After realizing that I could not be trusted to play a reasonable amount of Baldur’s Gate 3, I made the decision to swap my evening video game time back to Spider-Man 2 rather than carry on staying up way too late every single night. It wasn’t a difficult decision, to be honest. I’ve already beaten BG3 and while there’s a lot of fun to be had in the game, I recognize an unhealthy coping mechanism when I see one and that game is one from its character creator to its epilogue (for me, specifically. And, you know, probably other people as well). So, I returned to Spider-Man 2 and my relatively new save file, complete with a lot less podcast listening time than I prefered and fears about being as underwhelmed by the game as so many other people seemed to be. A lot of people have decried the game as being annoyingly short and while that doesn’t necessarily deter me (I love a game that won’t take 100 hours to beat just as much as I love a good game that takes 100 hours to beat), it had me putting off the game so I could savor it longer. Now that I’m back into it, though, I kinda regret putting it off as much as I have since it’s actually my favorite of the trio (Spider-Man: Remastered, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Spider-Man 2).

I mentioned in my review of SM:MM that I really appreciated the way that the game focused more on the sort of local superhero work that I prefered. Of course, Spider-Man: Remastered wasn’t exactly a huge game (Spider-Man 2 has the largest map and probably the most activities thanks to the additional districts, though I will add that they aren’t as monotonous as the activities in SM:R), but it does focus almost exclusively on large threats, superheroics, and supervillainy. I still enjoyed the game since it set a down a great formula for traversal and populating the world with stuff to do, but it is, in retrospect, clearly the first in a growing series. Everything that SM:MM improved from SM:R has been improved again for SM2. Traversal is smoother, though not without its hiccups. That said, those hiccups are mostly because the physics is a little less forgiving than it used to be, especially around smaller, more precise movements that would take you into alleys, swinging between buildings, or just skirting through some of the more densely filled urban areas. This shift in physicas, though, can be made to work in your favor with the right moves and a small adaption to the way you get around the city. Momentum is more difficult to preserve than it used to be, but you can also get moving a whole lot faster than you used to, even without using the various wind currents they’ve added to game that let you travel around without needing to pay as much attention to where you’re going. It can be a little rough, trying to leave one of those wind streams before the exit, but using the “web wings” can be a little rough in general since you need to unlock traversal upgrades to make them more maneuverable. Still, even though the map is bigger, I rarely feel bored with moving around the city if only because I actually have to analyze the terrain ahead of me and plot out what method of traversal I should use to continue along my way. Gone are the days of being able to just use one method all the way across the map. Now you’ve gotta change it up pretty constantly if you want to maintain speed.

Combat as a whole hasn’t changed much. The bones and much of the body are the same. The accessories are pretty different, though, since most of the abilities and gadgets work on a time-based recharge system that can be overridden via unlocked powerups to provide bonuses gadget uses, instant refills, and more. There’s also fewer of them. Gone is your wheel of options. It has been replaced by a selection dial tied to pressing one of the bumper buttons and then hitting one of the four buttons on the right side of the controller’s face. I keep messing up the controlls, since I’m used to swapping gadgets in and out, but I’m also a lot less reliant on those gadgets than I used to be. Maybe because I haven’t figured out the killer combos to make some of them super powered (the ol’ web grenade and concussive blast combo could take out entire crowds), but they do just seem like they’re less powerful than they used to be. You unlock them all much earlier, sure, but they generally don’t seem to do much without a bunch of upgradges when you can just combo your enemies into the dirt. The enemy variety seems to have grown, especially for being so early in the game still, but most of the tactics I learned in the first game are still applicable [I will add, though, that I’m much further in the game now and the only new enemies added are a few weapon-slinging heavies, so this variety is pretty much the extent of it). There’s a cool parry ability now, but I mostly still try to dodge attacks since that usually sets me up for more attacks by breaking enemy focus on where I used to be while the parry can leave me open to attacks from ranged enemies.

Where this game shines above and beyond every previous game, firmly landing itself in my Number 1 Favorite Spider-Man Game position, is the gameplay. Not only have I gotten to play my normal Spider-Man game, full of web slinging, web swinging, and beat ’em up battles, but I also got to play a rhythm game in a VR exhibit and ride my bike around after my best friend while listening to a song that broke my heart because it was specifically design to stab me directly in my emotional core (as was the second song that played in that same sequence when I was playing HORSE with said best friend (which are, respectively, “Cigarette Daydreams” by Cage the Elephant and “New Slang” by The Shins). This game decided that there would be portions of the game that stuck witih the old formula, but that a significant chunk of the game would shift from being largely open and about exploring to being a tightly controlled storytelling experience. An experience that swept me up so tightly that I didn’t feel constricted at all, until I messed up in a later sequence that made me realize that the controls for riding your bike are absolutely horrible the instant you’re not moving forward at a steady pace. Heaven forbid you need to loop back around or turned the wrong direction and have to spin around to go the other way in a somewhat confined space.

Still, the experience I had in those tightly-controlled storytelling moments was worth the mild annoyance of clumsy bike controls. Every time the game has overridden the normal soundtrack to play a song in a somewhat more restricted and theatrical style gameplay moment has been absolutely emotionally impactedful. Hell, even wandering around on foot in Coney Island, going from amusement to amusement was great. Sure, all the games and rides where marked as quest items to complete so I knew where to go at all times, but there were also a bunch of smaller interaction spots you could easily miss that would give you a chance to stop walking around for a little bit and talk to whichever of your two companions stuck around for your stop. More than anything else, this game has heart in a way that I genuinely didn’t think I’d find in a Spider-Man game. Sure, God of War: Ragnarok proved that AAA games aren’t devoid of that kind of emotionality and impact the way I’d feared they had become (as is the outcome of pretty much anything designed by comittee or executives), but once is a fluke. Twice… Well, that’s enough to give me hope for the future.

Even if it emotionally devestated me at the time. I found a particular side quest that was one of those moments that included a change to the audio (the track played here was an amazingly tuned up version of “Seabird” by the Alessi Brothers that sounds even better than the 2019 version of the track) that has me tearing up even as I’m writing this, almost twenty-four hours after I played through it. I knew what was coming even as I worked my way through the side quest and I was still destroyed by how it ended. I had to put the controller down and take a few minutes to process my emotions before I could go back to playing and I wound up being too distraught to go to sleep when my bedtime rolled around. It was rough and beautiful and just such a human moment.

Which is where this game truly excells, even beyond my comparison to past Spider-Man games. All of those small-time, local superheroism moments from SM:MM are back, but even more locally focused than before. Sure, sometimes you’re trying to find a missing person or tracking down the memory crystals of a supervillain you fought in the game’s opening (humanizing him in a way that makes it abudantly clear that his story is also a tragedy and that he was a victim himself even if he went on to make a lot more victims when he lost control), but sometimes you’re sitting on a bench with an old man who wandered off and got lost in memories of the past that he’s trying to hold onto as he senses his life beginning to fade. Or you’re taking time out of your day to encourage a young photographer who wants to take some pictures of you to help launch her career. Or just showing up to help someone whose truck is stuck in a pile of sand from that initial villain fight. This whole game is about the people in the world, that way things change, and how we, as groups and individuals, respond to that change. Even the supervillains from the past seem to be a part of that message, some of them trying to rehabilitate themselves because, ultimately, they never really hurt that many people. Like Tombstone. He tried to expand the gang ways in the vaccuum left by the Kingpin’s disappearance in the first game (Spider-Man: Remastered), but Spider-Man stopped him before he was able to do much and he’s out on parole now, trying to turn his life around. It’s a really interesting moment that marks the first time the main plot of the game showings this particular message of change and becoming a better person, though there’s plenty of side questions that do it just as well, if not better.

I’m excited to go play more of the game, since I think I’m about a third of the way through the main story of the game (I still have lots of mystery powers I’ve yet to unlock on both the Spider-Men), so I’m going to knock off here for the night by recommend that you play the game. Even if you haven’t played the others, Spider-Man 2 does an alright job of filling you in when you start playing and filling in necessary details for returning characters as they come up. I’d still recommend playing the previous games though, since they’re a fun experience on their own, but you can definitely just start here and play the others later if you want to fill in some of the blanks.