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Marvel's Spider-man 2 |OT| - The 19" inches of Venom you're Kraven for

Mossybrew

Banned
Of course there are some dumb moments in this game ( anytime you play as mj as we all know ) but so far the dumbest moment of the whole game is where peter has a choice to a) move a loaded tanker truck off train tracks or b) try to stop a freight train at full speed. Huh I wonder what would be easier. I must have missed some quick dialogue detailing some reason he couldnt just pull that tanker out of the way, right? Instead of derailing a train? Tell me I missed something?
 

Mossybrew

Banned
every boss with the tedious multi phases was a really bad call in this game.
Once I got to the Lizard fight I just started turning the difficulty down a notch for each boss fight, then turning it back up to amazing for regular goons. Im over boss battles as a gaming concept entirely and here they are just tedious and frustrating and I just want to get them over with. Thank god for on the fly difficulty adjustment.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Creeped up on an old guy by following his inhaler fumes.

F-odGHWaMAABaJo
 

MAtgS

Member
Jesus Christ, at the endpoint of the story and they yet again shove you into a segment controlling MJ, who at this point is now my most hated character in all of Marvel, with the insufferable deaf chick a close second.
Gee golly, sure can't wait to see the reaction to
Silk
next game. What do you suppose are the chances of that one getting just as much hate despite having the same gameplay as Peter and Miles?
 

Fake

Member
The police thing was clearly a response to all the bullshit about the first game:


Just had the fight with Kraven and the bit after Kraven. The spongey enemies and every boss with the tedious multi phases was a really bad call in this game. I just played from Li up to post Kraven (spoiler but you know), and it just felt like a cliche, waiting for the new 'phase' each time. Also some of the boss arena's are just a jankfest.

Because everything else is so good it brings it down a lot for me. I don’t mind the MJ sections up till now really. It's a bit of a change of a pace. I haven't really done much side content and dunno if I've done something to the map but only hunter base icons are shown.

Is blafing people denying the cop stuff, is so obvious. Just show how people can be low denying stuff.
And the director knows that the majority of players hate the MJ sections, just by his toxic answer about the subject. Was already bad in the first game, I can't understand why wouldn't in the sequel if they don't make adjustment or make things better. Really is a pace killer.
 
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And that's that, thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, definitely in my top 5 of 2023 but still deciding exactly where I'd place it (my top 2 are locked).

AZYD0Vx.jpg


I didn't care for the obnoxious pandering, subpar character models and crap MJ sections but as a whole this is a mighty impressive game that I believe does 3 things in particular better than any game that has come before it:

- traversal
- fast travel
- draw distance

To reign supreme in not one, not two but *three* design/technical elements is something to be applauded, well done Insomniac, now show us Wolverine and give me a Venom game 🙏🏻
 

Pimpbaa

Member
Don’t worry guys, there won’t be any more MJ segments in the next game since Miles is the main Spider-Man now. They will be replaced by longer and more frequent Hailey segments. I can’t wait to run around in near silence while I shake my controller as if it were spray paint.
 

Mossybrew

Banned
Gee golly, sure can't wait to see the reaction to
Silk
next game. What do you suppose are the chances of that one getting just as much hate despite having the same gameplay as Peter and Miles?
I have no idea who the spoilered character is, guessing maybe Miles' mom's date's kid in that after credit scene who it seemed like I was supposed to know what they were teasing?
 

Urban

Member
Finished it and overall its a solid 7,5/10 game for me but i think the First one is still the best so far.

The Good:
Speed of traversal
Graphics
Combat(to a degree)
Boss encounters

The Bad:
some of the cringe Side Quests
some weird glitches
Character models overall. Everbody besides Miles looked bad imo

the ugly:
Why am i playing as a deaf girl?
Why am i playing as MJ again?
Why is MJ such a bitch and writes an bad article about Spider-man when literally her LOVE is the Person she "loves" ?
Overall tone against Pete. To the end i had this feeling that they portrait him as not enough, so everybody help him to finish the job.
Miles healed Peter, has for every question an answer and can even cure his enemy..


It has its flaws and i cant understand some of the design choices but it is what it is...
 
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DeepSpace5D

Member
I just completed the Coney island theme park mission (I know, I’m going through it quite slowly) and damn! Ok that was a really badass section.

I like how it starts off all chill just exploring the rides and parlor games, and then how quickly it escalates up to when you’re trying to save people’s lives on the rollercoaster while simultaneously stopping the Hunters from kidnapping Tombstone. Really great stuff, from the visuals to the camera angles used, felt so cinematic.

I was actually feeling a little underwhelmed up until this point and it wasn’t keeping my interest longer than an hour or two at a time, but now it feels like things are starting to heat up and it’s got me wanting to see what happens next.
 

skit_data

Member
Ok, I've played the intro now.
After seeing Kraven in that jungle setting I can totally see exactly how good a Insomniac Wolverine game has the potential to be. Turn that tone up a few notches, slap on some gore an we're there.

Anyway, gotta continue playing Spider- Man 2!
 

Astray

Member
I'm about 3 Symbiote Nests away from %100ing the game, I have my nitpicks, but the game overall is extremely well-done, and I would argue is Insomniac's Arkham City moment in many ways. Didn't really mind the MJ stuff tbh, I am honestly completely done with the entire woke vs antiwoke thing that's happening in media discussions, I thought the MJ sections were more well-done mechanically than SM1, but YMMV on whether a change of pace is needed there or not.

The boss battles have largely been good and extremely engaging in a way (particularly Kraven and Lizard), with that said, I have problems with the final boss fight, mainly that it went on too long. I would rather have one less boss phase in exchange of a more interactive version of whatever happens between those phases.

One thing I really, really liked was how Insomniac chose to conclude the various side quests in the game, the Mysterio boss fight was a highlight of the game, as were the Flame and Chameleon side quests, I feel the latter two are very clearly set-up for a DLC of some sort, which I will likely play from moment 1.

Right now, this and AW2 are my joint game of the year (still to try Star Ocean 2R and some other games tho).
 

xBlueStonex

Member
Towards the end now, and the story has definitely gotten better, but good god those MJ sections are ridiculously bad. Brings down the whole package a few notches. Seeing her ride around on a motorcyle going toe-to-toe with trained assasins is so laughably bad.
 

tommib

Banned
What a terrible end sequence with atrocious third-person shooting and some of the worst next-gen only graphics I’ve seen:

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And then top it off with another Venom boss-fight in a swamp of annoying minions and mini-arenas:
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Couldn’t wait for the whole thing to end.

I’m done with these open-world button mashers. First half was fine but the quality all around vanishes the closer you are to the end game. Felt very rushed.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I'm enjoying just loading it up for a few hours every night and doing side content. I feel like I must have been playing for over 20 hours and I only just did my first mj section.

I can't get over how wack miles missions have been. I love me some history but it all feels so pandering. I know who Charley Parker is thanks to my grandma and hip hop love but man it feels a bit much.

Game continues to be nice easy going fun. Works a lot at the minute so it's nice to just switch off every night for a few hours.
 
Finally got around to putting time into this and I'm very surprised it got the scores it did.

It definitely a fun game and the combat and traversal is even better this time around but there are so many issues. Unless things improve in the 2nd half I'm thinking like 7/10. Lots of games are fun but flawed and this is in that arena for me.

The story is so slow and presented in such an old fashioned way that I really don't give a shit about it. People were complaining that AW2 was a walking simulator but at least you are constantly progressing in that game and the story in AW2 is really engaging imo but any time SM2 wants to progress the story it just sticks you in a tiny level and has you walk around pressing triangle. The story in Miles' Morales was poor but they have done the boy even dirtier here as his essay shit has to be one of the lowest stakes and least interesting side plots I've ever experienced. They should have stuck to one Spider-Man and written a decent story which is what I guess they'll do next time.

Anything that is high stakes is a seemingly impossible to fail QTE like you can't be trusted to take control.

The side content feels like a joke so far. Most of it seems to have zero point and absolutely zero challenge. People complain about Ubisoft filler content but this is just as bad.

Why don't the Spider-Men just reverse engineer MJs absurd stun gun then they wouldn't have to dodge around pulling their punches as they could just 1 hit ko everything in sight and have plenty of time left to write essays or go to the funfair.

I don't care about woke stuff but it's so heavy handed here that some stuff is pure cringe almost to the point of parody but I assume the writers are being sincere.

The graphics are shit anytime it isn't early evening where they are still shit but at least the hero lighting makes Spider-Man pop so you can fool yourself into thinking it looks ok if you are flying around at speed. Some textures are really high quality but most are PS4 level. Most of the character models are really poor looking. The reflections are really low quality but that's to be expected with consoles. The subpar lighting makes everything look flat and last gen. I can't believe I bought that CG trailer as being real as the post processing was light years ahead of anything in the actual game.

In performance mode the image quality is awful. So much aliasing, so many upscaling artifacts, tons of shimmering on distant objects.

The world feels totally dead. No clip civilians, zero environmental damage that isn't scripted (anything you can destroy like those scaffolds just nope out of existence a few seconds after you trigger them), nothing fun or interesting to find. This was a problem with SM1 but we have so much more power now that we could have had something like Robocop where the environments look chaotic after a big fight like JJJ complains about.

Again it's a good and fun game and I love the combat and traversal as they are easy enough to control to be fun but varied enough that they aren't boring but anyone giving this 10/10 is a lot more forgiving than I am.
 

poodaddy

Member
Man, this game is fun to play and look at (except for Mary Joe). But holy shit, most of the story or side story script is some woke ass shit. I just don’t get how this happened. This is the first game I’ve ever played that feels like it’s pushing its agenda down my throat.
Yeah it's a good time but the agenda is fucking egregious in this one, really obvious and not subtle at all. It's got me worried about Wolvie.
 

Pimpbaa

Member
Yeah it's a good time but the agenda is fucking egregious in this one, really obvious and not subtle at all. It's got me worried about Wolvie.

It’s worse than Horizon Forbidden West in that regard. But they’ll never listen to complaints, I mean they stuck in even worse MJ segments than SM1 in this game despite everyone complaining. It too has got me worried about Wolverine.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
It’s worse than Horizon Forbidden West in that regard. But they’ll never listen to complaints, I mean they stuck in even worse MJ segments than SM1 in this game despite everyone complaining. It too has got me worried about Wolverine.
I think them coming out and saying it’s M rated is at least a good sign. But maybe they’ll force us to watch Wolverine have a gay sex scene while being dominated by a blind lesbian that identifies as a gay man.
 
This game had a pretty bad story but I gotta say the twist was amazing. I’m just gonna spoil it here for you guys, but man when they revealed that the main villain wasn’t even venom but in fact Bryan Intihar I was just floored. I mean it was so obvious the whole time but yet subverted my expectations

How they showed the gamer that he cares more about PS exclusive stereotypical slow walking sections and MJ sections than flexing their game mechanics. When he is constantly at odds with the very talented tech and gameplay teams who are trying to make Spider-Man’s Arkham while he thinks he’s an auteur telling an emotional well written movie story when it’s really barley Saturday morning cartoon level. I mean… phew. If you thought kingpin was the money hungry gangster in New York think again! Spider-Man 2 reveals that Bryan Intihar doesn’t give a flying fuck about narrative or pacing and just wants to shuffle the writers that helmed the solid story of the first game to hire a team of women to push agenda and line his and his companies pocket with sweet sweet blackrock cash!

Just such a good twist I gotta give props to the team. Venom really had nothing on this second rate game designer/clown ass goofball
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
OK. Completed the game got the platinum.

Like others I have some issues, pretty severe issues but also they didn't do enough in anyway to significantly spoil my overall experience.

I would say I took more isssue in the weak side content and Mary Jane's face than the over woke pandering.

My issues.

How they handled miles for the first half of the game. Did you know Miles morales was black? And he has to save black culture?

So, as someone who is big into hip hop, like real underground old school hip hop bur also respect plenty of modern artists if I feel they are good. Both my parents are Jazz musicians and music teachers. My grandma was into big band, be bop all that good stuff so I know who Charlie Parker is and my love and respect is significant for that genre and those artists. It all shaped the hip hop I love.

Saying that, I couldnt believe I'm chasing down drum kits and saxaphones....

Anyway, it is what it is.

So, for me as a big insomniac fan...its their best game in recent years and has an amazing amount of love poured into it and there's only two things that frustrate me enough to dock the score. The once again terrible side content and weak city crimes. I mean, there is literally crimes copied from the first where you just press triangle and then square to stop a stolen car....its pathetic.

The other, MJs face. They had a perfect face model from the first game but decided to make her look like the king from Shrek! Like wtf.

So for me, it was close to a 10/10 spiderman game with amazing curscenes and attention to detail..I loved it. But I'm knocking it to a 9 out of 10 for those two issues.

bring on Wolverine!
 
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SteadyEvo

Member
Deaf chick section aside this has been a pretty good game. Even enjoyed the Mary Jane sections.

Only issues are showing boss battle stages. Knowing that I have to empty a health bar 2-3 sucks. Had this information stayed hidden it would be less of an issue.

And the end of the game boils down to horde mode… Hate when that happens and this isn’t the only game guilty of it.
 

Coconutt

Member
I was super looking forward to this game, finished it over the weekend and gotta say this game is just weaker than the first Spider Man game, you could argue that gameplay is better but I had tons of weird glitches on my playthrough which really affected my enjoyment of the gameplay. Also Spider Man and the majority of the cast on the 2nd game came out looking worse.

At least in the next game they can't ruin Spider-Man further as the focus is going to be on Miles Morales but I think I am done with Insomniac Spider Man for the foreseable future.

Jimmy Fallon Reaction Gif GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 

Paulxo87

Member
I finished it. 36 hour playthrough so I did most of the side content etc...

It's an 8 for me. Big beautiful world that is so detailed but there is just nothing done with it. It just felt kind of samey.. Technical marvel of a game though and best traversal ever.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Anytime that Reset Era podcast lady pop ups, the cringe is high.

I’m finally getting around to playing through this game, I can’t help but feel like I should have gotten Baldurs Gate 3 instead.
 
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Liamario

Banned
Can I just add, the Hailey spray paint mission was utterly pointless. You have a girl who's deaf (can't hear anything) and you have symbiotes who can't stand loud frequencies, nobody thought there was an opportunity to give her a proper mission(s) taking advantage of this dynamic!?
 
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FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Fun fact: it's the same actress that voices Aloy.
Good lord, everything she says is absolutely stupid or hyperbolic bullshit. That characters early fears about the “new black suit” are unwarranted and just plain dumb. I swear to god, she might be one of the most annoying talking heads in a game ever.

I’d shut her off, but I don’t want to lose the slightly amusing JJ podcasts.
 

Chuck Berry

Gold Member
I think them coming out and saying it’s M rated is at least a good sign. But maybe they’ll force us to watch Wolverine have a gay sex scene while being dominated by a blind lesbian that identifies as a gay man.

There's going to be an entire sidequest dedicated to going around performing bottom surgeries. The cleaner the job, the more XP.

SHING!
 
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Chuck Berry

Gold Member
Anytime that Reset Era podcast lady pop ups, the cringe is high.

I’m finally getting around to playing through this game, I can’t help but feel like I should have gotten Baldurs Gate 3 instead.

You know you can turn her podcast off in the options right? So you only get JJJ's.

Probably the only worthwhile accessibility option in the game. Bravo to Alanah Pearce or whatever fat purple haired bitch that included it.
 

Dazraell

Member
Good lord, everything she says is absolutely stupid or hyperbolic bullshit. That characters early fears about the “new black suit” are unwarranted and just plain dumb. I swear to god, she might be one of the most annoying talking heads in a game ever.

I’d shut her off, but I don’t want to lose the slightly amusing JJ podcasts.

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one frustrated about it. This felt like so "in your face" moment. I get she's supposed to show concern over Peter and foreshadow what will happen next, but it happened so fast and she was so annoying about it that it gave the opposite effect
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Finally finished this game. Verdict:

It was a solid game and one that I enjoyed. It's definitely a system selling exclusive for PS5, but is it an all time great? I'm not so sure.

My main issue wuith the game was the combat, as I never felt I could master it and towards the end I felt I was constantly having to spam my special abilities and gadgets. I played on Amazing difficulty. I hated the parry mechanic as it would rarely register. The thing that drove me crazy is that I could rarely actually attack anyone as I was constantly having to dodge over and over again. Enemies got in a lot of cheap hits as dodging didn't seem to work if you got caught in a long animation attack. Don't even get me started on the triangle targetting as it seemed to have a mind of it's own. As it wouldn't always target the right enemy. I didn't hate the combat, but it never had the smoothness or responsiveness of the Arkham games.

The game had a great story and mostly fun side content. I also appreciated that it wasn't excessively long. I didn't really like that towards the end of the game that it became boss battle after boss battle.
 
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