Doomverse #28 - Weaponized Mayhem

Doom is known for many things. Many things have already been said about Doom and Quake, especially on Planet Virtua. What really matters for a lot of people are the weapons. The guns, the chainsaw, the Rune Sword, all of these are the focus for a great deal of the fans. Many of them have been used in multiple games and represented in other games. These titles have affected the gaming world as we know it. The Doomverse weapons roster hasn't just stood the test of time, but modern games are still trying to perfect it. Sure, you can say Halo did it better, but everyone's wrong at some point in their lives.

This is a list of the greatest weapons in the Doomverse, beit Quake 3 Arena or Doom Eternal. Some weapons have an improved version in later editions, some of them are featured once and then basically never again. These are the weapons that thrived under the pressure of being compared to another in the Doom Arsenal. Whether they create more destruction or just iconized Doom as a whole, these rose to the top. 

The Dark Age's Bonecrusher

The newest Doom game, at the time of this writing, had no shortage of cool weapons, but this is one that truly stood out. It certainly wasn't the "BFC". The Bonecrusher in both of its other iterations used this idea to a great degree. The thought of a skull being used to drive shrapnel into your enemies is just such a brutal idea and its upgrades made it quite the demon grinder. The Ravager was probably the best iteration out of any of them and I can only hope that it will be in future titles. Part of me doubts it, but one can hope.

Doom 4's Heavy Assault Rifle

The repeating rifle was not a weapon in the original Doom games, mostly because it didn't need one with the chaingun. Doom 2016 brought this about in probably the most boss way possible. It not only starts like a true Doom weapon, but throughout the game, the upgrades build it up to a legendary status that deserves to be on this list. You can upgrade the bullets to explode after impact, and it even eats through cyber mancubi like hot water through ice. 

 Doom 4's Chaingun

Fully upgraded and able to immediately begin spinning, this chaingun will take down any horde of demons and destroy a boss demon's hit bar. This chaingun gets an upgrade where it sprouts three different turrets which all fire at once. It overheats faster, but it also does more damage than it would in normal fire rates. This is enough damage to take down a fresh Cyber Mancubus. The gun itself is a one-machine barrage.

Quake 3 Arena's Lightning Gun

More deadly than the first Quake's lightning gun, this one reaches far and drains the opponent's HP within seconds. One big problem is that it does run out of ammunition fairly quickly. If you're fortunate enough to get a fully loaded lightning, it can mow down any group of fighters. It doesn't chain lightning enemies, that would be a little overpowered, but it doesn't take away from how the gun turned out. 

Quake 3 Arena's Plasma Gun

The gun that inspired Dark Age's plasma gun. Though it can be argued that it's not quite as powerful as the Doom 1 iteration, it is still such a satisfying gun to use when you start to unleash upon a single or multiple targets. It also has the drawback of not being able to fire up close without massive backfire. It is known as "melting your face". So, pick your poison between the two. They're both A Class Doomverse weapons.

Quake 3 Arena's Railgun

If you want one of the better aspects of Quake 3 Arena, you do a railgun fight. These guns are so easy to use, you just pick one up and put someone in your sights. If you want to be real stylish, you shoot someone with no zoom. That one small second to line up your sights can be the second where you get killed, so you need to be fast and this is the way to one-shot an opponent. It will even kill someone with a near miss and does tons of damage when grazing a target. Quake 3 and Quake 4 did it right.

Quake's Nailgun

If you want a more iconic weapon, it's hard to beat Quake's original nailgun. This is where they proudly declared "Nine Inch Nails did our soundtrack" through the NIN symbols on the ammo boxes. The nailgun and super nailgun will get you through many levels of Quake with glorious nail fire. The problem really is that their nail doesn't last, especially with the super nailgun's fire rate. 

Doom Eternal's Crucible

One of the biggest hype pieces from Doom 2016. This sword was introduced at the very end, and we finally get our own in Doom Eternal. It is an instant-kill weapon with very limited ammo, unless you're fighting the Icon of Sin. This sword will immediately slice huge demons in half, even the mini-bosses. Given this powerful weapon near the end of Doom Eternal was a gigantic help when the going got tough. It was as dependable as the BFG when you needed a quick death between a rock and a hard place.

Doom Eternal's Unmaykr

Introduced in Doom 64 and perfected in Eternal, The Unmaker, or "Unmakyr" in this case, is a weapon on par with the Big Fucking Gun. One good pull will destroy the largest demons within a few seconds. It sends multiple laser blasts all at once, which make any demon crumble under its weight, even the bosses. The feeling of unleashing this enormous barrage all at once is very satisfying. You don't need to upgrade it like you did in 64, it's ridiculously powerful as soon as you unlock it by doing all of the callenge stages. It takes a while to accomplish, but it is a labor of love for a fantastic weapon in your arsenal. 

Doom 4's Chainsaw

What sets this apart from the other chainsaws, is that it is an instant kill weapon that is not wholly required to be used. Yes, it is still made to revamp your ammunition by spawning it from your victim, but it is not a need like it is in Doom Eternal. The death animations you get from this have to be among the greatest glory kills in the entire game. The blood and severed body parts are worth its use alone, you never need to make it required.

Doom 4's Gauss Cannon

A standout weapon for many, many reasons. It's Doom 2016's answer to the railgun. Somehow, though, they turned it into one of the most powerful weapons outside of the normal fair. Two words: "Siege Mode". This mode will turn this fairly decent blaster cannon into a decimating powerhouse of burning terror! One single shot from Siege Mode has the power to take down Barons of Hell and turn them into piles. It is one of the weapons that reminds you how awesome the power fantasy can get. Turn mancubi and cyber mancubi into piles of organs at your leisure and have a ball. It is even better when you're able to move in this mode.

Rocket Launcher

Doom 1 did this right from the start and they rolled with it in each and every iteration. Rocket jumps, blast back, rocket battles against Cyberdemons, everything about this gun has some sort of iconic affect on its game. Quake cashed in on the rocket jump first and it has since become a staple of First Person Shooters as a result. It may be a bad idea to use it on Lost Souls or Pinkies, for obvious reasons but it's just so wonderful to fire one missile into a group to see body parts begin to fly. Rip and Tear, indeed.

The BFG 9000

They tried to make a BFG 10,000 more than once. One was a strange iteration from Quake 3 Arena, the other was a planet destroying beam in Doom Eternal that blows a hole into Mars. They were nice but nothing will replace the Big Fucking Gun 9000. One pull of the trigger kills entire hordes and does incomparable damage to mini-bosses if it doesn't finish them outright. Doom films have never gotten this weapon right, but it is thankfully handled very well in every other sequel. We're not going to go into the crossbow from The Dark Ages, there's only one super powered laser cannon that we want. We want the one they used to name an alcoholic drink mix. You know, the one that three clips a Cyberdemon. We want that one!

The Super Shotgun

At first glance, in Doom 2, this may just look like a normal double barrel shotgun. Well, not only does it take 2 shells in each shot, but it also has the capacity to kill multiple demons in one pull. There's no blowback, though, and hearing that meaty sound as you fire and reload is hard to top. Doom 4 brought it back in all its wondrous glory and outshined even the Quake iterations as a result. With uranium shells and the ability to double shot, Doom 2016 brought the super shotgun to a newfound glory through some of the most awesome upgrades imaginable. Eternal's super shotgun had a hook for chain jumping and that may have been an interesting novelty, but it ultimately did very little for the super shotty all around. One upclose shot from this gun should be sending demon parts scattering across the screen. If not, you're doing it wrong.

There are a lot more weapons to be considered, but these are a good start. Next time, we'll take a look at the weapons of Wolfenstein, as those are a list all their own. Doom has no shortage of metal that grinds demons into dust, and Quake drives some pretty hard nails into the coffin. They are often duplicated by others, but they will always be judged by the best.

Xbox One - How Greed can Poison a Gaming Company

Anyone in the videogame zeitgeist can tell you why Xbox lost the console wars. It was not because Playstation was a trustworthy company and it was not because any exclusive game for another console. Microsoft did it to themselves and they are still feeling the stranglehold of that failure years after the eighth generation had come and gone. From the day that it was announced, the Xbox One uncovered just how bad a game console could get even before it was released in 2013. It also showed gamers just how much control they could have over their gaming experience and it was a very disconcerting revelation that made the general public stop trusting Microsoft. 

This all began in April of 2013 when a Microsoft Studios employee, Adam Orth, confirmed people's dreadful rumor of the next generation console requiring to be always online. He posted on his Twitter account that a console always being online was not a big deal and that people just needed to accept it. This was the first very large nail in Xbox One's console and opened up an entire flooding of negative press and public backlash. He lost his job soon after making the comment, but this was only the beginning of a very long and dreadful launch of a machine that was now in question. 

Adam Orth

The following months only brought more news and more disbelief. It seemed like every single thing that Microsoft revealed about the Xbox One only drew more backlash and public hatred. They announced that this console was not going to focus on gaming and that it was more about being a replacement to your computer and your television. Rather than giving people new games with which to gain hype, they told people that it was going to play BluRay, have cable service and live streaming capabilities that far exceeded all of the others. Rather than a gaming console, they wanted to replace literally every other high level media in a household. The idea was that the Xbox One would be the center of an entire family's entertainment rather than just playing to the niche of gaming culture.

Unpacking this, it still feels like this was a brainchild of both mismanagement and poor planning. Either a family would be required to purchase a multiple Xbox Ones in order to fill every bedroom and living room, or they would have one for the entire family to watch movies, TV shows while also bearing the burden of being little Timmy's way of playing new games. In retrospect, the idea had flaws down to the very foundation. When was the gamer actually supposed to find time to play the newest releases for the Xbox system when the rest of the family was counting on it to play their movies and other forms of media? 

Then they decided to bury themselves in even more controversy and show their true intentions with the console. Not only was it required to be purchased with the Kinect, an item that was already condemned as a meaningless add-on, but it also had a program that would marry one game to one console alone. That's right, you can only play new games in this console and you could not loan out your used games to friends, nor sell them to game stores. GameStop took issue with this, obviously, since the vast majority of their revenue came from used games. Gamers were not all swimming in money. It was quite the contrary in most cases and many collections were filled with used titles that were marked down. Xbox doubled down on this decision, stating that if they wanted to loan a game to a friend, they would need to pay a fee in order to do so. These restrictions were clearly meant to strangle every single customer for as much money as they could, even when it came to reselling the game to "certain retailers". 

One of the worst parts about this was the announcement that this system was always supposed to be online. That may seem arbitrary to some, but there are many out there who do not have a very stable internet connection. If the game console goes offline, you immediately lost the use of the Xbox One and the games you have loaded on it, whether you had the physical copies or not. After an enormous bit of backlash from this, the CEO of Xbox, Don Mattrick, in all of his lack of intelligence, announced in an interview that "for people who do not have an internet connection, there is another machine, it's called the Xbox 360". Once again, more and more people decided to side with the PS4, stating that they got the message loud and clear. This was such a callous and thoughtless comment, it brought about the theory that he was actively trying to make this console fail. Of course, they went from always online to only needing to be online once a day to check in with the Xbox servers. 

Giving credence to the idea that Mattrick stopped caring about the Xbox One altogether, he left the company soon after the controversy hit critical. He hit the road and instead went to Zynga so that he could leave that company as well two years later. This is one very large, glaring issue with the gaming industry as a whole. If things aren't going their way and they find themselves between a rock and a hard place, they can just zipline out of the company while it burns to the ground, taking their ridiculous amount of money with them. Why this man was ever given an opportunity after this blatant show of stupidity is a mystery all its own. 

The Kinect also became a point of concern for many, as it was always required to be on. They said that this was only so that it could have its voice activation on call for when someone wanted to turn on the Xbox One verbally. People saw this as very suspicious and began to wonder how much information they were gathering about each individual customer through both audio and video feeds. To try and reassure people, they told them that none of the data they collected was going to be used for any nefarious things like selling it to outside sources. However, the data was, in fact, being collected. The demand to remove the Kinect from the console was in an uproar, but Microsoft said that the Xbox One and the little camera gathering data were part of the same machine by design and it could not be removed. This was an outright lie, as they did remove it later on after the highest peaks in the controversy. It also had the added bonus of removing 100 space bucks from the price as a result.

Playstation did not help matters in the slightest, when push came to shove. They came out in front of the public and told people all of their features for PS4, which were not even real "features". They were, however, vast improvements over what was being promised for the Xbox One. They didn't require to always be online, they told people that all you needed to do to share your video game is to let them borrow it, they were focusing on making great games for the console, and the price tag for the Playstation 4 was 100 space bucks less. They even made a show of it. Two guys went on the screen and showed you the only step that you needed in order to share your games with each other, and it was just a guy handing another guy a game and him saying "Thank you". Ouch. 

There was another very large nail in the Xbox One's coffin, the price. It was 500 smackers! This was a ridiculous price, especially with how much they were planning to price the games and all of the other accessories that were not included with its purchase. Every single announcement that Microsoft came out with only convinced customers that this was not the console for them and the backlash only got worse as time went on and Microsoft continually failed to see the forest for the trees. By the time they started making the console more affordable and implimenting different improvements and services for it to flourish, the damage was already done. 

They had to race to meet PS4's quality and they even improved it to the point where it had backward compatibility with the Xbox 360 in some of its games. They put in a service called the Game Pass, where people could have an entire barrage of games for a monthly fee and started to focus more on new games rather than every other type of media, but it was all for nothing. The launch for the Xbox One was such a disaster that it became impossible to keep up. The good will that the 360 brought to the community was gone and they were playing catch up years after the Xbone came out. It helped to some degree but they had already lost the console wars.

If there was any generation of consoles to win, this was the one that needed it the most. Not only was the gaming industry becoming more and more competitive, the culture of digital games was blooming and that meant a big shift in the industry as a whole. Xbox One missed the mark, and that meant that all of the digital games that were sold for the console were not going to be bought for the next generations of consoles. If you bought games digitally for the PS4, there was very little chance that you would even consider moving over to the Xbox Series X for the next gaming experience. The digital library is fairly locked in by this point and all of it was made playable on the PS5. All of that revenue Microsoft could have gotten for people buying a new console under the Xbox banner was up in flames. 

As of the writing of this article, the Xbox is still feeling the effects of this gigantic misstep. The gaming industry's greed is still ever present, but never has it been so clearly unmasked in the public eye. They did everything to try and make up for their attempts to syphon money from their customers, but they lost all of the trust they had garnered in the years before. No one can blame the public for siding with Playstation on this one. Sony may also be greedy and constantly lie to gamers, but at least they do it while selling a product people actually want. It's a very sad notion that we need to catered to by thieves but that's the reality we live in. The gaming industry is hitting a gigantic low point because of it, but all we can do is hope for a brighter future and remember to drink water.

TMNT Cowabunga Collection - Slash'm'ups in a Half-Shell!

 It's so nice when companies get it right. When they seem to wear that mask just right and tell you that they understand, every once in a while it's nice that their lies actually make something valid. Putting together a Konami collection of Ninja Turtle games was a definite step in the right direction. This is right up there with the Capcom fighting collections, you've got yourself a winning bunch. This is an entire generation of childhoods we're talking about. If there's one one thing that can nostalgia punch on the level of Ghostbusters 2009 for PS3, it's TMNT for the arcade, plus Turtles in Time! 

That's right, dear reader, TMNT IV looks pretty damn good, whether it be for SNES or the arcade. We're loving it either way. Just going through these levels and rediscovering the fights against the machines, against Shredder and going across time to different settings fit like an old jacket that I haven't worn in ages. Shredder's Revenge was awesome in its own right, but there's something about playing the originals that get you really engaged. 

It doesn't stop at the awesome classics, though. TMNT III is awesome to revisit from the old childhood, but what about the games that were missed in our childhoods? I know some of you out there have had Turtles 2 for the Gameboy, but wow, this is a different sort of game to its very core. Still, even with the clunky gameplay and the very narrow point of view that you get from the limited scope of the handheld, it's just 90's nostalgia all wrapped in a bow. 

There's no way around it, you need to get good at these games just to get past the third level. It's not impossible but it is a very daunting task when you run out of continues. That's the great thing about all of the arcade ports in this collection. All of them go by a coin system and if you can just push a button to gain more continues, then you can basically beat the game. In the old Gameboy/Nintendo mentality, you have probably 3 continues and then you start at the very beginning of the game. 

Well, now with some current gaming trends of actually having a SAVE FEATURE, you can bypass this little detail. In all 13 titles of the Cowabunga Collection, you are allowed to save whenever you wish. This allows you to refine your gameplay and start to catch onto the controls for each game. While we're not going to go into great detail on every single title, as there are many, we are going to take a look at some noteable Turtles games. Some of them I've either never mentioned on this Planet Virtua or others that I've mentioned many times. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

Even as a kid, I really did not like this title. I had already played TMNT II for the NES and the arcade by the time I had gotten to this title and it was obvious why I really did not favor it. The dull side view platformer angle did not work for the turtles at all. You need to get Donny in order to get a good weapon with a long range, and that alone is not really a good selling point. There's a reason I love Mikey and part of it is his unique design and his personality. I also prefer the nunchaku over the bo staff when it comes to beating down some Foots. 

The platforming itself is already boring and tasteless, but then they bring in the mechanic of when you need to go into the overhead view and vehicles can come out of nowhere. All of the sudden, you've lost a life because some jerk on the street decides they want to run you over! We haven't even gotten into the water level with the electric seaweeds! There were just too many variables throughout the game. Not all of it is terrible, but a great deal of it is and those are also the most memorable parts. They're memorable for all of the wrong reasons. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (NES) 

There has been some talk around the block about this game being a wholly inferior experience to the TMNT arcade port. Obviously, to some degree, this would be the case, but is it really enough to consider it inferior in every sense? No, really, it's not. When it comes to controls, this port is functionally just as good as the arcade port. The graphics are a downgrade, but still hold up as some of the peak in the NES library. This is also because they added to everything. They even added Tora! Not that he was the most memorable villain in the roster, but still! It's just really cool to see them needing to keep with limitations while also generating a very positive experience with the NES port. So, calling this a wholly inferior experience is very disingenuous and it's important to keep the record straight. Any kid in the 90's was proud to have this added to their collection. 

Fall of the Foot Clan (Gameboy)

This game... is annoying. Let's be real here, they did not put their best foot forward. Ha! Foot!... I'll see myself out... but seriously! They put the camera so close to you that it's very difficult to see what is right in front of you and react accordingly. The controls are very, very stiff and it's hard to keep a good pattern going when you need to deal with the Gameboy's shortcomings. If this weren't bad enough, Splinter keeps coming up to you for bonuses with his "Guess what number I'm thinking of! You have this many chances!" And it feels like a kid going, "Dad! I'm fighting the Foot Clan! Can we do this later, please?!?" 

It's not always rocky sailing, but even when you're getting good with it, this title tends to drag. It does get pretty boring. This is not entirely its fault, as the Gameboy was made back when handheld gaming had ridiculous amounts of limitations and we were lucky to get what we had. Still, now it's just more of a relic with no nostalgic ties and it is a snooze fest. Then it starts to throw so many things at you from both sides and your progress becomes slow as a result. It's not overly difficult but it's also not a very pleasant or fun experience. I clocked out after beating the Shredder fight. The time and effort that took was not worth it.

Radical Rescue and the other Gameboy titles are more or less the same experience as this one. While some of them have a few extra gimmicks like being able to helicopter your weapon or something to that nature, they are still the bland and boring beat'em ups that gameboy had to offer. 

TMNT Tournament Fighters (SNES and Genesis)

Fighting games have been a dubious genre when it comes to our favorite green heroes. These titles were pretty big on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo but they never really caught any traction in the franchise as a whole. Sure, they've had appearances like they did with Injustice: Gods Among Us, but TMNT has never flourished as such. Tournament Fighters is something of an indication as to why. This is not a terrible game by any means, but it's just not an especially good mix. This is strange, though, you would think that with the translation from comic to TV Show to Beat'em up, Fighting games would be a knockout. 

No, honestly, the game is excellent in its own right, even as a fighting game outside of the franchise. The problem was that it just wasn't any sort of standout in the genre against Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. TMNT was seen more as a cartoon and a silly Saturday morning chuck partnered with a bowl of cereal. The fighting games did not offer anything new or innovative, so as good as the controls are and as cool as the game mechanics were, they did not pursue this genre any further. 

Another big problem is that they jammed it full of characters you don't even know. I have no ties to these weird dinosaur-like things, nor do I care about this storyline being jammed between fights. They could have brought in tons of the TMNT rogues gallery but they didn't. Instead of fighting memorable villains like the Bebop or Leatherhead, you're fighting monster things from the Archie comics. It was a decent effort and not a terrible game, but fans didn't latch onto it all that much and it didn't really have an appearance in arcades. Good for a play or two, though.

TMNT Tournament Fighters (NES)

Wait, there was an NES port?!

Whether there be Hyperstone Heist or the Manhattan project, this collection is more than worth it to at least try these games you missed as well as play the incredible games you remember. Turtles in Time still stands as one of the favorites, even when my personal favorite has always been the original TMNT for the arcade. It really doesn't matter which one is your favorite, this collection's got it. Playing the old games and discovering some other, perhaps stranger ones is just all part of a fun package for not a terrible price, even on launch. If you're a turtle head, then give this collection a try and take a bite out of Shredder. 

Batman or Spider-man? - The Webbed Batarang (Pt. 1)

Since the very early days, there have been two real power houses in the comic book world. Yes, there have been others and they have their own great titles, but DC and Marvel have been the two spotlight franchises. There have been two characters that are proven to be their most marketable names and those are the targets of today's article. Batman has been the outsider of the Justice League as a dark entity that excels in taking down mysterious and powerful criminals. Spider-man has been an every man since he was young and was bitten by a spider, joining forces with many heroes across the Marvel Universe. He has officially been considered an Avenger, an X-man, part of the Fantastic 4, and this isn't even going into the one-off teams he has formed. Spider-man guest starred in the one-off NFL character in his debut appearance! While Batman and Spider-man are polar opposites, they found their way at the top ranking of their respective sides of the comics. 

First off, I am not talking about who would win in a fight. There are all kinds of controversies with which would win the fight. Death Battle says that Spider-man would win a fight if Batman doesn't prepare but I'm going to be siding with Stan Lee on this front. Any fight between two characters is based on the writer. Whoever the writer wants to win will win and everyone can come up with every excuse. Batman could win against Spider-man and the webster can most certainly win against the Dark Knight. None of that matters and it is not being discussed. 

This is more on which one you would prefer as a character. The choice says a lot about you, but not really. Your choice is more prone one way or another based on personal bias and it may come from one medium or another. The way we're doing this is there will be a deep look across their franchises. These two properties represent their companies as flagships and they have been buried in toys, electronics, video games, TV shows, movies, posters, clothing, breakfast cereal, and bubble blowers. There is a lot to look at and let's make it interesting by giving it a subjective rating system. 

By the end of this series of articles, we can add up their scores and see which one comes out on top when all is said and done. I'm no expert on the comic books, nor have I kept up with current storylines as they've all come and gone in the blink of an eye. I have kept up with a lot of their TV shows, movies, and I can pick and choose among their best and worst storylines in the comic books. They've had some epic adventures in every medium and this seems like a good time to see how they add up together. We're not going to be looking at everything, but if you wish for me to consider some sort of game changing element in their favor or detriment, leave a comment or a message and let me know. I will take a look. 

Since this is primarily a video game blog, we may as well start with a comparison of their greatest video games. Both of these heroes have had successful runs on games, but both have also had some of the worst and blandest outings on both consoles and PC. If we kept going at each and every single video game, we'd be here all day. 

Batman Arkham City

Arguably the best video game outing Batman has ever had. While Arkham Knight wasn't a flop, it was far more devisive than the second installment. Arkham City was still fresh, it was coming off the success of Arkham Asylum with all new mechanics and far more room to move around. The best thing about this game is its boss battles. Fighting the likes of Penguin, Solomon Grundy and Clayface are awesome enough, but the star of the entire show was the fight with Mr. Freeze. I will admit, if I didn't have the info that shows you which parts of the level to use, it probably would have taken me far more than two tries. The game as a whole is rather long and beating it required several fights with multiple groups of gangsters. 

The Joker plot and the twist at the end is something to behold, and it's fun to take down the big baddies while also following along with a very well crafted plot. This was when Batman was seen at his best with a ticking time clock for an illness he needs to cure and several criminals coming after him because of what Hugo Strange did with an entire section of Gotham City. That is one unbelieveable element in this game. Who on Earth would possibly sign off on Arkham City? That sounds like political suicide to someone's approval rating. 

One of the best mechanics of this game is the gadgets, some returning from the original game. Some of them are brand new. One of Arkham's signature device is the explosive gel you spray in the form of the bat. Now you can put it in the way of an unsuspecting thug and knock them out with a controlled explosion. Even the puzzle-solving device known as the "hypnografter" is a fun little device to use with your PS3/PS4 controller. 

Still, there are a lot of things to see with this game, both in its DLC sidestories featuring Harley Quinn and Red Hood and in its collectibles. Going to be honest, I never really cared much for the Riddler's question marks. The extra content is appreciated, though, and some of them actually were good in their own right.

Spider-man PS4

Spider-man has never looked and felt so good as he did when they released his game for the Playstation 4. Yes, they basically reused the fighting mechanics from the Arkham Series while changing a couple of the buttons, but they fully put the Spider-man spin on it, while adding a very different array of gadgets to help. You're taking down small-time thugs and big baddies all over again, only they're a rogue gallery that is arguably equal to Batman's. Going against the likes of the Sinister Six was just so well pulled off with this game. You don't have to outright fight them yourself, outside of a cutscene, but you also have to go through an entire plotline with Aunt May, trying to find Harry Osborn, and all of the things with Peter's relationship to Mary Jane is just a wonderful part of the story. 

The thing this game has up on Arkham City is the controls. All of the greatness in a sandbox superhero game are seen through this game's mechanics and its very sunny disposition. It really is the best webswinging mechanics in any game. You can get used to it within moments of giving it a try, there is a lot of room to practice. New York is gigantic and exploring it is a joy with the collectibles and the extra stuff that even out does the Arkham Series, which had much of its own. For some reason, though, for Spider-man, I wanted to find the backpacks for the Spider Suits and I wanted to collect all of the throwback items as well, because I recognized a lot of them. 

The thing Arkham City has over Spider-man, the stealth sections. That's right, I'm saying it. I did not like the stealth sections when you're Miles and Mary Jane. Of course I would rather be Batman! Spider-man is great with stealth, as seen with his own stealth sections when he's taking down snipers or large groups of thugs all at once. However, Spider-man just feels the need to make us powerless and the side character sections seem to last forever. 

For me, the one that takes it is Spider-man for the PS4. It was a close call, but the design of New York City is just flat out better than Arkham City. Both games have a lot to offer, but it's the boss battles in Spider-man have more main villains to contend with. This is even true when being compared to Arkham Asylum. The Sinister Six wins Spider-man a lot of points. It's not often you see a video game actually pull that off with a sufficient storyline to go with it. Arkham City is no slouch, but we're comparing gold and silver at this point. At the end of the day, it's all just more of a good thing. 

When you look at the video game library as a whole, it all adds up to apples and oranges. The Arkham Series won Batman a ridiculous amount of points with fans, and even had some decent exploits in the 8-bit scene with the Batman movie tie-in Nintendo game and Batman: Return of the Joker. While Spider-man's NES outing with Sinister Six didn't pan out so well, his really good games didn't start coming out until his PS1/N64 excursion. This is nothing to say about Spider-man 2 for the Gamecube and PS2, but then we were treated with Spider-man 3 and Spider-man: Web of Shadow, both for the PS3 and Xbox 360. That's kind of what I mean, they'd had such a huge spectrum of good and bad games that it's very difficult to determine who would win outside of their greatest titles. 

Spider-man gets 5 points for being awesome! Next, we'll take a look at something else in their vast library of media. We'll be looking at the good and the bad, the Batty and the Spidery. Keep an eye out for that and make your own choice.

Goodbye, Playstation 4 - With a Fondness

As of October 6th, 2025, Playstation has officially stopped producing new games or new hardware for the Playstation 4. It really seems like only yesterday, they had just come into the market, and that was a little over ten years ago. Was that a long enough lifespan? Well, yes and no, but it was a long enough life to have some very memorable games come out for it in the generation. From Spider-man's greatest game to Resident Evil's seventh mainline entry, the memories are seemingly endless. This is the console that holds Doom 4 and Doom Eternal and those two games alone hold hours upon hours of gameplay in them. 

Now, I'm being sentimental, I know. I've already talked about my grievances with the lifespans of the Sega Saturn and its worthy successor, the Dreamcast. I'm no stranger to the death of great consoles. Playstation has had a long list of great consoles, despite my semi-joking mocking of the first console in the line. The Playstation 4 had some serious shoes to fill, given the awesome Playstation 3 and its capabilities. It succeeded. 

The eighth generation was very unique in several, SEVERAL ways, and that's mostly due to the Xbox One. While Playstation was going about business as usual, wrangling up all of their games and all of their game console features in line, Xbox was... not doing that. Instead, for some reason, Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to sell you a box that did television and movie streaming, music, basically anything a PC would already be more than equipped to handle. Oh, but THEN they were going to get to the games, you know, eventually. People were pretty baffled.

That's not even CLOSE to the worst part, though. They were starting to rattle off features like, ALWAYS ONLINE, the massive privacy camera on the front of the Xbone was always on, once you loaded the game from the disc into the console, the two were married now and you could NOT share your game with other console users. This meant that they were effectively erasing the used games aisle in every single gaming store. People saw this for what it was. While they were angling it as a more personal touch and a way to be closer to the customer, it actually came off like they wanted to get more money out of you so you could only buy new games, while also keeping you online to keep up full access to their online store while they watch you constantly with their camera and get all of the marketable information out of you they could. This was an absolute travesty of a mess. 

To say that Playstation 4 won the console wars for the eighth generation is underselling it. People went to Playstation straight from Xbox 360 and they started buying PS4 games, leaving Xbox in the metaphoric dust. This KILLED Xbox sales to the point where not even offering free digital games through their Xbox Live service could make them catch up. It helped them along for a little bit, but Playstation won, hands down. 

This spelled the absolute death of Microsoft's Xbox console, and we have been seeing its deteriorating state ever since. They almost straight up cancelled the Xbox Series X and the tenth generation console is still in heavy question. The problem was that the eighth generation was the worst generation to lose, and the Xbox lost so substantially, that it hurt their sales even MORE with the PS5. All of those PS4 games the customers had, both digital and physical can very comfortably be transferred to the PS5 with no sweat involved. It's takes a little over an hour and you are ready to play your old games on the new console that has already wiped the floor with the Series X system. 

Playstation convincingly put on the good guy mask in this situation and that immediately won them the war, even granting them victory laps. The video where they show how you can share games on the Playstation 4 has to be one of the funniest things they could have thought of and it probably sold them a couple million extra consoles as a result. The Playstation 4 came out on top because it focused on GAMING. Losing focus on gaming has killed many a console (though, I am hesitant to count the Philips CDI among them) because people are here for the sharpest gaming edge they can find. It gave us that and in great quantities. So, here we say goodbye to another console generation with the Playstation 4. It was a true gaming console, despite the other features. The Blu-Ray player, the streaming apps, playing old DVD's, all of it was there if you wanted it, but I'm here for GTA V because I have the urgent need to kill digital people! What? You all do it!

Virtua Kombat #2 - The Lore Breaking Mortal Kombat 11

The Mortal Kombat lore has always been a bit of a mess. Well, that's being too generous. It's been a disaster. At first, it started pretty simple, Scorpion wanted revenge on Sub-Zero, everyone wanted to win the tournament and Raiden wanted to have a party for the gods that destroy the Earth (realm). Okay that last one was retconned for good reason, but you get the idea. One big running theme, though, are the elder gods that enforce the rules unless you're evil. If you're evil, you get a free ride to do whatever you want until it's conveniant for the plot to say otherwise.

(Spoiler Alert for MK9 through MK1)

The story has been hard reset. The Playstation 2 3D games ended with Armageddon and were given a new beginning through Mortal Kombat 9. Now, it's not like they did a great job with the hard reset, because they ended up killing off 80% of the characters throughout the story... again. There was a horrific cut scene of Sindel just walking through, bonking everyone on the head and killing them easily before being killed by Night Wolf sacrificing himself. The death toll was taken to another level through MKX. 

Many characters had an undead evil counterpart called revanents. Through these forms, they can use magical mumbo jumbo to bring them back to life and the entire concept just makes things more grimey to get through. Now we have a way to die and come back to life. This is not a good corner to crawl out of, story-wise and they do not use it well in the slightest. The failure to MKX's story is nothing compared to the can of worms they release in the next title, though. 

We've gone through resurrections, now we're going through multiverses! Call it time travel all you like, but multiverses come in droves and bring about new versions of characters. MK11 decides it wants to get rid of the new slightly more evil Raiden that came about thanks to Shinnok's amulet corrupting him. We spend the entire game of MK9 and MKX following this Raiden, only for him to be literally erased and replaced with the one from MK9. 

So now the entire story is made into a stew. Old characters are meeting new characters and apparently Kotal Kahn hooked up with Jade, so there's a weird shipping decision. Either way, this story has pushed the crazy button already and that's not even considering how D'Vorah killed the new version of Scorpion and had him replaced with Scorpion from MK9. 

Are you realizing a pattern here? It seems that these people at Nether Realm Studios just can't seem to handle death, as ironic as that sounds for this series. Every single time they kill a main character, it seems that they are forced to give into some sort of backlash or realization that the character they just offed is too marketable to truly let go. Now, they need to come up with some way to kill them in some form while having a replacement for them ready on hand. 

The lack of stakes is one of the reasons why this new storyline is wasted in potential. Once they introduce Kronika into the story, she becomes their biggest excuse to bring characters back and/or kill them off without any risk to their sales. Because of this, they start changing literally everything. Not only does it invade this story, but it also screws up the ending by giving Shang Tsung the crown and the ability to change reality to his own liking. Let's go with: I do not consider the DLC even remotely canon. It changes the entire story for the worse and wastes everyone's time because Liu Kang still gets his god powers and restarts reality anyway. 

Yes, Liu Kang was caught up in all of this too. It's still a great thing to put into the series, given that Liu Kang and Raiden do continuously fight throughout MK history. Putting in a timeline where they join powers together in order to defeat the villain is a very good way to do this. The timeline is so screwed up before everything in Shang's DLC story that he was going to do the restart anyway. 

All of this could have been avoided if they just had a better plan from the very beginning. All of this was brought on because they ended up killing so many main characters in MK9 to begin with. Even when they have the way to bring them all back to life, half of them become resurrected while the others remain as revenants. It was pretty obvious that they were planning to bring more new characters in to replace the old one, mimicking what Transformers did, and this series received a similar backlash. Once that didn't work out, it was all about the writers trying hard to keep all of the characters in the game. MKX does this while also slamming more and more new characters, making it feel bloated. 

This article won't even go into how the multiverse plot affected MK1 (2023), but it's pretty obvious they kept pushing the multiverse once again just for the excuse to bring more and more legacy characters and mix them with the other action figures in the toy box. While this multiverse stuff does come out with some interesting interactions between characters, it's an overall hollow experience. When anything and everything can happen in a story, it stops being all that interesting. There needs to be something to reign it n before it trips all over itself. 

Mortal Kombat needs to drop this stupid idea that killing characters and bringing out more and more powerful people can sustain the story in any meaningful way. Much like the Dragon Ball franchise, this just ends up building a garbage story with enormous plotholes you could drive a truck through. No amount of nostalgia or fan pandering can cover up writers who don't know what to do. Trying to offer new DLC content behind a paywall or making your characters only available through real money, is just proving people right when they say your story is just a vehicle for extra pay content. Also, get some real writers and have an actual plan! 

There's always a good bit of entertainment to be had in Mortal Kombat's Lore. Sometimes they don't take full advantage of their position. Sometimes they make characters who do next to nothing and only exist to look cool. It's a fun ride through the story from a gameplay perspective, but when you step back and think for two seconds, immediately finding plot holes and uncharacterized moments, there is something wrong. When your cut scene literally makes people rage quit your game, then it's time to think of another strategy. Now, go get some water before your next fight and don't slip on the blood.

Virtua Kombat #1 - The Good and Bad Kharacter Direction

When you have a cast and a story as wide spreading as the Mortal Kombat franchise, there is a good chance you're going to over complicate things. This is the real problem with how big the Armageddon Roster was. They don't learn their lessons, of course, and upon rebooting the franchise, there was now a more solid, smaller cast of main characters, but that doesn't stop them from pouring more and more of the action figures onto the play area. Now, there are playable characters and partially playable characters everywhere you look. Let's just hit you with the SPOILER ALERT for this whole thing on the MK Lore as a whole.

Mortal Kombat 9 brought about a new cast of characters, mostly made up of old and returning characters already existing in the franchise. This was an understandable change across the board, but of course, there was more killing characters and attempting to bring in new ones for a new generation of games. This was why MKX suffered storywise. They wanted to put the Cage family up on the highest bar of the cast, but they just went about it in a clumsy way. Now Cassie Cage isn't even in MK1. 

Kitana

The worst way they handled the new generation turned out to be the best way in the end. And no, we're not including the Shang Tsung alternate ending. Kitana started out as the unwitting pawn in Shao Khan's games. It turned out he did not care about her and she became quite the sympathetic character as she struggles in the fight to the survive. In the mean time, she not only gains a love interest, Liu Kang, but also a "sister". Mileena became her clone, or they just stuck with sister and true daughter of Shao Kahn. She learns about all of the lies he told her about their family and relationship, and then she ends up getting killed by her mother. Yes, all of that happened in MK9. 

They bring her back to life, of course, but what they do after bringing her back in the time conversion of MK11. Now she is back and so is her lineage. Mileena has been killed in this timeline (another reason to hate D'Vorah), so once Kitana kills Shao Kahn (in this timeline, not in the Shang Tsung DLC), she becomes Kitana Kahn. This was one direction that actually works, aside from the arguments online. Seriously, she has been seen to be a great character and morally in the green while killing her opponents. The fact that Liu Kang chooses to spend eternity with her once he becomes the God of Fire and Thunder is just a very good ending for that particular timeline. This was the high note they should have ended it with, but of course additional entries have retconned and stomped on this part, but it was a nice touch.

Frost

As Sub-Zero himself said, "Wasted Potential". This was a character that could have been treated a lot better. Bringing her back as a mostly robot with a detachable human head would not have been on the top tier as far as ideas go. This was a potential character that could have gone against Kuai Liang and then learned that his defeats of her were training her and helping her learn how to fight. Instead, they turned her crazy, made her get a robot body and KILL the entire Lin Kuei in order to make a robot army. This could have been a new female Sub-Zero character who earned her way to that title, if Kuai ever decided to pass the mantle. It's alright to make her a villain, but they really did not need to go this dark with her story. 

Scorpion

Bringing Scorpion back to his humanity was one of the best touches they could bring to the character. At the same time, it wasn't such a terrible thing to go back to the Classic Scorpion at the end of MK11 either. It's a conundrum as far as this character goes. Having Sensei Hanzo Hasashi team up with Master Kuai Liang was a touch of brilliance. Their relationship has been very hard, considering it was Scorpion who killed Bi Han and created Noob Saibot as a result. 

Now, having him killed by D'Vorah was a stroke of stupid. He could have gone out like a champion, but they gave him to the character that they apparently want to promote in some way. What they did was piss off the fanbase. The way a character dies matters a lot, and yes they had the replacement for him on hand, but come on! It's good that they didn't go the Mortal Kombat 3 way and leave out Scorpion in any way. 

Raiden

In the end, Raiden is a very complicated matter. For some reason, in the Mortal Kombat franchise, he either have his powers in Outworld or he doesn't do crap. Either the gods can't intervene or he can just go wild and kill things with abandon. Seriously, the way the plot treats Raiden can mean a lot of quality points when it comes to Mortal Kombat. Thankfully, MK9 and up throw away his leash and allow him to do a lot of stuff, including resetting the entire universe in order to get back to the basics. 

Then, for some reason, the story decided to turn him evil. Well, semi-evil, if I'm being truthful. He's still fighting the evil people and killing them before they can invade, but still, he's overusing his power here and any elder god of old would have gotten involved by that point. Still, it's nice to know that the door swings both ways. Shao Kahn abused the rules of Mortal Kombat, so Raiden can teleport into their realm and destroy them with his thunder and lightning. 

There are mixed feelings about giving all of his powers to Liu Kang in the end. Hell, there's a lot of mixed feelings about him killing Liu Kang in MK9. That's why the way they did it was something of a stroke of genius, story wise. The build up between the two of them as two beings who handle situations differently, to fighting each other endlessly, it had a very nice flow to it when Raiden decides to end it all by joining forces with Liu Kang as the God of Thunder and Fire. It's a long way to jump, but they handled it rather well over all. It was nice that Raiden got his true happy ending when he talked to Liu Kang by the end of it, saying he was proud to be mortal again. This was where his character should have stopped, but of course, you get the idea where the series needs to go from there.

Cyber Sub-Zero

Now, stay with me on this one. We should at least be thankful we had this character made a reality. They were able to kill him and bring him back to life, of course, as we only see Revenant Sub-Zero at the beginning of MKX. From there, we can deduce that he was among the resurrected. Still, it was cool to have the cybernetic version. It's just a shame we never got to see Smoke very much at all in this part of the franchise. Still, Cyber Sub-Zero remains an oddity in the series, and that's really a shame. His cybernetic ice moves were awesome and just the thought of him going through the Cyber Initiative and then being able to remember it is just a nightmarish thought. It was good to have Kuai Liang back, though, and having him be the head of the Lin Kuei was kind of a no-brainer. So good on that. 

Shao Kahn

In the beginning, Shao Kahn was the highest level of god tier when it came to villains in the Mortal Kombat lore. Of course, then they came up with Shinnok and Quan Chi just in time for MK4. Quan Chi wasn't quite as powerful as Shao Kahn, but he was powerful enough to kill him, given the right opportunity. The newer, darker entities were needed, though, because we weren't going to be stuck with Shao Kahn for the entire franchise, we all know this. Still, how they brought about his final end was divisive. However, I would prefer his face getting cut off by Kitana over all of the garbage storytelling that they contrived for the Shang Tsung alternate ending. 

The real problem with Shao Kahn is that they kept him around being a playable character, but they just kept weakening him throughout the story mode. People end up defeating him on such a regular basis, he just loses so much of his overpowering charm from his original days. It used to be an achievement to defeat Shao Kahn, but now they just bring him about in order to have a slightly more threatening antagonist. Taking him down in the power scale was a decision that killed Shao Kahn's reputation, making him weaker and more vulnerable. Killing him off in an epic and story-driven way would be preferable to this treatment. Perhaps, if they decide to make him a main antagonist for a final time, they can give him a properly awesome ending. Otherwise, just let him go.

There are so many characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise and not all of them can be given the proper attention. This is a very large problem when they decide to jumble up their roster. That's not even to mention the special guest characters: Alien, Freddy, Leatherface, Terminator, Robocop, Spawn and more! Look, I would appreciate these characters a lot more if they didn't bring in so many characters and screwing up their power ranking. MKX was torn apart because of the fighters that defeated people supposedly three times their own power. The story becomes a mess when you decide to toss your continuity out the window. Just because you include these characters into the roster does not mean you need to shove them all AND MORE into the story. This is especially true when those additional characters are just paid DLC. Stories need focus and the more you toss to the wayside, the more the story gets pushback. Defend Earthrealm and be ready for what comes next!    

Spider-man - The PS4 Masterpiece and the PS4 DLC Misfire

This Planet Virtua is no stranger to Spider-man. In fact, they are some of the earliest reviews written for this world and that is because he is awesome. Honestly, this is more of an article for Spider-man himself and singing the praise to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for bringing him to the comics. The webslinger arrived in his first issue, Amazing Fantasy #15 in August of 1962 to profound praise all across the board. The kids loved him and bought the issues off the rack. Instead of an adult with a teenage sidekick, it was a teenager who had to go to school, have a day life and also go around town fighting crime in red and blue. 

Spider-man went from a teenage super-hero to an adult and joined the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, The Defenders, The Web Warriors, had a clone, had several different dimensional copies of himself and has fought villains ranging from a brick wall with legs to Dracula himself. He's teamed up with Batman, Captain America, Hulk, Black Panther and any other number of superheroes throughout the ages. Going into his full backstory would be a big job, so we'll just be covering the more prominent video games.

Spider-man hit his peak with Spider-man 2 for the Gamecube era, and that is where the 2018 title of Spidey leapt from. It has some of the most intuitive controls and broad spectrum of gameplay since those olden days. Spider-man from the PS4 took up the mantle completely, with an all new storyline, a fresh new face to an old but loveable cast, and gameplay that truly captured the essence of everything we love about the old web head. 

If you were to list its greatest traits, one of them would have to be the spider suits you're able to get throughout the game. All you need to do is find backpacks all across New York City and then you will be able to choose from a vast array of Spider-man suits that range from his original class, to Spider-man 2099. My favorite has to be either the MCU Iron Spider or the Scarlet Spider. I just love the look of Ben Reilly's suit, I don't know why. 

The greatest thing is yet to come, True Believers, as this is a game that very prominently features the Sinister Six! You have battles with Rhino, Electro, Vulture and, of course, Doctor Octopus. Doc Ock is actually the best villain here because you get to know him throughout the entire game. Peter Parker acts as his lab assistant and he needs funding. Once they cut his funding, that's when he gets into some very horrible crimes. 

You find Easter eggs all throughout this entire game, and they're all a joy to see. New York City is vast, and it's a pretty accurate representation of Manhattan Island. You find your way through the city with a very accessible map, and you swing your way to side missions, main story missions, or you can just swing around and stop random crimes. The more crimes you stop, the better your rewards so you can level up your powers, along with your technology. This gives you access to some awesome gadgets that will enhance your webshooting, along with your healing abilities. 

One place where this game fails is the stealth sections when you are Mary Jane or Miles Morales. It is just not a fun experience to take away all of your powers and make you throw balls to distract guards. Being able to stick to walls and being able to web up guys to keep them quiet is much more fun, even though those sections don't tend to last very long, especially in the gang beat'em up sessions when it's all just lost upon the second wave anyway. The sniper stealth sections are also kind of a low point. I get that it's more dangerous with higher damage weapons, but those sections just take forever, while not being difficult, just tedious and boring.

There are some things in the story that were not so well received, and for good reason. There is also a side mission where you fight an insufferable Youtuber and they are committing crimes just for views. This section is also quite tedious. 

Aside from some of the smaller missions, the core of the story and the gameplay in the story mode is definitely more than worth your time. Even the opening fight with the Kingpin is very well implimented, as it is the thing that sets off such a gigantic crime wave in the first place. He even warns us of that at the very beginning of the game. From there, the boss battles are quite awesome. While the double teaming with Scorpion and Rhino is kind of a long slog, it is really fun still. Electro's fight sections are also pretty fun, though not very difficult. Even the ending boss battle is challenging, while not overly so. It's a real run in Spider-man's shoes and you see his hardships as he is constantly getting the shaft for having a life as both Spidey and Pete. It's not an easy life, and it was very nice to see him get back with MJ. 

Then, of course, they had to speed-run a so-called "game" to go along with such an awesome title. Spider-man Miles Morales was originally going to be a DLC for the game, but for some reason, they just released it with a SLIGHT discount from a full game. It came out for the PS4 and PS5, but really, it had some seriously bad timing issues, mostly because it was done in the blink of an eye. Seriously, this game is four, maybe five hours long if you do some more of the side quests, of which there are not many. 

The other gigantic issue with this game is that it is so devlishly easy, the only reason I ever died was because I forgot about an ability I could use. Seriously, with how fast the Venom Strike replenishes, you can just suddenly go invisible, hide, then come back with another strike, while taking more and more of the gangsters by surprise. That invisibility breaks this game in half. You go invisible at any time and you have all of Spider-man's strengths. 

Aside from that, this is still the same game we know and love. Miles is not a bad character, even if they shoved in "modern messages" into the story, he still remained a good guy. Why they had to kick Peter Parker out of the story completely is a bit of a sham. It seems like they could have saved this all for the actual sequel, and do it to where you follow two Spider-men, but that's not what they did. Instead, we get this half baked game, and it seems they also changed a few things about Spider-man 2 that rubbed fans the wrong way. Still, they came out with a good game with the original Spider-man for PS4 and they prettied it up with some PS5 technology later on. Honestly, they got it right the first time, rushing out a mocked up DLC and then changing everything about the sequel just doesn't play in their favor. 

Spider-man is best when he is Peter Parker and he is more than happy to welcome partners in hero work, but no story should ever shove him aside when his name is in the title. Implimenting the Arkham Series fighting mechanics and pushing in some flips and Spider-man kicks was the best thing they did for this entire game and injecting spider venom straight through the entire game paid off in spades. This is a prime example of why patience and pleasing fans plays in the gaming industry's favor. The moment they forget that is the moment they miss out on a great deal of customer satisfaction. Spider-man can work in a video game, just like any other super hero. Well, except Superman. His games Virtua BLOW!