Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is Sony’s end-of-year blockbuster. The visual slap to which PlayStation Studios have accustomed us is not there. Still, Insmoniac Games’ title may be my game of the year.
The race for technical and visual achievements has been one of the driving forces of video games for many years. Sony has made it a strong marker through its PlayStation Studio. Whether it’s games like Horizon, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima and of course The Last of UsSony always impresses with the visuals provided on its game consoles. Even games that the manufacturer looked elsewhere, like Final Fantasy XVI Or Stray seem to have this element as an important criterion in their specifications.
Five years after the Spiderman of the PlayStation 4, three years after the launch of the PlayStation 5 and while Ratchet & Clank Rift Appart could have amazed me, I expected a lot from this Spider-Man 2. It is also one of the first Sony games not to be released on PlayStation 4. Despite all these elements, the slap is not there.
In search of innovation
I was able to play Spider-Man 2 for several weeks before its launch. To the point where I’ve completed the main story and am close to completing the game 100%. This article is not intended to blast the new title from Insomniac Games which I loved for a whole bunch of reasons which I will detail below. However, it disappointed me on a technical level in terms of visual performance and animation.
To clarify, I played on an Alienware QD-Oled screen in QHD in fidelity mode. The optimization to which the studio has accustomed us is there: it is absolutely flawless. On the other hand, I have things to say about the visual fidelity.
In Spider-Man 2, you are allowed two different types of scenes. There are the gameplay phases, where the game interface appears on the screen. These jittery phases don’t focus so much on stunning realism, but rather on the game’s ability to display lots of different elements, and quickly as needed. The best example of this is a dizzying scene during the game’s opening where one of the Spider-Mans is propelled several blocks.
Here we feel the PlayStation 5 SSD being put to the test to load all the scenery during this high-speed propulsion. The character then catches up and propels himself back in the other direction: the slap is there in terms of staging, speed of the action.
The other type of scene is the dialogue scenes between the characters. If I had to be caustic, it was these scenes that made me understand that it was probably better to keep Spider-Man under his mask. The character animation and lip syncing, I played with the French dubbing, weren’t really up to par with the other characters’ productions.
There wasn’t a single scene with Miles Morales where I didn’t feel uncomfortable with what I was watching. As if the game had stepped into the uncanny valley. Same thing for Mary Jane Watson whose perfect teeth appear, regardless of the tone of the scene, with a slightly frozen face. However, we are sure that the character did not resort to cosmetic surgery between the two episodes.
However, if we put aside these scenes on a human scale whose emotional reception can sometimes be a little disrupted by this question of animation, the game still does not lack a very nice plan.
There are numerous high-flying sequences perfectly crafted by the developers to give you the same adrenaline rush as the big screen Spider-Man. Sequences which give rise to magnificent shots and which allow the PlayStation 5 to be better highlighted.
Obviously, the game’s photo mode is also back. This mode allows you to freeze the action and put all the graphics power of the console into a snapshot of a scene. It is clearly with this mode that the “screenshots” shared by Sony around this game are taken. This gives beautiful souvenir photos, but which do not reflect the reality of the game in action.
Game capture shared by Sony // Source: Sony
Screenshot of a cutscene from the game from the PlayStation 5 // Source: Frandroid
I may appear to be harsh on the game, and I think I am a little, but it hasn’t really made me feel like we’re marking a new step since the Spiderman of the PlayStation 4. I made Spider-Man: Miles Morales at the launch of the PlayStation 5 and I even have better memories of the graphics of this title, undoubtedly helped by its winter period more conducive to reflections in ray tracing.
And yet, my game of the year
I finished Spider-Man 2 in a few weeks and am quickly approaching 100% of the game. It only took me 30 hours of play to get there. This point is already a real breath of fresh air for those, like me, who are no longer really looking for games in the race for the longest lifespan. Over these 30 hours, we can follow the very well-crafted narrative thread proposed by Insomniac and stop along the way for a few secondary missions here and there. The structure of the game has not changed one iota with the PS4 version.
And here you must begin to notice that I have mentioned the PS4 episode of the series several times. Insomniac Games has really only changed the recipe of the game very little. We still have some new features such as the arrival of wing suit to cross a larger New York, with a new accessible neighborhood. The skills of the two Spider-Mans have evolved, and then there is this ability to switch from one to the other between missions to vary the pleasures. Like its predecessors, the game continues to be a true love letter to Marvel comics, with numerous references right up to the final concluding images.
But the development studio remained very wise. We could, for example, have imagined a multiplayer mode for this new episode in order to play Peter and Miles at the same time. The structure of the missions has also changed relatively little even if I still appreciate the wide variety of systems: a little infiltration, a little combat, “investigation” (a button to highlight clues), very well known, but very pleasant. Apart from a few small camera or automatic aiming problems, each action scene in the game is a small success. We are very rarely frustrated by what unfolds on screen. No, we are here to have fun and have fun and Insomniac is a master of this subject.
And that’s ultimately the most important thing: I loved Spider-Man and the Miles Morales episode, I loved playing this Spider-Man 2. I even think I’ve never been as much of a fan of the Spider-Man as in this year 2023 which treats us to an incredible Across the Spider-Verse in theaters, and a very good blockbuster on console. But it is perhaps precisely this boundless creativity which has revolutionized animated cinema in recent years which is missing Spider-Man 2 on PlayStation to exceed its limits.
I came away wanting a Spider-Man 3, perhaps more willing to take risks this time. Still, the desire to dive back into this universe is for me the indisputable sign that Insmoniac Games’ recipe is successful. Looking forward to the sequel.