I re-watched the most recent "gameplay" demo for upcoming Spider-Man game on YouTube in 4k because we all know how shitty the bitrate is in live streams. Graphics look great but I noticed something strange. For a gameplay demo, there's very little actual gameplay included. And because I'm bored, I decided to run some numbers and analyze the bridge section from the clip.
Here's the breakdown:
2:42 - 4:03 - cinematic (82 seconds)
4:04 - 4:29 - gameplay (26 seconds)
4:30 - 4:40 - cinematic (11 seconds)
4:41 - 5:08 - gameplay (28 seconds)
5:09 - 5:36 - cinematic (26 seconds)
5:37 - 5:42 - gameplay (6 seconds)
5:43 - 6:20 - QTE cinematic (38 seconds) - square, triangle, R1
6:21 - 6:23 - gameplay (3 seconds)
6:24 - 7:12 - QTE cinematic (49 seconds) - square
To summarize:
- In this short demo control is taken from you for a total of 4 times;
- You are in complete control of the character 4 times, twice for a very short period of time (6 seconds / 3 seconds);
- Cinematics where you are passively watching amount to around 44% of total time of this section;
- If you include cinematics with QTE sections, total cinematic time is around 76.5%;
- You control Spidey for ~23.5% of the time.
I know Sony is known for "cIneMaTiC eXpErIeNcEs" but I think they are pushing it too far. If I want to watch Spider-Man I will stream Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (best movie of 2018). It's just one demo but I think it's telling that Sony decided to show their game in this manner.
Let's discuss.