Spider-Man: Edge of Time / YMMV

Complete Monster: Walker Sloan is a sociopathic industrialist from the 2099 future, functioning as the catalyst behind the game's events. Chafing under his lowly position in Alchemax, Sloan travels back in time and changes history to one where Alchemax has asserted control over most of Earth. Under Sloan's banner, Alchemax performs mass human experimentation on civilians with monstrous results, and runs the state of humanity into the ground under its dystopic heels. Personally experimenting on Eddie Brock and implanting mind control chips into him so as to command his alter ego "Anti-Venom", Sloan sends him on a rampage that endangers innocents while torturing him into further savage mutations, hoping to annihilate Spider-Man and gain even more control of time until Sloan can rewrite all reality.
Contested Sequel: Edge of Time is seen by several fans as inferior to Beenox's last Spider-Man game, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. While some do defend it, many admit that losing Noir and Ultimate was a steep blow.
- However, while this game loses some of the simplicity and accessibility of the first game, it gains a tighter and more mature narrative, improved voice acting from two more experienced Spidey voice actors, better dialogue courtesy of Peter David himself, more interactions between the Spider-Men of the game than just the ending, and a few twists most wouldn't see coming. It's easy to assess this game as having a better story than Shattered Dimensions, but maybe failing to live up to most of the hype that it created due to not being exactly the same.
- Much of the backlash comes from the gameplay side of things, lacking the varied environments and boss fights seen with Shattered Dimensions in addition to a relatively toned down combat system which was not as refined as its predecessor's.
Demonic Spiders:
- Stunners: they emit shockwaves that are nigh impossible to avoid (your only option is to regularly abuse either Spider-Man's Hypersense or 2099's decoy ability), they fire very quickly, they stun you so that you can barely move or attack for several seconds, they have a shield that prevents you from directly attacking them to stop an attack, and they're fairly common.
- Crashers are a close second: a Heavy that takes a ton of hits to kill, doesn't flinch when you hit him, attacks quickly, attacks in a very wide medium-ranged arc that's tough to dodge, and can knock off a third of your health in a single hit. They almost always have enemies with guns for cover and they can teleport to chase you down if you try to clear out the other enemies first.
Fridge Brilliance:
- Not having Noir and Ultimate was disappointing, but it does make some sense. Noir knows nothing about technology, and Ultimate would be just a copy of Amazing without the black suit. It also makes further sense considering the focus on time travel: the 2099 era would be the best place to start such a story in contrast to Noir, while the Ultimate universe (being a parallel universe which has no effect time-wise on the main 616 universe) would not fit the aesthetic at all.
- Why was Black Cat 2099 so mad at Amazing Spider-Man and what did she mean by "you did this to me"? As we find out, Peter Parker becomes the evil CEO of Alchemax in 2099 if he's saved by Miguel Ohara from death. If Peter is in charge of Alchemax, who knows what terrible measures he has done to those he cared about in order to "protect" them? Maybe Felicia was talking about Peter's future self experimenting on her. Who wouldn't be pissed off about that?
- Walker Sloan planned to kill Peter specifically because that way Peter will never become CEO. And if he's out of the way, Sloan can take over instead, making him The Starscream to Peter Parker 2099.
Fridge Horror: The description for the "New Ultimate" suit states that Peter remembers the events of Shattered Dimensions and meeting his Ultimate counterpart; the suit originates from that universe specifically. However, knowing Miles' origin story, that means that Ultimate Peter suffered a Bus Crash in between games...
Good Bad Bugs: In the Wii version, by punching the air in the time-gate room after you beat the first phase of Anti-Venom as Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing's lines and quotes will act like Anti-Venom is still in the room, despite him being launched into another room.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- This happens when Spidey says that he finally knows how it feels to come Back from the Dead, as a joke referring to how death isn't really anything in the Marvel universe (even specifically citing characters like Colossus and Captain America). Also within 2012, he would get his body swapped and taken off of life support by Doctor Octopus, dying.
- In Superior Spider Man #15-19, changes in the timeline have caused Miguel to be stranded in the present and Alchemax to have been founded in the present day, turning the plot of the entire game into this.
- At a later point in the game, Peter chews Miguel out for his The Needs of the Many stance, saying that Spider-Man would always save even a single person no matter the risk. Miguel takes this lesson to heart here, but his Earth-928B counterpart hasn't learned this and in fact formed an entire Spider-Society dedicated to maintaining the stability of the multiverse over saving individual lives, essentially creating an entire army of Spider-People who don't understand what it means to be Spider-Man. To twist the knife even further, Josh Keaton reprises his role as The Spectacular Spider-Man who already Took a Level in Cynic, a far cry from his portrayal of Spidey in this game.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- One of the available outfits is the suit used by Miles Morales, Peter Parker's successor in the Ultimate Universe. Flash-forward to 2012 with Spider-Men, where the 616-verse Spider-Man finally gets to meet him.
- This may have sparked Batman vs. Spider-Man, as Val Kilmer, famous for putting on the batsuit in Batman Forever, plays the villain in the game. Fast forward six years later, and Michael Keaton, another actor who has been the Batman first, is now the Big Bad in the movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming.
- One of the collectables in the game are a series of newspapers which change between timelines, one such headline said that Mysterio was going to direct a biopic about Spider-Man, in 2019 the first arc of the Amazing Mary Jane spin off comic involves Mysterio directing a biopic about Spider-Man.
Memetic Badass: This game's version of Peter has become this a little since the release of Across the Spider-Verse, where that version of Miguel creates the Spider-Society who all believe in The Needs of the Many at the cost of betraying everything Spider-Man stands for. Peter's scene where he convinces his Miguel to abandon this line of thinking became increasingly popular, and Peter is now seen as having the best understanding of what it means to be Spider-Man and would beat Miguel in any sort of encounter.
Memetic Mutation: "Explain it to my rapidly retreating backside!" ^Explanation
Padding: It takes two full hours to get to the Anti-Venom Boss Fight while absolutely nothing else happens. The remaining four hours of the game have little in the way of story developments and you spend long stretches doing nothing but run around trying to fix the time machine.
Signature Scene: With the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the scene of Peter begging Miguel to help change history and save Mary Jane has been making the rounds and praised as a perfect encapsulation of what Spider-Man is about. This also ended up making this version of Peter a small Memetic Badass as many feel that Spider-Verse's Miguel, who is even more gung ho about The Needs of the Many, would not survive an encounter with him, philosophically or even physically.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: People have complained that Spider-Man's costume is ruined by the webbing, since it looks off... It's because the character designers have deviated from the classic design and made the webbing pattern uneven, like an actual spider web.

YMMV / Spider-Man: Edge of Time

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