Worse than the first game, and not nearly as good as Miles Morales.
Gameplay here is mostly untouched from MM. It's fine, I guess. The story is where it really shits the bed. It spends the majority of its runtime spinning its wheels with Kraven's story. Kraven shows up in New Yawk (Greatest City In Da World Baybee Let's Go Mets Love Da Mets) and starts hunting supervillains. He's after Big Game: Scorpion. Rhino. Vulture. Black Cat. A Chinese guy. During all of this, we're introduced to Peter's best friend Harry Osborn, who was absent during the first game. It results in a relationship that feels forced, which isn't exactly helped by the fact that nobody looks like they did in the first game anymore. Peter is some sort of malformed Tom Holland with a hockey goon neck, MJ is now played by Connie Britton, and Harry is about to croon the Wii Shop titles to a bossa nova beat.
In the first game, alongside the major arcs of Doc Ock and Mr Negative, Peter at least faced off against most of the members of the Sinister Six. Iconic Spidey villains. Here, you're mostly beating up waves of faceless goons, because in this universe Kraven isn't a badass hunter, taking on dangerous prey solo in the Concrete Jungle... He brings a whole army with him. Pretty dumb, if you ask me. The character himself is played well, but I feel like that's a pretty substantial misreading of Kraven's entire character.
Speaking of things that seem like the antithesis of what people enjoy, I cannot stand that they added gliding in here. Swinging around is the most fun part of these games, and inserting a mechanic that lets you entirely bypass that is so wrong-headed that I can't understand how it made it into the final product. At worst, I feel like it's the sort of "toyetic" type of bullshit that would result in the Spider-Mobile, or the 4 million costume changes in Hack Fraud Dan Slott's run. At best, it's simply an acquiescence to the absolute nimrods who can't figure out how to use point launches and web zips to navigate areas without tall buildings. I never used it unless the game made me.
The side missions are also total chores. They're all a bunch of maudlin, weepy, emotionally manipulative bullshit that feels like they were written by a middle aged guy who just watched Jurassic Bark. The diversity also does feel pandering at points. I like Hailey as a character, but giving her a side mission where they show you that deaf people see emotions floating over other peoples heads like Sims was embarrassing.
Anyway, when the Symbiote stuff actually starts, about 3/4 into the game, it gets pretty good. But hey, too little, too late. I would like to give a shoutout to the always-great Tony Todd, who voices Venom, and does a fantastic job. He sounds like I always imagined Venom would sound when I read the comics. Did you know he was the adult Jake Sisko in the Star Track: Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor"? Now you do!
There has been a trend with Sony's first-party games feeling like DLC expansions to the previous games in their series. Even when I really like them, like GOW Ragnarok, it's hard to shake the feeling that there's nothing particularly "current-gen" about it. That was somewhat excusable before, but 3 years into the current gen, aping their own portal tech from Ratchet and Clank doesn't really cut it.
Now-obligatory TAA report: It's here, of course, and it blurs everything, of course. What did you expect? MSAA? Hahahah. C'mon. This isn't a Yakuza game.
I am interested in the setup for Spiders 3, which is about as predictable as possible, but I really hope we see a leap forward with Wolverine. Or they could make another Ratchet and Clank. I would prefer that.
5/10
Gameplay here is mostly untouched from MM. It's fine, I guess. The story is where it really shits the bed. It spends the majority of its runtime spinning its wheels with Kraven's story. Kraven shows up in New Yawk (Greatest City In Da World Baybee Let's Go Mets Love Da Mets) and starts hunting supervillains. He's after Big Game: Scorpion. Rhino. Vulture. Black Cat. A Chinese guy. During all of this, we're introduced to Peter's best friend Harry Osborn, who was absent during the first game. It results in a relationship that feels forced, which isn't exactly helped by the fact that nobody looks like they did in the first game anymore. Peter is some sort of malformed Tom Holland with a hockey goon neck, MJ is now played by Connie Britton, and Harry is about to croon the Wii Shop titles to a bossa nova beat.
In the first game, alongside the major arcs of Doc Ock and Mr Negative, Peter at least faced off against most of the members of the Sinister Six. Iconic Spidey villains. Here, you're mostly beating up waves of faceless goons, because in this universe Kraven isn't a badass hunter, taking on dangerous prey solo in the Concrete Jungle... He brings a whole army with him. Pretty dumb, if you ask me. The character himself is played well, but I feel like that's a pretty substantial misreading of Kraven's entire character.
Speaking of things that seem like the antithesis of what people enjoy, I cannot stand that they added gliding in here. Swinging around is the most fun part of these games, and inserting a mechanic that lets you entirely bypass that is so wrong-headed that I can't understand how it made it into the final product. At worst, I feel like it's the sort of "toyetic" type of bullshit that would result in the Spider-Mobile, or the 4 million costume changes in Hack Fraud Dan Slott's run. At best, it's simply an acquiescence to the absolute nimrods who can't figure out how to use point launches and web zips to navigate areas without tall buildings. I never used it unless the game made me.
The side missions are also total chores. They're all a bunch of maudlin, weepy, emotionally manipulative bullshit that feels like they were written by a middle aged guy who just watched Jurassic Bark. The diversity also does feel pandering at points. I like Hailey as a character, but giving her a side mission where they show you that deaf people see emotions floating over other peoples heads like Sims was embarrassing.
Anyway, when the Symbiote stuff actually starts, about 3/4 into the game, it gets pretty good. But hey, too little, too late. I would like to give a shoutout to the always-great Tony Todd, who voices Venom, and does a fantastic job. He sounds like I always imagined Venom would sound when I read the comics. Did you know he was the adult Jake Sisko in the Star Track: Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor"? Now you do!
There has been a trend with Sony's first-party games feeling like DLC expansions to the previous games in their series. Even when I really like them, like GOW Ragnarok, it's hard to shake the feeling that there's nothing particularly "current-gen" about it. That was somewhat excusable before, but 3 years into the current gen, aping their own portal tech from Ratchet and Clank doesn't really cut it.
Now-obligatory TAA report: It's here, of course, and it blurs everything, of course. What did you expect? MSAA? Hahahah. C'mon. This isn't a Yakuza game.
I am interested in the setup for Spiders 3, which is about as predictable as possible, but I really hope we see a leap forward with Wolverine. Or they could make another Ratchet and Clank. I would prefer that.
5/10