3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man 2 is a good game, if all you were looking for is for me to say that then you can probably stop reading now. The thing is though, everyone kind of knew this game was going to be good, it looked like a pretty cut and dry follow up to two already good games, so that question isn't all that impactful to people like myself. The real question everyone should be asking however is if it's better than the previous two games, and the answer is a lot more complicated than I had hoped. Both Spider-Man 2018 and Miles Morales are very highly regarded among the general populous, but honestly, I've always been envious that I couldn't connect to those games as much as other people have. Upon my first playthrough in 2018, I found the original game to be kind of repetitive. It had a weak combat system that emphasized flashiness over mechanical depth and It took every open-world cliché imaginable to make what felt to me like a soulless Arkham wannabe with a shiny Spider-Man coat of paint on it. In retrospect that might have been overly harsh, but I never considered it anywhere close to being a bad video game, but both of them took multiple years for me to really appreciate them for what they are, just two good superhero video games and Spider-Man 2 is no different. It takes everything the first two games did and does it again in pretty much the same way. Almost everything you liked from the first two games are present in Spider-Man 2, but that's also it's biggest problem, Instead of innovating on what worked it plays it way too safe for it's own good, creating an experience that feels like more of the same instead of the true sequel that I had hoped for. To start with the obvious, the web slinging is still easily the best part of these Spider-Man games. There's nothing quite like swinging through New York with triumphant music blaring in the background as you soar between skyscrapers, it is truly euphoric. I know the phrase, "it makes you feel like Spider-Man" has been memed to death by this point, but it does hold some merit, because these games do a really good job at making you feel that way. Spider-Man 2 makes the genius decision of adding a wingsuit into the traversal mix, which is more than welcome as it's somehow equally satisfying as the web slinging. You can seamlessly swing between buildings and glide through wind tunnels at a whim, and it really adds to that fun factor in a way I didn't expect it to. On top of this, Spider-Man 2 is also a gorgeous looking game. It's hard to believe that we're halfway through the PS5 generation already and there's only been a handful of first-party titles that truly take advantage of the hardware, but Spider-Man 2 is one of those games, and it looks great. It's not even like the previous two games were bad looking, but this is a clear step up and the higher capabilities of the hardware really shine as a result, I can't imagine how good this'll look on PC in a few years, but I know for a fact it'll be stunning. In the past I've complained a lot about the stories of both Spider-Man 2018 and Miles Morales. They're a serviceable excuse for cool set pieces to happen, but on their own, they fail to reach any of the heights set up by sixty years of well told Spider-Man stories. Between the bad dialogue, inconsistent performances and underdeveloped characters, the previous games never really clicked for me in the grand scheme of Spider-man storytelling. I'm happy to say Spider-Man 2 is a significant improvement over the previous entries in that regard, it still has a lot of bad dialogue, but a lot more of the story this time around is focusing on fleshing out pre-existing characters than going out of the way to set up new ones while also being a lot more ambitious in the directions it decides to go in. Almost everyone in this game has an arc with actual things to do that feel like a natural progression of their characters, I love the dynamic of Miles and Peter, as we really haven't seen them both suited as Spider-Man at the same time to any significant degree before this. They bounce off of each other really well, while also have their own things going on that propel the story. I love how much development MJ and Harry are given, MJ in particular felt like the generic love interest before this game and now she feels like a genuinely well fleshed out character that meshes well with Peter. Unfortunately I found myself kind of disappointed by how little Miles has to do in this game, which is a shame because I love his character, but the plot gives him almost nothing to do outside of the Martin Li stuff and side quests. Peter has so many things going on like his relationship with MJ, the reintroduction of Harry Osborne, Kraven slowly hunting other Spider-Man villains, the symbiote trying to take over Peter and so many more. Peter is given a plethora of things to do, but in a game where Miles is supposed to share the spotlight with Peter, it feels completely one sided. Don't get me wrong the Martin Li stuff is pretty strong, and while I wont get into specifics, the later half of this game definitely feels more balanced compared to the first couple of hours, but I still couldn't help but feel Miles got sidelined in favor of Peter. I mentioned in my review for Miles Morales how I didn't want them to waste Tony Todd as Venom, he's an actor I really respect and seeing him voice the main villain of this game was really exciting, and luckily, I wasn't let down. Venom is so good in this game and easily the biggest standout for me, maybe I'm biased because I love Tony Todd, but I truly believe this to be the one of the best Spider-Man villain adaptations in general. Unfortunately I can't say the same about Kraven the Hunter, as I found him really underutilized. He's set up really well, but unfortunately beyond the first couple of hours, he's pretty much sidelined outside of a few cutscenes until way later in the game. He lacks a lot of the strong motivation you want from a secondary main villain, and I was really underwhelmed by his inclusion. The missions are also a lot stronger this time around with a lot more things to do inside of them. Instead of having one big set piece and series of minor events following it, every mission feels like it's building off of the last, with the minor stuff reserved for the lengthier side content. Each mission serves as a natural jumping off point for the rest of the game, which ends up making every mission feel exciting. Everyone complained about the sequences in the first game where you walk around as normal Peter, MJ or Miles, but even those missions get a complete overhaul and actually feel fun to play now. During MJ missions you get throwable items to distract enemies, and you get a taser to defend yourself. The level design is also significantly better in these sections as they offer more room to approach a scenario with. The side missions also got a complete overhaul in Spider-Man 2. Instead of feeling like quickly thrown together fetch quests that don't stand out from the next, this time around side missions feel like mini questlines spanning multiple missions. One of my favorite side questlines is "the flame", which honestly feels like a mini-story told within this world and I'd love for future games to explore this concept further. As much as I enjoyed myself with this game, the main issues I had with Spider-Man 2018's combat systems and open-world are still present in Spider-Man 2, and they've somehow gotten worse this time around. I praised Miles Morales for somewhat fixing my critiques with the combat system, but for some reason they all reverted back to how they were before. I get this game wants to give the player that power-trip fantasy of beating up a small army of enemies single handedly as Spider-Man, but I wish there was more to it than just spamming square and occasionally dodging. As much as I call myself a "professional gamer", I'm unfortunately only above average at video games, so when someone like me can easily beat your game on the hardest difficulty with little to no difficulty, that's a problem. I'm not expecting this game to have the difficulty of a souls-like, but all of these games are way too easy for their own good, there's no reason why I should only die a handful of times in your 20 hour game at the highest difficulty. I can see the attempt to fix the mindless combat by adding the parry system, but it really doesn't change a whole lot other than adding one other occasional button press to the mix. To call Spider-Man 2's combat mindless is an understatement, it's completely serviceable for most people, but after a while I found myself getting bored by the basic pool of enemies the game constantly throws at you. In the first game there was a plethora of cool gadgets you can use that work for different styles of play. There were trip mine webs for stealthy players, you could have drones that shoot webs at enemies for people who play more aggressively, and it all just added to the variety of combat. It didn't change the game a whole lot, but it felt like the bare minimum for people to experiment with. For some unknown reason, Insomniac has decided to trash all of those cool gadgets and replace them with ones that are significantly worse. I saw a few people say that the old gadgets were removed as a balancing thing since people used those gadgets as an easy way to win fights, but as a counterpoint to that argument, the gadgets in this have that same problem albeit way way worse because there's little distinction between them this time around. By a certain point in the game when you fully upgrade all of your gadgets, they suddenly turn into near one-hit kills or stun lock devices for enemies that reduce combat to nothing, whenever I got into a battle I'd immediately spam all of the gadgets mindlessly and the entire group would be wiped out in seconds. At least beforehand you had to plan what gadget you were going to abuse, in this you just spam them all and somehow come out on top regardless. Spider-Man's map of New York got an expansion of Brooklyn and Queens, which on paper sounds like a welcome addition, but unfortunately all this ends up doing is adding to the pre-existing problems the already hollow map had. Sure, the recreation of New York is genuinely stunning and super fun to swing around, but as soon as you venture off the beaten path even slightly, the illusion is immediately broken. You start to notice none of the buildings have interiors, all of the NPCs repeat the same few lines of dialogue, there's invisible walls everywhere, every object you aren't supposed to interact with bugs out when you get too close to it and it's just one of those things that makes Insomniacs interpretation of New York feel shallow. This doesn't feel like a living, breathing city full of people, it feels like a generic cityscape for Spider-Man to swing around in, and the new parts of the map just means there's more emptiness. Yet again the open-world is littered with some of the most generic Ubisoft level copy and paste content out there, some of which are identical to the first game but under a different context and a new coat of paint. The spider-bots are just backpacks, the Kraven outposts are just the Fisk outposts, Mysterio replaces task master challenges, it just feels like the same thing over and over again. I truly hope that Spider-Man 3 does some drastic changes to the open-world design or at least bring some new ideas to the mix. The suits in Spider-Man games are a super important aspect to the core experience, a good Spider-Man game needs a good selection of suits. Spider-Man 2018 introduced this idea where almost every suit had a special ultimate ability attached to it, some of them were really creative and paid homage to a variety of different versions of Spider-Man. For example the Spider-Punk suit would play the guitar to stun enemies and the Vintage Comic Book Spider-Man had a literal quip button attached to it, It was one of those neat things that felt integral to the suit collecting in the first game that gave it a lot more personality. Instead Spider-Man 2's suits are purely cosmetic, and the abilities are replaced by 8 different ultimates for each of the two characters, none of them holding a candle to the truly unique ones from the first game. They aren't bad and are completely serviceable, but you can't help but feel some of the personality was lost in favor of this blander system. For some reason prior to this game releasing to the public, I heard a lot of people talking about how "bug-free" the experience was, and after playing it I can tell you that flat out wasn't the case for me. When I played Miles Morales a few months ago, I had a ton of game breaking bugs that ended up soft locking me several times. I'd end up clipping into buildings or enemies would clip into walls making me unable to attack them, I had audio and animation issues where either the wrong animation played or audio cut out for some unknown reason, and yet surprising, ALL of those bugs reappear in Spider-Man 2, including brand new ones. I clipped into 4 different walls in this game without even trying to, sometimes models would bug out and disappear, other times audio would desync from what I'm seeing on screen, and then sometimes I'd just outright crash after doing basic things. Keep in mind these bugs aren't a huge deal because auto saves happen every few minutes and loading to them seemed to fix everything so it's not like a ton of time was ever lost, but it was still annoying whenever they happened. These aren't "game-ruining" and honestly since the game performance wise runs so great outside of a few crashes, I'm a lot more forgiving than I would be otherwise. Spider-Man 2 is a good game, I have a ton of issues with it, but at it's core it's still a great superhero game. If you're someone that loved the previous two, I'm positive you'll love this as well, probably a lot more than I did. I really hope Spider-Man 3 introduces some new things to the table because as much as I enjoyed my time with Spider-Man 2, it played it incredibly safe when a Spider-Man game can be so much more. I imagine the Wolverine game will fill the gap between now and the release of Spider-Man 3, so I truly hope insomniac can learn from these games and make something I end up falling in love with in the future.