In 2018, with the release of Marvel’s spider-man, few years after the best superhero series in the video game industry (batman: arkham) released, Insomniac gave new life to superhero games, although the batman: arkham series is still at the top of the chart. but the passion and excitement of the past returned to this genre.
The wonderful design of New York and the very suitable map design for traversal with Spiderman’s web and powers, the unique design of the traversal mechanics with very high speed and variety made this game to be at the top of the table in terms of the traversal mechanics in open world games, and it continues to be Even today, it has the best traversal mechanics among open world games, the combat is very smooth and, of course, in some parts inspired by the Batman: Arkham series, it was very satisfying and immersed the player in excitement, speed and variety, the story of the game was also an original story that created a new story for Peter Parker that was not in the comics and movies.
Now it’s been 5 years since the release of the Marvel’s Spider-Man and its sequel, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, has been released, expectations for insomniac games have risen and they should deliver a next-gen game to the players, improve the already top notch traversal mechanics, darker story, smoother combat, more diversity in abilities and skills, better boss fights and most importantly better side quests.
Spider-Man and its DLCs and Spider-Man: Miles Morales created a very deep introduction for SM2 with two Spider-Mans and added a lot of depth and layers to the story that is quite evident.
STORY
Before the release, Insomniac promised a darker story, and the presence of Venom and Kraven in the story promised a much darker, more exciting, more emotional and deeper story than before.
Insomniac has done his initial characterizations for Peter Parker, Miles Morales and their family/friends in SM and SM:MM very well, and has made the pain they have endured along the way completely understandable to the players, the initial and The important layer of the characterizations have been done and now it’s time to dig more into their lives and see a much deeper characterization of these characters.
This time, the personal life of the characters in the game is much more involved in their superhero life than before, and this has caused much more emotions behind all the words, fights and friendships, and plunges the player into the depth of the story.
From the sense of revenge that exists in the depth of the player’s feelings due to the previous games to forgiveness, from friendship to enmity, from enmity to friendship, weakness, strength, the story succeeds in conveying the emotions of the characters to the player.
As the story progresses, it gets darker and the surrounding world changes accordingly, showing off a wonderful atmosphere.
Surprises never end, and the further you go, the more you are surprised, and every time you say to yourself, it is not possible to be more surprised than this, but the story proves the opposite to you again and again.
The story is very detailed and memorable, and most of the parts of the story will remain in your head and will not be erased from your mind, even the parts that are not very important, and this level of memorable story cannot be found in so many games.
The same can be said about the attractiveness of the story, the player is always thirsty to continue and see the remaining.
The end of the story may be a bit disappointing compared to the initial ninety-nine percent of the story, and it may feel like some events were forced at the end for an unknown reason.
Except for the ending, another problem that can be added to is the short length of story. After finishing the story, my time play was thirteen hours, and if we assume that PS5 did not track play time accurate, it will still be fifteen hours at best.
And I didn’t skip any cutscenes, and I think 18 hours could have been a more appropriate length.
CHARACTER DESIGN
The characterization in the game is very deep, and the previous two games can be seen as a prelude to this, the formation of Peter and Miles’ friendship, the restoration of Mary Jane and Peter’s relationship, references to Harry and … in this game, these relationships are much more.
They are involved in the main story and are one of the main foundations of the story, Peter and Miles face their past during the story and try to deal with it, Peter with the death of aunt may and Miles with the death of his father.
The friendship between Miles and Peter is one of the most important parts of the story and the importance of Peter for Miles is quite visible, the efforts of Peter’s friends to help him when he is drawned in to the power of the symbiote would not have been possible without the previous introduction and deepening it.
It could have hurt the story a lot but happily the characterization is well done and kept the story strong.
GAMEPLAY
Spider-Man 2, after the initial cutscene, at the very beginning stage, shows off the powers of the PS5 and the achievements of the studio with the PS5, much faster speed in swing and running on buildings to the amazing web wing, which alone adds a new level to the gameplay.
After completing the first stage, you will gradually discover more abilities that you can unlock during the game.
First, let’s talk about the traversal mechanics, while we thought that Insomniac showed us the most perfect traversal mechanics in MSM and they are only going to improve the speed of the previous traversal mechanics with the help of SSD, Insomniac does magic once again.
In addition to the higher speed of the navigation system, tons of new things have been added to it that will amaze the player, the most important thing that has been added to the traversal is the web wing, which acts like wings and when you use them, you can fly around the city at a very high speed, the higher you are and use it, the longer you fly, and after a while, when its speed decreases, you can fly by webbing and re-opening the web wings or entering the wind tunnels and Keep flying again.
If you enter the air tunnel with web wings, you will fly at a much higher speed than normal and you will be amazed more than before.
The traversal mechanics are not only these basic abilities that are introduced at first, but you can unlock several new ways for smoother and faster traversal by upgrading your abilities.
The traversal in this game is definitely the best among open world games to date. In terms of the traversal, spider man 2 is definitely a next gen game and there is no way to deny this.
The combat is in its smoothest state and this time webs play a much bigger role, new gadgets have made more variety, but removing the weapon wheel doesn’t seem very logical and it has made the variety less than SM and SM:MM while in fight, but a completely new section has been added to the game (abilities) have been added to the game, which by holding L1 and pressing one of the X, square, triangle or circle button, performs one of the abilities that you have already placed and It can compensate for the lack of weapon wheel in terms of variety, but its absence is still strongly felt.
As in the previous games, each type of enemy must be defeated in a different way, and it is the same in SM2, with the difference that there is more variety, and of course, some can be defeated with several different moves.
you are always encouraged to use variable moves and make your gameplay more fun.
One of the best upgrades from the previous games is the addition of parry, previously you could only dodge the enemy’s blow, but parry mechanic has given a new life to battles and boss fights.
Boss fights now have a health bar and it has given them more excitement, the variety in how to fight boss fights is much more, in SM and SM:MM, a weak point for boss fights was usually shown and you only had to use that to defeat the boss, but now, in addition to various weaknesses, you can also defeat them with regular strikes.
Some of the finishers are old and from previous games, and some are new and have a good variety, but the old ones are a bit repetitive.
The skills and skill tree have become much wider, and by advancing the skill tree, the gameplay becomes more and more enjoyable.
LEVEL DESIGN
The level design of the game is wonderful, the player is given a lot of freedom to complete the stages with stealth or normal, and there are always different stages of enemies waiting for the players to entertain them, and each stage needs a diffrent strategy.
Missions are well laid out and the player never feels like they are chasing a pointless goal and just going from one point to another.
Each mission is different from the next mission and they never feel repeated.
The impact of events in the story of the game completely affects the missions and enemies and fully changes them.
The design of the interiors is always unique and at the same time suitable for stealth and mostly has a suitable space for normal fights.
The game’s map, like the previous versions, is perfect for spider-mans to swing, fly and move freely, which has greatly helped the traversal of the game and is quite evident.
SIDE-QUESTS
Side-quests and collectibles have become much better and entertaining.
Some side-quests have a great story and will surprise you, and some are very ordinary.
This time, unlike the previous games, after getting the last collectible from each series of collectibles, you will be given a very exciting final mission, which will give you a goal to collect collectibles rather than just for trophy.
DUALSENSE
The dualsense features are well used and the trigger effects works when swinging, and the haptic feedback becomes strong and weak according to the speed, while flying with the web wing, the haptic feedback changes as the speed increases and decreases.
VISUALS
The visuals in Spider-Man 2 were one of the most exciting changes for me from the very beginning of the introduction, after seeing Insomniac’s abilities in R&C: rift apart and the power of the ps5, it was completely predictable, and it was expected that we would see a next gen visual experience, and Insomniac games announced before the launch that they are using all of the ps5’s power.
Will Insomniac succeed in giving us the next-gen visuals we’ve all been waiting for since the beginning of this Gen? The short answer is yes.
Ray tracing is enabled on both fidelity and performance modes and it cannot be disabled, and this decision was completely right, the lack of reflections in buildings and water, especially now that the player’s movement over the water to the other side of the map is possible.
It could have been a huge hit to the visuals, swinging and flying past all that glassy buildings and not seeing the reflections is really unbearable.
Ray tracing takes the visuals to a whole new level, in one of the missions it shows so much use of ray tracing that it amazes you and you are stunned by the scene.
Half of the map is in the previous two games and the other half is new, the map that was in the previous versions has been completely renovated and has completely different textures and is very detailed, the new part of the map also has many such textures.
All the buildings now have an interior that you can look at and see that people are moving or doing something in it, and the interior is full of details.
Spider-Man 2 currently has the best visuals among open world games and Insomniac has managed to give us the next generation game that we have been waiting for.
CONCLUSION
Spider-Man 2 is what we want from a sequel, a much better story building on the foundations that the previous versions built, improving the gameplay in every possible way while the previous games are already among the best in terms of gameplay, using all the PS5’s powers and turning the game into a completely next-gen game, next-gen visuals, extraordinary and non-repetitive level design, deep characterization at the disposal of the story, use of dualsense’s features, much more entertaining boss fights, Much better cutscenes and Much better animations.
