Marvel’s Spider-Man: Silver Linings DLC (2018)
The final of the three DLCs drop right before christmas, and with that, I really thought there would be some Christmas themed adventures in this last bit of DLC. Even if there wasn’t, the continuing story of the overarching villain Screwball takes center stage once again… actually not really, which is such a relief, but she still is in there, and thus is in all three DLCs and the main game with the most content spanning the entire game. Luckily its just more of the same combat arenas and chase missions, and ends abruptly enough for me to not really hate it all that much.
So on with the actual DLC, Silver Sable shows up as Hammerhead has stolen her tech and gone off the reservation turning himself into a cyborg. So the whole DLC is you chasing down informants and dealing with Sable to come to terms and agree to an unlikely ally senario and team up to take down Hammerhead.
For such a polished game and a nice steady release of DLC, I’m shocked how poor the last two chapters are. They just threw the same old mission structure into the DLC with a few new cutscenes and a final boss battle on a boat in the harbor. I’m honestly baffled how boring this was. The main hook for this DLC was Black Cat, and she shows up in the first DLC and then the last for literally less than a minute. Why was she advertised in it at all if it barely even features her.
There really isn’t that much to say about this DLC or the whole season DLC package. The first one was really well done, and shows such great promise, but I was so let down by the second and third. This last DLC also features the huge difficulty spike in the bases as well. Where it just focuses on throwing as many bad guys on screen as possible at you. The only way to beat this is a cycle of switching between your gadgets that instant kill and running away. Not really all that much skill to it.
The only real good part of the DLC is the side story of Chief Yuri, who is your main friend and Commissioner Gordon stand in. The three chapter DLCs focus on her mental breakdown, as crime is continually ripping her authority away and eluding justice. It really does feel earned and like a cop who tries to keep doing the right thing, but never seeing that justice served properly. Like how Joker keeps escaping over and over and just continues his killing spree instead of being dealt with once and for all.
The side story is easily the best part, as you find clues at all these crime scenes, with voice recorders and sessions between a therapist and a client. The client is a hitman and I thought it was going to be Punisher. The setup for these are just fun and the small side story is much more interesting than the Hammerhead one.
And that’s why I was so down on this DLC package. I felt like the smaller stories, the ones with the original Black Cat, the Yuri breakdown… these were all so much more interesting and stronger than the main DLC storyline that they focused on. Why was that the focus when all it was was the same rinse and repeat cookie cutter levels that I did in the main game, only with a different skinned thug attached to it. The Spider-Man game wasn’t perfect but it did do some stuff extremely well, and taking the story down to Earth and focusing on the smaller issues of Peter Parker’s life was the most enjoyable stuff in the game. I know Yuri’s breakdown will become a bigger deal in the sequel, I’m sure Black Cat will pop back up in the second game as well, but dropping in a few cutscenes and making me do the same boring missions that I got tired of in the main game before, well, lets just say I understand why people become super villains