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#treyarch — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #treyarch, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Spider-Man 3 with Harry Steele (Games On Film)

    Let’s talk about Spider-Man 3, the movie where Sam Raimi looked at “menacing single antagonist” and said no thank you, I would like three, please, and also I would like Peter Parker to dance down the street like he’s auditioning for a jazz-hands cult. It’s a movie that tried to do everything, mostly succeeded at doing too much, and somehow still made enough money that Activision looked at it and thought: yes, this deserves not one video game, but two, spread across seven different consoles, so that literally nobody in 2007 could escape it. Ambitious! Chaotic! Extremely on brand for the source material!

    See, there’s the fancy version, built by Treyarch for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, where you get a whole open Manhattan to swing around in and the black suit shows up only when the story deems you emotionally ready for it, very mature, very earned. And then there’s the completely different budget cousin, built by Vicarious Visions for PS2, Wii, PSP, GBA, and DS, where you can slap the black suit on whenever you feel like being a jerk, the Wii Remote gets to pretend it’s a web-shooter, and the DS throws the D-pad in the trash entirely so you can beat up Sandman by poking a touchscreen like it owes you money. Same cover art. Same villains. Practically strangers.

    Swinging in to help me sort out how many wildly different versions of one questionable movie a single franchise can generate is Harry Steele, co-host of Games on Film, the podcast where he and his brother Rory spend their days grading movies based on video games! Which means Harry has built an entire professional skillset around asking “did Hollywood mess this up,” and today, for one glorious episode, we get to point that same energy directly back at a video game and ask if it managed to mess up the movie right back. Poetic justice! Content symmetry! Whatever you want to call it, it’s happening!

    So grab whichever suit you’re feeling today, pick a console, any console, apparently they all made their own decisions, and let’s find out if the Spider-Man 3 games handled three villains and seven platforms with any more finesse than the movie handled three villains and one dance number.

    Learn such things as:

    • How similar do games have to be in order to have the same title?
    • Do movie tie in games really need to care about what happened in the movie?
    • Isn’t Spidey supposed to have friends?
    • And so much more!

    You can find Harry on BlueSky @onlymanwhocan and of course his podcast Games on Film.

    If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

    If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

    Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

    Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff.

    You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website.

    If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out.

    A big thanks to Murderworld the game and the Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective for the promos today.

    Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who would let the Venom symbiote engulf him if given the chance.

    #Activision #GameBoyAdvance #HarrySteele #Marvel #NewGoblin #NintendoDS #PS2 #PS3 #PSP #SpiderMan #Treyarch #VicariousVisions #Wii #Xbox360
  2. Spider-Man (2002) with Chris Ferrell (All Things Good and Nerdy, The Official GonnaGeek Show)

    Welcome back, web-slingers and button-mashers, to another delightfully unhinged episode of Play Comics! This week we’re crawling back to 2002, when flip phones were cutting-edge technology, everyone was still trying to figure out what the heck a “blog” was, and Activision decided the best way to capitalize on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie was to let Treyarch loose with a development kit and what we can only assume were several energy drinks and a prayer.

    We’re diving deep into the pixelated web-slinging wonderland that somehow convinced an entire generation that swinging through New York City while your webs mysteriously attach to invisible sky anchors was totally normal. This PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance spectacular managed to squeeze Tobey Maguire’s voice into a polygonal suit while adding enough extra villains to make you wonder if someone at Treyarch had been hoarding Spider-Man action figures since childhood and finally found an excuse to use them all.

    Joining us for this nostalgic journey through early 2000s gaming jank is the magnificent Chris Ferrell from All Things Good and Nerdy and The Official GonnaGeek Show! Chris brings his encyclopedic knowledge of all things delightfully nerdy to help us navigate the treacherous terrain between movie adaptation and comic book faithfulness. He’s the perfect guide for exploring whether this game captured the essence of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler or just gave us a really expensive tech demo for air-based web physics that would make actual physics professors weep quietly into their coffee.

    So dust off those sixth-generation consoles, prepare for some seriously chunky character models, and join us as we swing into action with a game that dared to ask the important question: “What if we took a two-hour movie and stretched it into twelve hours of gameplay by adding every Spider-villain we could think of?” The answer, as you’ll discover, involves more air combat than anyone expected and enough stealth sequences to make you appreciate that this was made before every game decided it needed a mandatory stealth section.

    Get ready for web-slinging, wall-crawling, and more mid-air punching than should be physically possible – it’s time to find out if this early millennium marvel holds up or if it belongs in the same category as those websites that still think animated GIFs are the height of digital sophistication.

    Learn such things as:

    • How do you decide who to use as a boss in a movie tie in game?
    • Will we ever have a bad Spider-Man game ever again?
    • What if…..Chris had latched onto The Flash instead of Spidey?
    • And so much more!

    You can find Chris on BlueSky @chrisferrell.bsky.social and of course his podcasts All Things Good and Nerdy and The Official GonnaGeek Show.

    If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

    If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

    Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

    You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicscast on Twitter and in the Play Comics Podcast Fan Group on Facebook.

    A big thanks to Spawnography and Piecing it Together for the promos today.

    Intro/Outro Music by Best Day, who is still looking for those steel beams in the sky.

    #Activision #ChrisFerrell #DigitalEclipse #GameBoyAdvance #Gamecube #GreenGoblin #Marvel #PS2 #SpiderMan #Treyarch #Xbox