You're Not Gonna Mess With My Bees.
The 2018 PS4 game Marvel's Spider-Man is one of my favourite videogames of all time, and I was delighted to receive the sequel Spider-Man 2 for Christmas!
I've just finished the Coney Island mission. Here are some early thoughts.
I hope we get some good Harry/Peter homoeroticism in this game; that's one thing that was sadly lacking in the original.
Just like the original, I love this game from the first cutscene with Peter in it. There's so much love in the characterisation! It's almost enough to make me forget that Peter has the WRONG FACE. They changed Peter's design completely for the shift from PS4 to PS5; it feels weird!
At least he's still voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. While I'm thinking about their shared voice actor, I should note that it would be extremely funny if Yosuke Hanamura of Persona 4 ever got spider powers and had to deal with that.
I'm really sad that Peter lost his teaching job. He was so excited about physics!
I was playing as Peter and ran into Miles thwarting the same crime. We tried to high-five, missed, tried again, gave up and just hugged instead. It was extremely cute.
MJ's face has also changed! This is so disconcerting.
Going by their first interaction after Harry's return, there is a real possibility this game is going to get me shipping Peter/Harry/MJ.
I love Miles using webbing to suspend his laptop in the air so he can type in bed.
Much darker, but I also love Miles hesitating to save Li!
There's a lot of hugging in this game, and I'm extremely pleased by this.
I like that the game doesn't distinguish Peter and Miles by e.g. calling them Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2. They're both just Spider-Man. Peter is never treated as a more 'real' Spider-Man for coming first; they both have spider powers and are therefore equally real.
Just realised that, at certain angles and in certain lights, the new Peter Parker design looks a tiny bit like my brother. Not very like him, but just enough to be startling.
Why isn't 'cute little light-up star hairband' a prize option at the fair? I know they're available; plenty of people here are wearing them! Let me put Peter Parker in a cute little light-up star headband, goddammit.
As with the previous titles, I really like that there are a lot of non-combat things to do in this game. There are photographs to take; there are research missions; there's a lengthy sequence where you're just hanging out with your friends at the fair, reminiscing and going on rides. Beating people up is only a fraction of Spider-Man's role!
There's a love for New York that comes through so intensely in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. It reminds me a little of the World Ends with You games, which are clearly brimming with love for Shibuya.
You can get a strong sense of place in other mediums as well, of course - Rivers of London comes to mind - but I'm fascinated by the way a game can let you immerse yourself in a location and explore it at your own pace. In his early teens, my brother learnt a lot about how to find his way around the real-life London by playing the PS2 game The Getaway.
I don't think I'll be able to navigate New York after playing the Spider-Man games, unless I happen to show up there with spider powers. I suspect that walking the streets of New York and swinging over the rooftops are slightly different experiences.
I've just finished the Coney Island mission. Here are some early thoughts.
I hope we get some good Harry/Peter homoeroticism in this game; that's one thing that was sadly lacking in the original.
Just like the original, I love this game from the first cutscene with Peter in it. There's so much love in the characterisation! It's almost enough to make me forget that Peter has the WRONG FACE. They changed Peter's design completely for the shift from PS4 to PS5; it feels weird!
At least he's still voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. While I'm thinking about their shared voice actor, I should note that it would be extremely funny if Yosuke Hanamura of Persona 4 ever got spider powers and had to deal with that.
I'm really sad that Peter lost his teaching job. He was so excited about physics!
I was playing as Peter and ran into Miles thwarting the same crime. We tried to high-five, missed, tried again, gave up and just hugged instead. It was extremely cute.
MJ's face has also changed! This is so disconcerting.
Going by their first interaction after Harry's return, there is a real possibility this game is going to get me shipping Peter/Harry/MJ.
I love Miles using webbing to suspend his laptop in the air so he can type in bed.
Much darker, but I also love Miles hesitating to save Li!
There's a lot of hugging in this game, and I'm extremely pleased by this.
I like that the game doesn't distinguish Peter and Miles by e.g. calling them Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2. They're both just Spider-Man. Peter is never treated as a more 'real' Spider-Man for coming first; they both have spider powers and are therefore equally real.
Just realised that, at certain angles and in certain lights, the new Peter Parker design looks a tiny bit like my brother. Not very like him, but just enough to be startling.
Why isn't 'cute little light-up star hairband' a prize option at the fair? I know they're available; plenty of people here are wearing them! Let me put Peter Parker in a cute little light-up star headband, goddammit.
As with the previous titles, I really like that there are a lot of non-combat things to do in this game. There are photographs to take; there are research missions; there's a lengthy sequence where you're just hanging out with your friends at the fair, reminiscing and going on rides. Beating people up is only a fraction of Spider-Man's role!
There's a love for New York that comes through so intensely in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. It reminds me a little of the World Ends with You games, which are clearly brimming with love for Shibuya.
You can get a strong sense of place in other mediums as well, of course - Rivers of London comes to mind - but I'm fascinated by the way a game can let you immerse yourself in a location and explore it at your own pace. In his early teens, my brother learnt a lot about how to find his way around the real-life London by playing the PS2 game The Getaway.
I don't think I'll be able to navigate New York after playing the Spider-Man games, unless I happen to show up there with spider powers. I suspect that walking the streets of New York and swinging over the rooftops are slightly different experiences.