Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Can't Just Be More Of The Same

thegamer.com:

Marvel’s Spider-Man is an amazing Spider-Man. See what I did there? Insomniac created the greatest (neoliberal attitude aside) iteration of the webhead we’ve ever seen in games. Exploration, combat, and storytelling all felt true to previous versions of the character while simultaneously pushing things forward for the better. It’s a game that I and so many others loved, but it was also very predictable.

While it evolved the universe with its excellent web-swinging, so much of Marvel’s Spider-Man was defined by filler content that pulled from the worst of open world design conventions. Despite launching in 2018, the majority of side activities feel dragged from the start of the decade, not the end of it. You’d gather backpacks filled with collectables strewn about the city, catch escaped pigeons for a friendly stranger, or complete generic traversal challenges that quickly begin to repeat themselves. It all grows a bit rote.

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These activities are perfectly fine in isolation, but you are continually bombarded with new side missions housing new unlockables that are scattered across Manhattan. Taking time to complete them is worthwhile given the experience points and suit rewards, but it always felt like a means to an end instead of actually having fun with the game itself. I’d set the marker on my map and swing between things like an obedient robot, no longer feeling like a superhero but instead a good little spider cleaning up the city to reach full completion.

Miles Morales improved upon things with more story-driven quests that placed a focus on our titular character’s place in the city. He was a young man from Harlem