I don’t like crying, but I imagine that's something everyone’s not huge on. In the worst cases, the feeling of moisture welling up behind your eyes isn’t one that goes away even if you wipe the tears off your face. It’s uncomfortable, maybe even scary, surrendering yourself to your emotions as the world presents beauty and fragility to you in equal measure; all you can do is let the tears run down. Sometimes you even get this special kind of crying where you just… stop. It's the kind of crying that sees you curled up on a sofa, bed, or even the floor, and you lay there clutching yourself tightly until the icy claws of vulnerability unhand you, sprawling you out to stare at the ceiling as your thoughts begin to seep into that space behind your eyes. I think everyone goes through a few cathartic, really liberating sessions of this honest-to-god weeping in their lives. I know I have.

I didn’t begin to conceptualize crying in this way until I finished Marvel’s Spider-Man on the PS4 when it released. It’s special in that it was the first video game I’d played that I had cried over, but it’s not the first time I had cried over Spider-Man in other media. I’ve pretty much cried over every single Spider-Man movie released before that game. It used to be one of my favorite games for a long time until I drastically broadened my gaming horizons this year thanks to the help of two invaluable friends of mine (I cannot thank you two enough, Cheryl and Jamie). Since then, you can say I've grown apart from SMPS4 as a game, but I still hold its story in high regard (minus all the bits that read as pretty undeniably pro-cop).

I've been a Spider-Man fan for most of my life, and SMPS4 was the first time I played a Spider-Man game where I really felt like Spider-Man, owing to the smoothness of web-slinging, combat that showcases the balance between acrobatics and raw power of the character, and a story that cuts straight to the core of the character.

The archetype of Spider-Man is twofold; Power and Responsibility. The taglines for the two Spider-verse movies sum it up eloquently: 'Anyone can wear the mask' & 'It's how you wear the mask that matters'. Everyone has the power to change the world, but simply having that capacity isn't enough to be a hero; To be a hero means making sacrifices, choosing to help others instead of helping yourself. It's the lesson Peter learns on the night Ben Parker dies. It's the lesson that is reaffirmed when he has to choose between saving May Parker from Devil's Breath or curing New York. It's honestly beautiful.

This ending is what brought me to tears so long ago; it displays such a competence, understanding and respect for this special character that has undoubtedly saved my life.

That competence and understanding is not to be found in this game at all.

What Marvel's Spider-Man 2 does manage to get right and improve over the first game is the gameplay. For most of the first half of SM2, I often found myself thinking back to a tweet I saw from Marcus of the Cosmonaut Variety Hour Youtube Channel, a man who everyone should really stop listening to regarding takes on Spider-Man media (and any takes in general, honestly), saying the new gadgets in this game are way too techy compared to the first and don't 'feel like Spider-Man'. Fuck that, honestly. Your gadgets in the first game include a web trap, a web bomb, electric webs, a goddamn anti-gravity bomb, a concussive blast (fine, whatever), and... literal fucking drones? The most tech-y crap the Spider-Men have in this game is a modified version of the anti-gravity BS the first game had. Not to mention, this game has a lot less gadgets than the first game bringing the total number to 4, and they're utilized very differently because of it. By the end of SM1, the game becomes a gadget spam-fest to keep enemies stunlocked since you just have so many ways to keep crowds off you while you generate enough focus bars to Finisher anyone that didn't get pasted onto a wall or off the side of the building you're on. None of that shit feels 'like Spider-Man' to me.

SM2 greatly reduces the amount of gadgets you have and makes regenerating them a notably slower process, meaning if you try to play this game like the first one, you will have no gadgets and get swarmed before you're probably mollywhopped into the release date for Wolverine. It means you're in fights punching and kicking a lot more than you were in the first game, allowing you to relish in the kind of awkward timing for the new parry mechanic and otherwise web up foes and slingshot them into some poor fuck's Honda Civic three blocks over. You know, like Spider-Man would.

I don't know how broken the Surge Meter abilities are in this game since I kind of forgot to use them the entire game up until today when I finished all the Symbiote nests and the last 3 or so story missions, but at this point of the game I was regenerating Surge like crazy with either character and had near on-demand access to a ridiculous damage boost & cooldown regen with Peter or all the Finisher attacks I could dream of with Miles. Every fight that wasn't the final boss against Venom was extremely unengaging as a result. And I was playing on the hardest difficulty the entire playthrough! The combat should not be putting me to sleep when I'm playing on what should be the most demanding experience the game has available! Especially at the climax of the entire goddamn story! But, as I said, I don't know if the Surge mechanic worked like this the whole game or just during the last few missions, so this isn't a negative I weigh heavily.

Speaking of the story, this is a good a time as any to switch to that topic since I've pretty much said all my praise for the game already. To borrow the phrase from my sister, the story of this game is 'some horse'. Which is, to say, it's ass. It is dookie dog shit. To be clear, I do not like the story in this game. At all. A Carnage DLC would likely only strengthen that opinion. Since this review is likely going to be the new longest thing I've written on this site (shameless plug, deal with it), I'll try to spare you all the excruciating details on how various parts of this game's story stack up with their comic book counterparts and condense as hard as I can, but first I need to talk about Richard Donner and verisimilitude.

For the unaware, Richard Donner was an American filmmaker and film producer responsible for directing a handful of episodes of TV westerns and also a little-known 1978 film you maybe haven't ever heard of known as Superman. He's the man responsible for defining the shape of the superhero blockbuster, to the point that Kevin Feige (once an employee of Donner's), the man responsible for running the MCU into the ground, is quoted with saying he has watched the film every time before he piles more MCU slop into the trough. Perhaps one of Donner's most famous quotes is his mantra for how a film can achieve 'verisimilitude':

"Be truthful. Honor the source material. Believe it, and take it seriously."

Donner believed in the power of comics as a medium to tell enriching, moving stories at a time when they weren't taken seriously. He knew that if he presented fans with a vision that reflected that belief, one that showed the source material as what it was rather than what Hollywood wanted it to be, then he could make a great adaptation, and he absolutely did.

To me, almost every aspect of this game's story shows a complete disregard for the various eras of the source material it pulls from.

Insomniac's take on Venom sucks. The back of the box of the physical version states you can battle various Spider-Man foes in this game like Kraven, Sandman, and also 'an original take on Venom'. This Venom is not an original take. The version of Venom here is Venom in name alone. He's a mishmash of powers and iconography from modern implementations of the character coupled with an origin story that doesn't commit to making him akin to an arch-rival for Peter, and Harry Osborn is thrown into the mix for some fucking reason as if this poor boy hasn't suffered enough. His fire weakness is explicitly written out in a really ugly move unlike a movie like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 where the whole fire weakness is subtly sidestepped because it never becomes important to the film, and using Harry as the host for Venom rather than Eddie Brock means the game is never able to sell the idea that Harry/Venom despise Peter for what they perceive as his slights against them, which is still something the game tries to go for, though like everything else that happens after Peter gets the symbiote, is incredibly rushed. Venom's motivations are thus swapped from wanting to make Peter's life hell to something more akin to Carnage or Knull's motivations to simply spread and take over as many hosts as possible. Harry thinks he wants this because it's how he can 'heal the world', but why does Venom want this? Your guess is as good as mine.

Speaking of Harry, lets talk about the Osborns. In the comics, the main sticking point between Harry and Norman is that Harry never feels good enough for Norman's expectations thanks to Norman's general coldness and how much better he treats Peter. Harry thus ends up resentful of Peter and has a very complicated relationship with his father, which this game just does not convey at all because, well, everything Norman has done in the previous game and this one has been for Harry's sake. He absolutely loves the shit out of his son (& there is sparse evidence to point to the fact that he sucks letting Harry know that) to the point he is willing to endanger everyone around him if it means keeping Harry safe. There's one scene where Norman hugs Peter, says he thinks of him like a son and thanks him for being Harry's friend, and Harry overhears all this from the doorway and there's all the classic sinister undertones you'd expect reflected on Harry, but also, like,

Where the fuck was any of this before? Are we seriously trying to set up the whole Osborn family dynamic here? Now? Halfway through the game? There was a whole flashback scene to Peter and Harry in high school in the first two hours of the game that could have had some dialogue to establish this earlier, but instead what we get feels like Insomniac waiting to the last possible moment to set up what should be the emotional crux to show the audience how Harry will merge with Venom.

Perhaps I should have fit this somewhere when I was still talking about Venom, but this game uses so many symbiotes when it is already full to bursting with minor villains in the first half that results in a thoroughly bloated package throughout. Carnage is obviously being set up for a DLC, Scream shows up with MJ as a host briefly, and Peter gets Anti-Venom at the end in a kinda similar way to how it happened in the comics when the character was first introduced. Most of these (Scream especially, good lord) end up coming across as cheap eye-candy, key-jingly moments for spectacle to make the player point at the screen like the Leonardo DiCaprio meme every time the game throws another character from the comics they weren't expecting to be in this game at them to the point it feels like whoever was writing this game just really fucking wanted to clock out early and go home to play with their action figures.

I need to pivot to Miles real quick to expand on this 'playing with action figures' analogy and how so much of the writing is sacrificed in favor of the key-jinglefest the writers want to have. The first half of the game frames Miles' arc around him having to learn how to define himself outside of being Spider-Man to write a college admission essay. He's constantly shown struggling to get any words typed, often abandoning the task to answer the call of duty. The game spends a lot of time setting this whole essay issue up similar to Miles' essay assignment in Into The Spider-Verse, but whereas that film's essay is basically not important at all after it is assigned to Miles, the film references it again during the end in a very smooth way to show that the whole film was always centered around answering that essay ('Not about physics, but about you. What kind of person you want to be.') It ties into his arc in that film very naturally. Here, Miles basically has his entire character arc put on hold because he has to help Peter not turn into evil space gremlin. The essay isn't even mentioned again until a post credit scene where Miles talks the whole thing down to Hailey before they kiss and are interrupted because it turns out Miles' mom's new boyfriend is Cindy Moon's (AKA Silk's) dad. Holy cannoli! Wowee! Look mom, it's the comic book character who canonically makes herself and Peter so uncontrollably horny that whenever they're alone they just pop a perc and get straight to fuckin'! Holy smokes, they're going to introduce her in the next game! Or maybe a DLC! Maybe she'll get her own spin-off game like Miles did!!!!! Who gives a shit about Miles' character now that the writers bought themselves a new action figure to play with! Peak! PEEEAK!!!

This game really digs into some of the more annoying 'Triple A Video Game' writing trends during the boss fights, where the characters will just incessantly talk back and forth to each other while they fight. Not short, canned quips about how much of the other person's ass they're kicking, but with the really kind of important shit you wish had been resolved at a point when you're trying to focus on not getting gobsmacked by an undodgeable attack or a blue-threat attack that feels like it never gives you enough warning to dodge correctly. Scream is especially horrible about this, with the game taking the opportunity to basically give Peter and MJ an impromptu couples' counseling session as Scream/MJ talks about how much Peter has fucked up recently while he tries to build up the Focus to work through his girlfriend's four fucking health bars. It's worth noting Venom also has four health bars, but at least you swap between Peter and Miles throughout that fight and thus what all three of them yap about is a lot more dynamic, with Harry accusing Peter of abandoning their dream for Miles and berating Miles for wasting so much of Peter's time.

This takes me back to Donner's verisimilitude and the game's general sense of bloat. It's clear that the story here was much more ambitious than the first game, but I think Insomniac bit off way more than they could ever hope to chew. A lot of what should be important character dialogue is instead pushed into 'emotional high' boss fights that for the most part play the same hand simply because there isn't anywhere else to put the dialogue without making the story much longer and more expensive to implement.

This game is only 'true' to the source in that it is simply not false. There is no 'honor' in throwing cameo after cameo at you when these appearances end up basically divorced from their original context. There is no 'belief' shown to the source material in chopping off the back half of a story like Kraven's Last Hunt and replacing it with what would optimistically be a really middling episode of What If?..., and there is absolutely nothing 'taken seriously' in a story that ends Miles' arc with the same disinterested bravado as the 'Please Wrap It Up' prompt from The Game Awards before throwing another pointless cameo at you.

I hate this story so much. It's old hat for Spider-Man fans to be fiercely opinionated when it comes to 'debating' the topic of which movies or which Spider-Men are the best, but genuinely, I cannot see a case for this being anyone's favorite Spider-Man universe. Believe me, I want to understand it. I think about the shitstorm that fans of this game brewed up when it won nothing at The Game Awards and desperately wish that these people actually had a point, that the dog humping Hideo Kojima's leg that is Geoff Keighley really did have it out for us Spider-Man fans, but unironically I think this game deserved to win nothing. The combat is fine, the traversal works, but the story shit the crib so hard you'd think the pillows were unpainted.

As I experienced Harry succumb to the frailty of his own body before allowing Peter the chance to try and save his life, I wanted to be crying. Here was a man being brought back from the brink of despair, willing to try and fix his mistakes even if it meant forfeiting his life, surrounded by people who loved and cared for him, even if in his darkest moments he had pushed them all away. This is the 'balance' Aunt May talked about at the start of the game. To recognize your burdens alongside the burdens of others and carry that weight together. It's honestly beautiful.

But I didn't cry this time.