 Spider-Man 2 has become the best Spider-Man video game of all time. While I've always had my gripes with certain aspects of these games, mostly in Insomniac's first Spider-Man game, much less in Spider-Man Miles Morales, this second game does what every sequel should do. It massively expands on the first game's traversal mechanics, graphical quality, and the map which the game has played on. I played this game for 18 hours straight, and it only took me one 2-hour nap to keep me going all the way through. By the way, if you'd like to see my entire gameplay footage, you can check out the two VODs in the live streaming category in my channel. It's literally just me playing the game, like, front to back through the whole story mode. You can watch me get my ass beat by the final boss, even though I was only on amazing difficulty. Okay, my excuse is that I only had 2 hours of sleep, otherwise I had already been playing the game for like 8 hours, okay? Damn you're such a noob, bro, backseat gaming, get the fuck out my chat. So let's first talk about the one thing I've been up Insomniac's ass about since day one, the swinging mechanics. In the first game, it takes a bit to realize, but you'll actually find that the web slinging feels a bit automated when compared to the other Spider-Man titles. A video that explains this phenomenon way better than I could is the problem with swinging in Spider-Man games by Darkspace. He basically concludes that Insomniac's swinging sacrifices your freedom as a player for keeping you moving in-game as smoothly as possible. Peter will automatically park or over any objects you encounter, and some web slings just look incredibly wrong at some angles, as if the game engine skewed them to be in this weird predetermined way. The swinging also feels like this in Spider-Man 2, that is, until you go to the settings and turn this slider all the way down. And if you're a real Spider-Man, you'll also turn on the fall damage. After these changes, the swinging is so much more immersive, and it's so much more rewarding as a player because it finally feels like you've taken the training wheels off of this game. Not only does the swinging feel great given a few adjustments, but so do the web wings. At first, I was vocally against web gliding, but given how it's implemented into this game, it is not a feature that feels slapped on. It actually feels like something you need to get around the world in certain situations. Before, it often felt like Spider-Man would be capped at an unsatisfying top speed, but now it feels like you're going so fast that you could actually fucking hurt yourself if you hit a wall. Bro, I went off at like 12 and wake up at 5 and see this motherfucker still streaming. What respect, bro. Thank you. I've been streaming since like fucking 11 o'clock, guys. I have been awake maybe a little too long. Not to leave out these fucking slingshot stations on fucking random buildings on the map. You can just plop yourself down and shoot yourself off fast as shit with these fucking random ass machines, man. Who fucking, who built these? You can also do this slingshot move wherever you want. It doesn't have to be at the station. It just won't be as fast without one. I have to say, given all the upgrades you can acquire and all the new shit you can do with the swinging in this game, whether it be the polishing of the mechanics from previous games like the Tasm 2 slingshot compared to the Spider-Man 2 slingshot or the inclusion of older features like the loop-to-loop from the last Spider-Man and all the added traversal options, this might just be the best Spider-Man game in terms of movement. Before I might have handed it to like Ultimate Spider-Man or Spider-Man 2 because of Insomniac's previously iffy swinging, despite its well thought out parkour mechanics, but now it genuinely feels like I can confidently hand first place to Insomniac. It took you three games to get it right. Good job. I'm very proud of you. But speaking of the webwings, I actually have like one or two nitpicks when it comes to how they're implemented with certain in-game costumes. Now the main motherfucker who started this whole web gliding trend is this goddamn dickhead right here. I don't mean to be so mean. I actually think he looks good in this costume. But when you use the webwings, it's still the same default webwing design and not the one from the MCU, which would make sense. Now I know some of you might be thinking of blowing up my house for such a nitpick as this, but it makes a lot more sense when you see that certain skins are actually given alternate webwing designs in some scenarios. Most of them belonging to Miles. Of the five alternate webwing designs I've found so far, three of them belong to Miles and Peter only has two. Now normally I wouldn't be complaining, but if you're going to give a new webwing design to a costume that doesn't even canonically have webwings, why not go back to give an accurate design to the Spider-Man suits that already have the webwings in universe. Those being the Stark suit, which for some reason is called the updated classic this time, and the far from home suit. Shit, I'd throw it on every MCU's Spidey skin just to be saved. Anyway, small rant aside, I can live without them. It's just something I had to bring up. I'm sorry for yelling. Alright, now let's talk about combat. Now I don't know if this is a hot take, but I actually prefer the combat in the last two games over this one. There's certain things about them. The one thing I like about the updated combat in this game is that it doesn't let you heal your focus until you at least have one full bar. So you can no longer heal with just a tiny bit of focus. You now need like one full ass, meaty ass bar. This makes the game much harder, which fixes some issues I've seen a few people complain about. The first game's combat tends to be pretty easy, even on ultimate difficulty. Not only that, but the game also expands on the combat so much more in terms of what you can do without the added spider legs, venom powers, or symbiot abilities. But those set abilities are worked into the combat in a much less satisfying way this time. I really liked the way the venom powers worked in Miles Morales. Using your focus bars to determine which venom attack you could use? It was so much easier to keep track of, but now it just feels like my eyes are scrambling all over the HUD to try to find out what I can and can't do in combat because each of the abilities have their own separate cooldowns which are located at the bottom of the screen, which is the exact opposite side of the screen compared to where the focus and health meter is, and I'm shooting my eyes up and down the screen trying to look at shit. The gadgets are also mapped to this same shitty screen bottom wheel, but on the complete opposite side of the screen this time, horizontally, fuck. What is this bullshit, dude? My fucking eyes are all over the goddamn place trying to look at the UI for this goddamn shit. I'm getting my ass smacked by fucking symbiotes and Craven's fucking BDSM Hunter fucking people. I'm getting fucked over here trying to look at the UI and fight at the same time, god damn it. There's so much shit going on. Before most of the gadgets felt like an honest addition to Spider-Man's arsenal, but now it's just a bunch of random bullshit that lightly aligns with something Spider-Man would use. I don't know, I just, I miss the old web gadgets and the ones in Miles Morales were just as bad as these new ones. These gadgets haven't been good since the first game. I don't care how easy they make things, okay? It makes sense that Spider-Man would have them and I'd prefer them over this random weird bullshit that feels so ineffective. But even if the abilities weren't weirdly mapped, they still can be fun to use in game, even if they are a bit annoying to pull off. But let me complain about those stupid fucking Peter arms even more now that I actually have played the game. These arms just feel really clunky and stupid and taking them out of the game would genuinely benefit the plot. During the game, light spoilers ahead by the way, skip to this time if you want to avoid this discussion, Peter keeps the symbiote for way longer than he needs to because he feels like he needs it to make him a better Spider-Man. But Peter could still use those overpowered L1 abilities before he even got the black suit. They were just via the use of his stupid robo arms. If the player wasn't given these stupid ass arms, they instead would only have access to whatever Spider-Man could do in combat. And then once you get the black suit, you would understand why Peter becomes way more powerful because he has these L1 abilities now. You would understand why he feels this way. You would feel more powerful as the player because when you're playing as Peter Parker, you would have nothing. You would just have the basic combat and you switch over to Miles, you're like, wow, Miles is way more powerful. You'll go back to Peter, you'll feel like, fuck, I can't do any of the Miles shit. Once you get the black suit, you'll be like, damn, now I'm just as powerful as Miles. Sorry, fuck, I'm just as powerful as Miles, if not more powerful, right? You wouldn't want to take it off anymore. You'd kind of understand why Peter's being a dickhead, but no. Peter is only slightly boosted with the symbiote and I didn't really feel a significant difference in power which made me disconnect with Peter being a bit of a cock during the plot of the story, which we'll discuss later or not. I don't really go into the plot that deep because I feel like I need more than one play through to really discuss the plot, so we're only going to lightly talk about it later, not to... Anyway, spoiler over, welcome back my spoiler frightened viewers, let's keep going. To summarize my thoughts, the combat in this game is definitely still fun and in some ways, innovates over the first game while falling short of the previous games in some respects. Alright, let's talk story again, so all my... all my spoiler people, that's right guys, you gotta go to another timecode, get the fuck out. I don't want to go too in-depth because I feel like one play through isn't going to be enough for me to fully break it down as I said, but I'm still going to diagnose a pretty big issue with it. The story just feels like it has a lot of shit that it needs to like cover and conclude and a lot of these conclusions aren't very satisfying when it comes to the collectibles. Sandman shows up in the first act of the game and you're made to go around and collect all these sand crystals all over the city. Now, to me, this kind of made Sandman feel like he had some shit going on in this game, like he would be a bigger player and maybe like a side quest or something because when he took over the fucking city, this was huge, like I thought Sandman was going to go even more in-depth and there would possibly be like more like Sandman content down the line that would be more than just these collectibles, right? We finally get all these collectibles and you're told the story of Sandman being kidnapped by Craven's goons and eventually after finishing this side quest that's set up at the very beginning of the game, it simply just ends with Peter going through some weird sand mirage, fighting more sand fuckers, the ones you've already been fighting this whole game and putting these sand crystals together and just dropping them off at Kimia's house. It's just such a quiet ending for such a huge fucking collectible side quest mission thing or whatever. I feel like some of the other side quests in this game suffer from like this really boring ending issue too. The biggest fucking offender, the biggest fucking offender being the goddamn spider bot mission. Around the map, there are 42, count them, 42 spider bots which give off a very familiar aura, that being of the portal effects from across the spider verse. Now, this whole mission teases that you could possibly be chasing after some other Spider-Man. Now given these hints, I was up this mission's ass trying to find every spider bot on the fucking map. I finally find them all and the game asks me to go to a location on the map where this cutscene plays. Wait, who's Miguel? A cut character from spider verse shows up, takes your spider bots and it's all over just like that. Fuck this mission. The best part about it are these fucking spider bots. And don't act like I got my fucking hopes up either. The first goddamn spider bot that we collect is a 2099 one. Fuck this mission. Anyway, this spider bot rant is more about the ending of the mission itself. Much less a criticism of the game's story. I'm just critiquing certain parts of... I guess you could consider these plots, I guess. But it's like side plots along from the main plot, which I've said that I'm not going to be covering as in-depth because I feel like I need a hole. I need a lot more time, okay? So maybe once New Game Plus comes out, I can give you guys a more in-depth review. But right now, my thoughts on the main story are pretty much just meh. Venom doesn't really feel like much of a character in it, but more like a hulking beast that you need to get rid of or the city will fall to ruin. Once Harry becomes Venom, it sort of just feels like Harry as a character gets lost within him. But it's not enough where like he's a bad character either. You can honestly sympathize with Harry a bit throughout the whole game. Seeing as Peter is like actively killing him by not giving Harry the symbiote back, which has been keeping Harry alive this whole time. Speaking of the Venom plot, Miles has like very little ties to it, like at all. He talks to Harry like only a couple times throughout the game, one of them not even being in a cutscene, so it makes Miles feel very disconnected from whatever's happening with Venom. But the Miles subplot I actually do like is the one where Miles has to learn to let go of his hatred for Mr. Negative for plotting the City Hall bombing that killed his father. Miles has shown how his hatred can make him lose sight of his responsibilities as Spider-Man, and while he knows he'll never forgive Mr. Negative for killing his father, he doesn't want to hold on to that hatred anymore because he knows how it's affecting him as Spider-Man. Honestly, Miles is the only character in this game that I'm actually kind of impressed with in terms of story. Peter's out and about doing your average symbiote Spidey shit, and has to deal with the fallout of his actions afterward. MJ becomes a last of us character, and Harry gets to add 14 inches on top of the national average size of 5 inches. I don't know. The story's just okay. I like that Jameson's ended a bit more than last time. I don't know, it's a video game story. What do you want me to say? It's filled with these super awesome moments for sure, but when it comes to what's going on with the main cast, it's all pretty just, it's alright. But that's okay. We're here to game, not to watch, so I'm not losing sleep over the game's plot. Well, actually I was losing sleep over playing the game, just not over the plot. The game ends with Peter possibly retiring as Spider-Man and maybe passing the torch off to Miles for a while in his new... evolved suit. Why do both of these games force you into whatever suit Insomniac wants to slap on you for the end battle? I understand it's because maybe these two have specific battle damage models they want to use, but come on. This new Miles suit is trash. This one, Peter's in... I actually don't mind it, this one's okay despite the weird random black paneling. It's got nice eyes, and the logo work is really good. They did a good ass job on this one. But this Miles suit? What the fuck are you wearing? In absolutely no way! Is this costume good whatsoever? First of all, first of all, first of all, let me break it down. It places most of its focus on Miles' chest and arms with this big sprawling glowing spider in the red hood. But what's the problem with this, you might ask? The fact that the Spider-Man mask on this costume is almost entirely blank with the only additions being Miles' visible hair and slightly and I mean fucking slightly altered lenses. The hair being out is just not enough to justify this mask's blandness. What this mask really needed was some bigger lenses that incorporate the light blue from the lower portions of the costume. Maybe with some some lens lining, some blue lens lining, like the end of the Spider-Verse and across the Spider-Verse suits do. But no, this mask is almost completely washed out by everything else that's going on with this fucking suit. The legs have no red on them at all, which leaves the bottom of the suit feeling completely naked, which is just something Insomniac just loves doing to their suits for some reason, and the fucking shoes on the bottom. The only thing that leads into the shoes being there are these shitty blue streaks that come out of the belt randomly. If I had to summarize what my problem with this suit is, it's just that the design elements aren't very concise. It just feels like a random mishmash of ideas Insomniac wanted to put on a suit. If I had to compare this to another Spidey suit that has similar issues, I'd probably say the integrated suit. But even that one is much better than this one, and yes, I'd go that fucking far. But some of you might be wondering why I'm complaining so much about this one suit. It's just one suit in a game of many other options. Why does it matter? Because this game lightly implies that this suit will be the one that Miles will be wearing from here on out, and to that I greatly protest. This Miles design is not worthy of the character, and I hope to God I don't see it on the box for Spider-Man Miles Morales 2 or whatever. That across the Spiderverse one is way better than this thing. Even that one is better than this. It's not actually that bad. It's one of my guilty pleasure suits in this game if I'm being completely real. But anyway, that's enough complaining about Insomniac's flippant ability to design good Spider-Man suits. Let's actually talk about some other ones. The Rainy Black suit is a really weird alternate suit for me because it's not treated like a symbiote suit in the game. You see, all the other symbiote suits have symbiote abilities like the black webbing and the symbiote web wings. But whenever you wear the symbiote suit usually the Spider-Arm based abilities are swapped out with symbiote themed ones. Except for the Rainy Black suit, which is still stuck wearing the iron arms when using the L1 abilities while swinging. That's weird. But I guess you can only go half way for the suit that was designed to be a half measure itself. Symbiote suit my ass! This is just a glorified recolor of Spider-Man. The Tasm 2 suit is here. They actually went back to update the textures on this suit a little bit after release and now it looks so much more like the real thing. Shout out to Insomniac for doing this because I feel like otherwise this suit would have fallen victim of the crowd who shits on Insomniac for not making perfect one-to-one replicas of the film suits. What actually is kind of sad to see is that all of the suits from pre-existing Spider-Man films don't actually get to have recolors. That's actually a huge shame because despite my complaining in previous videos most of these recolors are actually pretty alright. It's a very fun. There are some stinkers though no doubt. Some of my favorites are the Webman variants for the classic and advanced 2.0 suit. All of the Spider-Man 2099 recolors. Any of the Miles recolors that give him Peter's color scheme and all of the recolors of the spectacular classic black suit you'll unlock near the end of the game. I definitely need to do a video covering every in-game suit which will be coming soon no doubt. But that pretty much wraps up my main thoughts after completing this game. It was a really fun ride and I'm definitely not done covering it and I will tell you my thoughts on it in further videos later down the line. Was it worth the $80 I paid for it? Absolutely, but that's only because I'm like a crack addict for Spider-Man. And the $80 version comes with extra suits so if you don't want to have to bust out the Narcan I'd just get the regular version. It's still a really good game but then again, why do I consider it the best Spider-Man game? It's simple really. The traversal mechanics gut all the bad parts from the last game, albeit through the options menu. Making the swinging absolutely perfect when combined with the already great parkour mechanics the sheer amount of Spider-Man suits and variants to choose from the fact you can play as not one but two Spider-Man that are both really fun to control. No game has really done all of these things before at least not like Spider-Man 2 has. Spider-Man 2 has the benefit of feeling like an amalgamation of so many previous Spider-Man titles a lot of them being juggernauts in the Spider-Man video game lineage in their own right. Web of shadows and shattered dimensions for how it uses the symbiote to corrupt the city implementing its symbiote into combat respectively. And of course Marvel's Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man Miles Morales for all the amazing features from previous games. With that I can definitely say this has to be the greatest Spider-Man game. I will see you all next time when I rank all 78 in-game suits and just talk about the game in the future. So subscribe if you want more Spider-Man content especially Spider-Man 2 content fucking get over here dude subscribe you should just do it. I talk about Spider-Man all the time you might see me talking about some niche Spider-Man shit you've never heard of something you might be interested in you know I got videos coming out I'm also making my own Spider-Man show which is coming it's it's still coming guys I'm gonna get back to work on it when Spider-Man 2 hype dies down Man this game was a long time coming I'm satisfied with it if there's one thing if there's one thing I have to I will say in the end credits section the game feels really fucking empty like after you complete it like you can't go back and play older missions unless you start a new save like come on no new game plus this time I can't even change the night at the time of day I don't think they've even put that in yet I'm still playing on daytime I check the menus menus won't let me change the time of day maybe I didn't look there early enough I'll probably look again still good game good game 10 out of 10