Let’s talk about achievements. Trophies. What have you. As conceived, they’re a brilliant way to extend a game’s playability. Sure, you can blow past the average single-player experience in eight hours or less, but in an age when console manufacturers insist that every title come bundled with a cheeky, abstract to-do list (to wit, the...

Forgive me, readers, for I have bought NOS. I don’t pretend to be above the occasional Red Bull, especially when it’s been poured into some kind of infarction-inducing, judgment-deflating cocktail, but by and large, I’m not an energy-drink enthusiast. The things are nutritionally vacant, they throw off circadian rhythms, and they come in flavors...

I’ve always been a huge Spider-Man fan. But I hated his games because they, like most superhero games, were just crappy beat ‘em ups with a few cool web moves thrown in. The brawlers missed what made Spider-Man an interesting character. When SPIDER-MAN 2 came out I was blown away. Here was a game where I was Spider-Man — whipping around New York,...