Board 8 > Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

Moogle, I'm wondering if you finished The Flame sidequests, since that may answer one of your questions.

As for the post credits scene, Silk is a character I have always really wanted to like but she's never really managed to land. I've attempted to read everyone of of her surprisingly numerous runs of comics and sadly never got through any of them to the end. It's certainly a wierd reveal, Silk is a cult favorite but she's not super popular. If they were trying to get people hyped up they would have done a Gwen reveal here? She's one of the most popular Marvel character right now for sure, but I can't remeber if Gwen was already established somewhere in Insomniac Spiderverse.

One last thing that's a positive.

People complaining even more this time that it isn't realistic that the Avengers didn't show up for the dire situation in the end. No, that's the most comic accurate thing in the game, The Avengers fucking suck. They were probably all trying to beat the Hulk's ass in Kansas or something.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I was feeling it big time with Ragnarok

I still haven't finished my first play through of Ragnarok something about the game I just haven't enjoyed as much as the previous game

I haven't played either GoW game, but I watched a fair number of cutscenes.

The biggest difference I noted was that Ragnarok had far more 'modern' sounding dialogue, which I wasn't a fan of. Kind of like what happened to Game of Thrones as it progressed.

Ragnarok was very MCU at times, right down to Odin being comic relief

Which I'm fine with for the most part but it did seem to be a bit of a shift for the series

UshiromiyaEva posted...

As for the post credits scene, Silk is a character I have always really wanted to like but she's never really managed to land. I've attempted to read everyone of of her surprisingly numerous runs of comics and sadly never got through any of them to the end. It's certainly a wierd reveal, Silk is a cult favorite but she's not super popular. If they were trying to get people hyped up they would have done a Gwen reveal here? She's one of the most popular Marvel character right now for sure, but I can't remeber if Gwen was already established somewhere in Insomniac Spiderverse.

Yeah I had to look up who Cindy is lol

I wouldnt call GoWR Odin comic relief

Fair, that's probably a bit excessive, but I think you know what I'm getting at. Idk what you'd call him. He spent a fair bit of his screentime being anything but serious. We all knew it was a front and whatever but he was much more comedic than Baldur from the previous game. In almost every scene he was in, he was the one providing whatever humour there was with his unexpected line deliveries and actual jokes (e.g. "are you sure he's yours?"). Thor, Kratos, Freya, Atreus, even Mimir were all very serious in their scenes with him (as you'd expect)

So yeah "comic relief" is maybe not an accurate description but if we're talking about the MCU, Hela is a decent comparison. She had a ton of lines/moments where she was the one bringing the humour in the scene.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

One last thing that's a positive.

I joked a few times whilst playing about the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Dr Strange not showing up, despite all being confirmed to be active in the universe at that time, but Im so glad they didnt. Frankly Id be fine if Insomniac just stuck to individual hero stories in a shared universe and never do a crossover game. Well, maybe one, just to close things out might be fine.

I am a small cube

Finally beat the first game, now to try to beat Miles Morales. So far I like the first game a bit more though. Hope to get to this eventually.

I guess it got patched and I didn't see any glitches tonight... except for pedestrians wading out of a flooded subway exit like so many undead pirates.

but does it make you feel like Spider-Man?

Extremely over-stressed from trying to balance civilian life and defending the city?

Platinum complete.

Disappointed in the lack of things to do, for such a large map I expected more things and/or requirements. Story fell a little flat for me, Kraven never truly felt like a badguy this game, and I get that he obviously wasn't the man antagonist, but his start and finish felt rushed and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I also have no idea who Cindy is so mehh.

game play not great, lots of glitching unintuitive web swinging controls and often times during fights action commands would have a delay .

Final score 7/10

This Adidasgate shit is so hilarious.

I finally 100% beat Spider-Man 2. Overall, I'm more satisfied from a gameplay standpoint. I feel the combat takes a bit of time to really get to the level of combat in the first game with the gadgets. But once you get enough upgrades with them, it feels really good to play. Travel is great. Bosses are great.

But my god I hate these Mary Jane segments. I just don't get why they keep shoehorning them in it. I preferred it more when it was full on stealth though. Rambo MJ attacking and defeating legions of Hunter soldiers with complete ease while I have to beat the hell out of them with the Spider-Men was just a bit jarring to me.

And I hate to weigh in on the Miles Morales is Spider-Man debate, but I think it's fine that he is when there's not another Spider-Man there. It's awkward having them both call each other Spider-Man, and a bit silly when everyone in universe is just calling Miles "Younger Spider-Man". What's even the point then? Just give him one of the other names they've used for him, and let him be Spider-Man when he's the only one.

I'm not really terribly satisfied plot-wise though. Some stuff is awesome. Kraven is awesome. Peter's stuff is really solid. Loved the Venom stuff. They did a good job taking a ton of modern Venom stuff too. Miles had nothing going on and I'm stunned they didn't have anything substantial to give him for this game. The Martin Li stuff worked, but the rest is... Ehhhhh.

But spoilers.

I have no idea what they're doing with Kraven here. They build him up as some turbo badass, have him kill villains off screen. He's the primary antagonist for much of the game. We're trying to stop Kraven and his Hunters from taking over the city and killing all the supers... and then they just feed him to Venom to make him look even more badass.

Kraven stood out on his own without needing to kill a bunch of villains off screen. What purpose does this serve, exactly? At least show it to us. Just shoddy work there. And then why are we using Kraven just to make Venom look more badass? They did a fine job of it as is. Why not keep Kraven and the Hunters around for a while longer?

Have him at odds with Spider-Man, where Kraven wants his god damn fight with him and is using his Hunters to make his way to Venom. So they have two things to worry about. Then you can have him do his fight after incapacitating the Spider-Men for a while. Have Peter at odds with whether or not to stop Venom and Kraven from killing each other and stopping the Symbiote takeover.

I know they did a similar thing in the first game, where Mr. Negative was the primary antagonist, and then they throw Doc Ock and the Sinister Six in it much later. But the plots at least intertwined. Devil's Breath was a huge part of both stories. Spidey definitively stopped Mr. Negative's plot before a much bigger one appeared with Doc Ock. But in this game the Kraven story just ends abruptly and then immediately launches into the Venom story, and Kraven and his Hunters are complete nonfactors at all and we're just in this giant symbiote takeover. Just feels sloppy. Why make me do all of these Kraven and Hunter side quests if they're all just totally pointless by the time Venom starts taking over everything?

I also didn't love the complete symbiote takeover either. It felt rather sudden and Venom's power was frankly completely outrageous. And I'm sad Venom had personality for literally one moment in this game.

Also a severe lack of villains to fight here. What is it? Kraven, Sandman, Venom, Mr. Negative? With a fun bonus Chameleon deal? Perfect opportunity to give us redux fights with the villains we faced in the last game by trying to stop them but having them get captured by Kraven in the end.

Overall, I'm satisfied. But narratively, it feels like a very solid step down from the first game. I really wish the story was better than it was, even despite having some awesome moments in it. Hoping the DLC is better than the first game's though.

I started it on Friday and I'm 42% through so far

I'm really liking how much better the combat flows with how abilities are laid out on the controller

I think this got elevated above the first during the absolutely gnarly hour-long or so sequence where you fight Li, fight Kraven as Symbiote Pete, PETER VS MILES (I was looking forward to it since the first game and it delivered), then PLAY AS VENOM (insanely fun) and then BITE KRAVEN'S HEAD OFF OF HIS BODY

Felt like an amazing escalation

Oh, one other thing about Kraven.

I think it sucks that he gets to die in his great hunt to Venom. Kraven tore the city apart like an asshole, murdering a bunch of villains and Innocents, and then he wins and gets what he wants in the end. That fucking sucks.

Spider-Man should've stopped him from being killed by Venom somehow. Then he has to live with the fact that his glorious death at the hands of the biggest prey will never happen.

Hell, I'd have him fighting for the opportunity to face Venom during the symbiote takeover, only for Peter and Miles to have stopped him from doing so. Then when they wipe out the symbiote threat, Kraven comes out of nowhere for a final fight to the death. Then you have Peter or Miles just beat him and refuse to kill him despite him pleading for it. Because that's the thing that hurts Kraven more than anything else, and his zealot Hunters see him as a fraud after that too.

As cool as it is to see Venom bite off Kraven's head, it kind of sucks that the Spider-Men spend the whole game trying to fight and stop Kraven and they aren't even there for his final moments. And it also sucks that Kraven does all of this terrible, awful stuff and then he gets exactly what he wants in the end, making the struggle against him kind of pointless. There's a lot to love about Kraven in this game, but I think they just missed the mark when it came to his overall story arc.

Norman Osborne's change in attitude at the end makes no sense given everything leading to it and the only reason people don't complain about it is because he's supposed to become Green Goblin no matter what.

Quite frankly, it almost could have worked if Otto called him out on it. "The Spider-men hurt your son? Really? I'm sure there's nothing else to that story, you hypocritical moron." Instead, he's just as stupid. "Even Norman Osborne should know loss." Losing his wife has led to most of his evil crap. Otto should know that better than anyone! Fuck it's so stupid the more I think about it.

Yeah, I do think a bit of the Norman stuff was disjointed for sure. It doesn't bother me as much because he's a career asshole. I don't think his attitude really changed as much at the end.

Him blaming Spider-Man is him being an asshole, taking out all of his issues on everyone else but himself. Because Norman feels he did every single thing he could to get his son back, succeeded, and wasn't ready to blame the highly experimental goo monster he made on himself. It's easier to blame Spider-Man. And now he has to do something so much more dangerous in his desperation, the G-Serum, which he clearly didn't want to use before on his son.

What I find more strange is the weird jealousy angle they went with out of nowhere, where Norman is complimenting Peter and Harry is just infuriated by it. He doesn't have the symbiote manipulating him or anything, so it just seems really weird. Like Norman was moving heaven and earth to cure Harry, so obviously he cares a lot about him. It's just weird they have that one scene of Harry having a meltdown over it and then it's never addressed. It may be a throwaway line about it during one of the boss battles?

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

What I find more strange is the weird jealousy angle they went with out of nowhere, where Norman is complimenting Peter and Harry is just infuriated by it.

Oh I think I can explain that:

They really liked that part of the first Raimi movie and wanted to do their own version.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Because Norman feels he did every single thing he could to get his son back, succeeded, and wasn't ready to blame the highly experimental goo monster he made on himself.

My problem is he very specifically does blame himself! Repeatedly to Harry/Venom in particular! He's basically at the end of his rope and feels like a failure and begs for Spider-Man's help. It's very classically un-Norman like but then they remembered right at the end that he needs to be the Green Goblin next game but we're out of time so fuck it undo all that.