The story is great and pretty much exactly what I wanted and expected out of a sequel. Gameplay is also still excellent. I enjoyed beating this over the weekend and I love how the game switches between Miles and Peter.
Whilst I liked it for the most part, I do have a few issues with it that made me enjoy it less than its predecessor. Straight off the bat it's pretty buggy at launch. I got multiple crashes, graphical glitches, progress-breaking bugs, the lot. Not really what I expected from Insomniac but I'm sure they'll patch it out.
Other than that, I thought the villains, especially Kraven, were way less interesting than those from 1, and the stakes were never really that high. The emotional hook of 1, and the reason I like it so much, was it's portrayal of Doc Ock. This game doesn't really come close to that in terms of characters and some stuff is a little too cheesy and overly sentimental.
Graphically, the scenery looks gorgeous but the character models' faces all look pretty dead in the eyes. Peter and MJ are the worst for this, some characters like Norman look great, but Peter who was so expressive in 1 now has the emotional range of a rock.
Lastly and probably most importantly, the side missions are all kinds of awful. It might just be me, but my idea of side content in a super hero game is not riding bicycles and training bee drones. Most side missions feel like tacked on filler and just left me wondering why they were even included at all. There's a few Arkham-style mission threads where there's an actual villain or something, but mostly it's kinda meaningless. In the argument about game length, I don't think this is too short, but I'd happily cut 5 to 10 hours of side content to get an extra few story missions.
Overall, whilst this review is a bit critical, I really enjoyed it. It's a great sequel to the first one, even if it is a little rough around the edges. Anyhow Insomniac deserve a lot of appreciation for how much they have carried PS5 exclusives at this point, where are all the other teams? At this rate, we will have Wolverine before Naughty Dog release a game that isn't a remake.
Whilst I liked it for the most part, I do have a few issues with it that made me enjoy it less than its predecessor. Straight off the bat it's pretty buggy at launch. I got multiple crashes, graphical glitches, progress-breaking bugs, the lot. Not really what I expected from Insomniac but I'm sure they'll patch it out.
Other than that, I thought the villains, especially Kraven, were way less interesting than those from 1, and the stakes were never really that high. The emotional hook of 1, and the reason I like it so much, was it's portrayal of Doc Ock. This game doesn't really come close to that in terms of characters and some stuff is a little too cheesy and overly sentimental.
Graphically, the scenery looks gorgeous but the character models' faces all look pretty dead in the eyes. Peter and MJ are the worst for this, some characters like Norman look great, but Peter who was so expressive in 1 now has the emotional range of a rock.
Lastly and probably most importantly, the side missions are all kinds of awful. It might just be me, but my idea of side content in a super hero game is not riding bicycles and training bee drones. Most side missions feel like tacked on filler and just left me wondering why they were even included at all. There's a few Arkham-style mission threads where there's an actual villain or something, but mostly it's kinda meaningless. In the argument about game length, I don't think this is too short, but I'd happily cut 5 to 10 hours of side content to get an extra few story missions.
Overall, whilst this review is a bit critical, I really enjoyed it. It's a great sequel to the first one, even if it is a little rough around the edges. Anyhow Insomniac deserve a lot of appreciation for how much they have carried PS5 exclusives at this point, where are all the other teams? At this rate, we will have Wolverine before Naughty Dog release a game that isn't a remake.