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.
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