E3 began last Saturday but outside of maybe Nintendo, perhaps the most anticipated press conference was Sony’s which took place yesterday evening. The conference as a whole was light on showing anything new, simply rehashing things that debuted last year along with games that we already knew about, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any surprises, especially for comic book fans. Capcom’s Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite showed up first with a new story trailer that introduced characters like Dante, Nathan “Rad” Spencer, Arthur from the Ghouls N’Ghosts/Ghosts N’Goblins franchise alongside Marvel characters like Doctor Strange, Black Panther and Nova, who I’m surprised was not the Sam Alexander iteration but the Richard Rider Nova from UMVC3. As a fan of both, but preferring Richard, I very much like that decision.
The big news wasn’t the story trailer for the game, however, but a shadow drop of a demo of the game’s story that is available to download now on PSN. A new gameplay trailer was shown after the press conference showing a lot of the new characters in action as well:
The game that closed the conference, and perhaps stole the show, was Insomniac’s Spider-Man game, or as we know it as now, Marvel’s Spider-Man. An eight minute gameplay video was shown off and words can’t describe how spectacular it is. A big takeaway from a lot of major gaming sites is how the game looks like a return to form of the Spider-Man 2 glory days because of how the swinging looked, but what was most impressive to me at least was really everything else for a change. Spider-Man moved around in a construction skyscraper taking down bad guys with precision never really seen in any Spider-Man game, almost Batman from the Arkham series like some might say, using webbing to pull dangling beams to hit enemies and a web-gadget that acted like a proximity grenade that pulled an enemy in when they came close.
The first villain from the game was shown, and as many gathered from last year’s E3 trailer, it was Mr. Negative. Wilson Fisk, AKA the Kingpin, was shown as well who at least in the trailer, was in prison but also working with Spider-Man in tracking down Mr. Negative. The big reveal however in true Marvel fashion came at the end when a teenager taking pictures of the action was name dropped as Miles, meaning that perhaps Spider-Man may get a protegé in the game, if not in a (hopeful) sequel in the form of Miles Morales. Sadly the tease that the game may arrive this year was crushed at the end when the game was announced as coming in 2018, but given what was shown last night, Insomniac can take all the time they want.
Comic Book Video Games 