Sony Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (PS5) - Information Thread, update: New Game+, Audio Descriptions, other new features update releasing on March 7

[legend]

Okay, I got the final spider bots too. There is an optional traversal upgrade for seeing tech chests on your minimap that also shows the spiderbots, so that made it easier to find the final ones. Weird interesting ending to it. Makes me wonder what they have planned.

 

The only thing I didn't do is get gold on all the challenges (although I did get gold on most of them).

 

I feel like these games are ideal comfort games. They just feel good to play and chill.

[SaysWho?]

9 hours ago, best3444 said:

Does this have potential to be GOTY or is Zelda still a lock?

I loved Zelda, but even absent Spider-Man, I don’t actually know if it is a lock only due to the surplus of quality this year. It might still be! I just don’t know.

 

I’d love to see a varied number of GOTYs this year.

[best3444]

I started this and that was quite the intro. So far I'm impressed but there is a lot thrown at you in the beginning. Graphics are great and I enjoyed the hour or so I played. 

[Kal-El814]

I’ve gotta punch a few more people as Miles to get the Platty, but we done. More thoughts later but it’s good. 

[best3444]

It's nice I have the option to play at 40fps VRR on my tv. The game litteraly pops on my oled. I was taken back a little that each character looks like they are made out of clay. It's just a small nitpick because overall the visuals are pretty stunning. I'm going to wait until I beat TLOU2 before I fully invest myself in this. I'm looking forward to it. 

 

The intro was badass lol. 

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

It's nice I have the option to play at 40fps VRR on my tv. The game litteraly pops on my oled. I was taken back a little that each character looks like they are made out of clay. It's just a small nitpick because overall the visuals are pretty stunning. I'm going to wait until I beat TLOU2 before I fully invest myself in this. I'm looking forward to it. 

 

The intro was badass lol. 

Naughty Dog > Insomniac and it’s not even close 

[Firewithin]

4 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

I’ve gotta punch a few more people as Miles to get the Platty, but we done. More thoughts later but it’s good. 

I just got to 

Spoiler

Peter getting rid of the suit and venom is now here. am I locked out of the trophy of using venom abilities with the venom surge active now?

 

[legend]

13 minutes ago, Firewithin said:

I just got to 

  Reveal hidden contents

Peter getting rid of the suit and venom is now here. am I locked out of the trophy of using venom abilities with the venom surge active now?

 

 

 

Without saying more, no.

[SaysWho?]

I used fast travel for the first time today. HOLY SHIT, right by the fucking street I picked instantly!

 

Also, I just finished the last flame mission. 

Spoiler

I did not see that coming. I can see why someone would based on the Flame's personality, but he just seemed like a crazy ass cultist. So cool! Hope it's not like the Hush tease in Arkham City that was really cool with the ending being a letdown in Knight.

 

[Kal-El814]

So now that the dust is 99% settled and the wait for DLC / the sequel begins… some longer thoughts. 
 

No spoilers first. 
 

As a sequel it’s fantastic. It doesn’t do the Tears of the Kingdom thing of somehow giving me everything I didn’t know I wanted, but it wasn’t trying to. What it does perhaps best overall is take the best parts of the original, polish them up, and let them shine. Traversal was fun in the original, here it sings. The characters were endearing in the first two, here we get to really enjoy their vibes. And it lets us do that while also allowing itself to be serious and dramatic without fumbling the bag into camp or melodrama. It’s just always enjoyable. 
 

Pete and Miles go through some stuff and it all feels real and earnest and genuine. The actors for them, MJ, Harry, Rio, Hailey all get to shine. Guest characters are all generally very good, as are the villains, for the most part. More on them in the spoiler section. 
 

Gameplay wise, this is just really solid throughout. Playing on Spectacular felt good to me. I couldn’t just tank through fights but I still felt powerful when the combos were flowing. By the end you’ve got enough gear and kit that only a couple things were really challenging, but it felt earned at that point. Trimming the fat on suit supers from the first game was a smart idea. As I said earlier I think there is still perhaps a bit too much stuff… a lot of moves don’t have a lot of practical utility outside niche challenges whereas others are really significant upgrades. Since I cleared the map before the last fight my case is probably a bit unique and it’s not like it’s a big problem. It’s not as bloated or as uneven as the trees in the recent God of War games. 
 

Which I think brings us to what the game does best overall… it’s larger but you’re faster so it never seems bloated. You have two compelling protagonists from the first two games but neither feel like they’re short changed. You have fewer unlocks but they generally feel smarter and more balanced. The story is bigger in “scope” but still manages to feel really personal and intimate. It causes friction between characters that never really feels like bullshit. It knows what you want narratively and when it delays giving it to you it’s in service of a better payoff. It’s just really well done. 
 

Most of my small nitpicks involve spoilers. I’ll ruin villains and fights and side quest shit here for the whole game, so exercise caution. 
 

Spoiler

Kraven I think is largely just fine. He’s not bad but he’s kinda one note and even the box art lets you know he’s not the main attraction. I get why he’s there and how he serves the plot but he’s ultimately not all that interesting. 
 

Venom on the other hand I think is great. Making him Harry and not Eddie is super smart, the relationship with him / Harry / Peter is consistently interesting. I also really appreciate that Pete and Harry have an affectionate and openly loving relationship. Games don’t always let male characters feel feelings beyond rage, anger; stoicism, etc., and they really let Pete show a lot of range here. It’s lovely. Kinda weird to let Venom fucking eat Kraven and have that not really get acknowledged but hey, that’s always been a weird Venom thing, I guess. 
 

One of the few gameplay missed opportunities to me is that the bosses, for the most part, don’t feel unique. The last Venom fight does for sure. I wish more of them had different hooks. Fighting Yuri doesn’t feel all that different from fighting Kraven, which is… weird. Fighting Lizard doesn’t feel that different from fighting Peter who doesn’t feel all that different from fighting MJ-Scream. Non-boss wise, fighting Symbiote mooks doesn’t feel different than Flame goons or Hunters. This could be a factor of me clearing everything out, but it stuck out to me regardless. Seeing as how the Symbiotes in the comics are all immune to Peter’s Spidey sense… could have done those fights differently, perhaps.

 

High class issues, all.

 

I really liked the scenes with Martin Li and Miles. That whole arc was super good.

 

Side quest spoilers. Again, for the whole game. 
 

Spoiler

I was worried that the Mysteriums were all going to be Rock Band bullshit, thank goodness that was wrong. One of those challenges took me a few tries. They were fun though!

 

Also am I the only one who guessed The Flame was Carnage as soon as you saw him? Spidey only has so many red headed lunatic villains   

Sequel / DLC speculation. 
 

Spoiler

Someone’s obviously going to be Green Goblin next time, presumably Norman. Kraven killed Scorpion, Shocker, and Electro, so who’s gonna be in the Sinister Six if they do that? Goblin, Ock, Rhino, Chameleon, Carnage… Jackal? Depends on the DLC I guess  

Anyway great game. But man… this shit was janky. Game probably crashed ten times for me, including twice where I had to reboot my console. And I had to restart from checkpoint AT LEAST two dozen times when enemies clipped through walls and became unkillable, the game wouldn’t progress after I wiped  enemies, after I clipped through buildings and couldn’t get back to the actual game, I fell through the floor and into oblivion. Entire buildings would become invisible. Or I could watch the game shit itself as more and more costumes turned into cubes. Or enemies that MJ stunned would get back up off the floor; restart their walk animation, and get stuck, still counting as KO’d, but motionless, completely blocking the path I had to take to progress.  Or the game would play random, incorrect sound effects during cutscenes… loudly. Or the lighting would get bugged. Or Spidey’s body would disappear and just a head would float around. The game checkpoints often and loads fast so I never lost steam. But this is EASILY the most technically busted AAA release I’ve played.. ever? I had more crashes and restarts than hours logged!

 

But when it wasn’t shitting the bed or I was mashing restart… what a ride. 

[Spork3245]

After beating it yesterday, my guesses for DLC(s) are:

Spoiler

Carnage: definitely the most obvious with the final The Flame mission. 
 

I think we may also get Spiderman 2099 with the scene you get if you collect all of the spider-bots. Though, something like this could be a full-on “expansion” like the Miles Morales game after the first Spider-Man game. Alternatively an “expansion” game could introduce Silk, setting her up to be in the sequel… or it could definitely do both  

My guess for Spider-Man 3 is:

Spoiler

Green Goblin is obvious with the G-Serum mention by Norman, however I’m not sure if it’ll be Norman or Harry or both. We’re also likely having 3 playable Spider-People with the next game, since Cindy Hope (Silk) gets introduced in the after credits scene.

As for this game itself, some huge things that I was absolutely not expecting in the story:

Spoiler

It was almost “ruined” for me via a “spoiler free” video talking about what to upgrade first: in the video they said something like “don’t worry, points spent on symbiot powers absolutely won’t go to waste after advancing the story” which made me think that Venom would be a third playable character after initially fighting him or something and that symbiot suit points transferred to him. This almost got confirmed with when Peter initially loses the symbiot and you get to play as Venom for the mission. Either way, going into this I did not expect for Venom to be playable, even for a single mission.

 

I didn’t expect for Harry’s symbiot suit to initially be the Agent Venom suit. I also loved how before he loses the symbiot that he might randomly show up in the open world to help with stopping crimes. The fact that his initial suit was Agent Venom made me wonder if Harry would actually be the traditional Venom as well: for a moment, especially after it was revealed he had cancer, I wondered if Kraven was going to wind up with the symbiot and become Venom (like, if during the boss fight Peter would wind up getting the suit off after almost killing Kraven, but it would then escape and merge with an injured and unconscious Kraven).

 

I was super surprised to see Scream, as I wasn’t expecting the symbiot invasion-type arc, but especially not a Scream appearance.

 

Anti-Venom, and especially it being Spider-Man was a big surprise. I absolutely didn’t see that coming at all.

 
I only had two crashes during my play-through and just a handful of bugs. Post-game, however, I wanted to just swing around and do some random crime fighting before putting the game down. However, that was a challenge as all of a sudden like 2/3rds of the map made so I couldn’t go to street-level as Spider-Man would just fall through the game world, and all but 3-4 costumes would cause Spider-Man to basically turn invisible except for a single small block of polygons.

[Keyser_Soze]

The internet seems to be very horny for venom right now.

[Spork3245]

12 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The internet seems to be very horny for venom right now.

I mean… no one’s seen a tongue like that since Gene Simmons

[best3444]

I was impressed when I had to cross the river with spidey. It looked phenomenal and the air wings are cool as hell. The combat is thrilling but there is a lot to master. I am really looking forward to diving into this. 

[Kal-El814]

6 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

After beating it yesterday, my guesses for DLC(s) are:

  Hide contents

Carnage: definitely the most obvious with the final The Flame mission. 
 

I think we may also get Spiderman 2099 with the scene you get if you collect all of the spider-bots. Though, something like this could be a full-on “expansion” like the Miles Morales game after the first Spider-Man game. Alternatively an “expansion” game could introduce Silk, setting her up to be in the sequel… or it could definitely do both  

My guess for Spider-Man 3 is:

  Hide contents

Green Goblin is obvious with the G-Serum mention by Norman, however I’m not sure if it’ll be Norman or Harry or both. We’re also likely having 3 playable Spider-People with the next game, since Cindy Hope (Silk) gets introduced in the after credits scene.

As for this game itself, some huge things that I was absolutely not expecting in the story:

  Hide contents

It was almost “ruined” for me via a “spoiler free” video talking about what to upgrade first: in the video they said something like “don’t worry, points spent on symbiot powers absolutely won’t go to waste after advancing the story” which made me think that Venom would be a third playable character after initially fighting him or something and that symbiot suit points transferred to him. This almost got confirmed with when Peter initially loses the symbiot and you get to play as Venom for the mission. Either way, going into this I did not expect for Venom to be playable, even for a single mission.

 

I didn’t expect for Harry’s symbiot suit to initially be the Agent Venom suit. I also loved how before he loses the symbiot that he might randomly show up in the open world to help with stopping crimes. The fact that his initial suit was Agent Venom made me wonder if Harry would actually be the traditional Venom as well: for a moment, especially after it was revealed he had cancer, I wondered if Kraven was going to wind up with the symbiot and become Venom (like, if during the boss fight Peter would wind up getting the suit off after almost killing Kraven, but it would then escape and merge with an injured and unconscious Kraven).

 

I was super surprised to see Scream, as I wasn’t expecting the symbiot invasion-type arc, but especially not a Scream appearance.

 

Anti-Venom, and especially it being Spider-Man was a big surprise. I absolutely didn’t see that coming at all.

 
I only had two crashes during my play-through and just a handful of bugs. Post-game, however, I wanted to just swing around and do some random crime fighting before putting the game down. However, that was a challenge as all of a sudden like 2/3rds of the map made so I couldn’t go to street-level as Spider-Man would just fall through the game world, and all but 3-4 costumes would cause Spider-Man to basically turn invisible except for a single small block of polygons.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my diatribe that...

 

Spoiler

Pete being Anti-Venom was a cool surprise for sure.

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

 

lol friend stumbled across this online. I’d enjoy console wars memes from time to time. 

[SaysWho?]

13 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

 

lol friend stumbled across this online. I’d enjoy console wars memes from time to time. 

Weird meme considering what’s come out lol.

 

 It is a credit to Insomniac though with what they’ve released.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

Weird meme considering what’s come out lol.

 

 It is a credit to Insomniac though with what they’ve released.

It’s probably based on the assumption that since Spider-Man is Sony’s #1 sold game of the last 10 years the remastered version has likely done equally well on the PS5 compared to every other cross gen title. Sony always aggregates the sales numbers, so it’s impossible to tell. 

[Brick]

7 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The internet seems to be very horny for venom right now.

 

Wouldn't you be if you could get 19 inches of Venom? 

[SaysWho?]

On 10/29/2023 at 11:31 AM, legend said:

Okay, I got the final spider bots too. There is an optional traversal upgrade for seeing tech chests on your minimap that also shows the spiderbots, so that made it easier to find the final ones. Weird interesting ending to it. Makes me wonder what they have planned.

 

I have no idea what the ending meant either (just finished it 10 seconds ago), but "weird interesting" is definitely my description.  

 

Also 

Spoiler

the bartender's face looked blocky like she was from a PS1-era cutscene.

 

[SaysWho?]

The Mysteriums I ended up enjoying a lot more than I thought, and the ending was really cool. 

Spoiler

Fun and trippy boss fight with its own twist to it, though Betsy and Cole's nefarious involvement is something I suspected. But once Mysterio said he killed them, I figured that's not where the story was going.

 

[Spork3245]

23 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

I have no idea what the ending meant either (just finished it 10 seconds ago), but "weird interesting" is definitely my description.  

 

Also 

  Hide contents

the bartender's face looked blocky like she was from a PS1-era cutscene.

 

 

Spoiler

Multi/Spider-Verse. It’s Spider-Man 2099, who is the “Miguel” she references.

 

[legend]

31 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

I have no idea what the ending meant either (just finished it 10 seconds ago), but "weird interesting" is definitely my description.  

 

Also 

  Hide contents

the bartender's face looked blocky like she was from a PS1-era cutscene.

 

 

Spoiler

Like @Spork3245 mentioned it seems like a spiderverse reference. But the the PS1 era graphics for the world is tripping me up. The bar with no name and bartender is meant to be a place where spider villains hang out.

I'm not sure how much any of that helps make sense of it. In fact, it might only raise more questions about what they're going to do. But that's all I got  

 

 

Whoops made that quote instead of spoilers at first! Hopefully I ninja'd it fast enough.

[SaysWho?]

And there's a plat.

[Kal-El814]

REALLY hoping that refund request for no classic 'toon costume comes in soon because the bugs I can forgive but that omission cannot stand

[SaysWho?]

Been a few days since I beat the game. There was a lot to like.

Spoiler

• I really like how they did the gadgets/special moves. It was easy to use both, and I felt I got more use out of more gadgets due to the change. I also didn't feel as if there were useless moves; I enjoyed using all of them.
• There were times where I did nothing but story missions because of how invested I was in the story. 
• It didn't hurt that some fantastic set pieces were in the main story. The opener was a damned flex with Sandman, but the speedboat chase that we saw in the State of Play was pure bliss. It's like Sandman felt like God of War Colossus Battle from 2, and the speedboat chase felt like Uncharted.
• The QTEs were better in this one. I'm glad they got rid of the mashing for the end of car chases, but the ones that were there felt more natural with the action.
• The minute Kraven killed Scorpion, I figured no one was safe. :-X
• Boss battles were much improved over the first.
• Traversal was excellent. Gliding didn't feel like a replacement to swinging; it complemented it in the best way possible. Traversing the water between islands was such a treat.
• There was a good gameplay flow with the upgrades, I thought. I didn't have an issue with how the first game did the upgrades, but I did feel with this one it was expanded ever so slightly: you had your gadgets, your suits, your skills, and different tokens for all. It helped that...
• ...the side content was a lot of fun. I held out on the Mysteriums for a while but I actually ended up REALLY liking those time trials. They're usually my Achilles heel for gaming. Here, I didn't feel as if it was overly difficult, and there are no trophies attached to the golds, thankfully. There was one timed one I couldn't get a gold on, but the rest I nailed, even if it took an extra try or two.
• Lots of great teases for the next game.
• I didn't even realize how important some of the side missions would be. I'm saving firefighters, and then all of a sudden I'm fighting with Yuri? Cool!
• Crimes were better in this game, and they evolved with the main story. The first did half that when it came to opening up Sable crimes, but I liked doing the normal ones and seeing that, oh, here are members of the Flame. In this one, Yuri helps you. In this one, the symbiotes are attacking. I enjoyed that the Hunters Blinds did the same, where visiting after Kraven's death would alter the conversations the enemies would have.

Not really a complaint, but sometimes the more dour mood in the second half of the game would be much, mainly because I was so invested in the story that I'd play a main mission after main mission. In those cases, I had to do some of the side stuff for something with more levity.

 

Great game. Well done to Insomniac.

[Firewithin]

platinum done. brilliant game and overall experience. one of the best spiderman stories that's been done

[BloodyHell]

On 10/29/2023 at 3:06 AM, best3444 said:

Does this have potential to be GOTY or is Zelda still a lock?

BG3 is the lock.

This doesn’t have a chance 

[BloodyHell]

On 10/30/2023 at 12:00 AM, SaysWho? said:

I used fast travel for the first time today. HOLY SHIT, right by the fucking street I picked instantly!

 

Also, I just finished the last flame mission. 

  Hide contents

I did not see that coming. I can see why someone would based on the Flame's personality, but he just seemed like a crazy ass cultist. So cool! Hope it's not like the Hush tease in Arkham City that was really cool with the ending being a letdown in Knight.

 

Im hoping they just tackle that in DLC. I want 3 to be about Gobby, not another 
 

Spoiler

Symbiote story. Especially not Carnage…

 

[best3444]

31 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

BG3 is the lock.

This doesn’t have a chance 

 

Yea, that or Zelda will get it. I kinda think you're right that this year BG3 gets it since BOTW already got it. 

[skillzdadirecta]

I'm enjoying the game a lot but this 

 

Spoiler

Kraven fight, particularly the second phase is 

 

unfun bullshit. I might just be tired but I'm not enjoying it at all.Every other boss fight and set piece as felt unique and rewarding... this just feels like padded bullshit. 

[Keyser_Soze]

8 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

BG3 is the lock.

This doesn’t have a chance 

 

Lies of P is the lock.

[Littleronin]

I feel like Zelda will win it. Just because it is a Zelda title. But damn this year has been very good to gamers again. But I would not be surprise to see Lies of P be left off as the VGAs will most certainly have things like Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo IV, Starfield and maybe Hogwart's Legacy on the GotY nominations. 

[best3444]

3 hours ago, Littleronin said:

I feel like Zelda will win it. Just because it is a Zelda title. But damn this year has been very good to gamers again. But I would not be surprise to see Lies of P be left off as the VGAs will most certainly have things like Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo IV, Starfield and maybe Hogwart's Legacy on the GotY nominations. 

 

I think since BOTW got it in 2017 they will go with the surprise hit this year, BG3. 

[SaysWho?]

11 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I'm enjoying the game a lot but this 

 

  Hide contents

Kraven fight, particularly the second phase is 

 

unfun bullshit. I might just be tired but I'm not enjoying it at all.Every other boss fight and set piece as felt unique and rewarding... this just feels like padded bullshit. 

 

I don't remember a specific issue with that fight compared to the others. What was tripping you up?