It was a cool crisp autumn afternoon. At 12:30 PM the alarm went off, playing Goodbye Summer, Hello Winter. A long slender arm reached out from under a large blanket, reaching blindly for the phone to turn off the catchy and iconic jingle. After a few desperate grabs the alarm was eventually snoozed, leaving the room silent sans the white noise coming from the fans. After some fumbling around under the covers they made their way to start their day, grabbing a blue collared shirt from the line of blue collared shirts in the closet.
While combing in today's prescription of Keep's into his hair Jared suddenly heard a ring from the doorbell. Strange, he didn't recall ordering anything for today. Marching to the front door he opened it wide and sure enough there was a box right at his doorstep, no notable markings or brandings on it. Looking around he noticed a figure of sorts watching him from inside of a large truck, but before Jared could make out any features they drove away. While suspicious of the whole situation the curiosity got the better of him. He picked up the box and brought it with him into his studio.
Using his X-acto knife from his box opening streams Jared carved into the package's taped up top. The insides of the box were filled with different newspapers and junk mail used as a sort of wrapping paper or packaging. Pulling aside wads of paper the paranoid pro eventually felt something solid in his hands. Once he uncovered the prize he lifted an eyebrow, confused at what he saw. In his hands was a Gamecube copy of Spider-Man The Movie from 2002. Was this just a fan's way of requesting that he do a let's play or review of the game? But why would they drop it on his doorstep with no note, and even more pressing is how did they know where he lived?
Brushing off that horrifying thought Jared opened the game case, a cloud of dust puffed out from within making the gangly gamer cough.
"Aw man, this shit hasn't been touched in years!" Jared announced through his assaulted lungs.
He blew the rest of the dust out of the case, despite it all the game's case and manual seemed to be in fair enough condition. Inspecting the tiny disc, he noted and how surprisingly clean it's back was, only one or two tiny scratches that surely wouldn't effect gameplay. Jared looked at himself in the reflection on the disc, pondering on what he should do in this situation.
"You know what?" he said out loud. "I think I'll give this guy just what he wants. I'll play his shitty Spider-Man game and really let him know how uncool it is to leave a package unannounced on someone's front doorstep."
With that Jared went to his setup to start recording his gameplay and commentary for this forlorn wall crawling experience. He was ready to give this mystery fan a piece of his mind in this one off let's play. Locking the disc in place inside of the Gamecube he hit the power button and slammed record in his OBS recording screen.
"HI" He began rather aggressively. "Welcome back to ProJared Plays and this-" pause for effect "is Spider-Man The Movie, The Game, on Gamecube. Now here's a weird bit of backstory for this one, like some sort of cursed Halloween creepypasta this game just found itself on my doorstep this morning so I thought "hey, what better to do with a free game than to show it off for you guys" because I know one of you out there would really like to see me play it! So that's exactly what we're gonna do."
The game loaded into the opening movie, where even the pre-rendered cg fight scene between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin was showing it's age, Jared tried to find positives where he could but the game was not making it easy. The title screen was rather bland and featured a very short music loop that he knew would get grating rather quick. Brushing past all of the movie's opening sequences in a single cutscene, which unfortunately includes the wrestling match with Bonesaw that could have honestly been a very engaging tutorial boss fight as you could learn the base mechanics of combat and wall crawling inside the steel cage, we end on uncle Ben's murder and Peter Parker's sorrow. The gameplay finally begins as the Human Spider looks to hunt down the killer.
"Alright so you've got your standard stuff with a Spider-Man game, though this one actually plays more like one of those old PS1 games where you could swing from anywhere, even the clouds, and just button mash to take down these hoodlums. I get that there's supposed to be a pretty intensive combo system here that you can unlock but having such a small arsenal really does make these repeating goons feel pretty repetitive."
After hurting an arbitrary number of grunt enemies Peter is finally directed to the location of his target and stealthily makes his way inside. More baddies wait to get bashed, one even tries to squash the wall crawler with a truck, fortunately Jared was able to move away from this instant kill cheap shot just in time. Finally he navigated his way into the boss arena, as indicated by the mean mug on the health bar that just popped up on screen.
"Alright bastard, you're gonna pay for what you did to Uncle Ben- wait hE HAS A SHOTGUN?"
Jared dodged left and right as Spider-Man as the murderer began to fire off rounds from his large weapon. Spider-Man was able to maneuver around these shots, but it was really difficult to find a safe opening to come in for a counter attack. This was quite the tough first boss that was for sure. Just when Jared was finally able to find a sweet spot and land some blows the villain quickly retaliated with a point-blank shot.
Control was suddenly taken from Jared, the Human Spider wasn't reacting to any of the inputs. It was like the game glitched or something. From there Peter slowly turned toward the camera to face the player, his chest filled with holes all oozing with low poly blood effects. Jared's eyes widened greatly, watching this dark imagery in front of him. Peter reached a hand out towards the screen before falling over, his health bar instantly drained.
"JESUS!" Shouted the entertainer, "That is so fucked up, I know there are guns and stuff in this game but it's still rated E for everyone! I can't believe they were able to show something so grim. I guess lets, just, try again?"
Jared hit the retry button on the screen, but when the game re-loaded he wasn't in the same place any more. The game loaded into some station level with the Scorpion, who wasn't even in the movie. Peter was still in his Human-Spider costume which really didn't seem right, but regardless Jared played on. Shooting web balls at the boss seemed the most effective, they did decent enough damage and allowed him to stay clear of the Scorpions long tail and command grabs. Right when the boss' health had gotten as low as the bar could go it seemed as though he had stopped taking damage. None of Peter's attacks were having any effect outside of the small about of hit stun. The music had stopped so there was nothing but sound effects and quips coming from the game. It was purely an endurance battle at this point, but eventually Scorpion was able to best the gamer. Was there some trick to the fight that he had missed?
"Aahhhh this game is bull shit, I mean what am I supposed to do against that!? Is there some sort of secret move that I don't know about that I have to finish this guy with? I don't get it."
Hitting retry started the fight over, but this time Peter's health bar was completely empty. The boss ended the fight immediately before Jared could react, causing his jaw to drop to the floor in shock.
"What was that!? The game just FORGOT to give me health that time! I knew this game was janky but this honestly undefendable, I'm sorry whoever sent this to me but, it's just a mess."
This time when Jared hit retry he was once again warped to a further part in the game, causing him to look shocked and puzzled in the eyes of the webcam. It seemed like he was suddenly at the end of the game fighting the Green Goblin himself. Willem Dafoe's sweet sinister voice lines working their magic as Spider-Man, who was still the Human-Spider, began his battle on the bridge. Since the Goblin was able to fly around on his glider it made combat tougher than it already is. Jared was able to get Goblin off of his glider for a moment to do some damage, but he quickly made his way back into the sky. Out of web fluid he made Spider-Man run toward an extra cartridge at the end of the bridge. With his back turned he couldn't see what was about to happen.
Norman Osborn's glider, with blades drawn, charged at Peter from behind, piercing the youthful hero in the back and pinning him into the wall, the camera failed to keep up as the polygonal corpse was flung into the background, barely visible. Once again Jared was shocked at the level of gore featured here. Two trails of blood, one from each wound, led from where Spidey was standing all the way to where he met his demise. Jared mashed buttons trying to bring up a menu or retry or get any sort of response from the game but it was all fruitless.
"What. The Fuck! Is going on in this game? Did they really seriously release a Spider-Man game like this? How have I never heard about the dark edge energy that this game has? I mean clearly I've been dealing with some level warping glitches but, you can't glitch gore like this! Someone out there had to animate all these horrifying death scenes! This is crazy!"
Suddenly the camera started to move again. It wasn't a smooth motion though, it was like it was being handled manually. That theory quickly became fact when the Green Goblin pointed the camera right at his face. While the model wasn't rigged to show his mouth under the mask you could hear the goblin cackling as he looked right into the camera. He pointed it back over to Peter and manually zoomed in so Jared could get a better look. Between his laughs the Goblin began to sing.
"The itsy-bitsy Spider went up the water spout, down came the Goblin and flushed the Spider out."
Jared was stunned into silence, he had no words for what he was seeing on his screen.
"A real shame isn't it," Norman began "Strong enough to have it all. But too weak to take it. Could have been one hell of a team."
The Goblin once again held the camera up to face him, his early Gamecube era model looking straight at the player.
"And what about you?"
The controller slipped out of Jared's now sweaty hands. He started to cough hard seemingly out of nowhere. This was fucked up, what was even happening. He could hardly hear himself think as the Goblin cackled. Quickly he jumped up to turn the Gamecube off, the tv feed now nothing but a low hum and a No Signal logo. Jared got up to get some air and take a breather from whatever the hell just happened to him.
Inside the bathroom Jared washed his face in the cool water, trying to calm down. He looked at himself in the mirror as he caught his breath. Shaking his head at the whole situation he reached for a towel to dry his face off. After doing so he caught another glance at himself in the mirror, only this time he wore a wicked grin across his face. Jared jumped back in fright, rubbed his eyes, but nothing changed. He couldn't tell if he had lost it or his eyes really were playing tricks on him.
"So what'll it be" the reflection smirked.
"I- I don't know what's going on!" Jared seemingly replied to himself.
"You want it all, don't you. Fame, wealth, power. You can't deny it so don't even bother."
"What do you want?"
"To say what you won't, to do what you can't."
"This is, this is crazy!"
Jared ran out of the bathroom, hearing nothing but cackling in his head. He ended up back in his recording studio to grab his phone, his reflection in the dark screen laughing harder and harder. Pocketing the phone, he quickly grabbed the game out of the console, tossed it haphazardly back into its case and the case into the box. He carried the package with him outside, looking for any signs of whoever it was he saw earlier.
"THIS ISN'T FUNNY!" He screamed loudly into the neighborhood. "COME OUT WHOEVER YOU ARE, I'M CALLING THE POLICE AND YOUR ASS IS GONNA BE ARRESTED!"
Panting heavily, he looked around more and more before running across his yard toward the street. Something had caught his foot and he ended up falling face first on the ground, the box flying out of his hands with the contents spilling out from inside. Jared tilted his head up to see, shocked once again by his sinister reflection in the back of the game disc which had fallen out of its case. He began to sob, desperately looking for answers to anything that's going through his head. Looking past the disc he noticed something else glint from inside the box, still covered in old newspapers. Slowly he pulled himself forward, reaching for whatever it was that caught his eye. With tears in his eyes he grabbed at what was in the box. He sat up and rested on his knees, in his hands was a photograph. The memory was full of those who he had once known, that had once called him friend. A joint endeavor between content creators, they were never happier than when they had all come together to form Normal Boots. Or at least, that's what Jared thought. His hand shook, but only for a moment. His sorrow had shifted, he suddenly no longer felt misery and confusion. He realized now that he didn't want any answers, he didn't want any sort of resolution. He just wanted things to go back to when they were... Normal.
