How do you respond to the new normal? (Marvel's Spider-Man 2 in Review)

     Hey friends, a few weeks ago, we got Marvel's Spider-Man 2, actually on the same day as Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but it's taken me a bit longer than the other release to get through it. For one, it's a much slower paced game, less constant forward movement than Mario, but also just a lot of side content in the city. Just like the previous games in the series, I really wanted to take all the time that I could just swinging around New York like only a spider (or spiders) can and helping people out. For that reason, it has taken me a little while to get all of my thoughts together and actually put them down here, but I've gotten the platinum trophy now (meaning that I have done basically everything in the game), and I'm happy to report that this game is fantastic. Before I get any farther, this game is just as good as the first one, and maybe even more so. That goes for the gameplay, the story, and even the side quests. I was genuinely surprised by some of the twists and turns in this, and I can definitely say that this is a darker story than the first. Let's swing right into it, and talk just a little bit about this excellent sequel.

What is normal anyways?

    This story begins like so many "Spider-Man" stories. Miles Morales and Peter Parker are doing their best to live their ordinary lives, Miles as a student, and Peter teaching at the school. Suddenly sand begins falling like rain, and the two Spider-Men have to respond to the threat of the Sandman, who has been fine for a long time, but suddenly begins wreaking havoc again. After a pretty incredible battle sequence to kick the game off, He goes back to prison, but warns that something will be after them soon. Kraven the Hunter is coming, and as you can see in the trailers, he's the "Big Bad" this time around. He's a seemingly unstoppable killing machine who lives and dies by the hunt, refusing to be content until he finds some unknown predator that can match him. He picks the location of New York City when he sees just how many superheroes and villains live right in this area. I don't want to talk too much about the plot here, because the plot really is one of the biggest selling points of the game, but I do want to talk about some things that come up in the story.

    First of all, of course, the black suit is in the game (as shown extensively by the marketing material), meaning that we're going to go through some type of Venom storyline. I was honestly really surprised by just how long it took to get into the Black-Suit storyline, I would say it was probably Act 2 where it came into play, and it's all handled really well, it's a very dire and dark element of the story, of course, but completely necessary for where they were going with this story. It's hard to watch, though it's more actually dark as opposed to the moody and whiny Black-Suit Spider-Man from the Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. In this game, Venom is a threat that I felt legitimately worried about almost the whole time, not knowing when and where it would pop up, despite being involved somehow in the story from the very beginning. Unfortunately here I need to get into some spoilers, so maybe I'll set off the spoiler talk here and you can skip to the next section!

Spoiler Talk! Skip ahead if you don't want to know about the plot!

    Okay, let's talk about Venom for a bit. If you've played Marvel's Spider-Man from a few years ago, you know that Harry Osborne was not in Europe like Peter and MJ thought, he's actually really sick, and being treated in a secret Oscorp laboratory by a team of scientists. There was some Symbiote-looking goop coming off of him in a healing vat at the end of the game, so it seemed very likely that Harry was connected to Venom and was using the symbiote to heal from whatever disease his mother died of. In Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Harry is one of the main characters of our story, and he's feeling better than ever because of a special suit that was made for him. That sounds like he's mainly in the story to be a host for Venom, but that's definitely not the case. Harry is one of the driving forces in the story, and he's fantastic at it. He's a genuinely likable character, happy for a second chance at life, and then becomes more and more desperate to get the suit back after Peter accidentally gets it, and is unable to take it off. It's sad to see him get weaker and weaker during the Black-Suit arc, but you know that if he got the symbiote back after Peter gives it back, bad things are going to happen. Bad things happen for sure, as we see in the one sequence where Venom is completed, and you actually play as him for a period of time. In that mission, we're shown how invigorating it is for a weak character to be given such wild and untamed power, to the point where he simply loses himself into it. It's a powerful choice, and one that really goes a long way to establish the full strength of the new villain who is the ultimate driving force for Act 3 of the game. 

People can change in the new normal (Major Spoiler talk over now!)

    Miles and Martin Li have some unfinished business in this game, to the point where Mister Negative accidentally gives Miles new, overcharged abilities that he can work with. The most beautiful thing is to see Miles learn so much over his time as a Spider-Man and ultimately learn to work with his greatest enemy, the reason that his dad was killed, and put things behind them in order to do what needs to be done. I feel like it was one of the best handled storylines in this game, and I was genuinely happy to see something like this. This is not the only instance of characters taking on different roles here from their usual though. One thing that I loved about this game was to show that many of the villains from the previous games are now working on making themselves better for the people they love. Tombstone is now working with the Go-Kart track on Coney Island, Mysterio is now working on the future of entertainment, putting his illusions to work for good instead of evil (or is he?), Curt Connors (the Lizard) is now working for the Emily-May foundation, and helped to cure Harry of his disease that he was sick with for some time. Even Sandman, who did go rogue at the beginning of this game, as stated before, you later realize that it was in self defense against Kraven and the Hunters. Kraven unfortunately wants his "prey" to be at their best, actively trying to encourage the villains to be worse than they were even at their peak, and then he can hunt them down, and sadly, there are some pretty major fatalities, which I did not see coming. 

    The ability to change is not exclusive to the villains, of course, we see many of our hero characters changing. Mary Jane is in a very different spot in her life this time around, working for the Daily Bugle under J. Jonah Jameson, and honestly hating every minute of it, for good reason. Imagine dating Spider-Man and working for the one guy in all of New York who refuses to see any of the good that he does for the city. Her missions do return, and they have an emphasis on stealth as they did in the first game, but she has far more tools this time around, and gets more as the game continues. Let's just say that her time spent in Symkaria did her a lot of good. Felicia Hardy, AKA Black Cat has also turned over a new leaf (kind of) and has decided to run to Paris to escape the hunters, and apparently she's trying to do a little magic to achieve her goal. Best of luck with that, seems a little far fetched to me (no joke though, that mission is maybe the best part, and not just because I adore Black Cat's depiction in these games). Peter himself is facing a lot of hardship, trying to keep Aunt May's house, despite all of the issues involved with him keeping a job while being Spider-Man.

How can you face a threat of this size?

    The size and scope of the threats in this game are much larger than anything that was faced in the other games, with this being a global threat versus the others which pretty much would just effect New York. Venom, and the symbiote invasion that he represents, is a pretty terrifying threat, and the game does a fantastic job of making the area feel much more scary in the later parts of the game than the earlier ones. Not to say that Kraven isn't scary, but it's clear why so much of the game's marketing has been centered on Venom, besides just being a more recognizable character. I don't want to say too much about Venom, since I've already dealt with him a little bit in conversation, so let's discuss a little bit of the gameplay before I wrap things up here, shall we? 

    The gameplay of this game is largely similar to the previous game, though the big changes are pretty clear. Each character has 8 different actions, with 4 being specific to the character, and 4 being gadget related. You hold down L1 to get the Character actions, then activate one with the face buttons (Square, Circle, Triangle, X), and you do the same for Gadgets, but with R1 instead. The character actions can be switched out as you get more, and they're all related to the story beats that are happening. For instance, Peter starts out with some pretty sweet robotic spider arms, which he created using some of Doc Ock's technology, but then once he has the Black Suit on, he gets powers more related to the symbiote inside, including whipping people to the ground with tentacles that come out of his back. Miles of course has his "Venom" powers, which is a name that I feel should be changed now that we have an actual character of Venom in the story, but his powers get upgraded, as I said earlier, with each interaction with Mister Negative. It's a cool way to make the characters really feel different by the end of the story, like the personalities of each weren't the only things to change, there's a gameplay element to it as well. The gadgets have been tidied up from the selection wheel approach of the older games to now be tied to the face buttons with R1, which doesn't seem all that different, though it does mean that there are only 4 gadgets to be had at a time now, and none of them feel quite as good as the older ones, but that may just be my personal preference. I still had a hard time remembering which gadget that I had equipped to which button at the end of the game, but that's probably just because I relied on the standard moveset a lot. Traversal is as fun as you would expect with an Insomniac title, and the web-swinging is assisted with the new Web Wings, allowing you to glide on the wind all across Brooklyn and Queens, as this map is about twice as big as the first, with a lot of water separating the two islands. I'm not going to lean into the cliche that many reviewers did with that first game, that it "makes you feel like Spider-Man," but it does feel very good to play, especially with the adaptable triggers and haptic feedback coming into full effect.

    Our two Spider-Men face many dangers and do a lot of heroics in this game, but I feel that it's fitting for Mary Jane to get the last word here in the end. The one fully-human protagonist who has been active throughout the whole story, even though she has been on the sidelines a bit more than I would have liked. She quits the Daily Bugle and begins a podcast to make people feel better about all of the changes that have taken place recently. She tells the people of New York and the world as a whole that there have been so many tough times that have been going on, and that people are ready to return back to "normal." MJ says, "What is normal, and does it even exist?" She has been talking about her own experiences during this time, and invites everyone else to talk about what they have been going through, which is the whole point of the podcast, which is called "the New Normal." It's an important point to end this game on. It's a beautiful story, though dark at many times, it shows the power and resilience of people to push on, to continue getting better and better at rolling with the punches that life may throw at you. Healing the world isn't easy, but that's the beauty of it. There's no easy way to make a massive change, but over time, you learn to adapt and respond to it appropriately. I think this game goes out to all of the people having a tough time with life right now, and that Insomniac purposely left us with this message of hope even in the wake of all the devastation and turmoil happening in the game and even outside of it. As she wraps up her first episode, MJ invites the viewers to listen along and find the joy in the "New Normal," and that's what it's all about. Our heroes and the world that they live in has been changed forever, and now we'll have to see what they do with it. I hope you'll join me for the next chapter, whenever it comes out.

    Thanks so much for reading my post, friends! I loved this game, and I sure took my time getting through it because I just wasn't ready for it to end yet. I hope you all liked it as much as I did, and I'm sorry that I made it so long, I may have to make another post about some other elements such as the side quests, which I really didn't even touch on here, but which definitely deserve talking about. Like I said, I got the platinum, so I've gone through basically everything in the game, save some secret easter eggs that I may have not found yet. Did you have a favorite mission or a favorite suit to wear? There were some that I couldn't believe were in the game, and that I was super happy for. Of course, the costumes don't change the game, but the style is very important for Spider-Man. Thanks again for all of your support, friends, and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm your Self-Proclaimed Friendly Neighborhood Dreamer, and remember, you're not alone facing the New Normal. Be strong, but do it together.