Gotta say, the way he leaps off of rooftops and flips backward to face the camera before falling into a head-first dive is just full of the exaggerated swagger of a black teen. It gives me goosebumps every time he does it.
Yeah, what'd you expect here? Wasn't a fan of the first one much at all so the extremely similar DLC-expansion-sequel-thing wasn't gonna win me over either. I do think that this game is...very marginally somewhat better than the first one at least. And no it certainly isn't in the gameplay department that's for sure LOL.
To put it bluntly, Miles is just Peter but better. He has nearly every single ability that Peter has (traversal, stealth, combat, you name it) except now he also has access to Venom powers and invisibility powers. It admittedly took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the venom bar and the instant takedown QTE meter were on separate resources so they aren't a replacement for it. You build up a meter while in combat and when the meter is full, you get a powered up version of an already existing move (punch, launcher, web zip, ground slam), pretty much all of them are a massive AOE effect (though the punch needs to be upgraded to be AOE) and enemies affected take more damage. You even get a final Venom attack that's essentially just Chaos Blast from Shadow the Hedgehog, a massive AOE explosion that ALSO fully restores your health at the cost of 3 bars. While stimulating on a spectacle level, my problem with these abilities is that they don't really do anything to add depth or nuance to the combat, but only exist to make the already easy game even easier. Like, aside from the sword and shield enemies, in what situation would you NOT use these techniques whenever you can? They're easy to build up, they make enemies drop like flies, they make the brute enemies a complete joke, and there's no sense of multitasking or risk or reward factor to these abilities. The only satisfaction I can muster from using them is looking at the pretty sparkly particle effects and watching enemies get blasted helplessly across the room. There's also a bit of overlap with these abilities as well. The Venom Punch and Venom Dash seem way too similar to each other, it's just that the dash has a larger range, AOE damage from the start, AND you can get a free Venom Launch from it which is ALSO AOE. Like, what exactly is the tradeoff here? Less damage? Not from what I could see anyway. Other than that, combat is identical to the first game, still horrendously one-sided in your favor with or without venom powers purely by launching enemies in the air and air combo-ing them to death. Not much has changed in that department. You can use a couple of Venom powers during traversal but neither of them feel like a significant enough speed or height increase to justify using while swinging. I mean I'll use them when I can but it feels like at that point I'm more so using them out of obligation rather than anything else.
Stealth sections are made slightly better and worse at the same time. Better in the sense that after clearing a stealth section you don't have to fight more waves of goons already alerted to your presence anyway, and on top of that there's no MJ section equivalent in this game either! However, I feel like there are even fewer stakes involved in these sections with the addition of the cloaking ability. No punishment if you get spotted because even if you do you can disappear at will and wait for the AI to start looking for you again. These two mechanics SOUNDED cool on paper but don't amount to anything in-game aside from just making everything a lot easier.
No, you wanna know what ever so slightly tipped this game's enjoyment over the first for me? First is the story. I know, kinda sounds crazy. I didn't really connect much at all to the story of the first game, but I feel like this one having more of a focus on Miles and his friendship with Ganke, on top of the many different people in his life (Gloria, Phin, his mom, etc) leads to me caring more about these cast of characters. It's not great or anything, I don't think this was a particularly groundbreaking story and at points, the writing can be extremely forced and hamfisted (like when Rhino starts egging on the Tinkerer about her trauma for...reasons I guess?) but y'know what? It was nice for what it was. I also like Miles' personality showing through his Spider-Man abilities, the way he twists and turns in off-the-wall show-offy ways when doing tricks and when web swinging adds just that much flair that makes it a tiny bit more fun to swing around than if I were playing as Peter for example. I also like the Underground as a faction PURELY for their cool purple coloring to their weaponry and gear. Again, nothing major on any of these points, but hey. I'll take what I can get from this series.
For the love of god though, please go and do the Uncle Aaron side quest so you can listen to the beat he makes at the end, it's unironically one of the goofiest things I've heard in a game.
Yeah, what'd you expect here? Wasn't a fan of the first one much at all so the extremely similar DLC-expansion-sequel-thing wasn't gonna win me over either. I do think that this game is...very marginally somewhat better than the first one at least. And no it certainly isn't in the gameplay department that's for sure LOL.
To put it bluntly, Miles is just Peter but better. He has nearly every single ability that Peter has (traversal, stealth, combat, you name it) except now he also has access to Venom powers and invisibility powers. It admittedly took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the venom bar and the instant takedown QTE meter were on separate resources so they aren't a replacement for it. You build up a meter while in combat and when the meter is full, you get a powered up version of an already existing move (punch, launcher, web zip, ground slam), pretty much all of them are a massive AOE effect (though the punch needs to be upgraded to be AOE) and enemies affected take more damage. You even get a final Venom attack that's essentially just Chaos Blast from Shadow the Hedgehog, a massive AOE explosion that ALSO fully restores your health at the cost of 3 bars. While stimulating on a spectacle level, my problem with these abilities is that they don't really do anything to add depth or nuance to the combat, but only exist to make the already easy game even easier. Like, aside from the sword and shield enemies, in what situation would you NOT use these techniques whenever you can? They're easy to build up, they make enemies drop like flies, they make the brute enemies a complete joke, and there's no sense of multitasking or risk or reward factor to these abilities. The only satisfaction I can muster from using them is looking at the pretty sparkly particle effects and watching enemies get blasted helplessly across the room. There's also a bit of overlap with these abilities as well. The Venom Punch and Venom Dash seem way too similar to each other, it's just that the dash has a larger range, AOE damage from the start, AND you can get a free Venom Launch from it which is ALSO AOE. Like, what exactly is the tradeoff here? Less damage? Not from what I could see anyway. Other than that, combat is identical to the first game, still horrendously one-sided in your favor with or without venom powers purely by launching enemies in the air and air combo-ing them to death. Not much has changed in that department. You can use a couple of Venom powers during traversal but neither of them feel like a significant enough speed or height increase to justify using while swinging. I mean I'll use them when I can but it feels like at that point I'm more so using them out of obligation rather than anything else.
Stealth sections are made slightly better and worse at the same time. Better in the sense that after clearing a stealth section you don't have to fight more waves of goons already alerted to your presence anyway, and on top of that there's no MJ section equivalent in this game either! However, I feel like there are even fewer stakes involved in these sections with the addition of the cloaking ability. No punishment if you get spotted because even if you do you can disappear at will and wait for the AI to start looking for you again. These two mechanics SOUNDED cool on paper but don't amount to anything in-game aside from just making everything a lot easier.
No, you wanna know what ever so slightly tipped this game's enjoyment over the first for me? First is the story. I know, kinda sounds crazy. I didn't really connect much at all to the story of the first game, but I feel like this one having more of a focus on Miles and his friendship with Ganke, on top of the many different people in his life (Gloria, Phin, his mom, etc) leads to me caring more about these cast of characters. It's not great or anything, I don't think this was a particularly groundbreaking story and at points, the writing can be extremely forced and hamfisted (like when Rhino starts egging on the Tinkerer about her trauma for...reasons I guess?) but y'know what? It was nice for what it was. I also like Miles' personality showing through his Spider-Man abilities, the way he twists and turns in off-the-wall show-offy ways when doing tricks and when web swinging adds just that much flair that makes it a tiny bit more fun to swing around than if I were playing as Peter for example. I also like the Underground as a faction PURELY for their cool purple coloring to their weaponry and gear. Again, nothing major on any of these points, but hey. I'll take what I can get from this series.
For the love of god though, please go and do the Uncle Aaron side quest so you can listen to the beat he makes at the end, it's unironically one of the goofiest things I've heard in a game.