• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was so rushed and unfinished yet no one talks about it?

Papa_Wisdom

Member
That means don't get a sony console. Should have been hard for you since ps4? Or maybe ps3. Your best choice would be an xbox or a pc gaming.
I own all the PlayStations bar the ps5 as I have no reason to get one, Especially now there porting games to pc so not hard for me at all. I have all the Xbox’s (There output this generation has also not been great) and a pc.
 

kyussman

Member
Weird that they left in blm propaganda too,given the whole thing has been proven to be a massive scam at this point.....that alone is reason enough for me to question ever buying another game from Insomniac......granted these devs are just sheeple who virtue signal whatever the current thing is,but that's not a good enough excuse to get my money I'm afraid.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
We had a whole thread on how buggy the game was with the white boxes swinging around, people getting stuck in buildings, and NPC's going weird. We also had the "can be completed on disc" thread and talked pretty extensively about whether the on-disc experience was the way the game was intended to be experienced. There was spirited discourse around whether the bugs, post-release patch polishing and lack of features like NG+ were consequential.
 

Sleepwalker

Member
Game was a solid 8 at best. It dragged on a lot, some of the characters were extremely dislikeable and the story was somewhat predictable.

I enjoy the first one a lot more.
 

Ronin_7

Member
LOL, not sure what's with that over the top response, but they absolutely care. I'm not alone in this.

There is a reason why Spider-Man 2 resonated with no one for the game awards.

There is a reason why my nephew who LOVES spider-man, has played all of 30 minutes of this game since December. He has seen Across the Spider-Verse like 6 times in the theater and Miles Morales was one of his favorite games. You think he isn't the target audience for this game?

You think Sony can put 250+ million towards Spider-Man 3 and have it sell 50% or 75% of Spider-Man 2.

It's very similar to the situation Rocksteady found themselves with the Arkham games.

Insomniac is quickly running out of goodwill and if you think that isn't the case, I'm not sure what to tell you, your hyperbole and super dramatic response not withstanding, they absolutely damaged their reputation with this game that is largely hollow and extremely glitchy.
Season 1 Lol GIF by NBC
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
I think they did a lot of damage to their brand. Even Black Cat wasn't utilized very well. Ironically, she would have been better with the stealth sections than Mary Jane... because you know... checks notes....she is a thief.
Black Cat is too hot and seductive. I honestly can't remember the last playable female character that leaned into her sexuality as a key character trait. I'm not talking about (mostly) lesbian romances, I'm talking about their tone of voice, locomotion, attitudes. Not every female character should be like that; but the playable ones often feel like blank slates because the writers are ostensibly scared of women's sexuality. Which is another irony on the stack that's piling up here.

Sony should probably re-evaluate having Insomniac go all in on Marvel, but it's probably too late to turn around now. They seem locked in.
Marvel isn't the problem. The scary thought is that Marvel might be holding them back in terms of Sweet Baby-ish tendencies.

It all comes down to Insomniac's philosophy. As you can see with Ratchet, which used to have some fucking bite, theirs is "everything is happy and great and sanitized!"
 

Xtib81

Member
Couldn't even bother finishing it. It has to be the most bland and boring open world I've ever played.
 

yurinka

Member
Maybe they rushed to have it on time and didn't want to crunch. Didn't have time for everything, so they had to choose between to fix some extra bugs and put some flags. And well, they did their decision xD
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
Black Cat is too hot and seductive. I honestly can't remember the last playable female character that leaned into her sexuality as a key character trait. I'm not talking about (mostly) lesbian romances, I'm talking about their tone of voice, locomotion, attitudes. Not every female character should be like that; but the playable ones often feel like blank slates because the writers are ostensibly scared of women's sexuality. Which is another irony on the stack that's piling up here.

I don't really need video game characters to look sexy... Are gamers obsessed with sexy looking video game characters because they're not getting enough of that in real life?

I don't care what Black Cat looks like, I'm just saying the character is built for stealth rather than pigeonholing Mary Jane into that role.
 

yurinka

Member
Available info suggests that Insomniac's "B-team" and new hires were the main force on SM2, with significant resources going to Wolverine.
When announced, Insomniac said that the main Spider-Man 1 team was the one in charge of Spider-Man 2. And the main Morales team was the one in charge of Wolverine.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
I don't really need video game characters to look sexy... Are gamers obsessed with sexy looking video game characters because they're not getting enough of that in real life?

I don't care what Black Cat looks like, I'm just saying the character is built for stealth rather than pigeonholing Mary Jane into that role.
I'm not saying I need the character to look sexy, but it's clear at this point that many devs explicitly don't want their playable female characters to look sexy.

I'm explaining the probable reason as to why Insomniac didn't fill in their powerful woman role (for which they have expressly admitted to be ticking the box) with an obvious character like Black Cat - or included other superpowered females like Jessica Jones who definitely isn't clean enough - as opposed to turning Mary Jane into Solid Snake for no good reason.
 

sigmaZ

Member
I loved most of the game, the traversal especially which is as good as it gets, but a lot of the game is severely lacking and even Insomniac themselves admitted it was somewhat rushed.

The last 'act' of the story is shockingly bad. After the Venom Times Square fight, the game goes into overload with the rushing and pacing. It takes what should have been half the game and makes it into a two hour finale full of poor missions, not great story telling and bad character development. Huge disparity from the rest of the game where missions are far more in depth and better in quality.

Game launched with countless bugs. The game freezing for people, the audio muting, spider-cube just to name a few issues which were very prevalent. By far Insomniac's buggiest title I can ever recall. I had far more bugs in 25 hours of SM2 than I had with hundreds of SM1, MM, R&C, SO combined.

Game was somewhat unfinished. There were suits for example which had placeholders put in and were updated a few times after launch to get them in the state of where they should have been to begin. Even now a few months on, the game post-story is broken with the same few random crimes appearing.

The side content was overall maybe even worse than the first game. In SM1 one of the biggest complaints was how poor and repetitive the side content was. In this one they fixed a few of these issues with good side-story arcs such as the Flame missions, but the rest was worse. No Taskmaster challenges (just the repetitive combat Mysterio ones), the drones were copy and paste filler, the random side-missions were uninteresting and what not. Let alone there's zero replay value in any of this content (unlike the first game).

Then of course Miles Morales launched with NG+ and the option to pick time of day and weather post-story. This was promised as an update in 2023 for the game but later got delayed to 2024 and now further back to March 2024. Which is made even worse given the game has literally zero post-story content so fans have been left with nothing to do in the open world for months.

Overall, I hate the story of the game and how rushed it is despite there being a fair amount of good, but I find it shocking how the game has a 90+ MC score with many not calling out the state the game released in as well as how many shortcomings it has, no doubt most from being rushed near the end to be released before the 2023 holidays.
Yeah I was surprised how many bugs I encountered. Probably the most of any console game I've ever played. There were at least four times where I had to reset the game or my Playstation. The worst was at the carnival boss battle where I got stuck in a weird area and couldn't escape and even reloading the checkpoint wouldn't fix it.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Because despite how buggy it was it was still better than most games I’ve played on PC this year. I think only avatar and ff16 are more polished in terms of bugs but they have their own issues with performance modes whereas Spider-Man 2 was rock solid in every mode.

It definitely needs to be called out though.
 
I couldn't even finish the first Dad of War, was excited when it came to PC but it just didn't grab me at all. Too many set pieces, dull puzzles and characters. Decent gameplay though. I only played like 5 hours but...meh. Maybe I'll try it again sometime.
The problem I had with God of War is that the story and set pieces are more compelling than the actual gameplay which is pretty boring for the most part. Halfway through I turned it to Easy so I could power through it.

I tried Ragnarok a few weeks afterwards but I'd just had enough.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
I'm not saying I need the character to look sexy, but it's clear at this point that many devs explicitly don't want their playable female characters to look sexy.

I'm explaining the probable reason as to why Insomniac didn't fill in their powerful woman role (for which they have expressly admitted to be ticking the box) with an obvious character like Black Cat - or included other superpowered females like Jessica Jones who definitely isn't clean enough - as opposed to turning Mary Jane into Solid Snake for no good reason.

I think they wanted to make her more ingrained in the story. Definitely a mistake either way, but between the demands for more sexy female characters and people critiquing the attractiveness of Bella Ramsey who was playing... checks notes... a 14 year old character... there is something really strange in Gamerland.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
I think review scores are probably past their expiration date. Anyone who's played a decent number of games will have had the experience of playing a high rated game and a mid rated game in the same genre and either being surprised at how similar they are, or just flat out enjoying the "bad" one more.

At this point internet hype and hate seems to largely be detached from reality. Some games get a pass on major tech problems, or unfortunate design decisions while others are crucified for the lesser crimes. Sometimes the same game is getting praised and crucified at the same time depending on where you're looking.
 

Senua

Gold Member
I think they wanted to make her more ingrained in the story. Definitely a mistake either way, but between the demands for more sexy female characters and people critiquing the attractiveness of Bella Ramsey who was playing... checks notes... a 14 year old character... there is something really strange in Gamerland.
Haha yea that last one was always funny. THIS TWEEN GIRL CHARACTER ISN'T PRETTY ENOUGH. In general though, wanting attractive people in fiction has always been a thing. Man or woman.
 

Shut0wen

Banned
Just proof that if your making a game as complex as spiderman (because rachet in time isnt a complex developed game) without crunch it your fucked unless you have a publisher willing to throw a shitload of money at ya
 

Sephimoth

Member
I'm sure it's a great game but I just couldn't be enthused to pick it up. Feel like I've had my fill with OG and Miles Moralis and that this would be more of the same. I'll no doubt grab it later in life for the collection
 
Every character model looked worse, the venom enemies that you fight have the most horrendous and eye bleeding colors, and the HUD is so much worse than the first game with all of the shit popping up in 3D space all over the city.
 
They don't care about you, users on Gaf or Era aren't what Sony is after my friend.

Get a dose of reality, you can sell your Ps5 today for all it matters, please do.
This is a stupid comment. Of course Sony are after Gaf and Era, they are in the business of creating and selling video games and since places like this are full of people that play video games, I think you'll find that they make up some of their target audience.

A sale is a sale and that is what Sony and any other publisher care about.
 
I'll never trust the scores again for Sony 1st party after Ragnarok. I watched all the trailers for that game, and I'd post super mild - but critical, observations. "I don't see much new in the gameplay," etc. Wasn't going to get it. Then it literally got a 94 MC, like it was some Breath of the Wild tier masterpiece, so I bought it day one for $70. Didn't last 10 hours before dropping it. I don't think it's trash, it's obviously a polished game, but it sure didn't seem like a 94. One of the most extreme examples of review overhype in my lifetime.

I knew that was going to be the case again when I saw the scores for Spider Man 2.
You can make this case with Tears of Kingdom, too. 96 metacritic? Bitch, please xD
Reviews inflated from nintendo's nostalgia googles when murican revievers got their n64 on christmas lmao
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
I think they wanted to make her more ingrained in the story.
They wanted her more ingrained in the action. Because in superhero/scifi/fantasy/geek genre shit, action = agency, and female characters need agency, dammit!

If the story was more fleshed out and more well written, MJ could be just as if not more ingrained. God knows she was in the source material that made her iconic, without having her one-shotting trained militia members and sniping symbiotes.

Definitely a mistake either way, but between the demands for more sexy female characters and people critiquing the attractiveness of Bella Ramsey who was playing... checks notes... a 14 year old character... there is something really strange in Gamerland.
"Gamerland" is reactionary, yes, and I have my issues with enough of those reactions. I have no opinions on Bella Ramsey, but the wider drive on this attractiveness topic is only so virulent because the game industry, by force of an activist media, special interest groups and government programs, set the cat amongst the pigeons.

No one really talked about videogame sexuality in a serious manner until social studies majors started running around saying that games had too much sexuality in them.
 
Last edited:

K' Dash

Member
Game was shit compared to the first one, it's all downhill after the opening.

There were threads here and there criticizing it,
 
Last edited:

Ronin_7

Member
This is a stupid comment. Of course Sony are after Gaf and Era, they are in the business of creating and selling video games and since places like this are full of people that play video games, I think you'll find that they make up some of their target audience.

A sale is a sale and that is what Sony and any other publisher care about.
Sony is after the GaaS players that waste billions in MTX, if they had those I guarantee you that investment in SP would greatly reduce.

You're still right but to a minuscule point.
 

poodaddy

Gold Member
They don't care about you, users on Gaf or Era aren't what Sony is after my friend.

Get a dose of reality, you can sell your Ps5 today for all it matters, please do.
Bro chill out, people are discussing what issues they had with the game and you're going nuts on em. I get that you like defending Sony, but people have very real reasons to be annoyed with Spoders 2. I bought it day one for the statue, I was pumped, and I honestly liked the game but there were incredibly egregious flaws that can't be ignored, and it doesn't bother me to see people discuss them. I still had fun, I'd give the game a strong 7, but it definitely had issues and everyone who has had their faith in Wolverine shaken are valid, but on the other hand it's also totally valid if you're still super pumped. I won't lie, I love these characters and if they do a Wolverine statue like the Spoders 2 statue, I'll probably get it because I'm a fuckin simp like that lol....but I'll hate myself for it haha.

No one's anti Sony here, more just calling out issues Spider-Man 2 absolutely has, because we want Venom and Wolverine to be free from these issues, and in particular I think I can speak for everyone here and say we all want that impending X-Men game from Insomniac to be incredible, so criticism is a good thing. Doesn't mean anyone hates Insomniac or Sony, just means we know they can be better.
 
Last edited:

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
I'll never trust the scores again for Sony 1st party after Ragnarok. I watched all the trailers for that game, and I'd post super mild - but critical, observations. "I don't see much new in the gameplay," etc. Wasn't going to get it. Then it literally got a 94 MC, like it was some Breath of the Wild tier masterpiece, so I bought it day one for $70. Didn't last 10 hours before dropping it. I don't think it's trash, it's obviously a polished game, but it sure didn't seem like a 94. One of the most extreme examples of review overhype in my lifetime.

I knew that was going to be the case again when I saw the scores for Spider Man 2.

Ragnarok is every bit more deserving of its score than your game of the year last year, that’s for sure.

I’ll never trust one of those reviews ever again, mega hyped savior type games
 

Atrus

Gold Member
I encountered the cube issue 4 times, which appears to be memory related as it crops up after playing long enough. I also had to restart 4 times due to mission bugs which prevented completion or muted sound.

Hardly the buggiest console game ever.

While the shaming of Spider-Man by an otherwise poorly developed Mary Jane was an issue as was the fewer random mission types and underdeveloped spider-gadgets, the overall game was quite similar to the predecessors in terms of being a great Spider-Man game featuring content changes that kept the game fresh through the narrative arc.
 

Vick

Gold Member
I couldn't even finish the first Dad of War, was excited when it came to PC but it just didn't grab me at all. Too many set pieces, dull puzzles and characters. Decent gameplay though. I only played like 5 hours but...meh. Maybe I'll try it again sometime.
Agreed but even here in enthusiast circles people seem to adore the popcorn games from Sony. Always found that interesting. They're decent but they get treated like masterpieces. Slick presentation goes a long way I guess
So you played intro and tutorial.. haven't even got to the actual game yet.
Going through it properly would likely make you realize why it's indeed considered a masterpiece, or why so many people consider it one of the very best games of all time if not #1 even. And that ain't a demographic thing.

KXgS9cV.png


I mean you loved Alan Wake 2, can't possibly see how on earth you could have any kind of issue whatsoever here.

No one's anti Sony here. Doesn't mean anyone hates Insomniac or Sony.
That is sadly an extremely naive claim, demonstrabily false by daily doses of proof.

It's an utter delusional take. The amount of losers who won't even hide their shameless nature plaguing the discorse on a daily basis in here is outstanding.

Which is an absolute shame because it diminishes the importance of actual due criticism like the one OP provided.
A healthy community would point out how and why games like Spider-Man 2, Ragnarök, or TLOU Part II, failed to live up to their precedessors in certain regards, impossible to achieve given the amount of retardation aimed at actual greatness due to the most miserable and laughable reasons.
 

Metnut

Member
They spent $300M on it. At some point the game needs to come out.

This is what the CEO is talking about. Maybe they need a more efficient team, but it should’nt be impossible to deliver a full AAA game for $150-$200M.
 

Senua

Gold Member
So you played intro and tutorial.. haven't even got to the actual game yet.
Going through it properly would likely make you realize why it's indeed considered a masterpiece, or why so many people consider it one of the very best games of all time if not #1 even. And that ain't a demographic thing.

KXgS9cV.png


I mean you loved Alan Wake 2, can't possibly see how on earth you could have any kind of issue whatsoever here.
Lol dude 5 hours is giving a game more than its fair share, I really tried to gel with it but it didn't happen. I never really played the original GoW games either so that connection to the character wasn't there for me like many others probably have. Alan Wake 2 I gelled with right off the bat, the mood, the pacing the atmosphere. I adore Twin Peaks and True Detective S1 so that helped, and love Remedy's connected universe. They're actually very different games outside of being third person. Don't know why you brought that up anyway.
 
Last edited:

Ronin_7

Member
Bro chill out, people are discussing what issues they had with the game and you're going nuts on em. I get that you like defending Sony, but people have very real reasons to be annoyed with Spoders 2. I bought it day one for the statue, I was pumped, and I honestly liked the game but there were incredibly egregious flaws that can't be ignored, and it doesn't bother me to see people discuss them. I still had fun, I'd give the game a strong 7, but it definitely had issues and everyone who has had their faith in Wolverine shaken are valid, but on the other hand it's also totally valid if you're still super pumped. I won't lie, I love these characters and if they do a Wolverine statue like the Spoders 2 statue, I'll probably get it because I'm a fuckin simp like that lol....but I'll hate myself for it haha.

No one's anti Sony here, more just calling out issues Spider-Man 2 absolutely has, because we want Venom and Wolverine to be free from these issues, and in particular I think I can speak for everyone here and say we all want that impending X-Men game from Insomniac to be incredible, so criticism is a good thing. Doesn't mean anyone hates Insomniac or Sony, just means we know they can be better.
Bro game was fine but miles behind other games, I'm just saying casuals loved it and it sold very well.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Lol dude 5 hours is giving a game more than its fair share, I really tried to gel with it but it didn't happen. I never really played the original GoW games either so that connection to the character wasn't there for me like many others probably have. Alan Wake 2 I gelled with right off the bat, the mood, the pacing the atmosphere. I adore Twin Peaks and True Detective S1 so that helped, and love Remedy's connected universe. They're actually very different games outside of being third person. Don't know why you brought that up anyway.

“Slick presentation goes a long way”

That’s Alan wake 2 in a nutshell.

There’s far more actual game in those “slick presentation” titles you are criticizing
 

Boss Mog

Member
I encountered so many bugs, I thought it was a bethesda game. They didn't have time to evolve the gameplay or fix bugs but they had time to inject a shitload of ultra woke NPCs and sidequests though. Did you know that if you're bi and end up in a "hetero-normative" relationship you're contributing to "bi-erasure"? Neither did I until a Spider-man 2 NPC told me.
 

Senua

Gold Member
“Slick presentation goes a long way”

That’s Alan wake 2 in a nutshell.

There’s far more actual game in those “slick presentation” titles you are criticizing
I disagree, it's much more about the atmosphere, the mystery, the world. That Pacific Northwest setting just speaks to me like no other. It's all preference at the end of the day.

I never said those games were guff, but I never understood why so many were considered masterpieces. Because none of them have resonated with me like many others.
 
Top Bottom