For Spider-Man fans, by Spider-Man fans.
Playing through this, you can really tell that the wizards over at Insomniac really put effort and care into their craft. Almost (keyword here) everything feels like a substantial improvement; the traversal, side content, bosses, most aspects of the gameplay (I have a few complaints with this, I'll get to them later), and even New York itself.
The biggest improvement I saw was the boss fights. In the last 2 games, the bosses felt kind of underwhelming in hindsight, whereas I died several times on pretty much all of the bosses on Spectacular (the normal mode) in this game.
A close second goes to the traversal; sure it's still just New York and on paper this game just has more of the same, but when you look closer at the details you'd see that this game's NYC is probably the most realistic the city has ever felt in a video game. With all the new traversal options, such as gliding, loop de loops, and even surfing, you experience it all at breakneck pace instead of sitting through NYC traffic that's on the roads now compared to the previous games having basically none of that. There's even more texture to the NPCs walking around town in this one if you decide to take a break from heroics, whereas in the other games they all looked the same.
Side content feels like it could be on par with main story missions in this game, given how spectacle heavy they are. One that stuck out to me the most is the one where you play as Hailey from the Miles game, and only being able to faintly hear the sound of a wooden board breaking as the player brings a certain kind of immersion when you remember that she's deaf. It's just that good.
I also really enjoyed the new abilities that both Spider-Men now have in combat. Miles can literally throw blue lightning on some Star Wars Emperor Palpatine shit, while Peter can throw around a motherfucking alien at enemies. It adds a new sense of depth to the combat, whereas in the last two games it kind of just felt like the same loop of "air launch, beat the shit out of them in the air, and if they move too far away in the air just press Triangle to catch them, rinse and repeat". At least Miles' game had invisibilty which added depth and is also available in this game as well, but I barely ever used them due to how useless it can be with how quickly it runs out. Both characters now also have the ability to parry like a fighting game, which feels like another bit of depth, especially when you're forced to parry certain attacks in order to dodge them now.
The characters are all still the same characters from the first game, which makes sense for a sequel, but the new ones for this game are alright as well. In the beginning you meet Harry Osborn again after his "trip to Europe" from the 2018 game, and then are immediately shown a playable memory from their shared past to show their strong friendship. I do kind of wish, however, that some of the new characters bonded well with other side characters and not just Peter. MJ and Harry are also supposed to be besties, but it doesn't really show in this game even if MJ was there with Harry and Peter in their past and MJ is still closely connected to Peter as his girlfriend.
The story, while I don't really expect much from it given it's a superhero game, still feels kind of safe in comparison to the 2018 game. While it's still one of the better superhero stories I've seen in the past few years, especially with the MCU putting out only slop as of late, I can't help but feel at times that they could have gone a bit harder with the story at times. The story feels kind of front loaded, but for a super hero story I think it's overall still mostly fine, especially one done by fans of the IP like Insomniac.
Now come my biggest complaints. I don't know why, but with everything this game gives, it's strange that it also takes away certain gameplay elements as well.
- In this one, they reworked the Focus system. Originally you could have multiple Focus bars for multiple finishers, and continuously heal from them if you want so long as you were building Focus. In this game it's stripped down to just 1 Focus bar that does fuck all until it's full. Don't really know why they did this, but I don't really like it.
- There's half the gadgets now, which I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I used all of them in the first two games, but the fact that they limit you now is strange.
- Leveling up in the other games gave skill points, occasional movement speed increases, and rarely health increases. This gave incentive to do that. I can forgo the lack of movement speed increases due to new traversal changes already in-built into the game; I can't excuse how now on level up you only get a single skill point for your now THREE equally big skill trees, whereas health increases are earned through doing side quests where you get tokens for completing them and use those to grow out MORE skill trees.
- Web Lines are a new mechanic that both Spider-Men have. It allows you to create a tightrope between any two walls that you can walk across and stealthily pluck enemies off the ground and wipe them out. This is counteracted by the AI looking up more frequently compared to the previous games, but even then these lines just almost entirely trivialize stealth missions. It's not that hard to just pluck 3 enemies at once with just a single web shot and a zipline completely undetected.
- Suits are now not only a bit lacking compared to the first game, they're now completely cosmetic. Unlike the 2018 game where you had suit powers given to each suit, now it's just what suit you like the most at a given moment.
I'm saying it again. For Spider-Man fans, by Spider-Man fans. While not short of flaws, it's definitely a console seller for Spider-Man fans. 8.5/10, maybe even a 9.
also can everyone shut the fuck up about 19 inches? you're not funny holy shit
Playing through this, you can really tell that the wizards over at Insomniac really put effort and care into their craft. Almost (keyword here) everything feels like a substantial improvement; the traversal, side content, bosses, most aspects of the gameplay (I have a few complaints with this, I'll get to them later), and even New York itself.
The biggest improvement I saw was the boss fights. In the last 2 games, the bosses felt kind of underwhelming in hindsight, whereas I died several times on pretty much all of the bosses on Spectacular (the normal mode) in this game.
A close second goes to the traversal; sure it's still just New York and on paper this game just has more of the same, but when you look closer at the details you'd see that this game's NYC is probably the most realistic the city has ever felt in a video game. With all the new traversal options, such as gliding, loop de loops, and even surfing, you experience it all at breakneck pace instead of sitting through NYC traffic that's on the roads now compared to the previous games having basically none of that. There's even more texture to the NPCs walking around town in this one if you decide to take a break from heroics, whereas in the other games they all looked the same.
Side content feels like it could be on par with main story missions in this game, given how spectacle heavy they are. One that stuck out to me the most is the one where you play as Hailey from the Miles game, and only being able to faintly hear the sound of a wooden board breaking as the player brings a certain kind of immersion when you remember that she's deaf. It's just that good.
I also really enjoyed the new abilities that both Spider-Men now have in combat. Miles can literally throw blue lightning on some Star Wars Emperor Palpatine shit, while Peter can throw around a motherfucking alien at enemies. It adds a new sense of depth to the combat, whereas in the last two games it kind of just felt like the same loop of "air launch, beat the shit out of them in the air, and if they move too far away in the air just press Triangle to catch them, rinse and repeat". At least Miles' game had invisibilty which added depth and is also available in this game as well, but I barely ever used them due to how useless it can be with how quickly it runs out. Both characters now also have the ability to parry like a fighting game, which feels like another bit of depth, especially when you're forced to parry certain attacks in order to dodge them now.
The characters are all still the same characters from the first game, which makes sense for a sequel, but the new ones for this game are alright as well. In the beginning you meet Harry Osborn again after his "trip to Europe" from the 2018 game, and then are immediately shown a playable memory from their shared past to show their strong friendship. I do kind of wish, however, that some of the new characters bonded well with other side characters and not just Peter. MJ and Harry are also supposed to be besties, but it doesn't really show in this game even if MJ was there with Harry and Peter in their past and MJ is still closely connected to Peter as his girlfriend.
The story, while I don't really expect much from it given it's a superhero game, still feels kind of safe in comparison to the 2018 game. While it's still one of the better superhero stories I've seen in the past few years, especially with the MCU putting out only slop as of late, I can't help but feel at times that they could have gone a bit harder with the story at times. The story feels kind of front loaded, but for a super hero story I think it's overall still mostly fine, especially one done by fans of the IP like Insomniac.
Now come my biggest complaints. I don't know why, but with everything this game gives, it's strange that it also takes away certain gameplay elements as well.
- In this one, they reworked the Focus system. Originally you could have multiple Focus bars for multiple finishers, and continuously heal from them if you want so long as you were building Focus. In this game it's stripped down to just 1 Focus bar that does fuck all until it's full. Don't really know why they did this, but I don't really like it.
- There's half the gadgets now, which I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I used all of them in the first two games, but the fact that they limit you now is strange.
- Leveling up in the other games gave skill points, occasional movement speed increases, and rarely health increases. This gave incentive to do that. I can forgo the lack of movement speed increases due to new traversal changes already in-built into the game; I can't excuse how now on level up you only get a single skill point for your now THREE equally big skill trees, whereas health increases are earned through doing side quests where you get tokens for completing them and use those to grow out MORE skill trees.
- Web Lines are a new mechanic that both Spider-Men have. It allows you to create a tightrope between any two walls that you can walk across and stealthily pluck enemies off the ground and wipe them out. This is counteracted by the AI looking up more frequently compared to the previous games, but even then these lines just almost entirely trivialize stealth missions. It's not that hard to just pluck 3 enemies at once with just a single web shot and a zipline completely undetected.
- Suits are now not only a bit lacking compared to the first game, they're now completely cosmetic. Unlike the 2018 game where you had suit powers given to each suit, now it's just what suit you like the most at a given moment.
I'm saying it again. For Spider-Man fans, by Spider-Man fans. While not short of flaws, it's definitely a console seller for Spider-Man fans. 8.5/10, maybe even a 9.
also can everyone shut the fuck up about 19 inches? you're not funny holy shit