October has been an absolutely crazy month for gaming, and a ton of new releases have been vying for my attention. This one though gave me cause to dust off my Playstation 5 (which had been sitting there neglected while I paid more attention to my Steam Deck), and swing back into the world of Marvel and into the webby shoes of my favourite Marvel character of all time
"Spider-Man 2" follows up the excellent "Spider-Man: Miles Morales" and the previous 2018 (what? That long ago?) Spider-Man outings, building on Insomniac's expertise in wringing the very best out of Sony's hardware.
The new game doesn't just follow Peter Parker's exploits, but now offers up both Peter and Miles Morales as playable characters with both their own narratives and plenty of intertwining storylines as New York becomes a hunting ground for a new foe, the gigantic gruff (and probably reeking of BO) figure of Kraven the Hunter (nicely framing things for Sony's upcoming flick featuring the Lion-Coat wearing trophy hunter).
For Miles, there's also the chance to get revenge on the character who killed his father, Mr Negative, and the usual MJ "Oh my career! What about my career!" type nonsense that the games (and in my opinion, the comics) could do without. But we're in it for the game, right? So let's dig in.
Firstly it's readily apparent that even in "Sexy looking but lower framerate" mode, Spider-Man 2 is a technical masterpiece, looking absolutely stunning, shiny and high-res even on my meagre 1080p telly. Switching between 30fps and 60fps modes notably smooths things out without much loss in the way of graphical fidelity, so it's clear that Insomniac has put a lot of work into making sure this looks tons better than the previous outings and even the Spider-Man remaster.
More or less as soon as you take control of the game your muscle memory kicks in if you've played the previous titles, with one notable difference. This time rather than slamming off every building in the vain hope of getting a bit more vertical elevation, a quick flick of the triangle button sees Spideys (whether Peter or Miles) sprout tiny little cute webby wings to soar above the landscape and make the best of the various air currents and thermals that flow around New York.
One of the best things about previous games was the combat, and here it's fine-tuned to the nth degree as all those fluid transitions between punching and kicking and webbing your foes are super-smooth. Normally I hate combat sections in games, but in Spider-Man 2 I would actively seek out any opportunity to duff up a bunch of bad guys just to experience the thrill of rapidly swapping between both Peter and Miles' special moves, making light work of arms dealing gangs or Kraven's sweaty cohorts.
While I was playing, my wife would pop her head around the door and say "You should hear what your gamepad sounds like" and she was right, sometimes the action is so frenetic it's like listening to someone angrily typing out an argument on the internet, you're literally all fingers and thumbs as you move between deploying gadgets, webbing up armed foes, using your venom or electric powers and just punching the heck out of people. If you're a bit of a slouch on the buttons you might find things a struggle later on in the game as the one marked difference between this and previous titles is that it's a lot harder to 'stealth' a scene or a level, and I do miss that because the new game gives you all the tools to do that - but not that many opportunities. Shame.
As much as Insomniac has polished the heck out of Spider-Man 2 there were some quite spectacular bugs. One mission I failed early on where i had to rescue a teacher from an old tin shed went horribly wrong and I died just before I could go in and nab her for a rescue. The game, hilariously, had sealed up the roof I'd busted through earlier with a bunch of panels and planks, leaving the poor teacher screaming her head off in a building - and leaving me with no way of completing the mission other than rolling back to a previous save. Another mission prompted me to hit a particular button combo to show off a new move - but wouldn't move the game on and wouldn't respond to those button pushes - again I had to roll back to the last good checkpoint. There's a manual save option in the game and I ended up relying on it a lot because of stuff like this. Not game breaking, but very annoying.
There are also lots of hilarious glitches. While swinging through the streets I'd often see Miles or Peter swinging along merrily upside down or facing the wrong way and looking totally goofy. You get weirdness in fights too when enemies end up embedded in walls or just hovering in mid air, like they're waiting for gravity to kick in, but these are minor concerns and definitely won't stop you seeing the whole game right through to the (ugh) end-credit scenes (of which there are two).
Enemies abound in the game, and not only do you get to fight them - you get to play as them too, and in one memorable sequence you'll take control of my least favourite character in the Marvel universe, Venom. Though I dislike the character, and thought the movies sucked, he's actually great fun to play as you marmalise your way through the city causing absolute mayhem and making short work of any simple fools who decide to try and get in your way.
Boss fights in the game are generally dealt with well but at times there are too many of them, and the old "Yeah you defeated the boss, now do it three more times" gets old real quick.
You do even get to indulge in a bit of spousal battery as you take on MJ, transformed by Venom into the aptly named "Scream". It'd be great if this meant you didn't also have to take on those thoroughly irritating stealth sections while playing as MJ herself, but at least this time she gets through most levels by just blasting the crap out of enemies with her Nintendo Duck Hunt light gun.
Overall the best thing to say about Spider-Man 2 is that it's definitely a game that feels "Properly PS5-ey" in that the gorgeous ray-tracing and graphical finesse you'll see really does feel like Insomniac are doing good things. With all the new enhancements and the fun to be had once you've completed the main story, there's a lot of game for your buck here - but I feel like stretching things to a fourth game (if you count this as the third, and Spider-Miles as game 2) might be spreading too little butter over too much bread, and as much fun as I had with this I must admit that I played through on the "Just gimme the story" setting just so I could see the whole thing.
So what of Spider-Man 3 or Miles Morales 2? We'll see, but rest assured, as long as Sony has the rights to your friendly neighbourhood web-slinger, and as long as Insomniac keep bringing the money in, there will definitely be more.
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