Spider-Man: Rogue's Gallery

Spider-Man: Rogue's Gallery is an open-world sandbox game developed by Rocksteady Studios and due to be released in Q4 2013. It will be available on the Playstation 3 and XBox 360.

Uniquely for a Spider-Man game, Spider-Man: Rogue's Gallery is the first game not to feature Spider-Man as a main character. Rather, the player uses Spider-Man's various villains and the objective of the game is to defeat Spider-Man himself.

Gameplay
Spider-Man: Rogue's Gallery is played as a third-person perspective action-adventure game, with a primary focus on each character's skills and abilities. The game begins with a mass-breakout of the inmates of The Raft, Marvel Comic's maximum security facility for supervillains. This stage serves as a basic tutorial area, teaching the player the basic controls and several gameplay elements that they can employ, such as stealth. However, each villain also has their own unique abilities and traits that the player will learn throughout the game.

The supervillains make their way to New York and the player begins the game as Chameleon, hiding in a lock-up storage unit with a freshly-repaired microcomputer for his belt buckle that grants him his ability to disguise his appearance. The reason for Chameleon as the starting character is because if the player started the game as a stronger villain -- such as Doctor Octopus or Venom -- they would be tempted to go after Spider-Man immediately, whereas playing as a weaker character, such as Chameleon, encourages the player to seek out other, stronger villains to play as.

Spider-Man: Rogue's Gallery is an open-world sandbox game, which means most of New York is available to explore. Hidden around the city are around twenty playable villains, in their own specific hideouts (the Lizard being found in the sewers, for example). The player can learn of the villains' locations through reading the headlines on the front of editions of The Daily Bugle on newstands. Although if the player knows the location of the villain, the hints from the Daily Bugle aren't required.

Should the player find a supervillain, they'll receive a short cutscene where their character will interact with the villain. The player will then be given a series of options; they can try persuading the supervillain into joining them, attempt to bribe them, or fight them outright. Some characters will be more open to certain suggestions than other characters; Shocker, for example, will be a lot more likely to take a bribe than the Lizard. The reaction the villain has to each suggestion will also change depending on which supervillain the player is using; for example, if the player is using Chameleon, then the "Persuade" option will work a lot better on Kraven The Hunter -- because the characters are half-brothers and share a friendship -- than it would if someone else was trying to persuade him. However, for some characters, fighting will be the only option and some will be insulted at an attempt to bribe and attack the player's character. Should the player win the battle or their persuasion/bribery attempt succeeds, they will be able to switch to the new supervillain at any time from the pause menu. However, there will also be certain villains that can only be recruited if the player is using a certain character. For example, any character can visit Cletus Kasady in prison but Carnage will only become available if the player visits him as Venom. Likewise, the player must be using the Green Goblin to discover Hobgoblin's location.

As well as seeking out other supervillains, there are other activities the player can engage in around New York. They can plan heists, bank robberies and thefts of priceless paintings from art galleries to earn money. This money can then be used to bribe supervillains, buy new weaponry and equipment (for characters like Silver Sable and Mysterio) or upgrading already-existing equipment, such as the Green Goblin's glider or Shocker's gauntlets. This also attracts the attention of the police, SWAT teams, SHIELD agents, Black Cat (the more heroic incarnation of the character) and, finally, Spider-Man. However, the player can also just attack civilians in the street to the same effect.

Each supervillain has their own range of abilities that are useful in certain situations. While certain characters can use vehicles to get around the city, some can fly, swing or climb buildings to make their way across New York. Characters with flight abilities also have the option of turning on an auto-pilot feature, which means players using characters like the Green Goblin can concentrate on aiming projectiles without having to steer at the same time. Unique characteristics include Chameleon's ability to avoid detection and sneak into restricted areas while disguised as a police officer or SHIELD agent, Silver Sable having the Wild Pack at her disposal for missions and to deliver vehicles and weapon drops and certain characters, such as Venom and the Green Goblin, being able to escape custody by reverting to their civilian identities.

The main goal of the game is to defeat Spider-Man and, to combat the possibility of Spider-Man being defeated too easily, Rocksteady intend to make the character so difficult to defeat that only the toughest villains or a team-up of several moderately-tough villains will have the chance of doing it. However, the game doesn't end if Spider-Man is defeated. The player can continue playing the game and Spider-Man will still be an adversary, as normal. However, several new features will be available; Spider-Man will become a playable character, with good deeds being available rather than crimes. A "Rogue's Gallery" mode will also be featured on the main menu. In this mode, all the villains will be causing havoc in New York and it'll be the player's job to seek them out and defeat them as Spider-Man, with a best time being recorded for both online and local scoreboards. In the main game, the original Avengers + Captain America will also spawn in New York for the supervillains to seek out and defeat. Similar to the way the supervillains were originally found, the Avengers' locations will be revealed through Daily Bugle headlines, although unlike the original supervillains, they would have to be defeated in a certain order, from The Wasp all the way up to Thor.

Development
Following the Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games, Rocksteady Studios wanted to develop a new superhero series and the rights to Spider-Man were available. Wanting something as thematically different from the Batman games as possible, Spider-Man seemed like a good choice and making the antagonists the playable characters set it apart even more.

Rocksteady's involvement is reflected in the game's graphics. The high level of detail on the characters and the close camera is reminiscent of the Arkham games. Small changes were made to the environment too; unlike other Spider-Man games set in New York, the buildings are closer together so that, when combined with the close camera, the player gets more of a sensation of speed while swinging around the city. Enemies also group together in clusters, rather than being spread out across open spaces as they were in games such as Spider-Man 2.

Rocksteady also faced a problem with the possibility of the player knowing more than the in-game characters, such as the player knowing that Spider-Man was Peter Parker but the villain they were playing as being oblivious to that fact. Rocksteady developers didn't want players to be able to just march into the Daily Bugle and kidnap Peter Parker so, to counteract the problem, they implemented the ability to remove Spider-Man's mask and discover his true identity (or, if the supervillain didn't recognise Parker, to use a police computer to match his features and discover his name, phone number, address, relatives and place of work). It's only after the supervillain discovers Parker's identity that he will appear at the Daily Bugle or elsewhere in the game world.

Downloadable content was always a possibility, thanks to Spider-Man's wide range of enemies. As well as individual downloadable enemies being available, the first expansion pack, entitled "Murderworld", is set to be released in the months following the game's release. It will feature Arcade as a playable character and allow the player to make their own Murderworld, Arcade's sadistic theme park of death traps. Players will be able to place their own obstacles, including buzzsaws, lasers, explosives and many others. They will then be able to challenge Spider-Man to make his through the course or attempt it themselves while playing as him.

Rocksteady ran into problems with how violent the game should be. Naturally, Spider-Man is a character who always appealed to children and the ability to play as the villains led to a serious problem; there's nothing to stop the player standing in the middle of a crowded street and gunning down hordes of civilians as Silver Sable. The developer aimed for a Teen rating and put everything in the game that they could get away with while keeping that rating. So blood was out of the question, dead bodies fade within fifteen seconds and the game features no foul language. However, due to the fact that no blood is actually visible, there was no issue with Morbius The Living Vampire being featured.

Characters
The following is a list of playable characters in the game:
 * Carnage
 * Chameleon
 * Doctor Octopus
 * Electro
 * Green Goblin
 * Hobgoblin
 * Hydro-Man
 * Kingpin
 * Kraven The Hunter
 * Lizard
 * Morbius
 * Mysterio
 * Rhino
 * Sandman
 * Scorpion
 * Shocker
 * Silver Sable
 * Spider-Man*
 * Venom
 * Vulture
 * Only playable following the game's completion.