By: Kemar Noel
Swinging into the last few months of the year, Insomniac has done it again and has released yet another amazing triple-A game. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has been a much-anticipated game since the previous releases of Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s SpiderMan: Miles Morales.
The previous games have done extremely well in not just visual design but both the gameplay and the story aspect as well. There have been a lot of Spider-Man games released, but nobody has been able to capture the essence of Spider-Man like Insomniac in their recent projects.
Insomniac has been in the game for a long time and is known more for their Ratchet & Clank and Spyro games, but in recent years they have reclaimed their name through Spider-Man and are working on an upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine game. If this company continues making top-quality games, they may end up being a staple for top-of-the-line Superhero games.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 only adds to prior claims of greatness because of how much the series has improved since the last game. In this game, Insomniac managed to capture the superhero experience without taking away from compelling storytelling.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 follows the lives of both Miles and Peter and the struggles that come with wearing the mask. Both of our Spider-Men are the protagonists of this game with the story shifting focus between Miles and Peter. Miles at first is unable to forgive his father’s killer and has to come to terms with what being Spider-Man means. Miles must put aside the anger and rage for people who have robbed him in order to continue on with his life and save people.
Peter is seen struggling with navigating through adulthood as Spiderman and is faced with an abundance of problems that come with leading a double life. Peter has it easier than he does in most comic iterations since some of his close family are already aware of him being Spider-Man, but the neighborhood web-head can never remain too happy in any medium.
In this game, Peter is faced with dealing with his sick childhood friend, Harry Osborn, and dealing with the Venom symbiote. The symbiote is a parasitic species that gives Peter an amplification in power but slowly takes over the host’s body as it makes them gradually angrier and more aggressive.
In this game we are able to see the changes of Peter not just through the eyes of Peter but through the eyes of Miles. Miles, being a protege and friend of Peter, is watching his friend slowly get taken over by the symbiote. As Peter gets more angry and Venom takes more control over him we start to hear dialogue changes throughout the game in how Peter usually interacts with people. Peter is colder and more distant to not just his enemies, but friends and family too. Peter even after having to fight miles while under the control of the symbiote still lost his best friend Harry to the thing that could have saved him.
The voice acting from all the characters is Amazing in how they are able to express emotion and sorrow through their respective characters.
Horror Icon “Tony Todd” is the Voice Actor for Venom, and he does a spectacular job. Every time the audience is greeted with Venom; he is able to send chills down the spine of the viewer not knowing what he will do next. Each and every character in this game has some depth or improvement. The Mary Jane missions’ players had problems with before and made amazing strides in improving player enjoyment throughout these side quests.
There are some gripes people have with the game regarding the overall difficulty compared to the first game. Single-player games are now expected to be very difficult and challenging like “Elden Ring” or Souls Games. This game while not as challenging definitely makes up for it with an amazing story, audio and visual design, and more. Not many games are able to make you feel like you are a part of the story but this one nails every aspect of its genre.
Insomniac really took their time to add very minuscule details to make this game even better than fans already predicted it to be upon release.
I have never been more confident in giving this game and solid 10.