Spider-Man 2 is not Arkham City, and that’s a good thing…

Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 is nearly here, and it promises to be an even more epic game than the first with bigger, badder villains, new powers and a more expanded New York City.

But that doesn’t actually mean Spider-Man 2 is a much longer game than the first. In fact, Insomniac said previously the game is really just about as long as its predecessor. Probably about 18 hours to finish the story, roughly 35 if you want to complete it to one hundred percent.

But isn’t this the sequel? Shouldn’t it be significantly longer and have so many things to do it’ll keep you busy for possibly the rest of the year? Where’s my 60+ hour superhero game???

The fact of the matter is the gaming industry as a whole has a huge problem with scope in games. Spider-Man draws a lot of comparisons the the Batman Arkham series, which got bigger with each entry, mostly to its detriment. And a lot of third-person action games are dozens of hours long. The last few Assassin’s Creed games were easily 100 hours a piece.

And to some extent I get it, a lot of people only buy a couple of games a year whether it’s due to only being interested in a couple, or just not having the time or money for much more than that. And companies don’t want you buying other games, they want their game to be YOUR game, the game you play obsessively, hopefully buying DLC, sequels and spin-offs, maybe even some merch. It’s rare that a really high-budget, AAA game from one of the top studios in the industry is just like hey, this will probably take you a week, two tops, you might even be able to knock it out in a weekend if you’re dedicated enough.

But that’s great, I’d much rather that than a game far overstay its welcome and give me an entertaining, tight story and there’s some extra meat on that bone if I want to get more into it, but not a mind-boggling amount. There’s also been a long-standing issue of most people not finishing the vast majority of games they buy and it’s kind of nuts that developers put all this work into a game a lot of people might only see half of or less often cause it’s just too damn long.

I’m looking forward to Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 and am very ok with the fact that a week or so after it comes out I’ll probably have finished it and move on to the next game, that’ll still be a week or so I really enjoyed rather than a month or more that felt long a long and slow forced march.

That’s it for today, a little peek ahead: like most everybody else I am not going to even be able to start playing Spider-Man 2 until it is out on Friday so look for thoughts on that the following weekend, like around the 28th or the 29th. Next weekend, well the Gargoyles remaster is also out this week, so I will most likely be giving impressions on that this coming weekend. See ya real soon!