Sticking Power: ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ First Impressions

 

There are only a few games in the past five years or so that have completely captured my imagination and my free time – I’m sure plenty of folks riding out the final days of their 30s can relate. But of that handful of titles, three stand out above all others: Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and, most recently, Spider-Man 2 on PlayStation 5 (officially named  Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, but I think you’ll know what game I’m talking about even if I skip that formality moving forward).

Developer Insomniac Games has cracked the code as far as what makes Spider-Man compelling not only as a fictional character – that efficacy has been proven across just about every medium known to man except maybe Broadway – but as a playable character in a video game. Never before has it been so fun to aimlessly explore a virtual environment as it has been with these three games. And Spider-Man 2 is easily the best one yet.

The game looks beautiful, and whether I’m swinging between buildings as Peter Parker or Miles Morales or soaring above them with the use of the game’s brand-new Web Wings mechanics, I’m in love with the exploration, and many of my waking hours not spent playing the game have involved thinking about it … and that’s just the traversal!

Without getting into spoiler territory (you’ll get their soon enough if you scroll your TikTok FYP long enough), Spider-Man 2 weaves together the various threads from the original game, its DLC and Miles’ spectacular spinoff title to craft a massive narrative that pulls from a half-decade of Spidey lore to create something fresh. If you think you know Venom’s story already, you don’t. And because we’ve all gotten so comfortable with a Spider-Man multiverse many times over in recent years, it’s not at all jarring when Insomniac decides to make a massive departure from the source material. It’s refreshing! New is good! Stop complaining! 

Equally refreshing is the combat, which retains the frenetic, controlled chaos of previous entries while giving both Miles and Peter new, distinct abilities. Miles gets a strange upgrade to his Venom Blast abilities, while Peter … well, let’s just say his movements get more fluid this time around.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about Spider-Man 2 is how excited I am to TAKE. IT. SLOW. With many recent games that I actually quite enjoyed – including Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, God of War: Ragnarok, and Final Fantasy XVI – I’ve been compelled to move through the main story as fast as possible to absorb it and move on because of that “adulting” (ugh) thing I alluded to earlier. But I’m enjoying just being in Spider-Man 2’s world that I’m in no rush to get to the ending. Much like the titular Wall-Crawlers, I think I’ll stick around in Spider-Man 2 for a while.

On ‘Ahsoka,’ ‘Loki’ and Franchise Fatigue

 

Season 3 of The Mandalorian was OK.

Yes, it pains me to write that. The Mandalorian – universally beloved and merchandised thanks to the genius inclusion of a cooing Yoda-like baby now named Din Grogu – had gone from the absolute beacon of hope for the Star Wars franchise to “pretty good” in the eyes of many viewers, including myself. Now, maybe that’s because Andor had sufficiently and surprisingly raised the bar in terms of what a Star Wars TV show could be. Maybe it’s because we’ve been so sufficiently spoiled by new Star Wars stories that it takes much more to excite us. Qui-Gon Jinn himself, Liam Neeson, told Conan O’Brien earlier this year, “There’s so many spinoffs of Star Wars. It’s diluting it to me, and it’s taken away the mystery and the magic in a weird way.”

That makes a lot of sense, right? If we’re constantly fed – and Star Wars fans are fed these days – we’re not all that likely to salivate over the next meal. This is probably why Ahsoka, which debuted in August, was a bit hard for me to get into for the first few episodes. I liked it just fine, but I was shocked by how nitpicky and blasé I was about the whole thing. I felt like I could predict exactly where the story was going and how the season would wrap up.

And then Anakin freaking Skywalker showed up and s*** got REAL.

From the return of The Chosen One to some emotional Rebels reunions to Grand Admiral Thrawn just Thrawning it up every time he was onscreen, Ahsoka became one of my favorite Star Wars things ever. And given where the season wound up (Sabine Wren and Ahsoka Tano stranded on a strange world alongside new enemies, a rogue Jedi unraveling mysteries of the Force, and Thrawn about to unleash HELL on the New Republic), I genuinely have no idea what’s in store next for that galaxy far, far away … and that’s damned exciting.

We’ve been at a point in many fictional cinematic universes – including Marvel, Star Wars, and DC – in which it feels like we’ve been treading water for a while now. Ever since The Rise of Skywalker and Avengers: Endgame, fans have been waiting for the next big event to propel their respective overarching stories forward (and that event unfortunately wasn’t Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania). In DC’s case, we’re just burning through already-completed movies until James Gunn’s reboot happens. This is one of the reasons why phrases like “superhero fatigue” and “franchise fatigue” have been thrown around so much lately. Heck, even Andor – for all its many high points – is essentially just filling in the gaps between other films and shows.  

Ahsoka, meanwhile, just shook up the entire Star Wars galaxy and left us on the edge of our seats. Loki, now in its second season, is about to similarly make sense of all this Marvel Multiverse stuff we’ve been living in for the past few years. They’re breaking the formula and giving us new stories, new perspectives, and new questions to ask. Hell, I’d say given Star Wars and Marvel Studios’ recent output, they’re as good as they’ve ever been. So perhaps it’s not fatigue for fans … it’s impatience.

Fortunately, it seems, the wait is over.