sets into three-dimensional spaces for players to navigate. For example, the police station lobby, locker rooms, lockup, gun range, and garage all have real locality now.  

For fans of the films, it’s like a non-stop easter egg hunt.  Robocop works in some of his most popular lines from the films, but they’re incorporated, so naturally, it doesn’t come across as hamfisted. If you’re familiar with Robocop 2 (1990), it’s hard not to snicker as you hear him quote cheesy aphorisms when he issues citations.  Everything’s here, from the 1986 Ford Taurus police cars to the “really $h!tty gas mileage” SUX 5000, from Robcop’s Auto 9 pistol to the Cobra Assault Cannon.  Ever fantasized about going up against an ED-209? Now’schance.    

Seeing Is Believing

Nearly every conceivable step was taken to recreate the atmosphere of the films. The set lighting and the lens filters are enough by themselves to convince you you’re in that world, but the developers went all out. 

For example, when the player switches to Robocop’s scanning mode, they’re treated to a near-perfect re-creation of the first-person sequences from the films, down to the artificial scanlines which slightly darken the screen and the crosshair boxes that form around targets as the computer recognizes them.  Even the streets of Old Detroit are filled with rain-glistening concrete and puddles that reflect the street lights. They’re strewn with litter and garbage that has convincingly collected in the corners and around fences.

In action, the re-creation is just as stunning. When you fire the Auto 9, its muzzle flash flares out in an X-shape. The impact of bullets hitting a soft target is just as wildly exaggerated as the overdone squibs from the films, as is the blood spray and gore that erupts as three-burst rounds chew through a body.

Standing Your Ground – Gameplay

Robocop is a bullet sponge. He doesn’t crouch, he doesn’t have a dodge mechanic (well, not really),  And, while not invincible, he can take quite a lot of punishment before going down. This encourages players to stand their ground and rely on targeting and quickly taking out threats rather than zipping from cover to cover to survive an encounter. As a result, battles feel slower-paced and more contemplative than many other FPS games. 

The controls felt tight and responsive. For the most part, the aim assist worked well and was nearly transparent to the experience. However, it does have the tendency to work against the player at times. This is most evident in situations where an enemy is standing next to something explosive. If you try to move the reticle over the explosive, you’ll feel the aim assist fighting with you to keep your weapon pointed at the enemy.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Just as much care was put into the audible as the visible when creating this experience. Every little whirr and whine of a servo motor has been re-created, along with the unique sounds of each weapon being fired and the impact of its bullets. Perhaps the most delightful sound is the simple “thuck” of Robocop’s footsteps. 

Musically, the soundtrack is brilliant. Most of it is original and fits the action beautifully. While they did license the original theme, they showed restraint when using it, which made it all the more impactful. It’s only heard in a subdued piano rendition that plays over the title screen and in full during a climactic battle at the end. This was masterfully done. 

The game takes full advantage of multi-channel surround sound to create an atmosphere with constant low-level noise and effects. Character voices properly pan around according to the camera orientation.

Progress Not Perfection

Each action, whether it’s blasting a gang member, finding bits of contraband, or issuing a ticket for parking in front of a hydrant, earns players experience points, which can be spent on improving various attributes like armor or engineering. As these attributes are leveled up, there are also special abilities granted, such as being able to open a safe without finding the combination or revealing the locations of hidden items on the map. This fairly basic mode of progression gives the player a little control over things without turning them into chores.  

Players will also have the ability to upgrade the Auto 9 pistol using “motherboards” salvaged from bosses and found in R&D labs. It’s not just about increasing damage or reload speed either – you can also get full automatic fire and armor piercing, and for no reason other than the fun of it, you can increase the amount of gore shown when you blow away a bad guy.

The balance of progression is so well done it’s hard to overstate. With many games, it’s easy to peak early and take all of the challenge out of the game or peak late and give you awesome abilities you can only use once or twice before the end. Here, it felt like you were able to make Robocop into an unstoppable juggernaut at just the right point that you were able to maximally enjoy it.

Glitching Isn’t Just For Robocop

It’s, perhaps, ironic that Robocop glitching is part of the story’s main plot because this game has its share of trouble with stability. The PS5 version has nearly constant visual artifacts and other issues. The PC version, which this review is primarily based on, fares a little better in that these issues are a bit more sparse. The way telephone cords are rendered is so hilariously bad it’s hard to tell if the rendering is bugged or the developers just ran out of enthusiasm. Most of these problems are benign and only occasionally distract from the action, but there is one progression-breaking bug where an NPC gets stuck in a floor if you approach the objectives in the wrong order. Our playthrough required reloading an earlier save that lost about an hour of progress. 

Story: How It Started

It’s important to put the source material in perspective to understand what Teyon has done here. So let’s start with Robocop (1987), the film. Robocop’s veneer of ultra-violent action was so flashy that it nearly drowned out the themes that were really at its heart.  For all of its gore, it was also a cynical admonition of corporate greed, capitalist excesses, and the dangers of corporate lobbying, along with an existential examination of what it is to be human. 

Released during the Reagan years, when the US had emerged from an economic slump very reminiscent of the one we’re experiencing here in the early 2020s, Robocop’s writers were obviously trying to be critical of American Exceptionalism by taking some of the liberal bugbears of the day and extrapolating them to the level of ridiculousness. Good examples of these are the film’s fake commercials for cars with intentionally bad fuel economy and sunblock that will definitely give you cancer with repeated use but is the only thing to protect you against the sun now that the ozone layer is gone. 

These criticisms were so unrealistic that they became comical and ironically resonated with many of the people the writers were trying to lampoon. Instead of a poignant morality tale, its anti-capitalist message became a parody enjoyed by capitalists the world round. As for the existential question of whether Robocop is still human, the emphasis on ultra-violent action sequences left only enough screen time to examine it in the shallowest of terms.

Story: How It’s Going

Teyon has succeeded at something very difficult with Robocop: Rogue City in that they have managed to faithfully re-create the film experience while still telling an original story that fits in perfectly with the themes of the first two films. The surface story is still that of a dystopian world of greedy men wielding the power of their wealth and corporations to play God. The cynical parodies of capitalist excesses have barely changed. This is to say that the writers stuck with the elements from the films without trying to legitimize them as serious criticism. There’s even a mission about Sunblock 5000, which is all the more hilarious, considering we all know the panic about losing the ozone layer was silly. 

Where the story really shines is in the additional time the writers were able to devote to the existential question that Robocop faces about whether he is still Alex Murphy and whether he is still human. Rather than just telling you the answer, you’ll be asked to discover it for yourself – your responses will determine the outcome.

While the game offers you choices that have some impact on which epilogue scenes you’ll see, there are no branching paths or major divergences that would make a compelling case to keep playing after the credits roll for the first time. A low replayability score is not necessarily a negative in this case, as the game gives you ample opportunity to see and do everything in a single play-through.

Final Thoughts

Robocop: Rogue City is an excellent example of what time and passion can do for a video game. It’s a well-known stigma in the industry that movie-licensed games are generally crap, but this game defies that trend in all of the best ways. With tight shooter controls, a good variety of gameplay types, and a quality story that respects the source material and brings it to life, this game is a must-play for fans of the genre and fans of the films alike, and we are thrilled to mark it as Worth it.

Woke Elements

It may be a bit controversial, but I’m going with “none” on this one. While there are definitely some anti-capitalist themes, they are hilariously disingenuous to the point where I believe they were genuinely intended as the parody they ultimately are, and much more so than in the original 1987 film. If the writers were trying to sneak woke elements into Robocop: Rogue City, I expect they would have tried to introduce more relevant criticisms instead of carrying forward with the ones that were already there in the twenty-six-year-old source material.

When the original film was released, Detective Ann Lewis’s depiction of a tough female cop was somewhat novel. Despite that, the character did not exhibit the woke character traits of being masculine, being the physical equal of a man, or being a lady boss. If the writers had wanted to make this story woke, they would have had to change those things, but they did not. In Rogue City, Ann Lewis is still a tough cop and commands the respect of everyone in the precinct, but she is still ultimately feminine and doesn’t have to be built up by tearing down the men around her.

Finally, I appreciate this game’s acknowledgment of Christianity. Many games about the future of the United States either pretend that Christianity never existed or stand up some thinly disguised surrogate for Christianity at which to lob one-sided criticisms. Rogue City doesn’t have a religious aspect, but there were three things it did to acknowledge Christianity indirectly. Firstly, there’s a mission where you’re asked to find a VHS tape in a rental store, and the clue you’re given is that the title has something to do with The Bible. The character who gives this clue does so matter-of-factly, as though he expects everyone to have a general working knowledge of biblical phrases.  Secondly, during a prison riot, as you’re walking through empty rooms on the way to your destination, there’s a leather-bound Holy Bible sitting on one of the counters by itself. No context is offered. It’s not next to the Quran or other religious symbols. It’s not sitting next to a pile of drugs. It’s just simply there, acknowledging that it exists. And lastly, when the characters say “God,” the subtitles properly capitalize the proper noun. This doesn’t mean the writers are Christians or even theists, but it does mean that they didn’t intentionally use bad grammar just to be derisive.

The post Robocop: Rogue City first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

The Good:

• Gameplay is refined and extremely fun
• The story is fully fleshed out and well-paced

The Bad:

• Feels unfinished, technically – tons of minor bugs and glitches
• Dull, repetitive boss fights

The Ugly:

• If you’re playing woke bingo, you will run out of cards

Spider-Man 2

Set directly after the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 is a third-person action game set in a near-future aspirational vision of New York City.  Players will switch between playing as Spider-Man and Miles Morales to accomplish the mutual and exclusive goals each of them have throughout the course of the game. Players will fight street thugs, solve puzzles, collect and upgrade equipment, and try to thwart the mysterious plans of Kraven. Where they follow their individual goals, Miles uses his superhero duties as an excuse to procrastinate on writing his college entrance essay and also to support the underprivileged community with missions like saving a music museum dedicated to musicians of color. Peter Parker will complete experiments for the Emily May Foundation to generate clean energy with wind power and develop GMO crops to feed the homeless.

Story: The Gift of Gab

One of the things that sets this series apart from other action games is just how much story it manages to squeeze in while still providing extremely well-refined and varied gameplay. In games like Assassin’s Creed, the story and dialogue are concentrated around cutscenes and maybe a handful of set-piece events, but in Spider-Man 2, the dialogue almost never stops. Every fight, from the iconic plot-centric boss battles to the generic street crime skirmishes, is filled with constant commentary or repartee. Every time you pick up an object or come close to a side objective, someone has something to say. Even just traversing the city from one objective to the next, Spider-Man and Miles can’t go more than a couple of minutes without audibly musing or getting a cell phone call that furthers one of a dozen concurrent story threads.  

It’s difficult to decide which is more impressive – the sheer volume of non-repetitive dialogue or the fact that all voice actors sound on top of their game (no pun intended – well, maybe a little).  Aside from being laced with woke ideology, the content of the dialogue is very well written. The jokes land perfectly, and the drama is only hamfisted when it’s serving some ESG quota. Otherwise, it comes across as sincere and realistic.

Gameplay: So Many Options

Just because the game is story-centric doesn’t mean the developers let the core of the action slide.  While the bulk of gameplay is still combat-driven, the game never misses an opportunity to introduce a new type of interaction. This often happens in the form of minigames, such as solving puzzles to splice plant genes, isolate chemical compounds, or find hidden items, but it also manifests in races on the ground and in the air or controlling drastically different types of drones to train AI models or repair a broken security system. And the list goes on and on.

Gameplay: Traversal

Getting around in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 can be a sheer joy. Web-swinging through the streets has a rhythm that feels almost natural. As if that wasn’t good enough, the new web-wings ability, which turns the spider suits into wingsuits, gives players even more crazy-fun ways to zip around skyscrapers, across bridges, and over the bay. 

The ability to fast travel is locked behind completing a certain number of side objectives in each borough of the city. This is a fairly organic way to make sure players don’t start skipping chunks of the environment until they’ve had a chance to see and experience it.

Gameplay: If You Can’t Be Original, Be The Best

This game borrows most of its combat system (as do many other third-person action games) from Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), so the attack-dodge-parry combat isn’t new or unique, but this implementation does set a high bar among imitators. As with environment traversal, there’s a rhythm to combat that just feels right when you manage to sync up with it. Wade into a crowd of a dozen thugs unprepared, and you’ll get your butt handed to you, but get into the groove, and you start to feel unstoppable. 

The game still offers its share of cheap deaths from baddies that have attacks that can soak up half of your health in one shot if you don’t manage to parry or get out of the way fast enough. While frustrating, it also incentivizes the player to take a more frenetic and aggressive approach on the next attempt. 

The player and the enemy aren’t the only elements of combat. There are always environmental actions available to give the player an edge in combat  Sometimes, it’s just loose objects scattered around that you can web up and throw as projectiles, and sometimes, it’s something specific to a boss fight, like a water pipe, or a trapdoor. 

Several enemies are immune to direct attack, meaning that you constantly have to adjust your approach – for example, enemies with shields can’t be defeated head-on, so you have to get behind them to do any damage, and enemies with hand weapons can only be hurt by special attacks or a well-timed parry.

Boss fights are a little repetitive and predictable.  Every boss has to be defeated three times per encounter, and while there’s some variation in what environmental advantages can be used, there’s otherwise very little variety in the combat. In this, the designers clearly chose cinematics over gameplay.

Gameplay: Shhhh Be Very Quiet

During sneaking sequences, it’s up to the player whether or not the character is discovered.  If discovered, the enemies will attack until they’re defeated, or the player manages to break line of sight long enough for them to lose track. The stealth mechanics here are nothing new (most again taken right out of the Batman Arkham games), but they are well-implemented.  For instance, enemies have realistic lines of sight and respond somewhat convincingly to distractions. Environments are arranged to give the player plenty of opportunities to strategically separate the bad guys and use silent takedowns to incapacitate them.

Audio: A Feast for the Ears

The audio production is nothing short of fantastic.  The high-quality voice acting is mixed perfectly with the sound effects and music and is never difficult to understand. Full advantage is taken of multi-channel surround sound setups, not just to provide convincing ambiance but to give players positional awareness.  The music is well orchestrated and borrows heavily from the most recent Spider-Man films while still delivering unique performances. The Spider-Man “theme” gets multiple context-based renditions, including a rhythm-action game they managed to slip in.

Technical Evaluation: A Spider Web Full of Bugs

As polished as much of this game is, it was also released clearly unfinished. Minor bugs and glitches are evident throughout. If you’re curious why it was dinged for performance and technical issues, a fairly comprehensive list exists here. While disappointing, they amount to annoyances more than hindrances.

Final Thoughts

From start to finish, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is paced like an Avengers film; the action and story comprise a flashy, dense, nonstop feast of dopamine.  It’s clear that a lot of the right kind of passion, i.e., art, voice acting, complex storytelling, gameplay design, environment design, and audio design, went into this project. Unfortunately, a lot of the wrong kind of passion – DEI, decolonization, misandry, and a litany of other woke concepts also found their way into this virtual world.  It presents an Overton Window in which non-woke, non-leftist ideologies don’t even exist. As great as this game is technically and as fun as it is to play, it amounts to 20-ish hours of woke propaganda targeted at young people. Don’t let your children play this without at least first discussing that superpowers and future tech are not the only things in it that are at odds with reality.

WOKE ELEMENTS

To the writers, the true villain of this story is not Kraven or Venom; it’s whiteness. The reason this game gets such a high wokeness score is because it is fundamentally a story about decolonizing Spider-Man, and nearly every part of the narrative supports this though it isn’t necessarily obvious while you’re playing. You’ll find a lot written about “decolonization” online, and like all politically controversial topics, there is little consistency in how it is meant and how it is applied.  James Lindsay delivered a speech about wokeness that addresses decolonization if you want a based opinion, but it basically means removing white people from positions of power, public life, and, to some, from existence.  

Spider-Man’s woke slant is not worn on its sleeve. The writers didn’t try to make either Spider-Man gay, plaster the environments with pride flags and trans-rights slogans, or stop every five minutes to acknowledge the indigenous peoples that used to inhabit New York.  Everything it does is subtle, almost subliminal, and many players will, no doubt, brush off what they see as innocuous or coincidental, if they even notice it at all.  When I tell you this game ranks high on wokeness, I won’t be shocked if some readers who have already played it are dismissive or skeptical. You won’t necessarily be dealing with it the whole time, and that seems to be the point.

Spider-Man 2 resists the temptation to depict racial inequality between Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Indeed, without making Miles literally homeless, it would be difficult to depict him as less privileged than Peter. There are indirect inferences to racial inequality in the way that a music museum seems to struggle, specifically because its theme is “musicians of color,” but in thousands of lines of dialogue, no one cries “racism” out loud. If anything, Miles’ advantages over Peter (still has one of his parents and isn’t dirt poor) are meant to bring balance to Peter’s one advantage of being white – this is what the woke call “equity.”

One of the woke categories that Spider-Man 2 scores some points in was surprising to see in a video game at all.  That is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Google has memory-holed most articles that aren’t fawning endorsements of this concept so it was difficult to find a good one to share. Chances are you, however, have already encountered it and know exactly why it’s a plague on the corporate world, but if you would like an elegant and clear primer on it and how it relates to wokeness, you are encouraged to watch the James Lindsay speech linked above as it also touches on the elements of DEI.

On the surface and taken a piece at a time, the woke elements are scattered and appear unrelated.  Moreover, the sheer volume of dialogue effectively dilutes the woke parts, as prolific as they are, blending them in with what is an impressively large tapestry of narrative.  Despite the laundry list of problems, narratively speaking, the game isn’t all bad. There are great themes of friendship, familial loyalty, mentorship, honesty, and redemption throughout. Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, there are undeniable patterns that reveal the woke parts are not innocuous. 

As a game marketed to young people, the most immediately troublesome parts are the messages it sends to girls about boys and boys about themselves. For example, Peter’s self-effacement goes beyond healthy humility, and MJ’s beyond expressions of her own insecurities.

Some understanding of Venom is necessary for the context below. It is a symbiotic alien creature. Very analogous to demonic possession, Venom can take a person as a host and affect the person’s mind, blending his thoughts with theirs. This also causes them to lose most of their inhibitions. Since Venom is a creature of pragmatic self-interest, it magnifies a person’s aggression, anger, and resentment while suppressing empathy and compassion. Most of the words they speak are still their own but without a filter.

Anti-2nd Amendment

• While fighting a group of thugs looting a gun store, Peter monologues about how irresponsible it is to have a gun club in the middle of New York City, implying that the owner is at least partly to blame for the crime.

Anti-capitalism/Pro-communism

• Peter lectures, “Profit shouldn’t be part of the equation when it comes to basic human necessities.” Here, he’s referring to a non-profit being morally superior to other tech companies because it open sources the spliced genomes of modified plants. This is done expressly to make them available to feed the homeless for free as opposed to profiting from them the way normal corporations do.  How a homeless person is going to use an open-source gene sequence to grow food for themselves without the need for equipment, specially educated personnel, land, and raw materials is not fully explained.
• There’s a podcast that you will hear snippets from between missions and while traversing the city.  In one of these, the caster, Dana, laments getting cut off while having a riveting discussion about “philanthropy and using the means of production for good.” This is a blatantly Marxist concept.

DEI

• Sometime before Aunt May’s death in the first game and the start of this one, Norman Osborn, Harry’s billionaire father, set up a non-profit think tank in the middle of New York City called the Emily May Foundation to celebrate her legacy.  While Harry’s father set things up, Harry himself “changed a couple of things” when he recently took it over.  He casually mentions that he “Installed a diverse board to keep us on track.”  “Diverse” in this context refers to basically anyone who is either non-white, non-straight, or female. Harry’s change can only mean one of two things. The first one is that he fired any straight white males who were already serving on the board in order to replace them, and the second is that there was no board, to begin with, and no straight white males were considered for positions. Either way, this is anti-white racism doled out as casually as choosing the color of the floor tiles. Not to mention the naivety that comes with hiring people on the basis of something other than their qualifications and thinking this is going to keep things “on track”. 
• It isn’t just the board of Emily May that’s “diverse.” With the exception of Harry, Peter, and Dr. Curtis Connors (a.k.a. The Lizard), who is there as a short-lived plot device, there are no white males working at Emily May. In fact, out of the sixty or seventy people you see milling around, there are no white males in the building at all. This is subtle but 100% intentional.
• There’s a point after Peter is merged with Venom when the symbiosis is nearly complete, so Peter’s inhibitions are gone.  He begins ranting about how he is the only hero and that he has to save everyone. It’s a rare moment where the dialogue takes a turn for the awkward because there really isn’t anything in the plot up to that point that supports him having that belief, even subconsciously.  When Miles confronts him in order to bring him back to himself, he says, “I’m trying to save you, Peter!” Peter answers, “I’m the hero, you don’t save me, I save you!” Suddenly, the awkwardness of this left turn in the dialogue makes sense. The writers are tacitly apologizing for legacy Spider-Man being a White Savior.  This is the notion that much popular fiction depicts white people as the only ones who can be endowed with special powers to save everyone else as a way to promote white supremacy.
• Additional items can be found in the [Spoilers] section below.

Misandry

• In the opening sequence, Peter is fired by his black female boss. If the roles had been reversed and a white male had fired a black female for the same infraction, we would be reading about how “problematic” this game is in the actual New York Times.
• MJ, in an act of feminine chivalry, offers to pay Peter’s mortgage for him. (His altruistic Aunt May mortgaged the house and donated all of the money to a homeless shelter before she died. Since his lady boss fired him, he can’t pay the mortgage.) Later in the story, she uses this to emasculate him.
• During a fight scene when Miles has just met Felicia (a.k.a. Black Cat) five minutes prior, they’re confronted by an enemy vehicle with a turret on top, causing Miles to panic and ask Felicia what he should do.  Felicia tells him, “You got webs, use them,” which his panic has obviously made him forget. This is a blatant attempt to make Miles appear weak and uncertain and show how cool and collected Felicia is.
• In one scene, we’re treated to a sparring match in which a female soldier uses brute strength to overpower a male soldier who easily has a seventy to ninety-pound weight advantage over her. She knocks him to the ground and gleefully kicks him in the ribs over and over. In real life, a single punch from this man would probably have caved in her skull. As a bonus, the scene is on a loop, so she kicks and mocks him over and over indefinitely until the player triggers the next event.
• Upon their first meeting, the main antagonist, Kraven, explains to Peter that he “hunts that which man most fears.”  Kraven is using the term inclusively – when he says “man,” he means mankind.  Peter’s witty retort is, “He’s hunting failure? Intimacy?” implying that these are exclusively masculine fears.
• During a mission, MJ finds out that one of the Hunters has a lady boss, and she uses this, along with her sudden fluency in their language (deus ex machina much?), to impersonate his boss over the radio in order to learn the location of an access code. Once he tells her where the code is, she piles on a little verbal abuse and belittlement. Lest we mistakenly believe she was just being nasty to sell the part of a gruff paramilitary boss lady, she immediately remarks to herself it felt “kind of nice” to emasculate him.
• MJ is completely aware of the fact that Venom is altering Peter’s behavior; however, when he calls her to tell her the good news that he was freed and apologizes, she urges him to “go on,” as though she’s owed a more groveling apology.
• Peter’s character is a model of humility and selflessness. Throughout all three games that make up this series, he could hardly have been more empathetic and self-sacrificing.  This makes what happens when MJ is caught by Venom and turned into the symbiote monster “Scream” all the more disgusting. The character only exists for the duration of a fifteen-minute boss fight, but the entire point of it seems to be the diatribe of feminist grievances and attempts to emasculate Peter that plays out in the background as MJ (as Scream) lobs verbal abuse at him. Here are some highlights:
  • “I’m done begging for validation from you…or anyone!”
  • “For once, it’s not about you!”
  • “I’m finally in control.”
  • “I live in your shadow.”
  • “You just want to stay the stronger half.”
  • “You always patronize [me]!”
  • “You can’t keep a job.  You can’t pay the mortgage.”
  • At one point, Peter starts to say, “I always fix things,” then catches himself and amends it to “We always fix things,” before descending into sickening self-effacement where he apologizes for things that he didn’t do and that are not even in character for something he would have done off-camera.
    • “I’m sorry, I was wrong. You don’t have to trust me, but trust yourself.” 
    • “You’re right. I was selfish. I was so wrapped up in my own life I never thought about yours.”  

Gay Agenda

• Black Cat, Cat Woman analog and ex-girlfriend of Peter Parker, reveals through the course of conversation that she’s bisexual now. Just in case the player didn’t catch it the first time, the dialogue gratuitously works her “girlfriend” in several more times, as well as getting Miles to virtue-signal his allyship when he characterizes his motivation for saving her from the hunters as “We’ve got to get you back to your girlfriend.” 
• In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), when Miles attends a local fair at a park, we’re introduced to a lesbian couple, and the game makes sure we have a conversation about it. In this game, Miles revisits that same park to complete a mission. Standing in the exact same spot is one of the girls from the first game, and out of an entire crowd of people with whom he is familiar, Miles singles her out to ask about what else, where her partner is. This is done in order to remind us that she’s a lesbian and that Miles is an ally.

Atheism is not a religion

• The writers use the diminutive lowercase “g” when using the proper noun God.  This is not just bad grammar; it’s the hallmark of a zealot who does not believe his/her religion is a religion.

[Spoilers Warning] Do not read below if you don’t want spoilers. [Spoilers Warning]

[Spoilers] DEI

• Lest you think the early reference to the White Savior trope was isolated, the game ends with Peter quitting his role as Spider-Man and passing the torch to Miles.  The only way to completely avoid the White Savior trope is to not tell stories with white heroes or to diminish their roles to sidekicks and supporting characters.
• What Marvel presentation would be complete without post-credits scenes? This game has two. One is to set up the next game’s villain, and the other is to complete the pattern of “decolonization” by introducing Cindy Moon, a character that fans will know as Silk – essentially a female Spider-Man.

The post Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 first appeared on Worth it or Woke.