I’ve played through Spider-Man 2 and we’ve got to talk. First, yes there are several glitches where they could’ve possibly delayed it a week or two, to iron out. It’s not bad, just a bit annoying stuff like you can have animations going through one another or you won’t get the correct action prompt to allow you to move to a certain place. These aren’t game breaking and the game is still miles better than anything coming from others.

Those few glitches are layered on top of some of the best animation work and detail. The city didn’t blow me away in any of the games, but the detail is impressive. You see individual sand grains in the sand where you fought Sandman. The foiliage around looks great and there’s more NPCs and cars than ever.

How do I feel about Spider-Man 2? I feel it is a tale of two stories and some missed opportunities. It is not the Arkham City that is was claimed to be and it’s because of Insomniac’s choices. The first game is still the better one and MM was too.

Going with two Spidermen could’ve worked, but it didnt. For the first 10 hours it had its moments, but I kept just getting bored. Then I realized I was playing as Miles and that’s the main issue, a lot of the Miles missions are lame. Peter is over here with a new lab, Harry is back, MJ moved in and the Venom stuff. Pete even gets all the special ability suits in the story. When this is happening, Miles is helping dudes ask dudes out to homecoming, helping find granddads or standing up for his community. In fact, Miles best missions are the ones where he’s helping Peter directly like getting him out the Venom. It’s like when I’d play as Peter it was like, the game wanted to be a good game again. Though even for Peter, the story does start out slow and maybe gets a little too cutsceney and handholdy. I initially didn’t care too much and was kind of put off.

I found it a bit jarring the characters look a fair bit older and slightly different now. Their VAs are still good and characters are still likable and I had no complaints for the most part. I will say I never liked Genki, he’s annoying and I want to tell him shut up, he uses that same Marvel humor and again not saying anything. Then there’s that Danikas chick or whatever, who adds nothing to the game. Why is Yuri so angry and Spider-Man can’t tell her anything in her pursuit of absolute justice? She was also a cool character in the first game. Black Cat was in the game for about 5 mins and used a Dr. Strange type portal and left. Bye Felicia.

Gameplay wise it’s actually really good, the web slinging and fighting feel great. One thing I wish they did was to have Peter and Miles have more unique abilities. Many of them in each of their skill trees serve the same purpose, but are different colors. It would’ve been cool if just Miles had the flight suit and Peter had to swing for example. Now the MJ sections like the first game are nice change of pace. She’s stealthy and isnt picking dudes up and body slamming them. I enjoyed that shooting section towards the end. From the Spidermen perspective, one annoying thing was I felt the regular enemies took a few too many hits. I absolutely hate those green symbiotes, besides that I didn’t mind fighting the others.

How is Kraven? I wished they introduced him differently but he grew on me. I never knew who he was, but he starts to feel unique in terms of villains. He really needed more screen time. Random thought, I don’t know why they didn’t show how he beat Vulture, you just see his wings. The Venom is the crazy symbiotic we know. When it’s controlling Peter, just made him sound like a rebellious teen a lot of times. But Harry was more convincing, he starts breaking stuff and you get a better sense it’s a part of him. But why was it so helpful to him for so long?

Side missions aren’t as good to me, you don’t have to many storylines. There’s the one with Yuri about tracking down the fire cult leader, that abruptly ends! There’s a few other self contained ones but nothing mind blowing. I looked up some and yeah I don’t really care to play them. Another thing, I don’t like having five different versions of the enemy bases/strongholds you got the Sand Man rocks, Mysterio portals, the Hunter blinds, the fire bases and the Venom nests. There slight differences between them but it’s not anything that significant.

Now we got to get to the race part of this. I feel they truly did Miles dirty. The writing for him is similar to one of my issues with the new God of Wars, where people are talking but no one is saying anything. There were times I had a blast playing Pete, get into a Miles mission and after a while got bored, turn it off, and go to sleep. The whole revenge plot with Martin Li falls flat. Another thing, stop with this criminal forgiveness and reform stuff, it failed in Spidey 3, failed in No Way Home and fails here. I actually really like Nadji Jeter, he brings the innocent up and comer feel to Miles and, in the earlier games it provided a good change of pace to Peter. The interaction between him and his mom is also a unique touch.

Now let’s talk about racism in this. Alright the Miles Morales game was pretty good and loved it captured the unique feel of Christmas in Spidey. You don’t really see that too much. But there was a few things that didn’t sit right with me. I have an issue with a mixed guy being portrayed as a black guy. It’s funny because people will say he’s black then talk about “fine ass momma” who isn’t black. This happened a lot with the Spiderverse films. In the Miles Morales game, they then did what seemed to be taking shots. One of which being when you have to get the sounds uncle Aaron had made for making beats when him and Jefferson were rapping back in the day. It just seemed a bit derogatory for my taste.

In Spidey 2, they pull out the agenda checklist. For Peter they talked about global warming for a little bit, but Miles was on a new level. They’re taking the agendas of white liberals and putting them onto others. Ask yourself why isn’t Peter helping that dude ask his bf to homecoming? Why is Miles stuck doing silly school missions while Peter’s doing the foot work. Then we got Miles saying he needs to stand for his community, and we know what community they’re talking about. That’s fine but it’s the stereotypical “black man” fighting the evil white man we’ve heard a million times. It’s mostly white liberals who made this and think they’re saying something prolific. Taking away from a game’s story to be a cricket in a field of singing crickets. A guy I follow on twitter that says some good stuff, said that when another guy brought up the agendas in this, that woke is anything that makes white conservatives uncomfortable. My response is that is you should be very uncomfortable too. They are taking all the non whites and separating into POC and whites, you know racism. Plus they’re injecting their agenda in that group. Quick history lesson the BiPoC and the earlier Black and Brown unity was a myth created in the 70s. Before that Asians, Indians, Native Ams, Latins (as they were called then) and many mulattos went to white schools, bathrooms and lunch counters. In fact many Latins went to court to keep segregation and stay classified as white. Not to say they didn’t face racism, they did but were regarded as exotic whites.

The ending fight was cool though it felt like Venom was spamming. Not going to liethe Harry Peter thing got emotional and the G serum flew over some peoples heads. If they’re trying to turn it over to Miles they did a bad job, because they all went through something crazy. I felt it got contrived when Peter after going through it all and asking if the city still needs him. Miles helped but Pete was the driving force. Is Miles the new main Spider-Man? I’m not sure, but I would be open to it, if the writing in this didn’t show where they were going with it. For that I can’t co-sign it. I like Miles but the writers see Miles as an agenda peddling exposition dump and I don’t want to see him go out like that. For some reason, there’s dudes that think people voicing concerns are racist crying about a “black” or Puerto Rican Spider-Man, sounds good but no. Before thinking it’s racist, imagine if Peter went to Wakanda and T’Challa gave him the suit and he was now Black Panther. You would hear the same folks saying Marvel is whitewashing and getting folks accounts banned, when the whites said quit crying you racists.

The easiest was to describe the game isn’t too dissimilar to Zelda Twilight Princess. You had some big highs but also some of the biggest lows. Is it GOTY? I’m pretty sure TOTK will be. Spider-Man 2018 was better in every way outside of graphics but it’s still a fairly good game. I wouldn’t pay $70 for it though, unless you’re a big Spidey fan.