Marvel's Spider-Man 2 vs Batman: Arkham Knight
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00:00 Welcome to Mojo Plays and in this super installment of Versus, we're putting Marvel's Spider-Man
00:12 2 against Batman Arkham Knight.
00:21 Before we begin, we publish new content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring
00:26 the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:30 Round 1 - Combat
00:39 Marvel's Spider-Man can trace a lot of its gaming lineage back to the Arkham games, which
00:43 changed what narrative-driven superhero games could be back in 2009.
00:47 The Arkham games had fast, fluid combat, a combo system that felt rewarding to master,
00:52 and a lot of gadgets for Batman to use against his enemies.
00:56 Arkham Knight iterated on this even more, but it certainly didn't reinvent the wheel.
01:00 Plus, quite a lot of Arkham Knight's combat doesn't revolve around Batman at all, but
01:04 the Batmobile.
01:11 Love it or hate it, it's there a lot and you can't really avoid it.
01:15 However, Arkham Knight also has dual takedowns during certain combat sequences, allowing
01:20 you to take control of Robin, Nightwing, or Catwoman and play as them with new animations
01:25 and unique movesets.
01:36 Spider-Man 2 definitely makes use of its dual protagonist system to have the Spider-Men
01:40 team up, and you can do double takedowns with Peter, Miles, and some other characters like
01:45 Black Cat, but it's not quite on the level of switching between the Bat Family in the
01:49 heat of battle.
01:56 Other than that, the combat is an absolute blast, even if you do have fewer gadgets at
02:01 your disposal than in the 2018 game.
02:03 Miles and Peter now have extra abilities unique to them, and multiple skill trees to invest
02:08 in.
02:09 It's all more streamlined and more dynamic than the combat in the first game, making
02:13 Spider-Man 2 even more exciting, something we didn't think was actually possible.
02:21 Ultimately, the combat in Spider-Man 2 just has more variety and more meat to it than
02:29 in Arkham Knight, which is why we're giving this point to Spidey.
02:33 Winner, Spider-Man 2.
02:38 Round 2, Stealth.
02:48 Spider-Man 2018 definitely emphasized stealth more, with Peter being much weaker in combat
02:53 than he is in this sequel.
02:55 There were many stealth arenas that were definitely drawing from the tradition begun in Arkham
03:00 Asylum, something that was also replicated by Marvel in Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions.
03:05 But stealth in Spider-Man was never as good as in Arkham, and Insomniac moved away from
03:10 stealth significantly for Spider-Man 2.
03:14 Yes, though it does have stealth arenas and Miles can turn himself invisible, you never
03:23 really need to use stealth.
03:26 Even in the maligned MJ sequences, she's now got a gun and can easily take down enemies.
03:32 It's comical in these areas.
03:41 On the other hand, though Arkham Knight is the most powerful version of Batman we ever
03:45 see in the series, he still has to rely on stealth.
03:49 Even with all that new armor, you'll still regularly have to stick to the shadows and
03:54 work hard to stay undetected, as only a few goons with guns can dispatch the Bat for good.
03:59 Stealth is also much more complex in Arkham Knight, with medics, drones, jammers, and
04:04 enemies that can detect your use of detective vision all existing in arenas at once.
04:12 Finally, Arkham Knight added an iconic mechanic that gets used liberally throughout the game,
04:19 the fear multi-takedown, letting you select multiple enemies and take them all out in
04:24 quick succession, sometimes avoiding combat entirely.
04:35 Stealth is still there in Spider-Man 2, but Arkham Knight remains one of the best stealth
04:39 games of all time when it focuses on those deep systems begun in Asylum.
04:44 Winner Arkham Knight.
04:51 Round 3, Open World.
05:02 Arkham Asylum and Arkham City had some of the best open world maps in gaming history,
05:06 but Arkham Knight's version of Gotham pales in comparison to its predecessors.
05:11 Most of the Gotham landmarks, including the Asylum itself, but also the Monarch Theater,
05:15 the original Ace Chemical Building, the Courthouse, and the GCPD were already used in Arkham City.
05:21 Arkham Knight's Gotham has plenty of landmarks, but we're not attached to most of them,
05:32 and it is definitely a less interesting world overall.
05:35 As well as that, you'll either be racing through the streets and destroying everything
05:39 in your path in the Batmobile, or gliding so high that you can't see much of the street-level
05:43 detail anyways.
05:46 It's no secret that Spider-Man 2 has some of the best, if not the best, traversal in
05:52 any video game ever.
05:54 Swinging through New York feels even better the second time around, faster, more fluid,
05:59 and with more options.
06:01 The Spider-Men also now have the web wings, which let them fly through the air much faster
06:06 than Batman ever could.
06:13 As for New York itself, it's a lot livelier and dynamic than Gotham.
06:17 Gotham is immediately evacuated for the plot, leaving the city empty so that you don't
06:22 feel guilty about demolishing it during the tank battles.
06:25 It's also been expanded this time around to include Brooklyn and Queens, increasing
06:29 its scope even more.
06:36 Spider-Man's New York is way more fun than Arkham's Gotham through and through, and
06:40 that's why the web crawler wins this round easily.
06:43 Winner, Spider-Man 2.
06:47 Round 4, Main Villain
06:58 It's not really a spoiler to reveal that in the end, Spider-Man 2's main villain
07:02 is Venom.
07:03 He was set up back in the 2018 post-credits scene, after all, and used across the marketing
07:07 materials.
07:08 With Sony even releasing a statue of him fighting the Spider-Man.
07:12 So don't come crying about "ew, spoilers!"
07:15 But Venom's not actually in a lot of the game.
07:17 Pete gets the suit relatively quickly, but Venom himself is barely a threat until the
07:22 very end.
07:24 It's true that Venom is such a popular villain that we don't really need this explaining
07:31 to us, but looking just at the game itself, Venom isn't the omnipresent threat that
07:36 a good villain needs to be, and the less said about Kraven, who also doesn't appear as
07:41 frequently as he should, the better.
07:50 But Arkham Knight isn't perfect with its villains either.
07:53 A lot has been made about the Arkham Knight himself, and yes, he is lackluster.
07:58 But Scarecrow is the antagonist who drives most of the plot, and almost succeeds, multiple
08:03 times, at destroying Gotham and breaking Batman.
08:15 It's through his fear toxin, and Batman's ongoing blood infection from Arkham City,
08:20 that the Joker reappears as the final villain Batman needs to face in the game.
08:25 Scarecrow also regularly appears on billboards to talk about how he's going to fill Gotham
08:29 with his toxin.
08:31 Even if you don't like Scarecrow all that much, you still know he's always there,
08:36 watching you.
08:46 This round is definitely a very close call, with both games' approach to villains being
08:50 somewhat flawed, but we're giving this one to the Dark Knight, because you're at least
08:54 aware of the villains for the entire game.
08:57 Winner, Arkham Knight.
09:07 Round 5, Story
09:20 The story of Arkham Knight has a lot of issues.
09:23 Years later, and people are still talking about how obvious the plot twist of the Arkham
09:27 Knight's identity was, and that is very true.
09:30 Though you could say you predicted from the beginning that Scarecrow would almost win,
09:35 and that Batman's identity would be revealed to the world.
09:38 It has a lot of emotional story beats, like Oracle's fake-out death and the heroic demise
09:43 of Poison Ivy, as well as the culmination of the Joker blood storyline, and Batman preparing
09:48 his allies for his assumed death.
09:54 But it's clear that Arkham Knight suffered by not involving Paul Dini, one of the most
09:59 celebrated Batman writers of all time.
10:01 It was Dini who made asylum in City so compelling, and without him, Arkham Knight falls flat
10:07 at times.
10:16 Spider-Man 2 has an overall great story, though it's not perfect either.
10:20 The biggest issue with its story is that the characters don't spend as much time interacting
10:24 with each other as they should, especially outside of being Spider-Man.
10:28 In the first game, we saw a lot of Peter's life and spent time with MJ, Aunt May, and
10:33 Otto to develop all these characters and make their roles in the story more poignant.
10:37 But if you do all the side content, you certainly won't be disappointed with Spider-Man 2's
10:41 story and all of its twists and turns.
10:50 It also manages to keep things surprising despite drawing from well-known comic book
10:54 characters, something Arkham Knight failed at more than once.
10:57 Again, it's close, but Arkham Knight's story has way too many problems to beat our
11:02 friendly neighborhood Spider-Man this time.
11:05 Winner, Spider-Man 2.
11:13 Arkham Knight is definitely the least popular of Rocksteady's Arkham games, while Spider-Man
11:18 2 has already been considered to be a drastic improvement on Spider-Man 2018, a game that
11:23 was already just about perfect.
11:26 Because it cleared that high bar, there's no real competition here.
11:29 Spider-Man 2 is undoubtedly our winner.
11:32 Let us know down in the comments which game you think is better, and don't forget to
11:36 subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great stuff every day.
11:48 Thanks for watching.
11:49 If you enjoyed the video, there's more where that came from.
11:52 See you next time.
11:56 Bye.
12:02 Bye.
12:06 (whooshing)