E3 2018: Everything We Learned From Sony's Spider-Man Demo
7. Combat Looks More Arkham-Like By The Day
Insomniac
Though WB Games disappointed everyone by failing to include either Batman: Arkham or Superman in their E3 showing, the series' legacy lives on. Monolith's Lord of the Rings games (also under the Warner Bros. umbrella) sport a similar free-flow system to the one pioneered in Arkham Asylum, and now Insomniac's Spider-Man looks to be doing the same.
Dozens of thugs or villains can appear on the screen at any one time, and Spidey has to outmanoeuvre them all in a very free-flow-like way. Punches and kicks are mapped to the square button, Spidey can dodge much the same way Bats does and he even has his own selection of gadgets to quick-fire in combat too.
This isn't to say that the game isn't original - it very much is - but Arkham's influence is more than apparent. It looks to be a positive one too, with each punch, kick and grapple looking as though it genuinely connects.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
