Breaking the record for the fastest selling Playstation Studios games in 24 hours, comes Insomniacs Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. “Are you sure this isn’t something you can handle yourself?”
In September of 2018, Insomniac released their first iteration of their Marvel’s Spider-Man series of games, and it was a massive success. Only two years later in November of 2020, they released Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales. In October 2023, Insomniac released the highly anticipated third game in the series, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
This game was honestly fun to play, but a common grievance is the glitchiness and the length of the game. The first act of the game was a great start and introduced many good characters and story elements.
The second act was the longest portion of the game and saw many great fight scenes and characters. Despite all of this, there were only a few sidequests to do by this point.
The third act was the shortest and saw little to no addition to side missions or pastimes. The ending it gave was a lot sweeter yet somewhat sour than the previous two games. Watching the transition from a friendly neighborhood Spiderman to not-so-friendly and kind Spider-Man was a blast, and watching the plot develop was more fun than ever.
The Story from Act One to Act Three.
Act One: 9/10, it was a great opening and introduction to the two versions of Spider-Man, and seeing how they already had problems to deal with in their personal lives made it easier to connect with them.
Act Two: 8/10, despite seeing the symbiote suit in the game and how useful it was, it hurt to see the insults that Peter Parker was throwing out at his enemies. Minus the few insults that made multiple people crack a laugh.
Act Three: 6/10, the story in this act was good, however so many things were never explained. It ended so quickly after it started that it felt dry and not really fleshed out like people expected it to be.
The entire story: 7.6/10, from beginning to end the game was great. But when looking at it in thirds you realize that they went from trying as best as they can to make the story great, to trying to get it done in time for release.
Mechanics of the game.
Swinging: 9/10, was even better than the first two games, and made the game and playing as Spiderman feel a lot more unique, and made the experience that much better.
Fighting: 8/10, the system was practically the same as the previous two games but with the addition of parrying and more quicktime events mid-fights allowed for the fighting to seem difficult in a good way. The boss fights were also amazing; I cannot say too much about the bosses themselves due to them being heavy spoilers, but they were very interactive and unique from one another.
Abilities: 8/10, seeing the evolution of each ability through the game and having the ability to choose which abilities you wanted to use in a fight allowed for greater customization towards playstyle.
Customization: 7/10, The suits were decent, the addition of some suits having interchangeable suit styles and colors, but a large amount of the suits were not good. There were plenty of good ones to choose from but a large number of players only bought the suits for the completion trophy and used a single suit the rest of the time, and some suits had awful color style.
Sidequests: 7/10, they were all very good and fun to play, as well as adding to the story, but there were not many side quests or missions to do.
Overall Mechanics:7.8/10, the mechanics of this game were very good, it definitely could use a lot of changes but there is some hope with the release of the new game + mode coming in December of 2023.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, gets a total score of 7.75/10. It was a very good game, and despite its shortcomings in a few places, overall it was exactly what players expected from the game. So good job Insomniac. Be Greater. Together.
