Spider-Man PS4: 10 Things It Must Learn From Batman Arkham

5. Get Bosses Right

Spider-Man PS4 Kingpin Wilson Fisk
Insomniac

Though the Arkham series was revered for a whole host of reasons, its boss battles definitely were not one.

Apart from Mister Freeze in Arkham City and Killer Croc in Asylum, Rocksteady never seemed to be able to nail their most climactic battles. Warner Bros. Montreal did better in Arkham Origins with both Deathstroke and Bane providing real threat, but lessons were clearly not learned by the time Arkham Knight came around, with Slade Wilson in particular falling victim to a horrendous 'tank boss' that teased a hand-to-hand confrontation, only to end it with a brief cutscene instead.

Spider-Man, like Batman, possesses one of the greatest rogues' galleries in all of comic book-dom. Characters like Kingpin, Venom, Doctor Octopus and Sandman have all featured in some tremendously memorable video game battles over the years, and with the power of the PS4 affording these characters even more potential in terms of what can actually be achieved in battle, Insomniac have to make them a priority.

There are few characters, arguably, able to boast as diverse an array of villains as the wall-crawler. Making them memorable shouldn't be too difficult.

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.