Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Trailer Splits the Spotlight
With the game’s release just over two weeks away, Sony is getting gamers psyched for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 by releasing a new trailer. It’s short and features no actual gameplay, but it’s got plenty of superhero action to whet the appetite of PS5 owners hungry for more Spidey. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a sequel to Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, with Spider-Man and his Ultimate Universe counterpart (which was altered in the games) taking the lead in a story dealing with the alien symbiote that will become Venom. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be available for the PlayStation 5 – and only the PlayStation 5 – on October 20, 2023, and you can see the new trailer below:
My feelings on this are kind of moot since I don’t have a PS5, but I’m not overly interested. I mostly loved Marvel’s Spider-Man, but parts of the story annoyed me. I hate what they did to Mary Jane; she’s not the same character in any way aside from having red hair and calling Peter Parker “Tiger,” and she gets annoying fast. (If I were Peter, I’d have left her ungrateful ass in the terrorist-occupied Grand Central Station and told her to save herself; then, I’d have seen what Black Cat was up to.) And I hate how they integrated Miles Morales; he’s no longer an alternate-universe version but a part of the main Marvel Universe from the beginning. He also came about entirely too quickly; Doctor Octopus just emerged, and Green Goblin isn’t even a thing yet, but here’s Miles! And now he not only got an entire game to himself (which is fine; he has his fans, and there’s no reason they can’t have a game devoted to him), but Peter is relegated to being the co-lead in the main Spidey games. Do you have any doubt he’s going to be the one to pull Peter back from the symbiote-inspired darkness by defeating him in battle? I have no desire to beat up Spider-Man as Miles Morales.
However, as a game divorced from its story, it’s probably a lot of fun. Marvel’s Spider-Man had fantastic gameplay, taking a heavy Arkham influence and tailoring it to Spidey and his specific abilities and tone. Swinging around Manhattan fighting crime is such a pleasure that I played through the entire game three times, including the three DLC stories. And this one’s got some excellent new villains (new to these games, I mean) to pit Spider-Man against, like Venom, the Lizard, and Kraven the Hunter. There’s a lot of potential for cool levels and fight scenarios, which was another highlight of Marvel’s Spider-Man; many of the supervillains required different strategies to defeat them. There are plenty of enticing elements of the game, and I’m sure it’ll be a huge success. It’s just sad that Spider-Man has to share the spotlight in his own games now.
