Spider-Man 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man. The game takes the mechanics from the first game and further refines and improves them. The game also has graphical improvements and an acute attention to detail. Let’s start with the combat in the game.
The Good
The combat has slightly changed from the previous game, as the gadget system has changed from the radial wheel activation, to four on screen prompts. The new gadget system has less diversity, but does streamline the combat. In addition to the gadget change, there are two big changes, parries and abilities. The parry is straight forward, there is now a parry button, and there are some attacks you can only parry, as well as some abilities you can only dodge.
Stealth has had some major improvements. There are more takedown options for stealth, and webstrike takedown has more uses. The hunters have animatronic birds that fly around patrolling the area, and if you webstrike one while they’re on a perch it will actually be silent and web it to the perch so enemies won’t find it. Wall and ceiling takedowns were introduced in Miles Morales, but are still very nice in certain areas to snag quick takedowns. The biggest new tool is the web-line, which lets you create up to six lines that let you create your own vantage points. The lines let you perform takedowns even better than the other options. Aside from the fact that the lines can be placed almost anywhere, a certain skill lets you take out two enemies at once.
Abilities, another feature that was added in Miles Morales gets a major revamp. Each character has two ability sets. For Peter it’s the Spider-Arms and the Symbiote/Anti-Venom abilities. Whereas for Miles it’s the standard and evolved venom abilities. Miles also has the power to go invisible, and can even get an upgrade that makes it to where the first attack from invisibility does bonus damage. Then each character has an ultimate ability which can quickly change the direction of any fight. For Peter it’s the Symbiote surge, which causes his Symbiote to cover his body, swapping all of his abilities to Symbiote/Anti-Venom and giving him greatly increased damage in addition to new animations for his attacks. For Miles he has the Mega Venom Blast which discharges a large amount of venom, which will one shot most regular enemies.
The new ability system makes each Spider-Man feel unique from one another. In addition they designed unique animations for them so that they feel even more different from each other.
Another huge mechanic that they added are the web wings. The web wings let you glide around at high speeds. There are even wind tunnels scattered around the map which boost your speed to absurd levels. The two movement systems greatly complement each other letting players fly through the playable area at ludicrous speeds. And if you don’t feel like doing that the game lets you fast travel to almost anywhere on the map. The only restriction is that it has to be on a street, because if it’s not while you hold the prompt it will move you to the nearest street.
The two characters have a large range of outfits that let each person customize the Spider-Men to look unique. This is further aided by the fact that most suits have three alternate colors for players to choose from. There are even outfits which change the animations style/speed of the characters, and in the case of Peter certain outfits change your webs color and your Spider-Arms design. There is even an outfit which completely changes the look of the web-glider. The game does so much well, which is what makes their many, many mistakes even worse.
The Bad
This game sees the return of players’ least favorite mechanic from the first game, the non-Spider-Men missions. In the first game these levels were incredibly boring and time consuming. In this game at least they are a little quicker paced, but they are still just as boring as the previous game. At the very least the sections are a bit faster than they were before. Then at the end of the game they change the stealth sections of the game to a bare bones third person shooter. The story idea behind these sections is cool, but they’re so poorly done it’s laughable. They’re supposed to be tense and force the player to play safely, but the easiest way to do it is just to run around and takedown any enemy who might notice you. This is even worse when the game gives you an attached web shooter, which means you can just web up the enemy before even approaching them.
The game also missed a couple of details, like they make the web arms change based on the outfits, but don’t change the Symbiote abilities to match the outfits. It looks very awkward wearing any Symbiote suit that isn’t the Anti-Venom suit. The Mysteriums, this game’s equivalent of the Taskmaster challenges, can only be done by Miles. This is disappointing because it’s quite fun to try and get the gold medal with the sheer amount of chaos that occurs during the challenge.
I would not recommend anyone pick up this game at full price. There is just simply not enough content in the game to justify its 70 dollar price tag. The reason I say this is that I managed to 100% the game, in only 15 hours of playtime. That is far too little gameplay to spend that much money on the game. When the game eventually goes on sale I’d recommend it, but unless the triple A dev team is going to add in some post release content, I sincerely can not recommend this game to anyone at its standard price.
Spider-Man 2 had a lot of potential, and the game was very fun. However the glaring lack of content really marks it hard to praise the game to anyone. The game was very enjoyable when I started it, but the fact that it ends so quickly really makes me hope that they’re going to make some of the DLC(downloadable content) free instead of just gouging players even more than they already have. For rating I’m going to say Spider-Arm Barrage out of Anti-Venom Yank.
