Game review: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – The Best Superhero game ever made
Greater together indeed
Hello, dear readers! My name is Victor, and I am a totally blind gaming, technology, and entertainment journalist. I am also an ambassador for universal design, an accessibility consultant, advocate and tester.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is the latest action adventure PlayStation 5 exclusive developed by Insomniac Games and published under the prestigious PlayStation Studios umbrella. The highly anticipated direct sequel to both 2018’s award-winning adventure Marvel’s Spider-Man and 2020’s Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be available for everyone to experience in just a few short days and I can promise that you are nowhere near ready for what’s coming your way!
We received an early access review code for the game a few weeks ago and during this time we had a blast playing this stunning blockbuster that stars not one but two fully playable Spider-Heroes. This awesome feature allows us to explore their lives both when they act as vigilantes with masks on, but also in their day-to-day existence as they interact with friends and navigate intricate relationships. Even more impressive though is the fact that we can actually switch between them at almost any given moment and it’s absolutely fascinating to drop on them just to discover they were already engaging in some activities.
Look, I guess everyone already knows that Spider-Man 2 will be a technical showcase for the PlayStation 5. Insomniac Games is one of the most respected developers in the gaming industry and they always bring revolutionary experiences to their players, but this is definitely their best work yet and will set a new standard for interactive entertainment in the years to come.
I played a few hours of the game myself until I hit a brick wall because some of the accessibility features weren’t quite as well implemented as we hoped and after that Alina continued the adventure.
Although a huge accessibility update for the game targets a December release, sadly I believe that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 won’t be fully playable by blind gamers, and that’s a shame because most of the game is.
But I will cover all of that below, in this spoiler-free review. Let us continue.
An unforgettable and emotional story
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has a really epic, original, personal, and truly emotional story about which I’m not willing to tell you too many things. I hate spoilers and I’d love for you to embark on this new unforgettable adventure going in blind, like I did, pun definitely intended.
All you need to know is that Spider-Men Peter Parker and Miles Morales return for an exciting new adventure in this critically acclaimed franchise and I can assure you that you will be blown away by the fabulous writing, the gorgeous cinematics, the rich cast of characters including Kraven, Lizard, and, of course, last but definitely not least, Venom. Every line of dialogue has been exquisitely tailored in such ways to grab the players’ attention and most of the time the hilarious remarks will manage to put a smile on our faces.
The story is much better than those we saw in some of the movies or even comics and it took us around 23 hours to roll the credits on it. In this time Alina also did some optional quests and that’s something she almost never does as her interest is mainly in the story. She loves the game, the freedom it allows for the player, and with her newfound passion for photography she checked out New York for perfect picture spots.
Webbing it around
If you played the original Spider-Man game or its sequel, Miles Morales, you know what to expect from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as well. The gameplay has been improved and expanded upon so now we have the most fluid combat, animations, takedowns, swinging and gliding than ever before.
It’s a delight to swing by from mission to mission, listening to news alerts, chasing criminals, solving mysteries, completing objectives and exploring this magnificent city. All of it while also experiencing an exquisitely well-written narrative and spending time with unforgettable characters.
The Web Wings which you may have seen in promotional videos allow for seamless and insanely fast traversal, while the Slotted Abilities work great in intense combat and are game-changing mechanics available for both of our heroes. There are also even more ways to customize how Peter and Miles look, play and feel with new suits, skills, abilities and suit styles, but I promised no spoilers so I will let you discover them on your own.
New York is your playground!
For Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Insomniac Games has nearly doubled the size of the city with the addition of Queens and Brooklyn, two iconic New York boroughs. The overall sense and scope of exploration and discovery in the open world have been improved exponentially! In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 you can find even more activities, optional quests, and additional content to explore at your own pace. Climb the Empire State Building, take a walk through Central Park, look into windows to spy upon unsuspecting citizens or take pictures throughout New York to share with friends online. The city is gorgeously reproduced, it has a vibration of its own, a pulse that can be felt everywhere. Just stop for a second and listen to people chatting and watch them live their lives in one of the most known cities in the world.
A Technical Showcase
When it comes to its presentation, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is one of the best-looking and most polished games you will experience this year and probably next year as well. Insomniac games designed it in such a way as to take full advantage of everything the PlayStation 5 has to offer.
Alina tells me that this is the best recreation of New York City in any video game that she experienced so far and that the lighting, shadows, characters and colors are purely out of this world. At times the game touches on photorealism and everything runs smoothly with ray tracing enabled. Regardless we are talking about ultra-quick hero-switching in the open world, the all-new fast travel system, or the Super Hero action set pieces that now can span multiple city blocks and seamlessly transition in and out of buildings, above and below ground, everything is flawlessly presented and executed.
As we were expecting, the cinematic experience is also complemented by top-notch voice acting, excellent sound effects, and an epic soundtrack that changes constantly and enhances each moment making it even more riveting. I know that I’m using the word epic a lot in this review, but that’s exactly how it is. Even more impressive though is how the DualSense controller becomes an extension of the PlayStation 5 console with the way it makes the player experience in their own hands everything happening on the TV screen. The haptics are excellent, you will feel every small web swing, footstep, but also the wind, water or leaves going around our heroes. The sound moves continuously between the TV speakers and the controller, creating a soundscape that transports the player to another dimension.
The entire adventure is filled with jaw-dropping cinematics that seamlessly mix in and out of gameplay and as such manage to deliver the most immersive, fun and entertaining experience to date from an open-world action-adventure video game. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 opens with a boss fight that could very well be a final encounter for other titles, but from there things only get bigger and better. New York City is the perfect sandbox for such bombastic moments and stunning vistas will grab your attention during the day and also at night.
The entire presentation is so clean and polished that photo enthusiasts will probably spend as much time taking pictures as they would actually playing the game.
Accessibility-focused
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 also includes a robust suite of accessibility features that will allow gamers with impairments and disabilities to experience this unique adventure. The nice people at Insomniac Games publicly acknowledged their commitment to making this game accessible for as many players as possible and that’s what they did for the most part.
From gameplay modifiers that allow us to customize the difficulty, the amount of damage we do and the enemy perception, to chase assist which allows us to easily follow targets, to gameplay speed, lock on target, the option to skip puzzles and to auto-complete quick time events or to have sign language for us, there is a little something for everyone here.
All the above-mentioned features alongside a navigation assist system that faces the camera towards the current objective should have made Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 also fully playable by blind gamers, but sadly this is not the case. The navigation assist works fine when we are in the city, but as soon as we enter a closed space things start to fall apart. This system definitely needs improvement and it is so sad that the accessibility team at Insomniac Games didn’t realize this until now. They have excellent examples of how this function should work from other partners at PlayStation Studios, including Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio.
Even if in December we get the promised text-to-speech functionality and audio descriptions, there are level design challenges blind players will face in the open world of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and I fear that these will be more than we can handle.
If anyone at Insomniac reads this, please reach out to me or even better, to Brandon Cole and let’s make this game fully playable by gamers without sight. It’s almost there and with a little bit more work it can be done. We have some missions where the navigation assist just directs us to the general area and after that, we are asked to follow some circuit in order to activate something, that we cannot do without a way for us to figure out the path. I hope that a lot of the button prompts will be narrated after the December update and we also need to know how far we are from an objective, so the distance needs to be readable as well.
Please don’t just stop supporting the accessibility for this game like Santa Monica Studio did with Ragnarok because that would be a shame. If you went to the trouble of including so many wonderful accessibility features, narration and audio descriptions as well, please make an extra effort and finish what you started, make Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 the first superhero game fully accessible for players that can’t see at all.
Disability happens when accessibility doesn’t and accessible experiences bring down the barriers between able and disabled players so make a priority of ensuring that blind gamers will get to feel like true superheroes in your game!
A Spider-Man adventure for the history books
Well my friends, we reached the end of the article and I guess that from everything that I wrote above you already know that I highly recommend to almost everyone who owns a PlayStation 5 console to pick up Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 day one. I say almost everyone because I have legit concerns when it comes to blind accessibility and can’t recommend the game at this time and in good conscience to my blind readers.
Insomniac Games, just like other first-party developers under the PlayStation Studios umbrella, continue to bring unique experiences that can easily be elevated to masterpiece status.
It was a pleasure to experience everything Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 had to offer and I honestly can’t wait for you all to try it out. I really hope that some improvements for accessibility will arrive soon because as the saying goes when everyone plays we all win!
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 arrives October 20 exclusively on PlayStation 5.
Score: 10 / 10 – Amazing
Review copy provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment via PlayStation Romania
Victor Dima
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