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Today’s forecast for Manhattan: scattered goo, strong winds of questionable decision-making, and a one hundred percent chance that Spider-Man’s week gets worse.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is what happens when your friendly neighborhood hero wanders into the moodiest chapter of his career. The quips go quiet, the skies go dark, and Peter Parker learns that an alien goo outbreak is not something you can shake off with a witty one-liner. Even the city looks like it needs a nap, which is saying something for a place that’s been knocked flat in more video games than anyone can count.

Chris is joined by Matt Turner of Pikaslash Plays, who bravely volunteered to talk through every dramatic stare, gloomy monologue, and crossover cameo. It’s two friends, one very gloomy version of New York, and a sincere attempt to figure out when Spider-Man stopped being the funny one.

Pull up a chair, keep the lights on, and whatever you do, don’t adopt anything that moves on its own.Continue Reading

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I get it, movie tie ins are hard. You’ve got a development timeline dictated by by an unobservable force. Expectations that are already lower than a kid who gets all of their candy stolen before they get a chance to eat any of it. The only thing you can do sometimes is get your friends and family and hope that they can help you through these tortuous times.

And then a new kid shows up, going on and on about how someone bigger and badder is going to come around and eat your whole planet. And the new kid is cooler than you because he has a surfboard. And he’s shiney and possibly made of metal? Yeah things are getting weird.

Helping me wrangle all of this insanity is Gary Jones from Divergent Comics. Which is a good thing too because I definitely needed a second opinion about some things here and Gary brought a nice calm perspective to counteract my annoyance that until very recently we just couldn’t get a good Fantastic Four movie no matter how hard we tried. And I really needed him to help keep my thoughts about the movie from staining my thoughts on the game.

Get those forks ready, pitch or otherwise, because I know this one is going to leave a few people hungry for more.Continue Reading

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Bruce Banner has the worst anger management plan in recorded history. Step one: don’t get angry. There is no step two, because the world is full of slow Wi-Fi, hold music, and a military that answers “please stop chasing me” by chasing him harder. It always ends the same way: one enormous green man, one miraculously intact pair of purple pants, and a repair bill the city will still be paying off in 2060.

This episode is about The Incredible Hulk, the video game spun out of the 2008 film. It’s a story about a man who just wants a quiet life, a decent cup of coffee, and a cure, and who keeps getting interrupted by helicopters. His entire personality is a mood swing with a gym membership, and he is somehow still the most reasonable person in any room that contains Ross.

Returning to the show to take the green wheel is Russell Moran of Kaiju ComiCast. Russell spends his days with some of the biggest monsters ever to flatten a skyline, which makes him the one guest who won’t flinch when a city block gets treated like a chew toy. That gives us the big question: is the Hulk a superhero, or a kaiju with a great publicist and a gamma-radiation origin story? Russell is here to rule on it.

Keep a spare pair of stretchy pants handy, don’t make us angry in the comments, and let’s find out whether this one leaves you roaring or just leaves a very large hole in the wall.Continue Reading

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Congratulations! You’ve been hired by the Justice League. Your title is “Hero,” your qualifications are “showed up,” and your first assignment is standing in Metropolis next to Superman while a stranger in a very small cape asks you where the good loot is. Welcome to DC Universe Online, the game where you can create your own superhero and then spend the entire first hour in the character creator, agonizing over the exact shade of your cape and a name that isn’t already taken by eleven thousand other guys who thought “Night-something” was original.

The premise is gloriously simple: you get to live in the same world as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of DC’s heavy hitters, and the heavy hitters are weirdly cool about it. Nobody asks for a résumé. Nobody questions why a hero named “SteelGhostFlash7” is suddenly on the Watchtower. The Joker is out there being the Joker, Lex Luthor is out there being smug, and you are out there trying to figure out whether you’re a legend in the making or just a guy in tights who’s very good at following the glowing arrow on the map.

Leaping into the DC playground with us is David Gallaher, writer of some of your favorite video games and comics, which means he’s spent years inventing heroes and villains on purpose, a luxury the rest of us only get in a character creator. David has been on both sides of the page, so he’s perfect for the question at the heart of this episode: when you drop yourself into a universe where the icons were already established decades ago, do you feel like a hero, or a very enthusiastic extra with a better costume?

So grab your most dramatic cape, practice your brooding stare in the mirror, and settle in. Somewhere out there a hero is saving the city, and he’s definitely using a username he regrets.

Also be sure to check out the full post so you can see some of the stuff that Daybreak sent over for me to share. It doesn’t play nicely with RSS feeds.Continue Reading

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Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he does is get stabbed, shot, and set on fire before shrugging it off and asking where the nearest bar is. His healing factor makes him the only character in comics who can have a terrible day, a worse day, and a questionable haircut, and still be back to normal by Tuesday. It’s easily the most relatable power in the Marvel universe, provided you’ve ever tried to recover from a long weekend.

This episode is about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a game built on the idea that a man with an indestructible skeleton has somehow misplaced his own backstory. He’s got amnesia, a grudge, and a tank top collection that suggests he’s never once been cold. It’s a story about a guy trying to remember who he is, told in a medium where the answer is usually “the one who’s yelling and tearing through everything within reach.”

Helping us sort through the rage and the sideburns is Grant Stoye, the comic writer behind some of your favorite independently released comics and one of the minds behind the currently running Kickstarter for Yule Volume 2. Grant knows a thing or two about Wolverine-level resilience. Independent creators bounce back from deadlines, printer quotes, and shipping costs that would flatten lesser mutants, and their healing factor runs on coffee and optimism. If anyone can tell us whether a hero who survives everything can still keep a story interesting, it’s a guy who makes comics happen with no safety net and a lot of heart.

Bring a bandage you won’t need, hide anything made of paper, and let’s find out whether this one earns its snikt or just growls a lot and leaves.
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Every generation needs a reminder that games-based-on-movies-based-on-comics are their own strange little ecosystem, and Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a proud, slightly confused citizen of it. It doesn’t adapt either del Toro movie directly. Instead it just borrows the general vibe, invents its own plot, and trusts you to recognize a giant stone fist and a wisecracking demon without needing either film’s actual story. It’s the video game equivalent of a cover band that only plays originals.

And that giant stone fist deserves a moment, because it’s doing some real character-design heavy lifting. Hellboy is built around exactly one absurdly oversized body part, and that’s basically the whole design manual for a certain flavor of comic book tough guy: pick one appendage, blow it up past the point of reason, let the silhouette do the talking. Todd McFarlane ran the identical play with Spawn, except he went south instead of north, handing us a hero who could probably punt a sedan but might struggle to tie his own laces. One big fist, one big boot. Same weird design instinct, opposite ends of the body.

Which is a good excuse to bring in George Marston of Spawnography, the podcast where Pierce Lydon joins in to spend their time in the giant-boot corner of that exact design philosophy. George is flying solo this round to see how a giant fist holds up against a their usual task of studying a giant boot.

So pick your favorite oversized body part, brace for a beat-em-up that seems mildly allergic to its own source material, and let’s find out whether The Science of Evil earns a place next to del Toro’s films, or whether it belongs exactly where most tie-in games end up: forgotten. And don’t forget about the Nazi occultism.
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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.Continue Reading

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They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but in this case, it’s paved with quick‑time events and awkward platforming. Step back into 2010, when grim determination, button mashing, and a suspicious amount of artistic license gave us Dante’s Inferno on the PS3 and Xbox 360, the game adaptation no one asked for but we secretly loved anyway.

Joining Chris this time is Adam Williamson. You know, that guy who’s somehow managed to pop up in both past and future episodes of Play Comics. It’s like he’s got his own metaphysical time loop going, except with fewer torturous souls and more witty banter.

So grab your favorite medieval poetry anthology (or just pretend you’ve read it. No judgment), crank up the over‑the‑top orchestral soundtrack, and prepare to descend through nine circles of beautifully rendered weirdness. Let’s find out how a centuries‑old Italian masterpiece got a glow‑up full of demons, guilt, and surprisingly good level design.Continue Reading

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Look,  We’ve seen a lot of comic-based video games in my time, but when a mafia hitman gets murder powers from an eldritch shadow monster so he can take vengeance on, well, everybody, you know we’ve entered elite storytelling territory. The Darkness isn’t here to make you feel good about humanity. It’s here to make you ask if you’d trade your soul for a pair of talking demon heads who love street lamps way too much.

This week, we’re diving into The Darkness on PS3 and Xbox 360, that moody, gritty, and surprisingly heartfelt adaptation of the classic Top Cow comic series. And joining us for the chaos? None other than Sarah of Mars. Yes, that Mars. Because let’s be real: if you’re dealing with an ancient, malevolent cosmic force, you might as well bring in someone from a planet that already knows about hostile takeovers of a planetary variety.

So get comfy (preferably not in the subway tunnels of New York with a swarm of writhing demons), because we’re unpacking love, loss, corruption, and whatever dark surprises the game decided to throw at us just for kicks. Oh, and if your shadow starts talking back… maybe turn off the console.Continue Reading

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This week on play comics we ask ourselves what happens if you you can’t decide what you want to make a game about. Should you just give up? Should you really dig into your soul and decide what you’re super passionate about? Should you look and see if there’s any other related media coming out that you can tie this game into? Or should you act like you’re at the end of five different boxes of sugary cereal and justice dump the mall into a single bowl and see what happens?

There’s certainly one thing that I made my mind up about this one, and that’s how Perry Constantine from Superhero Cinephiles and Japan on Film needed to come by and help me make sure that I kept everything straight here. And it’s a good thing too because with more playable character than I want to count spread out across 7 consoles upon release and a few more as back catalogs were taken advantage of it would have been really easy to miss something here.

So was there an actual story for this game? Or was it just a giant excuse to squeeze in as many tidbits as they could so the other kids would think they’re cool? You’ll have to listen to find out!Continue Reading