Greetings humans, Monki here with the closest thing you'll ever get to a "set report" from me.
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of flying out to California to check out the headquarters of Activision. Activision, the creators of Pitfall!, the bastion of all things Tony Hawk, Call of Duty, Quake and Doom. Video game companies aren't usually the most interesting of places to visit, but they managed to have a pretty awesome setting in which their company does work.
I had flown out of Austin at 8:10am to make it to the land of movie stars and Everclear songs. I walked into the Santa Monica home of Activision around 9:45am. (Two hour time difference made that happen, not super-sonic jets.)
Upon entering I was greeted with walls covered in graffiti. It seems as though the Tony Hawk team had some artists "pretty up" the place a while back.
Speaking of the Tony Hawk team, check out the ramp/couch that rests in the hallway just outside of one of the big conference rooms. Not the most comfortable of couches I've been on, but damned if that isn't pretty sweet.
The rest of the press started flowing in and digging into the breakfast table that had been set up for us. It was a great chance to meet up with some writers from websites like Shacknews, Team XBox and a few others I've been reading for years. It was nice to hear a lot of the guys are fans of AICN as well. The topic of choice over our cinnamon rolls was Neill Cumpston's review of 300. "Sentient boobs fighting werewolves." Awesome.
We were then split into groups and herded off into different conference rooms. I went along with the Wii/DS group to a room on the lower level. Set up were four big flatscreens with Wiis and four DSes ready to go.
The rest of the press started flowing in and digging into the breakfast table that had been set up for us. It was a great chance to meet up with some writers from websites like Shacknews, Team XBox and a few others I've been reading for years. It was nice to hear a lot of the guys are fans of AICN as well. The topic of choice over our cinnamon rolls was Neill Cumpston's review of 300. "Sentient boobs fighting werewolves." Awesome.
We were then split into groups and herded off into different conference rooms. I went along with the Wii/DS group to a room on the lower level. Set up were four big flatscreens with Wiis and four DSes ready to go.
Vicarious Visions has been placed in charge of the Nintendo-based Spider-Man 3 games. They had previously worked on Ultimate Spider-Man for the DS and their newest efforts are pretty remarkable.
I jumped onto the DS version first. After a quick run through of the controls by one of the producers on the game we were given the freedom to do whatever we wanted.
One of the starred questions on my list of questions to ask was, "Is Bruce Campbell in the game?" which was meant for any of the producers actually. I can't tell you how pleased I was to hear Bruce himself booming the tutorial dialog over on the Wii systems as I had cranked up the DS I was on. So it is true, BRUCE CAMPBELL IS IN THE SPIDER-MAN 3 GAMES. Okay, back to the DS.
The theme for both of the Vicarious Vision games was "radical control scheme." I'll get to the Wii controls in a bit, but the way the DS is set up, there are no "button-actions." Your basic motion control is on the D-pad...left, right, crouch and jump. Those controls are mirrored with the A, B, X and Y under your right thumb. (Y = left, A = right..etc)
Why the mirrored controls you might ask? All of your fighting maneuvers are based on stylus motions so you have to make the controls even for your right handers as well as your southpaws (like myself).
That's right, all of the fighting is done via gesture movement on the bottom screen of the DS. If you want to punch, you swipe in the direction of the baddie on the top screen. If you want to web a guy up you tap in the area that the guy is at and hold it down.
It takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of your stylus placement on the screen it becomes very simple and fun to play. For more complex moves you actually perform various motions on the bottom, for example, one of the cooler moves, the web rodeo, is done by first webbing up an enemy and then making a circular motion with the stylus. Your reward is watching the baddie swing around your head knocking into his buddies. Pretty awesome.
Your powers get upgraded as you play via Hero Points you pick up during the course of the game. You can purchase new moves and what not in a 'store' available in the menus.
What is really cool about the design of the game is the amount of depth in the levels. The producer called the game "2.5-D." It is a side-scroller but the world spins around Spidey giving it a feeling of three dimensions. Kind of hard to explain but imagine if you were looking at a guy walking down the street while you were in your car going the same speed. All of the buildings move and have depth while you keep your focus on the main character. Now imagine that character is swinging around via web. Much cooler looking than most of the stuff I've seen on the DS.
As you play the game you eventually unlock the black suit and that becomes part of your arsenal. The black suit is another convention that goes across all four platforms I checked out and I'll go into detail on each in time.
In the DS version you build a "rage meter" of sorts and once it fills up the black suit takes over and Spidey gets a whole new catalog of fighting moves and techniques. He really turns into a beast of a character, just slamming his way through everyone.
I got a chance to ask Leo Zuniga, the lead designer of the DS version, a couple of quick questions about his game.
Monki: What were some of the challenges in developing the Spider-Man 3 title for the DS?
Leo: Our initial goals for the project were to develop an innovative new touch screen combat system along with delivering major improvements to enemy AI and the mission system. Touch screen combat was a definite challenge - we had a dedicated programmer on it for the entire project, which was crucial to perfecting the character handling.
Giving an open city feel was key in this project, and this is something we hadn't done before on the NDS. The player can simply swing across the neighborhoods looking for hidden items, side mission or race challenges. The progression is open and provides several paths for the player to take. The non-linear approach was challenging, but in the end it gives player a greater sense of freedom and choice in how they want to play the game.
Monki: At what point did you decide to go from traditional button-pad fighting to the innovative stylus fighting?
Leo: After we finished Ultimate Spider-Man DS, the team created a prototype to take touch screen based combat to the next level. USM featured Venom as a playable character. The relatively simple touch screen mechanics showed a lot of promise and was a great foundation for us to build on. Making the game easily accessible was foremost on our minds. It was important that the game be easy to pick up and allow the player to experiment with all the combat moves. To this day we discover maneuvers and combat strategies that weren't initially apparent to us. This allows each player to have their own unique approach to touch screen combat.
Monki: How hard was it to cram the narrative into the DS version? Are there any storylines that are in the DS version that don't exist in any of the other titles?
Leo: Our cut scene team did a great job at conveying the overall movie story arc in the game, even with the limited cartridge size. We took what we learned on Ultimate Spider-Man to deliver a really strong narrative for Spider-Man 3.
One of the side story arcs that is exclusive to DS is "Detective DeWolfe." She provides a variety of missions for Spider-Man to tackle. Spider-man will traverse through a chemical factory, manufacturing plant and even an air base. Each is quite distinctive and provides a fresh take on the environment.
Monki: Can you offer any tips or codes for the DS version of the game for our readers?
Leo: Mix up your touch screen gestures to call up a variety of combat moves and you'll earn more Hero Points. Spend your Hero Points in the Spider-man store to unlock great combat moves such as my personal favorite - the web rodeo. You can also buy yourself some cheats with your hero points if you really want!
I had a lot of fun with the DS version of Spider-Man, more than I thought I would have. I'll finish off the DS stuff here with an image from a cut scene. It doesn't look too fancy, but it is what is in it that counts.
Venom. This is the only image I've seen of Venom so far in any of the games on any platform. Also, that appears to be Peter on the top screen? Everyone was very careful about letting us know too much about the movie plot of the game and this is really the only eyebrow-raising thing I've seen.
From the DS side of the table I stepped over to the Wii version. First let me show you something that I kind of geeked out about.
It's a green faceplate on a Wii! Yeah yeah, I know the debug kits for the Wii all look like this but I still got a kick out of seeing a crazy green front to the beloved system. Call me a geek.
Let me go ahead and get this out of the way first. After playing all four systems, I'm more excited about the Wii version than any other.
Let me explain. The DS version is great, but it's very much a handheld version of the game, limited graphics and size just due to the nature of the system. The 360 and PS3 versions are identical and are for the most part an upgrade to the proceeding Spider-Man titles (they are still badass though). The Wii version though...when I played it I had the biggest grin on my face since I waited 12 hours to pick up my personal Wii at home.
What is so incredible about the Wii version? THE CONTROLS.
I can't believe I hadn't thought of it. Everyone sees the Wii-mote and thinks, "lightsaber game." Well obviously. Now, had you ever thought of a TWO-HANDED SPIDER-MAN GAME? With the remote in your right and nunchuk in your left, you flick your wrist and hold B to web, release B and you go sailing through the air, now flick your nunchuk and hold Z (or C? ...the big trigger), it does the same thing except with Spidey's left hand.
Back and forth, you swing around the city with the greatest of ease. This is exactly how a game for the Wii should work. It was a fun take on a control scheme that could only work for this particular system.
Enough gushing over the controls, let me get into the game.
As I said before, the game kicks off with some simple tutorial missions narrated by Ash himself being the clever smart-ass he always is. You slowly pick up the various controls, locking on to targets, moving around on the ground, attacking, etc.
The way the black suit is handled in this game is pretty sweet too.
The black suit eventually will take over your character and like all of the others, you gain an enormous boost of strength and a group of new moves. You roll around whipping all kinds of ass as blacksuit all while a meter is ticking down. After a bit of time the blackness starts to fade in from the corners of your screen as if you were blacking out. In order to turn off the blacksuit you must go through a series of motions in order before the screen turns completely black and you kill poor Peter Parker. These 'release' motions get more and more difficult as you play the game making it much riskier to keep the suit on for more than a short amount of time.
Fighting on the Wii is pretty sweet too. It is pretty satisfying to web a bad guy up, pull back on your Wii-mote, send him flying toward you, then send him skyward with a gesture-based punch.
One very similar mechanic in the next-gen ports of Spider-Man 3 is the usage of interactive cut-scene style battles. If you've played God of War you'd understand what I mean. Basically they are scripted scenes that require you to react with a button press or a gesture very quickly in order to keep the cinematic moving.
On the Wii version I got to check out the battle between Peter and Harry / Goblin that we saw during the commercial on Heroes a while back.
At certain moments you had to jerk the controller, the nunchuk, or hit a button in order to keep the scene progressing forward. It is certainly a cool concept for those of you who hate cut-scenes.
I got a chance to talk with Dan Tanguay the lead designer and Dan Wallace a producer on the game.
Monki: How much work and effort went into the design of the control mechanism for the Wii version of Spider-Man 3?
The Dans: A ton of work went into the controls design for Spider-Man 3 on the Nintendo Wii. Spider-Man is a great video game character. He is athletic, acrobatic and very animated. It's easy for people to imagine themselves flinging web lines as they soar through the city. The controls give us the opportunity to let people play out the actions they see so they can feel more like Spider-Man.
It sounded simple in theory, but as it turns out, the implementation was a lot harder. It required a lot of prototyping and focus testing.
We began concepting the controls before we had even seen a Wii in person. Our controls designer constructed a mockup out of heavy paper, while another designer made a mockup using a stapler. (Of course, he hated it when people-not knowing what is was-used the stapler.) These mockups let us brainstorm all sorts of ideas. For a while, we toyed with the idea of getting all of the controls onto the Wii Remote so people could play one-handed, but better judgment prevailed after E3 2006 when we saw the Wii in person. We decided to support the Nunchuk, and developed numerous paper designs with that in mind.
After several iterations, we settled on a rather generic two-handed design. Something was missing, though. It didn't feel very Spider-Man-like. Our producers weren't happy with it, and they pushed us to take another crack at it, this time with two-handed swinging. The controls team worked through the weekend. We tested it the following Monday, and people liked it. A lot. We had found our control scheme. It continues to amaze me how quickly certain ideas can come together.
Flying through the streets of Manhattan firing out web lines with your hands and falling into the pleasing rhythm of swinging is a great experience and very satisfying. We're pleased with how things turned out.
Monki: How closely did you work with the PS3/360 team in developing the storyline for the game?
The Dans: Both teams had the same goal of making the best possible Spider-Man experience for their respective platforms. Treyarch had already laid the foundation for several of the storylines that seem to match up with needs of the Wii version. So there was initial collaboration there. Over the course of the project, we collaborated on various aspects of the script, settings and characters. Certain elements were totally unique to the Wii version and of course, the key movie moments are shared. Interestingly, the gameplay in these movie moments are totally different, which plays to the strengths of each system.
Monki: How much do the PS3/360 games differ story-wise from the Wii version?
The Dans: We took the storylines written by Treyarch and adapted them to fit our progression. We also wove a new storyline featuring Marvel's Morbius and Shriek characters into the mix. We follow the overall story arch from the movie and place our own mission designs and gameplay mechanics into the missions.
The Wii game shares three storylines with PS3/360 game, though each of those storylines has different gameplay. Because the moment to moment experience is very different on the Wii, these storylines feel a bit different too. We also created a new storyline featuring Morbius and Shriek, two villains that haven't appeared in a Spider-Man game before. Although they don't appear in the movie, we found a compelling way to tie them into Peter's story that reflects several movie themes, including his struggle with the Black Suit and his relationship with MJ.
Monki: What kind of exclusive material will the Wii version get?
The Dans: There are other exclusives outside of the Morbius and Shriek storylines.
For example, our combat plays differently. There is a deep experience points (XP) upgrade system with over 40 major upgrades. A great one is Spider-Man vaulting over an enemy's head to hit them in the back. Another is web zipping onto the chest of a big guy to beat them in the face. Because of all these combat differences, we created an entirely new upgrade interface for Spider-Man. It's shaped like a web. Corny? Perhaps. But it's neat.
The Wii also has a unique approach to city gameplay. Like the PS3/360 version, Spider-Man needs to take back the city streets from gangs rampaging around the city. In the Wii, it's called the Crime Wave system. As the Crime Wave system evolved, it became a light strategy game. Spider-Man assists the police in taking back each neighborhood in Manhattan. Naturally, the gangs will fight back. And sometimes they'll take neighborhoods from each other. You can choose how you want to battle these gangs, and certain approaches work better than others. It provides a great interface for solving street crime.
In order to take back a neighborhood, you need to go on patrol. Each stop on patrol has a small story, and winning that mini-scenario dynamically unlocks the next one. When you finish a patrol, all these tiny stories have merged into a larger narrative thread.
Finally, the Wii version gives players the choice of using the Black Suit at any time. The black suit mechanics are unique. It's far more powerful than the red suit, but it comes at a heavy cost...That risk/reward element plays out really nicely in the middle of a combat situation.
Monki: Can you share any codes or passwords for the Wii version of the game?
The Dans: Yeah... about that. I can't. But I can say that you should keep your eyes peeled for Spider Emblems hidden throughout the city.
A Wii-mote from a stapler at one of the largest video game companies in the U.S...I love it. Also, the upgrade 'web' Dan mentioned is a pretty neat concept. As you upgrade your stats your web spreads out and you can pick up other abilities, a simple but neat concept.
After getting our Wii/DS fix we were brought back up to a conference room on the third floor. The "Doom Room."
Inside of this room were four 360s and four PS3s all set up with the game on big flatscreens, each attended by someone who was working on the game. A giant Spider-Man figure guarded the center of the room like a blue and red gargoyle.
The next four images will be from the 360 version of the game, the last four will be PS3 images. You can click on them to get higher-res images too.
I sat down at a 360 station with a producer and he started to walk me through the game. Immediately you notice how damn good this game looks. Spidey swings through the city in such a beautiful fluid motion that you could just cruise around going from building to building watching the character animations. Very slick.
Also, I was blown away by the amount of NPCs (non-player characters) running around. Something like 200 different character models were designed to wander around the city so very rarely do you see the same character walking next to a clone.
The whole city is dense, just full of stuff constantly moving. The New York City streets LOOK like New York City streets, people everywhere, cars and taxis driving up and down the streets making noise.
Fans of the series will be pleased to know the controls were built off of the Spider-Man 2 game. I hadn't played any Spider-Man titles in a while prior to going on my visit but I picked it up just like I was sitting on my couch with my roommate a few years ago playing the second Spider-Man game.
Your Spider-Sense has also been radically improved. Now you click in your right thumbstick to enable the Spider-Sense mode. The screen clicks over to a black/white mode where important items or key points are highlighted in color. For example, you have to disable some bombs in a room but you can't find them. Click on your Spider-Sense and you can see quickly that they are hidden behind a shelf or on the ceiling somewhere. Want to know how many baddies are around a corner without being seen? Turn on the Spider-Sense and do a quick head count of how many asses you need to kick.
Treyarch, the developer of the 360/PS3 versions, didn't need to re-invent the wheel in making this version of Spider-Man. They took a title that was already a lot of fun and did a great job of bringing it up to speed for the next generation of consoles.
The producer who walked me through the 360 version was kind enough to answer some questions. William Schmitt is a producer for Activision and he's pretty damn good at swinging around the city in the game.
Monki: How long has Spider-Man 3 been in development? Were you seeing material from the movie as you were developing the game?
William: Spider-Man 3 started a few months after Spider-Man 2 was released with a very small concept and technology team. The team ramped slowly for a year before entering full development. I'd say we spent 16-18 months in full development. We were invited to several visits to the Sony Pictures lot to see very early footage, read scripts and have Q&A sessions with the production staff for the film. In addition to this we were proved with a large amount of photo reference from the on-set dailies and cyber scans of the cast to help us reproduce the films look and feel.
Monki: Is the entire voice cast from the movie also in the game? Can you relate any experiences working with the actors in recording sessions? Any good Bruce Campbell-isms?
William: We'll be discussing VO talent in the real near future, but let me just say - Bruce Campbell will not disappoint.
Monki: How was the city of New York re-created for the game? Did someone lay a map of Manhattan down and start copying it into the game?
William: City maps were analyzed by the designers and in-game maps were laid out to be a close approximation. They cut up the city into the boroughs and fidgeted with building heights to help locomotion run smoothly. We take a few liberties here and there, after all it is a fictional Manhattan right?
Monki: How closely did you work with Marvel on the development of the characters/villains that exist outside of the movie plot?
William: We used Marvel's character guidelines and style guides to create the concepts for our non-movie related plots. After we developed a 1st pass we took them in for review with both Sony and Marvel and received feedback. We work closely with all parties to approve the character concepts, dialog and plots for everything in the game.
Monki: How many people from the original Spider-Man team are still at work on this 3rd movie title?
William: Several actually; Spider-Man offers a lot of creative freedom so it is easy to keep people interested from game to game.
Monki: How many NDAs do developers on the game have to sign in order to work on this project? Has Sam Raimi threatened your life in any way?
William: A knife's never been pulled on anyone on the project...yet, but we know that we need to make sure that all content pertaining to the movie is kept under lock and key. None of the Spider-Man games have ever let anything leak so I think the level is trust is pretty high. This doesn't stop us from signing several NDAs however.
Monki: Have any of the actors from the movie gotten a chance to check out the game? If so, what did they think?
William: All of the actors have seen the game at one point or another and all of them have been very impressed. Check out the CE edition...they all make comments about the game in some very cool candid interviews.
Monki: What sort of online components will Spider-Man 3 contain?
William: Spider-Man is a single player experience, so there are limited online features.
Monki: Are there any hints or codes you can tip our readers off to?
William: Codes...none. Hints...make sure to take advantage of your new Rage meter - this will really help you in big combat situations such as dealing with large numbers of enemies and bosses. The new Spider Sense is also a huge help - not only does it help identify enemies, but it'll also aid in determining objectives.
Also, while playing, he mentioned to me that he had seen about 45 minutes of the movie, one more reason for me to be totally jealous of him.
After playing around with the 360 version of the game I quickly jumped onto the PS3 version. There isn't a whole hell of a lot of difference. The graphics are just a tad bit nicer on the PS3, just a little bit more crisp it seems, but overall either version of the game will do just fine for you.
You can really see how the next-gen consoles are pushing the graphics abilities of this game. Check out the detail in this PS3 screenshot. (Click for the high-res.)
Did you see the reflection in the subway car itself? Simple crap like that really gets me jazzed. To think only 20 years ago we were running around with characters comprised of 30 pixels of about 16 colors. What the hell are games going to look like in the next 20 years?
