Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Took One Major Step Back From The First Two Games

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is a huge improvement over its predecessors in many ways, with a larger map, faster traversal, a game-changing fast-travel system, and the ability to swap between both Peter Parker and Miles Morales' Spider-Men. However, for those who played the previous titles in Insomniac Games' acclaimed superhero series, it can feel like the newest entry has taken a step back in one specific area: the game's gadgets.

[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2]

Insomniac has streamlined the combat system in so that players can simply press one of the shoulder buttons and any of the face buttons on the PS5's DualSense controller for special moves. Using L1 and a face button activates one of Peter or Miles' unique special abilities, such as Miles' bioelectric «Venom»- not to be confused with the symbiotic villain of the sequel — or Peter's symbiote powers, and pressing R1 and a face button uses one of the duo's shared array of gadgets.

Unfortunately, in order to streamline this system, there are fewer gadgets available in and the radial Gadget Select menu of the previous games has been removed. Web Shooters are the default for tapping R1 on its own, and there are only four others which are activated with the face buttons. The Web Grabber pulls enemies and items toward each other, Ricochet Web will bounce between multiple targets, Concussion Burst emits a powerful sonic wave and is particularly useful when taking on Symbiotes later in the game, and Upshot is a small drone-type device that blasts enemies into the air.

The L1 abilities system was introduced in as a way to explore his new unique Venom abilities, and that game did have fewer gadgets when compared to the amount in. This made sense as Peter