Spider-Man 2 is Caught in the Web of its Own Ambition | Game Review and Plot Critique

Spider-Man 2 is a game caught in the web of its own ambition it's an action game first and foremost but it's also a character oriented game that uses its open world to explore the characters and setting beyond the context of Spider-Man it wants to show you Peter the scientist and Miles the aspiring music producer but in creating this varied complex structure the game often loses sight of what it does best and invests too much in its weaker aspects to be clear that's not to say it's all bad for instance the combat has transcended its inspiration to become one of the most idiosyncratic iterations of the free flow formula with as much focus on crowd control and positioning as it has on punching bad guys the traversal is maybe the best I've ever experienced with additions like the web Wings playing to the game strengths of style and feel over depth on the other hand some parts of the game fell completely flat for me as promising as the characters premises were for instance their arcs didn't follow through in a way that made me emotionally invested the map's Edition is sizable with plenty of side missions but that content frequently favored underdeveloped mechanics over the robust systems already in place I don't fault the game for its intentions I actually really appreciate what it's going for here with its strong focus on the characters and how that manifests in both the main story and the open world however intention doesn't equal execution and even though I see and admire what Spider-Man 2 is going for I think it overestimates the strength of all its features becoming Tangled in its effort to be so much at once for the sake of accessibility I want to include a brief spoiler-free overview of my thoughts on the story of Spider-Man 2 before heading into more in-depth spoiler territory if you don't want spoilers I'll make it very clear when that section is about to start and you can skip ahead to the next one which I've labeled in the description with this preface out of the way here are my spoiler-free thoughts on the plot of Spider-Man 2 as enthrallingly flashy as Spider-Man 2 can be I think the success of its character oriented plot hinges on whether or not it has deep interesting characters that make the player want to spend time with them seeing them grow as they overcome or even succumb to obstacles characters like these Elevate everything from the momentto moment gameplay to the enormous set Pieces by investing the player emotionally on that smaller personal level thereby making the Larger than Life stuff more than just spectacle unfortunately despite the game's ambitious plot I didn't find a single character that did that for me in Spider-Man 2 fundamentally it's your classic Spider-Man story with both Peter and Miles struggling to find balance between their commitment to the Spider-Man role and their personal lives beyond that though it's more broadly about young people trying to find their place in the world a tale that's simultaneously Timeless and quintessentially contemporary in its specifics it's a story about relying on others with the Spider-Man trusting each other and those close to them to save the day it's also a story about miscommunication with so many of the conflicts and at least one major villain arising as a result of the character's failure or inability to commit to that trust as thematically layered as the plot became though it never never went as deep as I wanted it to it didn't challenge the protagonist enough most notably via the villains who at best were only superficially related to the themes of the game and at worst seemed arbitrarily chosen from Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery the resolutions in character arcs seemed to me shallow and unearned I'll admit that on this first playthrough I was genuinely swept up in the spectacle of the game it reaches some climactic set pieces starting strong with the Sandman boss fight in the beginning but it's in the interim the story between those points that I struggle to find anything interesting and as the game went on it became increasingly clear to me that the plot doesn't have the substance to support those more bombastic moments for me that meant that they were entertaining in a vacuum because of course it's exciting to chase lizard across the city and to Dawn the Symbiote however without strong characters to serve as pillars for the plot giving it the support it needs for the themes to be explored further those flashier moments didn't linger in my mind for very long like I said they were cool to experience the first time around but by themselves they're not going to make me want to replay the game anytime soon having established my thoughts broadly it's time to move on to the specifics and that means getting into spoilers if you'd rather avoid those go ahead and skip to the next chapter otherwise keep on watching although I think all of the characters have compelling premises Spider-Man 2 has disappointingly little interest in examining them far beneath the surface I'll start with a good Peter is looking to drop his role of Spider-Man in order to contribute good to the world in other ways making his Dynamic with Miles much more interesting since he's Peter's future successor rather than just MN meanwhile miles is trying to live up to not just Spider-Man's Legacy but his deceased father's as well aspirations that are in constant tension with miles's lingering hatred for Martin Lee MJ's journey to be in control of her life as well as to be a Fountain Head for the truth puts her in the compromised position of working for J Jonah Jameson the exemplification of everything she stands against as a journalist all for the sake of gaining a platform Harry has recently recovered from his mysterious illness simultaneously eager to make up for lost time with the Emily May found foundation and reminiscent of simpler times almost reenacting the past by spending an evening with Peter and MJ at the fair as if they were all younger and still in high school these are all solid starting points that had me anticipating complex characters but a character needs much more than a good premise to be well written and unfortunately I don't think the game followed through I'll start with Harry like I said there's a disconnect between the themes the game hints at through its characters and the profundity with which it actually explores them here's a good example near the beginning of the game Harry invites Peter on a bike ride casually giving him a bike that looks identical to one that Peter used to own we know Harry is super rich and the resources he'd need to find some old bike Peter used to own in a city as big as New York would need to be enormous but Harry isn't one for Grandeur as we can see when he downplays the situation even if he is telling the truth and it really is just a similar bike he went through all the trouble of making it look exactly like Peter's old one so here we see Harry's contradictory nature which I mean in a good way contradictions make for more interesting characters he seems to almost want to forget his privilege but but he'll take advantage of it when he deems it worthwhile for purely sentimental reasons as with the bike or to enact positive change onto the world with the Emily May Foundation his character is an opportunity for the game to explore some complex topical ideas about privilege and life and death what people with power owe to others what it means to inherit power that was won unethically what the next step is for someone who nearly died but was miraculously saved and the game has answers to those questions but I didn't find them compelling Spider-Man 2 seems content with addressing these topics on a super superficial level for instance Harry gives back to the world with a foundation he operates it for the most part independently of his father and upon recovering from his illness his priorities are to reconnect with his old friends and hunker down to do some work at the EMF but the game doesn't bother exploring these topics to a more meaningful extent look this might seem nitpicky you might think it's silly that I apparently want Spider-Man 2 of all things to be some sort of philosophical statement the point I'm trying to make is that the game asks and answers these questions and when these questions and answers make up so much of the characters I want them to be compelling so that the characters are compelling I want them to reach Beyond surface level conclusions and I don't think they do unfortunately I think that was the case consistently across all characters I want to focus on Peter next but as a protagonist it's impossible to do so outside of his relationship to the other characters there's a lot on Peter's play at the start of the game he's Spider-Man which means he's also miles's Mentor he wants to be an emotionally available and supportive boyfriend to MJ and to top it all off he just got a teaching job at miles's high school of course mere minutes of playtime later he loses that job after seemingly abandoning his students during sandman's Rampage through the city though we know he and Miles were actually saving the day soon after the game flashes back to Aunt May teaching a younger Peter about the process of having balance in life and the point couldn't be clear something's got to give and even though that something is probably Spider-Man circumstances prevent that from happening just yet Craven has just arrived in the city stirring up conflict wherever he goes in the meantime other areas of Peter's Life begin to take that hit starting with Miles who Peter basically ignores in favor of Harry and the Emily May foundation and here's where I think Peter's web of choices and consequences begins to lose its coherence almost immediately after Peter's fired Harry appears with the offer of what's essentially Peter's dream job getting fired wasn't so much a consequence as a convenient plot device to put Peter in the position of needing a job thereafter all of Peter shortcomings all the ways that he fails to focus his attention where it needs to be seem to have no meaningful conse quences for instance miles under goes his entire character Arc all without Peter's help involving letting go of his Grudge towards Martin Lee and gaining confidence in himself even though Peter literally attacked MJ while he wore the Symbiote there's no real impact on their relationship the whole situation feels way too neat it feels cheap to bypass the moral complexities of the symbiot influence by just having MJ become scream for a bit so that she understands and then there's Harry in a game that's all about balance and more specifically about the limited attention available for Peter to give out it seems strange to me that Venom originates not from Peter's independent failure to be a good friend but from the Symbio influencing him to be a bad friend there's so much more to unpack here since I find Harry's resentment entirely unconvincing but for now my point is that I think the game deals with Peter's balance and attention clumsily with consequences for his failures ranging from non-existent to Half Baked to contrived when it's actually the Symbio that deserves them I think symbiot Peter is also a good example of how Spider-Man 2 brushes over its more compelling themes to start the game is a bit opaque regarding what effect the Symbiote specifically has on its host so I can only go by the clues the game provides I know the obvious stuff it makes the host arrogant hot-headed and aggressive it makes them turn on those who may be a threat to the symbiotic relationship even if they're close friends like miles and Harry or Partners like MJ it initially supports the host's goals only to exploit them as a symbiot hold strengthens ultimately replacing the host's desires with its own we also know that the Symbiote distorts its wearers reality like when Peter attributes his recovery to Craven's bad aim which is completely untrue or when Harry thinks he's healing the world but is actually furthering the Symbiotes agenda but in a game that seems on the surface interested in Morality accountability and consequence I think it matters where Peter's Behavior actually comes from while he wears the Symbio the closest we get to an explicit answer I think is when Martin Lee and Miles go into Peter's mind in an effort to expunge the Symbiotes remnants they see Peter's worst thoughts and says that Peter doesn't actually believe those things to which Martin Lee replies but it might be how he feels it's a noteworthy disconnect he might have feelings deep inside that he knows are wrong but we know enough about his character to know that they don't Define him not only does he not act on them but like my said he doesn't believe them at all so when Peter wears the Symbio and begins to believe and act on those feelings we know it's not really him and his character Arc grinds to a halt if this version of the Symbio brings out traits that don't reflect the character character how can we consider him the same character Peter's principles beliefs priorities Etc can't be challenged because he's not really Peter while he hosts a Symbio he's under a spell waiting for someone to snap him out of it miles finally does it by appealing to the true Peter the one independent of the suit which again points to the distinction and once he's free everything is back to normal he's his old self again apologetic of course but nothing about him is really changed because it couldn't have he hasn't overcome a desire for the Symbiote because he never had it the suit came to him not the other way around he hasn't learned to abandon arrogance in favor of trusting others because he only behaved that way while under the Symbiote influence the game fails to meaningfully explore the morality of the whole situation because the narrative mechanics of the symbiot neatly absolve him of everything he did well almost everything there's one big exception Harry Osborne Harry does blame Peter for his actions thinking him selfish for keeping the Symbiote when Harry needed it for his recovery the conflict seems contrived to me though because the game doesn't do enough to believably develop Harry's resentment from the beginning when he's introduced I kept thinking this is too good to be true Harry is too good too perfect too boring he's the best friend Peter and MJ lost he offers Peter the dream job he needs now more than ever he's committed to Healing the world as he says time after time and it was too good to be true but importantly not because of Harry Harry doesn't seem to expect the Symbiotes influence or even its power the only ones who might have are Norman and Dr Connors but there are secondary characters on The Very outskirts of the plot the most their actions tying to the plot thematically is to point to how much a father would do to save a son but that idea is barely mentioned let alone explored Harry's reappearance is too good to be true but we can't attribute that to his character so if Harry is so perfect why does he become venom that is my main problem with his character we can only really guess there's no convincing transition between the good hary we initially meet and the version susceptible to the Symbio later on we see him become increasingly frustrated as he physically deteriorates without the Symbio of course maybe he's afraid of death maybe he doesn't want to lose for the second time the chance to make an impact on the world maybe his insecurities make him desperate to prove himself and having that taken away makes him hate Peter I can only really speculate because even though some of this is hinted at none of it convinces me that it would make Harry so angry and antagonistic towards Peter even before he's reunited with the Symbiote for that to be the case I needed those qualities to be more a part of his character prior to losing the Symbio the first time as it stands I only saw perfect Harry an unconvincing transitionary period Then Venom just as with Peter the Symbio obscures Harry's character so much that I think it's useless to consider Harry and Venom to be the same character in other words becoming Venom halts rather than progresses Harry's Arc The Only Exception being when he speaks past the Symbio during the final battles it makes Venom as a villain almost Anonymous the game tries to make us think it's personal with Peter and Harry fighting on the grounds of their high school campus and Peter appealing to Harry independent to Venom but with Harry so far gone it's not really him responding it's venom for me Harry's Arc was the most contrived in the game failing him as both a secondary character and an antagonist despite miles's Arc perhaps being the most cohesive and focused of the bunch it's still not enough to make for an interesting story in my eyes like I said the premise is solid enough The Grudge he holds towards Lee threatens his Integrity not only as Spider-Man but as miles the human beneath the mask that his friends and family love his Dynamic with Lee is personal and specific which is more than I can say about any of the other antagonists in the game that said it all gets resolved much too easily for Lee that means feeling remorse for his past actions and deciding to make amends by helping miles and Peter for Miles his fight against Lee prompts a revelation that restores miles's faith in himself giving him the strength to let go of his anger for the greater good but I for one never really felt that miles's anger threatened his character the stake seemed false and without a more thorough exploration of his inner turmoil the whole thing ends up feeling like a generic forgiveness Arc I know miles Technically says he doesn't forgive Lee but in the context of the plot it feels like a trivial distinction the suspense of a forgiveness Arc hinges largely for me on the question of what happens if the character doesn't forgive miles's character isn't nearly fleshed out enough here to bring that kind of nuance making it whole plotline fall flat for me MJ's Arc is the most brief of the main characters so I don't have too much to say about it since most of it happens while she scream it has the same inherent issues that I have with Peter's and Harry's arcs in other words although scream voices a lot of frustrations regarding Peter and MJ's career they don't feel true to MJ's character because most of it comes out of nowhere that is to say from the Symbio outside of that MJ is a supportive girlfriend who tries to steer Peter in the right direction since a lot of that happens while he hosts the Symbio though the interaction doesn't feel like it's really born from their relationship thereby failing to bring out anything interesting from either of their characters when both MJ and Peter are without the Symbio there's little to no character development on either end making for an uninteresting plot line overall broadly speaking Spider-Man 2 has a villain problem right now though I want to talk about the other big bad Craven in a word I think Craven is arbitrary his motivations that is finding a worthy opponent to end his life before his cancer does have nothing appreciable to do with anything else in the plot his quest is self-indulgent entirely independent of the story's other plot lines themes and characters if I really stretched I could say that he's a foil to Harry they're each dealing with their own chronic illness in different ways Harry by trying to do good in the world Craven by going on a selfish Endeavor but as with the rest of its interesting premises Spider-Man 2 doesn't pursue this Dynamic to a meaningful degree Craven doesn't challenge the Integrity of the heroes either the closest he comes to that is when symbiot Peter almost kills him but at this point I've made it clear that it wouldn't really have been Peter doing it the strongest thematic relevance I can attribute to him is his tendency to disrupt balance be that with the heroes or by provoking imprisoned or reformed villains into fights but that seems like a really weak link to me any big strong guy from the Spider-Man Rogues Gallery could fit that role even separate from the themes Craven wasn't a compelling villain to me at all he doesn't have the presence I expected as his Representatives his Hunters are laughably incompetent losing every fight to the Spider-Man a fact Craven seems bafflingly oblivious to or uninterested in I'm not saying these low-level enemies should be able to beat the Spider-Man I'm saying Craven should react more believably he's disinterested in them because they don't kill but wouldn't it have made him more intimidating and thematically relevant if he put them in a position where it was in their best interest to kill him he's also indecisive when Sandman escapes his Hunters by being taken into custody at the beginning of the game for example Craven says that Sandman was was not the one I had trouble following that logic because wouldn't the worthy prey he's after be the most difficult to capture others like Mr negative Tombstone lizard and black cat also managed to escape him as it stands his Macho Persona was iroll inducing because he had so little to back it up sure we saw him kill scorpion but more often than not he was incapable of even holding on to those he hunted never mind actually killing them his only real purpose seems to be to serve as a catalyst for the Venom Arc for me Craven fails as a villain on every level neither intimidating in scene nor interesting to dissect in retrospect again I can't deny the ambition of Spider-Man 2's plot there are so many moving Parts themes multiple main characters and multiple villains each with their own desires and motivations and the set pieces are genuinely cool but way too often those moving Parts don't seem carefully engineered so much as aimlessly flying around the pieces regularly miss each other entirely as with Craven's thematic relevance to the protagonists and when they do meet like with miles's and Martin Lee's Arc the game seems content with generic superficial commentary with so much of the plot tied intrinsically to the characters the whole thing comes apart in my eyes when the characters initially so intriguing end up being flimsy I remember back in 2018 when the first Spider-Man game came out on the PS4 that its combat didn't really click with me I didn't hate it by any means it was fun enough in the moment it was just sort of unmemorable which was a bit of a surprise to me given how much of a fan I've always been of the Arkham games the progenitors of free flow style combat playing Spider-Man 2 it's so much easier to articulate why this sequel builds so naturally so intuitively on the combat models of the previous games that they now seem like prototypes to me by comparison it takes the pillars that made the previous combat distinct namely verticality crowd control and positioning and builds on them making the player's choices more significant by increasing the potential for strategy that's not to say the combat is super deep or anything I think the Spider-Man games have always been just as much about style as their actual mechanics but for the first time that latter half feels substantial to me making for an experience that I not only prefer over its predecessors but earns its place as a worthwhile iteration of free flow combat luto narrative dissonance the clash between a game story and its mechanics is a given with a game like this of course course Spider-Man should realistically be able to take most enemies out with one punch not to State the obvious however but Power alone has never made for compelling gameplay the joy of Spider-Man 2's combat isn't in the protagonist strength but rather in how well all of their other attributes are Incorporated in their fighting styles I think of it as crowd control via Mobility this is what I mean taken as one unit enemy encounters can be overwhelming with several opponents on the ground surrounding you flying enemies swooping in from the air and gunshots coming in from offscreen again not to State the obvious but these conflicts aren't meant to be confronted as a single unit they're meant to be broken down and that is what I think is so special about the combat and Spider-Man 2 there are so many ways to do that all building from the foundation of the previous centuries take air combat for instance which allows you to focus on one Enemy by separating them from the rest in the first game it was restrictive from the air there wasn't much interaction with enemies on the ground some of the abilities you had on the ground weren't available in the air at all and the there weren't many options to prolong your Air Time by comparison air combat is much more flexible here first there are more ways to interact with ground enemies like by bouncing an Airborne enemy off of them or these web Yanks which are carried over from the ground move set and let you pull individual enemies wherever you want even off rooftops bouncing off of enemies has the added benefit of keeping you in the air as does the web swing combo it all feels more fleshed out here it keeps the point of the air combat which is basically to divide and conqu ER but doesn't make it feel like a compromise with more crossover between the ground and air move sets Peter and miles each have their own distinct rechargeable abilities that let them stun enemies to give you some Breathing Room abilities that elevate several enemies at once and abilities that propel them across the fight in case you want to get out of a hectic area or move to a particular enemy it's all about positioning having control over exactly where you and your enemies are that's what makes the sequels combat so special in my eyes it's far outgrown the versions becoming as much about influencing the placement of enemies as it is about punching them ultimately though Spider-Man 2 doesn't want you to think of it as a strategy game so although it rewards you for using abilities with intention it doesn't punish you for choosing moves randomly it doesn't disrupt the flow of gameplay by pushing you to be super deliberate in a game like this one I enjoyed that the gameplay feels really great maintaining the superhero fantasy despite presenting the player with challenging scenarios part of that feeling came from the momentum I would build build up in combat momentum that would be ruined if each move held too much importance so even though the game isn't particularly easy neither would I say that there's a wrong way to play I think that's also a result of how cohesive the move set is for example let's say you're feeling overwhelmed by several ground enemies you have a lot of options you can use an ability to reach another part of the battlefield almost instantly use a gadget to stun nearby enemies or start air combat to focus on one opponent at a time you get a similar result that is control of the fight but in very different ways showing how intuitive and userfriendly the move set is as a whole the introduction of the Parry mechanic is the only exception where there is only one right answer which felt a bit out of place for me given the way the rest of combat is structured I'll admit that I never really got the hang of it but the damage you take when you fail the Parry Isn't So devastating that it ruined my experience it just felt like an odd addition still combat remains very accessible while having a decently High skill ceiling for players that take advantage of all the options as solid as the move set is no combat system is complete without some good enemies to push back targeting the player characters vulnerabilities and countering their strengths although there isn't a huge variety I think they were each well-designed enough that the game made up for it with the combination of enemies at P front especially given the short run time of the game which for me was about 30 hours to reach 100% sure you have your basic enemy types that run up to punch you or shoot at you from a distance but you also have more bespoke enemies for instance Craven's robotic dogs would disable my reach treible abilities until I'd take them out some enemies knew to evade my web strikes or had to escape from Air Combat and some would shoot a net to temporarily incapacitate me giving their allies time to rush me while I'd struggle to free myself there are only a few enemy factions and only several enemy types within each of those but again there's a nice cohesion to how their abilities interact with yours which made them entirely adequate for my playthrough as good as the combat is in Spider-Man 2 the boss battles felt a bit safe to me that's not to say they're bad the Perry for instance felt much more at home to me in these fights since I had the time to learn and adapt to the boss's move sets boss encounters felt more traditional in that regard low-level enemies were usually absent so the positioning and crowd control that I associate with the game's combat were out the window replaced instead with a one-on-one Cadence of dodges stuns and beatdowns and there was one fight in particular that played with not knowing where the boss was and where they'd strike from next as well as an environmental distraction that made sense narratively and made the fight more exciting but for the most part the bosses didn't push me to play in ways that surprised me and relied a bit too much on spectacle like with the lizard Chase across the city or the Sandman fight at the beginning of the game like I said before those scenes were exciting in the moment but I needed the gamepl to match for them to be truly memorable without that they didn't feel as inventive as the regular combat just as with Spider-Man 2's melee combat I'm uninterested in whether or not the game stealth missions are realistic I don't really care if they lack a strong inworld explanation what I do care about is justification in the game play and unfortunately just as with the previous games I think Spider-Man 2 fails in that respect it's not just stealth either there are several instances when the game deviates from its usual gameplay to its own detriment I think there's an inherent problem with briefly presenting entirely new modes of gameplay partway into a game since the player isn't going to spend much time with them flushing them out risks overwhelming the player while keeping the new mechanic simple might make them boring at multiple points the game insists on moving away from its strengths that is combat in traversal to instead focus on Half Baked mechanics there is no example more egregious to me than the game stealth missions which came up way too often for how milk toast I thought they were I imagine they're there for pacing because their mechanics did not justify their frequency to me I'll run you through the typical stealth Loop first I'd scan the area to check if my target was visible to other enemies if they weren't I'd take them out with a single press of a button either by pulling them to me or leaping at them if they were visible to other enemies I'd shoot webs at nearby objects in the environment to lure the others away finally I'd take out my target zip back up to cover then repeat the process most enemy types don't seem designed to complicate the stealth formula so there's no interesting dynamic between their abilities and those of the player character it's missing the back and forth that makes melee so compelling on top of that the environments present only the illusion of complexity with their multiple floors and wide open asymmetrical layouts that upon closer inspection did little to challenge my tactics the multiple floors could have prevented me from depending on elevation to stay hidden but anytime a drone would start to notice me for instance eliminating them was just a button click away then it was back to the rafters the open layouts could have limited the number of Vantage points but Spider-Man 2 introduces the web line allowing the player to create a vantage point almost anywhere they want if stealth was more Dynamic if the enemies had more abilities unique to this approach if the environments pushed back more then I think it would be a more engaging system that stands on its own admittedly you can choose to bypass stealth in favor of melee in these encounters but to me that just shows how little confidence the game has in its stealth framework as it stands stealth and Spider-Man 2 didn't receive even close to the same treatment that its melee system did idling instead as the lesser of the game's two main modes of combat I think the MJ sequences are a bit different because they do have a strong narrative premise that I actually like as a part of Team Spider-Man MJ is ready to contribute however she can even if that means fighting back guys it also makes sense for the game's broader themes about trusting and working together with others the player doesn't just see but performs those contributions once again though my issue is on the gameplay front in temporarily switching genres there isn't time for the mechanics to develop to an interesting extent the MJ missions consist of a combination of stealth and cover shooting narratively my problem is that the weight of her efforts is reduced when the opposition is so laughably dumb and easy to outmaneuver this Stealth gameplay Loop looks like this throw a rock to lure an enemy and sneak up on them to take them out silently not only is the core of it as basic as it gets but the game kneecaps its efforts to build on it with enemies that are way too forgiving with their detection meaning that groups of them are as easy to manipulate as individuals later in the game MJ missions adopt the cover shooter genre but the same issues of overly simplistic mechanics remain without engaging gameplay to back up the plot these levels didn't work for me narratively either I found a few more instances of underdeveloped deviations from the usual gameplay some side missions involve logic puzzles that only superficially correspond to the narrative like miles scanning the environment and pulling some doors open at specific angles to get into prowler's hideouts or Peter doing science which in practice is just adding and removing little colored icons from an array I know the point is to show the protagonists outside of being Spider-Man as well as to provide some slower moments for pacing but it just didn't work for me they felt like distractions from the game strengths and unfortunately it was a pattern with several mini games and genre transitions that didn't earn their place in my eyes even more than melee combat traversal and Spider-Man 2 has a big focus on feel rather than mechanical depth sure it helped that I was conscious of things like my momentum and the building's idiosyncrasies to maintain a high speed but just like combat as long as you have a decent grasp of video game controls there isn't really a wrong answer this is also the one exception where I think the mechanics actually benefit from not being complain in a superhero fantasy like this I don't think traversal should be a chore the game doesn't need to push back on your abilities the fundamentals from the previous games make a return swinging diving web zipping but there are welcome additions that reinvigorate it Corner swinging turning a dive into a 360° Loop and most importantly gliding gliding feels great the animations convey the wind's resistance prompting me to make micro adjustments to maintain course without feeling like I'm fighting it starting a Glide involves just clicking the triangle button but as straightforward as it is it didn't let me ignore those other mechanics rather I had to use all the available abilities to keep my momentum up alternating between swinging zipping and gliding to move as fast as possible I welcomed the addition of gliding making what is arguably one of the best traversal systems ever even better exploring the open world there was no shortage of side content but I found it to be really inconsistent in quality the best moments were when the game leaned into its strengths that is combat in traval even mixing things up a bit by adding special challenges in the mysterium for example those are Mysterio themed combat encounters where you might have to beat the enemies before the timer runs out or try not to take any damage nothing revolutionary but it worked to keep things fresh well enough on the other hand there's a lot of tedious busy work for instance I'd collect these little mysterious spider bots around the city in exchange for a bit of commentary from the player character or take pictures of specific locations to send to Robbie Robertson who comments on them that tidbit of World building would sometimes feel worthwhile but I didn't think it was most of the time I also wish the spiderbots were more of a traversal challenge I remember one was floating up high in the air and I had to use an updraft and wind tunnel to get to it otherwise they were just on the sides of buildings with the challenge just being finding them which is much less interesting to me I got the satisfaction of checking them off the list as well as being rewarded currency for upgrades but they weren't actually fun in and of themselves some of the narrative oriented side missions take a break from all the action to show the protagonists being downto Earth friendly neighborhood Spider-Man that involved things like miles helping capture footage for his high school's campus tour video or Peter helping an old lady figure out what's been making a mess of her backyard unfortunately like the MJ missions I appreciate the premises more than the execution I thought the side characters who sought help had Bland generic personalities relying on one-dimensional archetypes to give the Spider-Man their task and send them on their way as interested as these missions seem to be in bringing out this more personal side of the protagonists I didn't think the missions revealed anything surprising about the characters anything that added substantially to how I understand them the one exception is one mission that flashed back to a flustered younger Peter on his way to pitch his work to jjon and Jameson for the first time which I actually thought was pretty fun narratively I wanted to be emotionally invested in these subplots in general since I genuinely liked a lot of these Concepts grounding the Spider-Man bringing them face to face with the people of New York in execution though I found little to care about I'm conflicted trying to come up with a verdict about Spider-Man 2 but I think that's only natural when I see such a wide Gap in quality between its best and its worst did I have fun playing it yes did the plot and side content often overshadow that fun gameplay also yes I don't dislike any of what Spider-Man 2 tries to do in concept this is a mature game in the sincere way that it handles its themes and characters trying to bring out the Nuance of their development and Dynamics I legitimately appreciate that and I think the video game medium with its relatively long run times is a great place to explore in depth both the mundane and the spectacular moments of being a superhero but the writing just wasn't there for me and apart from the core gameplay unengaging mechanics held back whatever promise certain narrative elements initially had of course that means it wasn't all bad the combat and traversal really carried the game for me but I didn't experience those parts in a vacuum it was always in the context of the plot and open world and since those elements seemed so severely lacking to me the overall experience tempered the game's highs like I said in the beginning Spider-Man 2 is ambitious but even after doing so much it lacks that key abstract trait for me memorability I enjoyed parts of it in the moment but without more highlights I'm not going back anytime soon if you enjoyed the video consider leaving a like and if you want more like this subscribe and ring the bell this is my first time doing a plot critique with spoilers so if you watched that part let me know what you thought in the comments as well as whether or not you'd be interested in more content like that thanks for watching

Channel: Abshyp

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Id: cVsjrKnaSaw

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024