Batman has always been my superhero of choice. I'm pretty sure my mom still has pictures of me absorbing the 1960's show six inches from the damn screen, my eyes like thin sheets separating the Batusi from my brain. This hyper-fixation on Adam West's rippling physique resulted in me developing a very narrow taste in superheroes. Burt Ward's dog food is the only brand I'll feed my pup, that show still has me all fucked up!
One of the few Marvel heroes to break through and leave some sort of impression on me is Spider-Man, which is great because nobody seems interested in making good Batman games anymore. Rocksteady has been engaging in self-sabotage for almost a decade, but at least I can count on Insomniac to put out a good game, even if it maybe trends a bit too close to the previous Spider-Man and it's (better) expansion, Miles Morales. I wasn't on Backloggd dot com when I played them, so I never had a chance to share my thoughts. In short: they're both very good, quite possibly the best Spider-Man games to have been released up to that point.
The first 60% of Spider-Man 2 plays it incredibly safe. It's more of the same, albeit with fewer gadgets and less superfluous challenges scattered throughout New York. Although you now have two Spider-Men you can freely swap between - assuming this doesn't crash the game, which happened to me frequently - Spider-Man 2 feels much more focused than the previous entry. I think Insomniac learned a lot of good lessons from Miles Morales, which similarly trimmed a lot of fat and was far better paced and more manageable for it. There's also a whole lot less time spent paling around with the cops. In fact, they're practically non-existent now, unless you count the ghost of Jefferson Davis haunting the halls of his son's mind.
Things really pick up in the later half, however. The Symbiote suit comes with several new powers for Peter which helps refresh his gameplay, and the story picks up and veers into some very goofy territory that results in some really fun set pieces and battles. My only complaint here is that Venom spends a little too much time as a slobbering rage monster and that Tony Todd is severely under-utilized. Also, you know, heavily basing everything off existing stories and then not crediting those authors is kind of a dirty move. Sorry Donny Cates, all your ideas have been syphoned out of your head and are no longer yours... Just like Riddler's Box from the hit movie Batman Forever! Ohh... Batman...
Traversal is also as good as it's ever been, and I think this was already a strong point of the first game. The inclusion of a wingsuit initially feels as though it might trivialize navigation, but once you understand how it can be used to build or maintain momentum, you can chain it into swings and start doing some really crazy acrobatics. It's also useful for bridging the river that separates the two islands or maneuvering over open spaces like the park and suburbs of Queens, which means no more awkwardly swinging through trees. Everything just feels a lot more fluid.
Side content is more of a mixed bag for me. The Emily-May Foundation quest is dull and is mostly used to support a core plot thread about Peter and Harry's startup. It's a little more believable when Peter is actually helping with the Foundation than simply paying lip to it, but tepid shooting sequences and clunky gene splicing minigames aren't my idea of fun. I am also generally not a fan of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man missions, most of which I found to be trite in their efforts to tug on your heart strings. The Internet absolutely lost it over Finding Grandpa, but I could not get past Gramps' put-on frail old man voice which sounded about as good as something I'd do as a joke. Perhaps I'm a heartless monster for not getting misty-eyed about it, I ate some of the Burt Ward dog food and it might've done something chemically to my brain.
That said, the mission with Howard's pigeons is a highlight and was actually emotionally moving, and none of the side quests are so abundant or tedious as to be annoying. I was able to platinum this game without it ever feeling inconvenient to do so which is a marked improvement over the first Spider-Man.
Much like the gameplay, the overarching plot of Spider-Man 2 struggles to get going and only really picks up in the second half of the game. Maybe it's because I don't recognize any of these people anymore, but I had a really hard time getting invested in the interpersonal drama of Peter, Harry, and Mary Jane, which the game sinks a considerable amount of time into slowly developing. Some of that is to do with Scott Porter's performance as Harry, which makes the character sound a bit too phoney. He's very chipper, really leans into this "yeah, we're going to save the world! Let's go, team!" attitude that doesn't feel genuine. My friend Larry Davis also pointed out that he looks a lot like Matt Johnson from Nirvana the Band the Show and I can't purge this from my mind, so I need to pass the curse onto all of you. A lot of what Harry's arc is building up to does pay off in the end, but it's hard to unpack all of that without getting into spoilers. Spoiler is a character from Batman, she later becomes Robin and then a corpse.
Mary Jane is at least given more to do, although her atrocious stealth sequences are back, and I don't know who the hell asked for more of them. She's got a stun gun now, but these missions are still so tedious. Just the shallowest take on stealth you could possibly imagine, but even sneaking around as the Spider-Men feels like it has regressed and is nowhere near as enjoyable as it was in the last two games. At least Miles can turn invisible, which speeds things up, and I don't think any of these sections have automatic fail states if you're caught, so nothing's stopping you from getting into a brawl.
Speaking of Miles, I think I prefer his side of the story and find him a far more interesting character than Peter. This has been the case for me since Miles Morales, and I really liked seeing how his character, relationships, and powers evolved in this game. His struggle for revenge against Martin Li threatens to pull him into places just as dark as where Peter goes when dressed in the Symbiote, and this pent-up aggression is explored in more compelling ways. I also think Insomniac has done a better job of embodying what it means to be a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" in MIles, whereas Peter is a bit more absorbed in his own world. The story does play with the idea of Peter possibly passing the torch onto Miles, and if the third game embraces that more fully by making him the lead, that'd be alright by me.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 might be the best in the series, if only marginally so, but it has left me excited to see where Insomniac goes with the third and presumably final entry. Even if it ends up just being more of the same, that still means we'd be getting a great game. Or they could fuck it all up, give Spider-Man the Spider-Mobile and force you into a ton of shitty tank battles with it under Green Goblin's city-wide fart cloud.
One of the few Marvel heroes to break through and leave some sort of impression on me is Spider-Man, which is great because nobody seems interested in making good Batman games anymore. Rocksteady has been engaging in self-sabotage for almost a decade, but at least I can count on Insomniac to put out a good game, even if it maybe trends a bit too close to the previous Spider-Man and it's (better) expansion, Miles Morales. I wasn't on Backloggd dot com when I played them, so I never had a chance to share my thoughts. In short: they're both very good, quite possibly the best Spider-Man games to have been released up to that point.
The first 60% of Spider-Man 2 plays it incredibly safe. It's more of the same, albeit with fewer gadgets and less superfluous challenges scattered throughout New York. Although you now have two Spider-Men you can freely swap between - assuming this doesn't crash the game, which happened to me frequently - Spider-Man 2 feels much more focused than the previous entry. I think Insomniac learned a lot of good lessons from Miles Morales, which similarly trimmed a lot of fat and was far better paced and more manageable for it. There's also a whole lot less time spent paling around with the cops. In fact, they're practically non-existent now, unless you count the ghost of Jefferson Davis haunting the halls of his son's mind.
Things really pick up in the later half, however. The Symbiote suit comes with several new powers for Peter which helps refresh his gameplay, and the story picks up and veers into some very goofy territory that results in some really fun set pieces and battles. My only complaint here is that Venom spends a little too much time as a slobbering rage monster and that Tony Todd is severely under-utilized. Also, you know, heavily basing everything off existing stories and then not crediting those authors is kind of a dirty move. Sorry Donny Cates, all your ideas have been syphoned out of your head and are no longer yours... Just like Riddler's Box from the hit movie Batman Forever! Ohh... Batman...
Traversal is also as good as it's ever been, and I think this was already a strong point of the first game. The inclusion of a wingsuit initially feels as though it might trivialize navigation, but once you understand how it can be used to build or maintain momentum, you can chain it into swings and start doing some really crazy acrobatics. It's also useful for bridging the river that separates the two islands or maneuvering over open spaces like the park and suburbs of Queens, which means no more awkwardly swinging through trees. Everything just feels a lot more fluid.
Side content is more of a mixed bag for me. The Emily-May Foundation quest is dull and is mostly used to support a core plot thread about Peter and Harry's startup. It's a little more believable when Peter is actually helping with the Foundation than simply paying lip to it, but tepid shooting sequences and clunky gene splicing minigames aren't my idea of fun. I am also generally not a fan of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man missions, most of which I found to be trite in their efforts to tug on your heart strings. The Internet absolutely lost it over Finding Grandpa, but I could not get past Gramps' put-on frail old man voice which sounded about as good as something I'd do as a joke. Perhaps I'm a heartless monster for not getting misty-eyed about it, I ate some of the Burt Ward dog food and it might've done something chemically to my brain.
That said, the mission with Howard's pigeons is a highlight and was actually emotionally moving, and none of the side quests are so abundant or tedious as to be annoying. I was able to platinum this game without it ever feeling inconvenient to do so which is a marked improvement over the first Spider-Man.
Much like the gameplay, the overarching plot of Spider-Man 2 struggles to get going and only really picks up in the second half of the game. Maybe it's because I don't recognize any of these people anymore, but I had a really hard time getting invested in the interpersonal drama of Peter, Harry, and Mary Jane, which the game sinks a considerable amount of time into slowly developing. Some of that is to do with Scott Porter's performance as Harry, which makes the character sound a bit too phoney. He's very chipper, really leans into this "yeah, we're going to save the world! Let's go, team!" attitude that doesn't feel genuine. My friend Larry Davis also pointed out that he looks a lot like Matt Johnson from Nirvana the Band the Show and I can't purge this from my mind, so I need to pass the curse onto all of you. A lot of what Harry's arc is building up to does pay off in the end, but it's hard to unpack all of that without getting into spoilers. Spoiler is a character from Batman, she later becomes Robin and then a corpse.
Mary Jane is at least given more to do, although her atrocious stealth sequences are back, and I don't know who the hell asked for more of them. She's got a stun gun now, but these missions are still so tedious. Just the shallowest take on stealth you could possibly imagine, but even sneaking around as the Spider-Men feels like it has regressed and is nowhere near as enjoyable as it was in the last two games. At least Miles can turn invisible, which speeds things up, and I don't think any of these sections have automatic fail states if you're caught, so nothing's stopping you from getting into a brawl.
Speaking of Miles, I think I prefer his side of the story and find him a far more interesting character than Peter. This has been the case for me since Miles Morales, and I really liked seeing how his character, relationships, and powers evolved in this game. His struggle for revenge against Martin Li threatens to pull him into places just as dark as where Peter goes when dressed in the Symbiote, and this pent-up aggression is explored in more compelling ways. I also think Insomniac has done a better job of embodying what it means to be a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" in MIles, whereas Peter is a bit more absorbed in his own world. The story does play with the idea of Peter possibly passing the torch onto Miles, and if the third game embraces that more fully by making him the lead, that'd be alright by me.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 might be the best in the series, if only marginally so, but it has left me excited to see where Insomniac goes with the third and presumably final entry. Even if it ends up just being more of the same, that still means we'd be getting a great game. Or they could fuck it all up, give Spider-Man the Spider-Mobile and force you into a ton of shitty tank battles with it under Green Goblin's city-wide fart cloud.
2 Comments
@SunlitSonata I have changed the lore of Silent Hill, just like Ascension promised.
SunlitSonata
5 months ago
Yo I found someone using your gamer tag infiltrated the Silent Hill interactive episode shitfest
https://twitter.com/danksilenthill/status/1719741110917181762