Spider-Man 2 probably won’t break new ground, and that’s ok…

We are just a little over a month away from easily the biggest superhero game of the year and a highly anticipated sequel to one of the PlayStation 4’s best releases, Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2. It certainly promises to be bigger and prettier with double the Spidermen and even more villains than the first and a whole lot more New York than the previous game as well in addition to a dizzying array of suits for each hero to wear.

That’s certainly a lot more of what was already there, but what actually is new about Spider-Man 2? Really fast fast-travel? Almost instantaneous switching between characters (a gimmick that was pulled off really well in Grand Theft Auto V two generations ago already)? Like it will all be done well but none of that is really… well new. There doesn’t seem to be anything really groundbreaking about Spider-Man 2. The original got by on being a really well-produced superhero game that has been exceedingly rare since for a while there hadn’t been many superhero games in recent years. Spider-Man 2 really just seems to be that again but on a bigger scale.

Is this okay in a year where one of the biggest criticisms of one of the year’s biggest games is that well, it’s just another one of those games like we’ve played before (that’d be Starfield)? I actually think in the case of Spider-Man 2, it is.

The difference with Spider-Man 2 is while it certainly draws inspiration from certain past superhero games (the combat is definitely lifted from the Batman Arkham series but given enough of a spin that it feels different enough because hey Batman isn’t Spider-Man), it’s still its own thing and not counting the really good Miles Morales spin-off, it’s been five years since we had a full-blown proper follow-up, this is only the second proper entry, and there haven’t really been any other games in the meantime doing what Insomniac’s Spider-Man series does. If you consistently re-release a game across platforms before a very similar follow-up or have a series where you are pumping out sequels or spin-offs every year or two without much innovation in-between that would be much more of an issue. Not so much for Spider-Man, at least not yet.

And theoretically, it will be quite some time before we get a third entry, as Insomniac is just about ready to go all in on their next big superhero project, Wolverine. So I think in instances like this, it is in fact extremely ok that Spider-Man 2 may in fact be just a lot more of what we enjoyed in the first game. It’s been spread out enough so that is ok. And if it’s at least five years til the next proper sequel, that will probably be ok for Spider-Man 3 as well (though if Wolverine is more of the same, then it might become an issue).

That’s it for today, this might be my last post on Spider-Man 2 until I actually get some time with the game but still should have a post next week so see ya real soon!