LegalSpeak Detroit: Become Human

Detroit Become Human

By: Patrick "TheLaw" Morris

Hey everybody welcome back to LegalSpeak a ColdNorth Production. I'm TheLawMorris and this is the video essay series in which I get to talk about the games I've been playing and what I think of the video game industry as a whole. Don’t forget to check out ColdNorthPro.com for everything we do all in one spot. Today we are going to be talking about the 2018 David Cage game Detroit: Become Human but before we get started consider this your official spoiler warning for a game that is very easily spoiled. If you haven't played Detroit and you don’t want it spoiled stop watching now! Oh and also there might be some spoilers for Until Dawn too. 

Going into Detroit I knew it was a choose your own adventure game but that was basically it. I had never played a David Cage game before so I was able to come into it with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions of what a David Cage game is supposed to deliver. And after playing through it I feel like Detroit is two thirds a good game and one third a really bad young adult novel adapted into an even worse movie. Drop Jennifer Lawrence into the role of either Marcus or North put some fire behind her and make a poster and you could easily have convinced me this game was marketed at 13 year old girls who were looking for their next Hunger Games fix.

Throughout the game you play as three main characters and move through their stories as they all happen concurrently with one another. Kara's story (the best of the three) provided emotional intensity and some seriously heart pounding moments that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Connor's story provided an excellent opportunity to step into the shoes of a detective and thoroughly (or not so thoroughly) investigate each scene to uncover the truth and the connection between each individual incident. And Marcus' story provided all the subtlety and nuance of a brick to the face. Overall across all three stories the game has pushed the choose your own adventure genre forward and if you feel the same way I do about this specific type of narrative that is an excellent thing.

Driving the entire experience of a choose your own adventure game is the decision making and how it effects the outcome of the story. For the most part Decisions in Detroit are well thought out and provided an adequate difference in outcomes as each of the stories progressed. That being said the decisions of Detroit are essentially the entirety of the game as outside of those decisions and a handful of quick time events the game is essentially one gigantic cutscene and considering this fact decision making does come up short in a handful of ways. Each time the player is presented with an option they are practically beaten over the head with the fact that they are either making an important decision, saying something of significance, or looking at something that could come into play later on.

Every time I saw a small padlock icon unlock while looking at something or after saying something to another character I almost felt cheated, like the game was spoon feeding me the possibilities rather than me learning about things organically. This all came to a head when the police officer stopped by Rose's house and I has a minute before opening the door to track down three pieces of deviant evidence that were laying out and about. I was quickly able to find two of three but ran out the rest of my time before opening the door desperately searching for the third only to learn later on that I wasn’t able to hide it because I hadn't looked at it previously. Whether I had looked at all three items or not the game should have let me frantically search to find those three items and hide them away in that moment. Showing the padlock icon unlock took away from the experience and the tension of the moment. Had I looked at those items and no icon had appeared it would have forced me to be significantly more engaged and aware of my surroundings raising the stakes of the entire scene.

The nature of the choose your own adventure genre allows for several major "oh" moments for the player. That moment that the audience connects something happening right now to something that had happened previously and everything sort of clicking and falling into place in their minds. The best and most effective "oh" moments are the ones that are a slow burn and the pay off comes hours after the decision had been made. While this became a significantly smaller problem in the late game early on it felt as though the developers were treating the player like they had the memory of a fruit fly. Found the gun in Todd's nightstand? Better give the player the opportunity to grab it less than fifteen minutes later. Encountered Leo in Carl's studio? Better bring him back in a few minutes for a confrontation to make sure the audience hasn’t forgotten who he is. See and free the "zombie" android's in Zlatko's basement? They're gonna kill Zlatko just minutes later. Now I'm not going to say the game didn’t have any slow burn consequences, for example visiting Carl's grave in the second to last chapter because he died early on is a nice touch but the game exhibits far to much handholding as a result the player rarely gets that long term pay off from a decision they made literally hours prior.

For those of you that havent played the game and don’t know, after each chapter youre shown a flow chart mapping your path of decisions and outcomes. The other possibilities are on the flow chart but nothing aside from the options you had and the choices you encountered are actually displayed, the rest is left blank. This was a fun little feature to see how many choice there were and to make things even more fun you can press the triangle button to see what percentage of your friends or players worldwide made the same decisions as you. Now while this was really neat on my first play through it really takes the fun out of any subsequent playthroughs. The game almost sets off an alarm to notify the player anytime they have to make a decision and being able to see how many other possibilities there are makes any future playthroughs much more methodical and in my opinion less fun.

When discussing the decision making mechanics of the game the obvious game that Detroit can most easily be compared to is Until Dawn. Not only does Until Dawn not scream in your face every time you make a decision but it also has significantly more long term pay offs. On my first time through Ashley immediately opened the door for Chris and I didn’t think anything of it because who wouldn’t open the door in that situation? But when I watched my friends play through it and Chris tried to kill Ashley instead of sacrificing himself suddenly Ashley locking the door and leaving Chris to die blew my mind! Until Dawn handled decision presentation better by not broadcasting it every time the player made a decision to the point that oftentimes player's don’t even realize when they had made a decision. And presenting them with the illusion of choice when there was none in one infamous scene was nothing short of a stroke of genius. Detroit takes itself far more seriously than Until Dawn and executes on the presentation in a subpar way.

Where Detroit lives and dies is with its characters and their interactions with one another. Trying to find a balance between the relationships the player wants to preserve and the objectives within the story they want to achieve is where the game is at it's best. Incase you haven't already figured it out I hated the Marcus storyline and found myself very early in the game trying to get him killed so I would have to keep coming back to this miserable character that I couldn’t stand. But when it became apparent that Marcus could romance North suddenly there was something in the storyline that I was invested in. I then spent the rest of that particular storyline trying to balance my decision making and Marcus' relationship with North. Trying to be a pacifist non violent protestor while also trying to satiate what seems to be a never ending bloodlust from a sexy android can be a difficult task to manage. But that's what made it engaging. During Connor's story I became to invested in his friendship with Hank and wound up not finding anything but a new BFF during my investigation which in turn led to Connor being decommissioned a few chapters before the finale. And throughout Kara's story the relationship was basically the entire story so that went pretty well for me.

Keeping the main character segregated from one another until the late game made the entire experience feel like three small games happening in the same universe as opposed to one larger overarching narrative. The game and story would have been better served had it forced the main characters together earlier on and allowed for more interaction between them. Once again something intricate and complex that Until Dawn did better.

On the whole the game was good, I wouldn’t say it was great but it was enjoyable. While it had its shortcomings it did have the distinct advantage of being a choose your own adventure which is always fun. Considering Detroit is no where even close to the best the genre has to offer but is still so so much better than Bandersnatch which is currently the best choose your own adventure the film medium has to offer I feel confident in saying that the future of this genre is in video games. Detroit is a step along the way and a very enjoyable one, I hope to see more choose your own adventure games in the future.

What are your thoughts on Detroit and the choose your own adventure genre? Is Until Dawn as good as I remember it being? Did anyone else think Bandersnatch was super dumb? Let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much to everyone for watching! If you liked what you heard don’t forget to subscribe for a new video every week! If you wanna get in on some more free form video game or movie conversation you can find our podcasts HardReset and NoRefunds right here on YouTube or on most major podcast services. Ill be back next week talking about Alien Isolation, until then just go play some games. 

LegalSpeak Majora's Mask

Majora's Mask

By: Patrick "TheLaw" Morris

Hey everybody welcome back to LegalSpeak a ColdNorth Production. I'm TheLawMorris and this is the short video essay series in which I get to talk about the games I've been playing and what I think of the video game industry as a whole. This week we are going to be talking about Majora's Mask but before we jump into all that mess I just want to remind you to check out our website ColdNorthPro.com for everything we do all in one spot!

Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game ever made, in fact in my opinion Majora's Mask is the best video game ever made. Now neither of these things are particularly unpopular opinions, a lot of people like Majora's Mask and there a million videos about this game on the YouTube, everyone singing it's praises because of how dark and mysterious it is. And the game is without a doubt dark but that's not what makes it good. What makes Majora's Mask so great is the story that lies beneath all the dark teenage angst, the story or a child learning to deal with loss.

Majora's Mask is one of the few direct sequels in the Zelda series and it's being juxtaposed to Ocarina of Time actually allows for a more unique take on a Zelda story. Rather than simply following the tried and true Zelda formula (please don’t think I'm ripping on the Zelda formula as the series is my all time favorite) Majora's Mask is instead able to branch out and explore with the player what happens in the immediate fallout of the events of Ocarina of Time. Every time a story ends with the hero vanquishing evil and restoring peace and tranquility to the world I'm always left wondering what happens next. Sure the war is won and nobody has to worry about the immediate threat that was previously in place but there are so many things that happen in those stories that would change the way we live our lives forever and we never see the heroes of these stories deal with those things. There is no happily ever after because the sun will rise again tomorrow and the hero will have to face the reality of the new world head on. Majora's Mask is a story all about what happens when that new world comes packing some harsh truths.

A popular theory amongst fans is that throughout the entirety of Majora's Mask Link is dead and Termina is some interpretation of purgatory. Now while I don’t personally subscribe to the theory that Link is dead I do believe that nothing the player does in the game actually happens. The entire story takes place in Link's mind. Now I cannot be clear enough about this, I did not come up with this theory and I in no way think that I am the one that came up with this but I do believe that the events of the game are representative of Link moving through the five stages of grief. Link isn't dead, he's grieving.

At the close of Ocarina of Time Navi tells Link that she has to go and flies away. Majora's Mask opens on Link riding Epona deeper and deeper into the lost woods despite Link's knowing that the dangers involved with venturing further into the lost woods he feels compelled to search for his friend. At the very outset of the game Link is knocked out by a skullkid at which point the audience crosses from reality into a figment of Link's imagination.

Each of the five main areas of the game thematically represent one of the five stages of grief and Link moves through them not only in the order in which people are supposed to but also minor relapses and loss of progress is emulated throughout the game as the game forces the player to venture back to previous areas to collect additional items and side quests for masks. As well as physical travel the game forces the player to experience setbacks in their road to recovery by making them play the song of time to return to dawn of the first day in order to have enough time to complete all the dungeons and quests in the game. In a way the game teaches players that nothing can ever be accomplished without some sort of setback whether it be circumstantial or of our own creation.

After a hallucination of deku scrubs Link finds himself in a clock tower and emerges in the midst of the hustle and bustle that is Clock Town. All the people of Clock Town are rushing about preparing for the annual festival that is set to begin in three days and none can be bothered to acknowledge the threat that is literally looming over head. The moon is growing larger in the sky as it approaches and will undoubtedly be crashing directly into Clock Town killing them all in just a few days time. This apocalypse that hangs in the balance grows ever closer and yet no one seems to notice and when pointed out all they can do is wave it off as nothing to be concerned about. The people of Clock Town are in denial.

After leaving Clock Town Link's first stop along his journey is the temple in the center of Woodfall. Upon his arrival Link sees a monkey that has been met with extreme hostility and is told that the monkey has kidnapped their princess. The monkey then speaks to Link privately and informs him that he has no idea what they are talking about but the deku scrubs of Woodfall simply need someone to blame. The deku scrubs of Woodfall are anger.

Beyond Woodfall is Snowhead. Upon arriving in Snowhead Link find the Goron's frozen and sequestered from their way of life. The Goron Elder's Son wont stop crying and the general mood of the room oozes discomfort. Speaking to each Goron the player can hear their desperation for their lives to return to how they once were and for things to simply get back to normal. The Goron's are willing to do anything just to have their old lives back and when Link arrives they see a glimmer of hope and immediately try to latch onto that. The Goron's are bargaining.

Next in journey the game takes the player to Great Bay. As soon as the player arrives at Great Bay a cut scene plays in which Link witnesses the death of an unknown Zora. Shortly thereafter Link learns that the Zora was a beloved member of the community, a talented musician, and a loving soon to be father. Not only is the entire community especially the Zora band left not knowing what to do after this tragedy happened so shortly before their performance at the festival but Lulu has lost her voice and is sent spiraling into a deeper depression as she copes with the overwhelming loss she has endured. The Zoras are depression.

And finally the last major area in the game is objectively the most bleak and dreary of the all, Ikana Valley. A dry desert climate that is not hospitable to almost any forms of life and is therefore populated almost exclusively by the undead Gibdo. Amongst all the dead and desolation of Ikana Valley however lives the young girl Pamela and her father, the two happiest people the player meets in the entire game. They live in what is undoubtedly the worst most depressing place in all of Termina but they have come to accept what they have and embrace the fact that they have each other and value that above all else. Their lives leave a lot to be desired but they are happy. Pamela and her father are acceptance.

Majora's Mask takes the mask's, a small side quest mechanic rarely necessary for the main story in Ocarina of Time, and builds an entire game around it. Throughout the game Link obtains and wears different masks to achieve different goals but none of them help him run from what has happened. Each mask is representative of a childs fear of the unknown and the physical manifestation of Link literally trying to hide from reality. The transformation masks take this one step further and represent Link trying to literally become someone he's not in order to not have to face the fact that his friend is gone. Of all the masks in the game the only one that Link can wear that makes him his best self is the Fierce Deity Mask that is a representation of his potential. Of the 24 masks in the game Link is at his most powerful when he embraces who he is and how the events of his life have changed him, when Link wears a mask of his best self is when he can finally overcome his fear.

The story of Majora's mask is dark yes but more importantly it's deep. The story revolves around a child learning to cope with loss and press forward regardless, a child that screams out in pain as he tries to force himself to be someone he's not for just a few moments of relief while he can pretend that his problems have all washed away. What Majora's Mask is to me is the internal struggle with overcoming our own mental illness' and making ourselves better for them. Majora's Mask is beautiful to me and even as game's change and become more advanced it will always be applicable to someone who is struggling.

What are your thoughts on Majora's Mask? Let me know in the comments down below.

If you liked what you heard don’t forget to subscribe and check out our video game podcast HardReset for more free form video game discussion and our movies podcast NoRefunds the podcast that watches bad movies so you don’t have to! You can find those on most major podcast services and right here on YouTube. If you don’t want to scrounge around for our content you can find everything we do all in one spot over at ColdNorthPro.com. Connor Lockett next week is for you, I'll be back talking about my thoughts on Detroit: Become Human. Until then just go play some games.

LegalSpeak Tom Clancy Games

Tom Clancy Games

By: Patrick "TheLaw" Morris

Hey everybody welcome back to LegalSpeak a ColdNorth Production, I'm TheLawMorris and this is the short video essay series where I get to talk about the games I've been playing and my thoughts on the video game industry as a whole. You can see everything we do all in one spot over at ColdNorthPro.com. This week we are going to be talking about Tom Clancy Games so lets get to it!

The Tom Clancy licensed games have had their ups and downs throughout the years but overall have stayed very close to what they were originally intended to be. With each new series in the franchise there was a markedly different approach and intent that satisfied a gap that hadn't been filled previously by anything else in the portfolio. And shockingly the intent was always clear and none of the series' have radically changed what they originally set out to be but instead they’ve come increasingly closer to realizing their own respective original conceptualizations. As the games were introduced the technology was clearly not up to the task to allow the developers to make the games they had clearly envisioned from the start but as technology improved each Tom Clancy series came closer and closer to what was originally intended to be in the players hands from the very beginning. Now in 2019 the technology has finally caught up to the vision and as a result the portfolio of Tom Clancy games is one of the most consistently great in contemporary video games.

It all began in 1998 when Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was released on the PC and later ported to the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and even mac OS. Rainbow Six consisted of short bite sized missions that revolved around tactical shooting and team based objective driven gameplay. Over the years the series improved but didn’t stray far from the formula. Enemies felt like blank slate lifeless bots that felt as though they could better serve the experience if they were controlled by a living breathing and most importantly, thinking human. I never felt any sense of satisfaction in killing the enemies in Rainbow Six because and the games always felt hollow in the same way Counter Strike does when playing against bots instead of people. Enter Rainbow Six Siege. Suddenly sticking to the formula but putting human players behind both ends of the conflict elevate Rainbow Six be what it had always had the potential to be but had never been able to be because of hardware limitations.

And speaking of hardware limitations no series in the franchise has been more stymied by hardware limitations and forced to limit the scope of what the developer so obviously and desperately wanted it to be than Ghost Recon. Being relatively familiar with most of the series in the Tom Clancy franchise I think it's safe to say that Ghost Recon had the biggest aspirations of the bunch. When the first game launched in 2001 on the PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo GameCube it slowed down the pace of Rainbow Six and used the added time to emphasize squad based stealth gameplay. From the get go Ghost Recon was always intent on portraying a more intimate, quiet, cooperative experience that involved four people moving through a level undetected together. As time went on the levels in Ghost Recon games grew larger allowing players to attempt different variations of their approach to achieve their objective. And finally in 2016 Ghost Recon Wildlands was released and is a massive open world that not only embraces the cooperative multiplayer experience but encourages it. Ghost Recon Wildlands has become what the original was so desperate to be and after putting dozens of hours into Wildlands I am astounded that a developer 18 years ago was able to conceptualize what Ghost Recon would eventually become so accurately.

One year after the release of the original Ghost Recon game Ubisoft Montreal treated us to my personal favorite Tom Clancy game, Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell wasn’t less ambitious than it's older brothers but simply smaller in scale and much more contained. Where Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon were so focused on being video games and delivering an excellent pseudo multiplayer experience, Splinter Cell was much more refined and more in line with what Tom Clancy himself would deliver in his books. A single player narrative focused game featuring characters with depth and global conflict Splinter Cell immediately stood out from the rest of the Tom Clancy games and seeing as the type of game Splinter Cell was meant to be wasn’t nearly as dependent on advanced technology it is the series in the franchise that has undergone the least amount of change in order to realize its original vision. The series came out of the gate strong and immediately Ubisoft knew they needed more of these games in development. Ubisoft Shanghai took the reigns on the second entry in the series while Ubisoft Montreal was able to take their time with the third entry and arguable the best game in the entire franchise, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. After Chaos Theory though the Splinter Cell series went through what felt like a couple of identity crises. First forcing Sam Fisher to be a double agent then pushing a much more cinematic approach in Conviction. Luckily after a three year break Ubisoft Toronto brought the series back with Blacklist that functioned as return to form for the series while maintaining some of the more accessible elements from Conviction. Splinter Cell has been dark for the past five years and with each E3 I continue to let myself get excited to hear Michael Ironsides gruff gravely voice but every year I end the Ubisoft conference disappointed…maybe 2019 will be the year we see the spy make a comeback.

After Splinter Cell there wasn’t a Tom Clancy series that really caught traction in any significant way for more than a decade but then in 2015 Tom Clancy's The Division was released on PC, Xbox one, and PlayStation 4 and it was…kind of ok I guess. At launch The Division suffered from the same difficulties that almost all online games do which is a lack of balancing and a lack of content. The core of the experience was present but the product felt lacking and rough around the edges. Over the last three years however not only has The Division been given more coats of wax than Biff Tannen would lie to you about but they’ve also managed to keep the Christmas season going for three plus years! Now The Division hasn’t had nearly as much time to develop as the other games in the Tom Clancy stable and for the first time a Tom Clancy series is following trends rather than setting them by being a shared world MMO shooter but it has worked out fairly well. I've never been particularly into the shared world shooter genre and to be completely honest I played the game at launch and quickly fell off then only went back to it for a few hours for this video but there is so obviously so much potential in The Division that I am actually really excited for the what The Division 2 has to offer, maybe it will be the one that hooks me on shared world shooters.

Over the past few years Ubisoft has shown a commitment to their games and their players by continuing to support their online games like Siege and For Honor and The Division is no exception. I'm not crazy about everything they've done in the past and I'm sure they will make decisions that I don’t agree with in the future but credit where credit's due: when Ubisoft sells a game for $60 this generation they are going to make sure you get your moneys worth out of that game.

Where the Tom Clancy franchise sits right now (assuming Splinter Cell makes a return at E3) is an incredibly well rounded portfolio that has a game or two for everyone. If you want something that plays like the Tom Clancy movies or books play out, look no further than Splinter Cell. If you want to explore an open world and play a top shelf co-op stealth shooter with your friends you'll be hard pressed find a better experience than Ghost Recon Wildlands. If you're looking for some match based PVP action Rainbow Six Siege has got it spades. And if the daily grind of an MMORPG is more your speed then The Division and soon The Division 2 will scratch that itch for you. The technology finally caught up with the developers imaginations and aside from 2005 there has never been a better time to pick up a Tom Clancy game. 2005 being the year Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory one of the best games of all time came out but you all already knew that because we have all played that game all the way through at least a dozen times right?

Which Tom Clancy game is your favorite and why is it Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory? Let me know in the comments down below.

Don’t forget that we have other content besides just these boring ass videos! Check out our podcast HardReset for more free form video game discussion and our movies podcast NoRefunds the podcast that watches bad movies so you don’t have to! You can find both of those on most major podcast services and right here on YouTube! If you don’t want to scrounge for our content you can find everything we do all in one spot over at ColdNorthPro.com! I will be back next week talking about my favorite video game of all time The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask but until then just go play some games.

LegalSpeak Spider-Man DLC

Spider-Man DLC

By: Patrick "TheLaw" Morris

Hey everybody welcome back to LegalSpeak a ColdNorth Production. I'm TheLawMorris and this is the video essay series where I get to talk about the games I've been playing and what I think of the video game industry as a whole. Now I know I said last week that I would be talking about Tom Clancy games this week but the scale of that video got way out of control so that one wont be coming until next week, so for now we are going to be talking about the Spider-Man DLC. 

Before we get into the discussion though I do need to take a moment to issue a spoiler warning, I wont be intentionally delving into specific story beats in this video but I wont be making any effort to avoid any spoilers so if you havent played Spider-Man or the DLC yet and you don’t want that spoiled stop watching now.

I've never been a huge supporter of DLC, there has almost never been DLC that has captured my interest so as a result I almost never buy DLC. The primary reason that DLC has failed to intrigue me so many times is that I play games for the stories they tell and after the story of the main game anything short of a full blown sequel feels lackluster. After the climax of a main story of a game playing a smaller story just feels less than in many way. In my opinion DLC almost always feels overpriced for what it is able to deliver. Now that’s not to say that all DLC is overpriced because there is quite a bit of DLC that can stand on its own as an entire experience and deliver. The best examples of this being The Witcher Blood and Wine and Far Cry Blood Dragon. So after years of avoiding DLC I decided to jump back in with one of my favorite games of the year and I spent the $25 on the Spider-Man season pass.

On the whole the entire Spider-Man DLC experience was what I would call the epitome of mediocrity. Throughout three chapters and roughly six hours of Spider-Man gameplay we definitely weren't given the best the game has to offer and unfortunately I feel as though in many ways the DLC came packed with the lowest lows of the overall Spider-Man PS4 experience. Each chapter centered around one character and their interactions with Spider-Man and yet the only one of these three relationships that Spider-Man has that was the most interesting in it's respective chapter was his dynamic with Silver Sable in the finale chapter. The Black Cat storyline was fine but what was most compelling wasn’t Spider-Man's interactions with Black Cat but instead Peter's interactions with Mary Jane and how they handled the potential ramifications of actions Peter had taken while they were split up. Hammerhead played a fun villainous role in the second chapter but was entirely outshined by a vengeance hungry Yuri Wantanabe as she broke her own rules out of shear fury and desperation. The main focus of the first two chapters were completely overshadowed by supporting character's that stole the show.

But the flaws aren't simply limited to character dynamics with one another. Black Cat's involvement in the storyline felt disconnected and her motivations that had run so strong in the first chapter were so easily abandoned in the third chapter. Moving from chapter one to chapter two felt excellent as the first chapter ended on a high note and the second started at that same level before coming back down but the transition from the end of two to the beginning of three felt abrupt and almost as though it wasn’t meant to be played immediately afterward. Content that made up the side activities of the main game was haphazardly patched together within the context of the story making the actual summation of the story levels feel much more generic and phoned in. And the attention to detail was no where near the level of polish that made the main game so great: Black Cat is presumed dead at the end of chapter one then makes a short appearance in chapter three in which she completely abandons all her work from the first chapter without a second thought all while offering zero explanation as to how she survived. Hammerhead is presumed dead at the end of the second chapter yet none of the other characters are surprised when he shows up alive in the third chapter. And where the hell is Mary Jane going to be at the start of Spider-Man 2? Is she going to sit that one out?

If you watched my video on the main game you'll know that what I think made Spider-Man PS4 stand out was the level of restraint Insomniac showed. Well I'm sad to say that that restraint seems to have been thrown to the wayside during the writing and development of the DLC and it really does suffer as a result.

All of the negativity is fine but the DLC wasn’t a steaming pile of hot garbage. Chapter two in particular was very satisfying and provided a contained story arc and some of the most intriguing character development seen across both the main game and the DLC alike. Hammerhead made for an actually formidable villain and a great boss fight but the stand out of the entire package was Yuri Wantanabe. Seeing the chapter start with the NYPD raid on Hammerhead's hideout that ended in tragedy gave Yuri something to fight for. And as she became increasingly consumed by her rage not even Spider-Man could control her. Yuri's arc and ultimate fall at the end the second chapter as she shot Hammerhead in cold blood was one of the most interesting and believable declines the game has to offer. While the second chapter still would have been my favorite of the three even without Yuri's subplot it was that desperate, angry, and sad police captain on a rampage that pushed the entire chapter into excellence.

Overall I am sad to say that I don’t feel as though the Spider-Man DLC pass is worth the $25 asking price. While the second chapter stands out as the highlight its just not enough to justify spending money on and playing through the other two. What I found most interesting though is the fact that even after not being thrilled with this particular DLC pack I think I'm now significantly more likely to buy DLC for other games moving forward.

What are your favorite DLC packs and which ones do you think I should play? Let me know in the comments down below.

If you liked what you heard and you just cant get enough hit that subscribe button for a new video every week. Also don’t forget to check out our video game podcast HardReset on iTunes, Spotify, iheartradio, SoundCloud, and right here on YouTube for more free form video game discussion. And our movies podcast NoRefunds the podcast that watches bad movies so you don’t have to! On iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube! I'll be back next week talking about Tom Clancy games so until then just go play some games.