Spider-Man 2 weaves the story of multiple heroes and villains into one rip-roaring adventure that improves on its predecessor in nearly every way, with charming side quests, a fantastic open world, and a whole lot of combat.

Spider-Man 2 sees Peter Parker and Miles Morales team up to save New York from Kraven, a dangerous hunter set on killing superheroes and villains alike. You’ll switch between Miles and Peter as you swing, glide, and fight your way through the open world and a campaign filled with many twists and turns.

The open-world is designed with exploration in mind. Traveling across New York is more fast and fluid than ever with the addition of the web wings that seemlessly fit in with the already engaging web swinging. Activities and quests don’t show on your map until you get near them in the game world, encouraging you to focus on the city around you instead of living in the map.

Spider-man 2 is packed with fun and unique mechanics that don't stick around too long. Whether in a curated story moment, like playing carnival games at Coney Island or a more frequent open world activity like snagging spiderbots, there are plenty of moments that serve as necessary respite from what is otherwise a very combat focused game.

The campaign is thrillingly paced, filled with huge set-pieces and interesting character developments centered around resentment and rehabilitation. Yet, for as much as I was into the story, I almost always made time for some side quests or activities which contained some of the most endearing moments of the whole game. Spider-Man 2 simply never lets up.

Combat takes center stage for much of Spider-Man 2 with an improved button layout to better handle the wide array of special abilities and gadgets. These moves synergize together wonderfully and create a great loop in the combat. The combat remained quite fun throughout even if there were a lot of quests that could have use a dozen fewer enemies.

One of the throughlines in the main story and much of the side content is the previous Spider-Man villains trying to reform themselves and return to an acceptable career. Seeing a different side of these villains, like Tombstone working at a Go-Kart track, adds a fun flavoring to this world and gives context to the work Spider-Man has done in his career.

Against the Storm takes what could merely be a solid survival city builder and expertly implements rogue-lite elements that add weighty strategic choices and random modifiers, making each settlement a fresh and fast-paced fight for survival.

As the Queen’s Viceroy, you are tasked with venturing out from the Smoldering City to build settlements that provide supplies for the Queen. Each settlement is a brief and difficult city building experience marked by dangerous storms, dark fantasy elements, and choice-based modifiers and goals.

A Race for Reputation:
Against The Storm strips away slow periods of other city builders by making each settlement a 60-90 minute race against the elements and the Queen’s constantly dwindling patience. You'll need to act fast to plan your layout, expand smartly, and find efficient ways to keep your citizens happy. Succeed or fail, you'll move onto a new settlement where you can do it all over again.

Satisfying Supply Chains:
Cutting down trees for the hearth may be crucial, but Against the Storm puts a heavy focus on creating supply chains for more complex goods, like biscuits or scrolls. Hunting down the supplies for these complex recipes, via blueprints, trade, or exploration, and then seeing your reputation soar when your lizards start eating pie, instead of roots, is incredibly engaging.

Choice and Variety:
Each settlement you build differs based on a number of variables, keeping the game fresh and engaging even after dozens of settlements. The starting location of the settlement affects resource availibility, the combination of species impacts what products you should be producing, and, like any good roguelite, there are plenty of random modifiers and strategic choices.


The Storm:
Against the Storm has a robust meta game that gives purpose to your settlements, with permanent upgrades and even multi settlement goals to strive for. There’s also a rising difficulty system, if you really want to challenge yourself. Even playing more casually, as I do, still leaves you with a worthwhile strategic experience and an engaging progression loop.

Dredge is a rock-solid fishing game built on simplistic mechanics, tantalizing upgrades, and an eerie lovecraftian atmosphere that fills every conversation, location, and quest.

As you explore a mysterious archipelago you’ll catch fish, and dredge up supplies while avoiding the dangers of nighttime. You’ll then use your bounty to buy upgrades to your boat and curry favor with the locals who have plenty of secrets and assistance to offer.

The Lighthouse:
The day/night cycle in Dredge is crucial. Beyond simply a time to catch different fish, the entire tone of the game shifts. Visibility drastically decreases, the dangers of the sea come out, and you might even spot the flicker of a ghost ship out of the corner of your eye. Thankfully the faraway light from the everpresent lighthouse is always there to guide you back to shelter.

Fishing:
The fishing and dredging mechanics are quick and engaging, but most importantly they cost in-game time. Because time is such a precious commodity, any mess-up can feel costly, moving you ever closer to the time of day when you don't want to be out on the water.

Fear and Fast Travel:
Dredge often provokes legitimate feelings of fear and dread when you accidentally get caught far from home as night sets in. The panic meter can get out of hand fast, but the inclusion of some power-ups, like a modified fast travel, are a bit too powerful and mitigate the dangers that the game works so hard to create.

Dave the Diver has a superb initial game loop of fishing and restaurant management. The deeper you get into the story though, the more meandering that loop gets, until it often feels like a different game entirely, and not always for the better.

By day you scuba for fish with your trusty harpoon gun, and by night you manage a sushi restaurant serving the fish you’ve caught. As you explore deeper into the sea you’ll be able to serve fancier meals, upgrade your equipment and solve the mystery of the great blue hole.

Dave the Diver thrives on the balance of its initial premise – five to ten minutes of diving for fish, then five to ten minutes of performing the dinner service. It’s a great loop filled with moment-to-moment fun, fresh mechanics, and upgrades to strive for. It all makes the game incredibly hard to put down.

A big component of the gameplay involves micro games (some more dexterous than others) that are performed when catching a fish or pouring a drink. As someone that hates button mashing (okay, I suck at it), some of these games were more fun than others. For accessibility sake, there really should be an option to turn some of these off entirely.

Dave The Diver began to wear on me in the mid to late game where there are long stretches that remove you from the gameplay loop in favor of drawn out story moments, fetch quests, and linear puzzle sections. Not only does this de-emphasize the restaurant management, but also the fishing that is so crucial to your sushi enterprise. The whole loop falls out of balance.

There’s a lot of charm packed in this game, with beautiful pixelated cut-scenes, quirky characters, and a plethora of one-off mechanics or diversions that can sometimes border on annoying when you simply want to get back to serving sushi.

This game will throw a lot at you. You'll grind wasabi, fight crazy bosses, farm vegetables. It feels like the onboarding phase of the game never really ends and I wish the some of these mechanics never existed to allow other mechanics more room to breath.

And some absolutely shocking gameplay moments (boat chases, boss fights, underwater welding, wasabi grinding. This game goes all out in terms of mechanics and gameplay variety.