“There are certain missions where I was just jaw dropped.” – Nick Ryan
The Spider-Men swing back into action in the video game Spider-Man 2, paving the way for the future of superhero games. Created by Insomniac Games, the highly successful game was expertly crafted by Bryan Intihar and Ryan Smith. Released on October 20, it sold more than 2.5 million digital and physical copies within 24 hours. The game follows Peter Parker, voiced by the returning Yuri Lowenthal, and Miles Morales, voiced by Nadji Jeter. The two Spider-Men strive to protect the city from two villains, Kraven the Hunter and Venom.
This game was a highly anticipated follow up to Spider-Man (PS4) and Spider-Man Miles Morales, which were both nominated for Game of the Year.. The first-ever trailer of the game was released two years ago and gave the world its first look at Venom and hints towards Kraven. The character Venom is one of the most well known Spider-Man villains and is a sentient alien symbiote that bonds to a host to survive, giving a whole new story of Venom bonding with Peter’s best friend, Harry Osborn. Kraven the Hunter’s main goal in this game is to move to the city of New York to complete the “big hunt” of many characters involved with Spider-Man. This game introduces a never before seen story, new side missions, and unique suits from comics and movies. Overall, the game was very successful with fans giving the game a 9.3 out of 10. IGN gave the game a rating of 8 out of 10 while giving the other two games much higher ratings.
Spider-Man 2 is a game changer for superhero related games. Switching between Miles and Peter gives players a variety of missions to complete and a more in-depth story. The main story of the game does a phenomenal job at making the player feel connected to Spider-Man, showing the difficulty of living two different lives of an ordinary person and Spider-Man. What makes this game so special is how both Spider-Men go through a roller coaster of emotions. As seen in the trailers, Peter bonds with the Venom symbiote, becoming a Spider-Man who starts to lose control of himself and begins to forget about the people who care for him.
Miles too starts to lose control due to the villain Mister Negative, or Martin Li, who was one of the main villains in the first game who killed Miles’s father. In the current game, Mister Negative has escaped and is nowhere to be found. This takes over Miles, and he starts to become fixated on only finding Mister Negative, which almost makes him forget his duties as Spider-Man. As with almost every story oriented game, there are side missions to complete giving the player a variety of different stories to experience. With Spider-Man 2, the side missions didn’t have anything too special about them and were just OK. This was the only disappointing part about the game; though some side missions were entertaining, most fell far from expectations. Overall Spider-Man 2 had one of the greatest main stories in video game history but still landed short in side missions.
With Spider-Man 2 being a follow up to the first two original games the developers took what was good and took out what was bad about the previous games. Though many features returned from the previous games, new special attacks, suit advancements, and new skill trees brought the game to a whole other level. The new special attacks for both Spider-Men were more advanced and visually amazing. With Peter
, you get to have symbiote special attacks where the player can use the symbiote to execute various attacks. Suit advancements like the Iron Spider arms also elevated the game, allowing for more special attacks. The suit advancement that everyone was looking forward to though was the web wings, which allow players to soar and glide through the city. With the addition of the web wings, web tunnels were also added, which allows for the player to glide through the city at high speeds. A skill tree is a set of abilities or advancements in the game that you can unlock as you progress in the game. The skill tree in the game was upgraded compared to the last games; it affected all aspects like combat, health, traversal, focus, and web swinging. As the player levels up and continues through the story, they can unlock all-new abilities that were not in the original games.
A total of 71 suits can be unlocked by completing side missions and the main story. Suits range from suits from movies like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man played by Tobey McGuire, Andrew Garfield’s suits from The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, all of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man suits, and even suits from the Into and Across the Spider-Verse movies. Many of the suits were also somewhat customizable with the ability to change the color and look to fit the players’ likeness. Though many well known and loved suits were added, the game’s new suits were very disappointing and did not fit with what the fans were hoping for. Most of the suits were basic and had little to no design. Miles’s suits were the most disappointing coming from the most stylish character.
Senior Nick Ryan said, “I loved it. I have to say, I liked the story of the first game more, but I still really liked this game a lot.” Ryan played the game the second it came out and said he completed the main story in less than 24 hours. “There are certain missions where I was just jaw dropped. I was just like, what is happening? This is awesome,” he said. Ryan still had some critiques to give. “The web wings are really cool. The only thing I don’t like about the web wings is the web tunnels. I feel like I’m just flying. I’m like Ironman at this point. It should be more like a gliding mechanic but it’s still really cool,” he said. While reaching the end of the game, Miles got a new suit that is questionable, some like it and some do not. “The Miles suits were so bad …I won’t spoil anything but he’s like Miles’s original. And I was like, bro put that back in your closet.” Ryan gives the game an overall score of 6/5 expressing that his love for the characters and story outweighs all that he disliked. With that being said I give the game 4.5/ 5 stars because the story and characters were amazing but the side missions and suits make the game short of perfect.
