This review contains spoilers
Another outstanding outing for Insomniac's Spider-man series, this game gives us two spider people to play as. The addition of the web wings makes for more fun traversal and a few unique challenges. Combat remains fast, fun and effective even if it is repetitive. A new parry system takes a while to get used to as it happens so quickly in the flurry of things going on, but once you get the hang of it, you can really make combat scenes fly.
The standout here is great acting, amazing visual details, and that real sense of being Spider-man. The game is immersive to say the least, with the PS5's dual sense controller doing so much more work this time around to make you feel like you are really there. A big standout is using the web wings, which have a heft to them that is echoed throughout the controller.
The story has some issues, however. Perhaps it was my naivety while playing the first game, and my assumption that seeing Otto Octavius was just a red herring for a future game, but I was genuinely surprised at the mid-game turn that Doc Ock was going to become our main villain. In this game, however, the arrival of Venom was shouted from the rooftops, there were very few, if any, narrative twists or turns that caught me off guard. Everything just feels like a run of the mill Spider-man story. That's okay though, because so much of it is done so lovingly and this is easily the best incarnation of Spider-man and Venom we've seen on screen together, even if it is in a videogame. Stakes felt big and epic, the journey felt monumental.
Unfortunately the game has issues with repetition, it didn't feel like much had changed since we last played one of these games and even after getting upgraded abilities, the way you just mash a few buttons the same way for both characters, who share the same gadgets, just felt lazy. I wanted more complexity.
Finally, the game had a few bugs and crashes. It crashed twice, forcing me to restart the PS5, and on one occasion I completed a side mission but the side mission UI was stuck on screen, forcing me to relaunch the game. Several times while doing basic crime missions a bad guy would get stuck outside of the geometry and the mission had to be abandoned. Fortunately this has no bearing on the overall game except for the guilt you feel when you web swing away and Peter goes "no time to help those people..." like yeah, I had time to help those people, thanks for not noticing Peter.
The standout here is great acting, amazing visual details, and that real sense of being Spider-man. The game is immersive to say the least, with the PS5's dual sense controller doing so much more work this time around to make you feel like you are really there. A big standout is using the web wings, which have a heft to them that is echoed throughout the controller.
The story has some issues, however. Perhaps it was my naivety while playing the first game, and my assumption that seeing Otto Octavius was just a red herring for a future game, but I was genuinely surprised at the mid-game turn that Doc Ock was going to become our main villain. In this game, however, the arrival of Venom was shouted from the rooftops, there were very few, if any, narrative twists or turns that caught me off guard. Everything just feels like a run of the mill Spider-man story. That's okay though, because so much of it is done so lovingly and this is easily the best incarnation of Spider-man and Venom we've seen on screen together, even if it is in a videogame. Stakes felt big and epic, the journey felt monumental.
Unfortunately the game has issues with repetition, it didn't feel like much had changed since we last played one of these games and even after getting upgraded abilities, the way you just mash a few buttons the same way for both characters, who share the same gadgets, just felt lazy. I wanted more complexity.
Finally, the game had a few bugs and crashes. It crashed twice, forcing me to restart the PS5, and on one occasion I completed a side mission but the side mission UI was stuck on screen, forcing me to relaunch the game. Several times while doing basic crime missions a bad guy would get stuck outside of the geometry and the mission had to be abandoned. Fortunately this has no bearing on the overall game except for the guilt you feel when you web swing away and Peter goes "no time to help those people..." like yeah, I had time to help those people, thanks for not noticing Peter.