the spider-man complex — brand new letter
Hey Micaela!
Look at us! Two mentally unwell transwomen talking about Spider-Man! I’m so glad we can fill this niche that no one ever has before.
After spending two weeks or so with you in your beautiful home of Brooklyn, I think it’s pretty apt that we’d come to the idea of starting a letter series about New York’s Finest — the Spider-Men, obviously. I’ve come to the warm feeling of adoring Brooklyn enough that Giovanni called me a ‘natural Brooklynite’ after meeting me in person one time (thanks, Gio). Another friend less charitably called me a ‘New Yorkaboo’. I enjoyed that a lot.
I desperately miss being in New York. I miss the MOMA. I miss the Guggenheim. I miss looking up and seeing the Empire State Building in the unnecessarily tall flesh. Fuck, I even miss the Staten Island Ferry. That’s how you know I’m romanticising the whole thing to hell. Most of all, though, I miss Bushwick; your home and, as of the last fortnight, the place I want to be most in the world. Alas alack, to Birmingham I returned. So, to balance out the romanticism of my memories as a starry-eyed tourist and your reality check of just being a girl who lives there, we thought we’d head to fiction, and where’s the greatest and most detailed depiction of New York but Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Obviously, the first thing I did once I entered free roam was swing over to Bushwick, which…doesn’t exist in the game. Neither does Ridgewood, actually. Insomniac Games, I and the queer community at large will never forgive you.
Anyway, I’ll step out of the comfortable warmth of my memories and talk about the video game itself. The word that comes to mind so far is conflicted. I’m fascinated by how the opening, Anakin’s worst nightmare, made me feel so little despite evidently trying to make me feel so much. Never has a vertical slice (which, I mean, that’s what the Sandman fight is) been so transparent; a sheet of superheated sand desperate to impress, hoping you’re distracted enough by its luster to not notice the emptiness behind the glass. Marko’s touching story in Spider-Man 3 has spoiled us, inevitably, but there’s just so little of substance here. Disconnected grains of emotion and character falling through my hands. Kraven is also in this story, I guess. I really couldn’t care less. I have a feeling, if I may continue the Spider-Man 3 allusion, that he’ll be the Venom of this game (not, you know, literally the Venom in this game) — an antagonist that really should not be here, adds nothing of value and actively takes away from the antagonists that matter. Oh, and this is unrelated, but I’m not sure where else to put it: I fucking HATE Peter’s Iron Spider arms being a default part of his kit now. They’re ugly as shit and god please let me just do regular Spider-Man shit.
One thing I am picking up, and liking, is an ever-present shadow of grief. There’s a lot of decisions, conversations and scenes centered around it. Peter can’t sell the house he and MJ absolutely cannot afford to pay the mortgage off of because it’s May’s, and he can’t lose this last part of her. He’ll let it sink him before he lets go of the weight. While walking around the house, he picks up a picture of Ben and his voice catches in his throat, commenting that “It hits you like a rogue wave sometimes.” Miles, in what might be his first moment of having an actual character in this entire series, makes the rage-blinded choice to prioritise the suffering and death of Martin Li, his father’s killer, over not only saving his life and letting him redeem himself, but later over saving innocent people from their own deaths. Miles fails at the fundamental selfless choice that defines Spider-Man. And finally, upon reconnecting with his antihero uncle, Aaron reminds Miles that “We can’t let him live up here. It’s another kind of prison. Sometimes, you gotta push the past away so you can make room for the future.”
And on that selfless choice, I should probably explain the name of this series. ‘The Spider-Man Complex’ refers to the crushing weight of always feeling like selflessness is the only possible choice, even and especially when it comes at the detriment of ourselves. Prioritising others’ happiness, success, and comfort regardless of how it affects our own. Decentralising ourselves so far from our lives that we exist to serve those we love and need to help, and nothing more. To self-destruct so that others can self-construct. The specific phrasing originates from a conversation I had a few months ago, in which I described this mentality and its effects on me as being ‘like Spider-Man’s whole thing’, at which point a dear friend looked me dead in the eye and said ‘No, Ashley, that’s a saviour complex.’ Still. The name’s catchy. And more fun to think about than a saviour complex.
So, Micaela. What are your thoughts on these first few missions? Why is Miles so fucking boring, except for this one scene? Why do his suits fucking suck? And here’s a good one: how do you work with the Spider-Man in your head?
Yours in mental disrepair,
Ashley
Dearest Ashley,
There’s a funny feeling that emerges from swinging around Spider-Man 2’s New York City while the M train rushes past my window. As true spring slowly encroaches and the sidewalks and streets defrost, the sounds of life begin once again to filter into my apartment, even and especially when I do not want them to. New York was never a particularly special place to me growing up, simply The City that I travelled into to see Broadway shows. That’s the curse of being from the tri-state area: New York and Philadelphia aren’t places on a map, but they aren’t romanticized, platonic ideals either. They’re simply messy, crowded places.
It was extremely disheartening to learn that Insomniac’s expansion out of Manhattan included such a limited view of the outer boroughs. Both Queens and Brooklyn are made up of a few mushed together sections — a Downtown each, alongside Astoria for Queens and Little Odessa and Williamsburg for Brooklyn, respectively — and icons like the Domino Sugar building, the Barclays Center, and Green-Wood Cemetery simply aren’t there. Bushwick and Ridgewood might exist, out there on the periphery of the playable area, but it’s blocked off by an invisible wall that serves to make the entire game feel smaller, faker. Somehow adding in more of the city to explore has made Spider-Man 2’s map feel even more like a simulation. At least in the Manhattan of the first two games, you couldn’t get far across the water.
As much as I can complain about the map itself, the traversal in this game feels better than ever. I know we both lowered swing control, lending a weightier, more skillful touch to what otherwise is a braindead movement system, but the small touches like swing jumps, point launches, and the ground launch being part of the Spider-Men’s base moveset helps make everything feel easy and fun. The new moves, corner pivots and a 360-degree swing to build speed, bring a fantastic sense of momentum, and the added speed plays well with a system I haven’t entirely formed an opinion on: the wing suit. Flying feels fun, especially when it’s fast, but it actually harms meaningful interaction with the world itself. Maybe I’m BOTW/TOTK-pilled, but this virtual New York City isn’t a sandbox to interact with; rather, it’s more a cityscape to soar and swing through. The altered point-of-interest proximity population and experience bar that forces crime-stopping to unlock fast travel are huge improvements that encourage interaction, but despite living here, I can’t say Spider-Man 2 makes me feel any sort of way — no pride, joy, or interest — about doing so.
I’m in full agreement that the Sandman battle that opens the game falls far short of expectations. It’s like nothing was learned from arresting Kingpin in Spider-Man (2018) — swing a little, punch a little, have some quick time events that never show up again outside of stopping a rogue driver in a crime. It’s inarguably a more cinematic and well executed opening compared with the first game, but so far as the story stands, Marko’s rampage exists tangentially to the main plot — or should I say plots. The first scene you actually watch upon booting up the game is Norman Osborn sicking the Venom symbiote on his son, Harry, who we know from the first game is sick with a degenerative illness. We go from that to the half-hour Sandman “battle” to a brief introduction of Kraven, who looks at a Unity asset–ass map of New York City for new prey to hunt. Imagine the surprise if Kraven just showed up to attack the RAFT and we had no idea who he was or that he was in New York. Imagine the shared catharsis with Peter and MJ when Harry shows up outside of May’s house in Queens, alive and well and not hiding in Europe. (On a brief quibble, Harry flat out tells two reporters that he lied to them and was suspended in a tank of goo for months and they simply do not question it! Oh the plot holes you can avoid by saying it’s an “experimental treatment.”) It’s as if Insomniac’s writers don’t trust players to follow a marginally complicated plot. Everything must be breadcrumbed into oblivion, or told the themes and character motivations outright. It’s depressing.
If you noticed an omission from that paragraph, it’s that the name Miles Morales did not show up once, and I imagine something similar happened with Insomniac’s story team before remembering, fuck, we have a second Spider-Man. Following his standalone expansion, which in my opinion has one of the worst stories I’ve ever experienced, Miles does seem ripe for a story based around grief: his father was murdered, his best friend became a super-villain terrorist who tried to blow up the city and then died “redeeming” herself, and his uncle is a villain/antihero who takes justice into his own hands. Here is a teenager who has lost so much and gained a massive responsibility on top of it. Grief should be overflowing, and at times, it is. Both interactions with Martin Li are great for Miles pushing for revenge over being a friendly neighborhood hero to all.
But he’s Miles Morales. He’s cool and goes with the flow, even when his mom starts dating someone else. He has a new best friend (another techie, which, wow does Miles have a friend type) and a potential girlfriend, and he is so anxious they’ll leave him behind that he checks notes spends most of the early game failing to write his Common App essay? So he can’t follow them to college? Are you fucking kidding me? Miles is such fertile ground for thematic exploration, presents the perfect opportunity to be a dramatic foil to Peter, who has lost everything but had May to guide him through the pains of being a teenaged Spider-Man, and he’s barely present in the narrative. Peter was a better mentor when he was with MJ in Symkaria and left AI challenges for Miles to complete than when they are both in the same city.
I expect much of this letter series, and our private correspondence while we continue to play through this game, to focus on the little Spider-Men in our heads. We are both deeply empathetic people, often to our detriment, helping others at the expense of our own stability and ability. That kind of lifestyle isn’t tenable for me, it hasn’t been for a long time, but recent events have made it impossible to be anything but selfish, by which I mean placing my own desires and needs first and slowly becoming a person again. Someone who can help others without the same amount of entanglement as before. It’s difficult to balance being of service to others at all times with the fact that most days are a struggle to do the simplest things. I can’t be running into traffic to save anyone or stopping a train that’s running off the rails. I am not Spider-Man and Peter Parker — I’m just Peter Parker. A poor artist trying to find a way to make it in the city without letting it swallow me whole. It seems like, perhaps, Peter and Miles may have to learn a thing or two about accepting their own limitations and the consequences from that, so maybe I can grow with them. Maybe we can, together.
Spider-Man 2, at least the portion that I played for this letter, is a messy game, and it’s not something it seems I can blame on ambition but, at the risk of setting criticism back another five years, sequelitis. Make New York bigger. Make combat more “engaged” — Iron Spider arms, deeper skill trees, a goddamn parry that I think will be the death of me because what do you mean Spider-Man has to parry attacks? Make the story even larger, with more villains who can’t uphold a consequential narrative. Early on, it’s a bloated, unfocused mess that sadly got planned story DLC cut, meaning many threads — like the arson happy cultists praying to Carnage — will dangle untied and uncut forever. I think it’s fitting that the game is unfinished. It feels emblematic, in a way, of Sony’s identity crisis of the PlayStation 5 era: how do we do what worked for the past decade, but more? It’s rarely better. Just more.
So Ashley, my dear, what are your experiences swinging through three of the five boros? How do you feel about the combat? Is this game a showcase of the PS5’s capabilities, set with ray tracing and zero loading zones? Or, in Insomniac’s quest for the most realistic, most biggeriest Spider-Man story, have they stumbled upon their own limitations and must now face the consequences?
Awaiting with baited breath,
Micaela