the spider-man complex — bored in black
Sweet Micaela,
God, these are going to be some long letters. Thank god for the advent of word processors, or we’d be spending far too much on paper and postage to fit our words of co-operation, confusion, and internal conflict.
I miss the scream of the subway, both inside and out. I miss the intrusive rattle of the M. It’s fascinating to me that perspective makes me yearn for what you, understandably, see as a half-hourly disturbance. I envy your experience of true spring; the shift from New York’s warm and welcoming fake spring to Birmingham’s sunless pre-April showers has been harsh [note: it literally just started hailing while I write this from the safety of a cafe]. Even in my awareness of my rose-tinted lensless glasses towards New York, being very much not a tri-state area resident (I really gotta visit Jersey eventually for the full experience), I can’t help it being more than just The City in my mind. It’s your city! On that note, I am still mad about the limitations of the two new boroughs and will probably continue to bring it up in the future — at some point, it’s just not true to say that Brooklyn and Queens have been added to the map. I get that even Manhattan is condensed and warped to fit the constraints of a city to swing through — an aside, but did you know that the Chrysler Building became too difficult to license between the two games and was removed from the city entirely? — but so much is missing that it isn’t just a one-off landmark or street that feels off. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to break a game’s boundaries more, just to see what facsimile of Bushwick and Ridgewood lies beyond the accessible area; I’ve watched both Spider-Men suddenly zip back to the limits of their world as I try to force them into these horizon-exclusive neighbourhoods more times than I can count. If Birdy’s can be in several Hollywood productions, it can be in Spider-Man 2!
I’m glad to say that the movement is one of very few elements I am also unflinchingly in love with. I’d heard previously that the top speeds possible in this entry were much higher than either previous game, but my god, I worry that the traversal improvements will make me never want to return to them again. I am in slight disbelief that swing assist is even a setting, as choosing anything above zero assist is just ridding yourself of the joy of learning to swing with control and confidence. And a journey it is — Yuri Lowenthal’s Peter can join Tobey Maguire’s in having severe back injuries resulting from careless swings and poorly calculated arcs, at least in my hands. The wings, I think, border on too much of a good thing: they’re core to maintaining and creating that visceral high speed, but it also means you no longer have to earn speed via dives from high places; just find one of the hundreds of jetstreams or updrafts around the city, and you’re golden. Maybe I associate web wings too closely with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, and I should re-examine my biases.
Something that I’m excited to hear your take on as you experience more of it is the game’s side content. Following on from the grand yet vapid introductions of Sandman and Kraven, they (or rather, extensions of themselves) make appearances in both predetermined and random events around the city. To shamelessly compare to Spider-Man 3 once again, my fears were confirmed. Marko’s consciousness is split across New York and held within crystals defended by clones of himself (sure! Why not!), and upon shattering these crystals, the Spider-Men hear his voice in their heads: a scared, unstable man powerless behind bars, desperately missing and wishing for the safety of the one thing he loves in this world. I won’t spoil how this short questline ends, but I can tell you my response was ‘Oh. Okay. Sure.’ One of these days, Marko will get a decent story to himself outside of the comics. Kraven’s hunters and Kasady’s cultists are responsible for the majority of non-citizen crimes, and generate about the same level of interest as their depowered brethren. More guys to punch, cars to stop and fires to put out. Maybe the oncoming alien threat can change this.
Oh yeah, Kraven and Harry are also in the story! I’m a fair bit further than you in the narrative as we stand, so I’ve had more time with these two. Sadly, they’re about as interesting as they were when you last saw them. Kraven kills off a villain for nothing but powerscaling reasons, a quick shorthand to make you scared of the guy. The Unity map is still about the extent of depth that his character receives, though: he’s a hunter. He hunts. There’s little else! Harry, too, is just ‘Peter’s best friend’. The bond between them is so saccharine, so goddamn nice, that it makes me a little sick. Harry’s life-or-death-necessitating revealing of his ‘experimental treatment’ to Peter atop Coney Island’s rollercoaster is met with an accidental admittal of Peter’s own alter-ego; neither of them seem particularly bothered about being lied to for years! I don’t know, I think if my best friend suddenly gave me the information that they’ve had alien or spider-based superpowers for years, I’d have a little stronger reaction than inviting him to join his Osborn-empire-funded research foundation and immediately declaring a team of ‘Spider-Pals!’. You’re an adult, Harry. Come on. Stop trying to make Spider-Pals happen.
Miles, too, has fuck-all to do. While Peter wrestles with an impossible mortgage, his relationship with MJ and a reappearance of his feline ex (who’s bi now! Love wins!), Miles is faced with Common App, maintaining the cultural museum’s collection and helping the school’s token gay couple nail their homecoming invitation. I’m glad Peter is finally far past high school in a contemporary Spider-Man story outside of the comics, but I don’t think Miles needed to be stuck in educational purgatory to make up for it. Let both of the Spider-Men be adults! I completely align with your feeling that Insomniac forgot that Miles had to be in this game (and it does seem like something they felt forced into by Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ ending); they were so caught up in finally paying off the symbiote tease from 2018 that they forgot about the Spider-Man who already had a black suit. There are tiny moments of character for Miles, such as not entirely forgiving his Uncle for his Prowler past and being ready to Venom Strike his civilian ass when Aaron seemingly breaks into and steals from his mom’s apartment, but these are few and far between compared to how frequently Miles is nothing more than a pale imitation of his Into The Spider-Verse self. Oh, and I finally unlocked that suit, so I don’t have to be pissed off staring at his terrible Insomniac-original classic suit anymore.
Letting myself be pissed (look, I never said my segues were smooth) has been a fun part of my developing feelings on this game. In contrast to the traversal, the combat of this game just makes me mad. Sure, there’s an appeal to Spider-Man being a power fantasy, but leaning fully into the previous games’ dependence on tech and gadgets is the wrong way to go about it for me. The power fantasy arises from Spider-Man floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee: you can’t get a hit on him, dancing around your sluggish mortal frame and cracking awful jokes every few seconds, but when he hits you, it’s right into next week. I think about that panel from Superior Spider-Man, in which Octavius (in Peter’s body) learns just how much Peter has been holding back when he punches Scorpion with full force and knocks the arachnid’s jaw clean off. Miles gets a slight pass considering his bioelectricity has always been what differentiates him from Peter, but to lock Peter’s power behind upgradable gadgets and Iron Spider arms that materialise from fucking nowhere is to completely miss what makes Spider-Man so special: he’s just a guy who happens to have super strength and speed. This is also why the parry makes me so angry; I’m playing as Spider-Man, not Sekiro. There’s a reason there was no block button before! Spider-Man dodges! It’s his whole thing!
I’m getting better at letting myself be upset or angry when it’s validated (again, my segues are poor and you can criticise me for it). It’s part of learning selfishness: recognising when the right response isn’t to just metaphorically get on your knees and apologise, and instead to accept that ‘No, actually, I have a right to stand up for myself and be annoyed.’ As basically every piece of Spider-Man media makes clear, it’s rough being Peter Parker, even without the double life to balance. Attempting to reduce the immediacy of my response to apologise and devote myself to others sometimes feels like throwing my suit in the trash; a woman of servitude no more. Still, I’m a long way from that. I’ll much sooner rip open my shirt to show the spider symbol beneath and try to save another than accept that there are other heroes around, and it doesn’t always have to be me. Then again, to recall the words of Hobie Brown and, regrettably, listen to a British person: “I’m not a hero, cos calling yourself a hero makes you a self-mythologising narcissistic autocrat.”
So, at the close of this very long letter, I’m incredibly curious to hear your thoughts on the section of the story we are currently misaligned in our progress on. What do you think of Harry and Kraven’s place in the story, or lack of. Are you excited to see how Insomniac handles the black suit arc? And are you, too, tired of how fucking nice everyone is in this game?
Toastiest,
Ashley
P.S. I can’t believe you made me read the word ‘sequelitis’ in 2026. Why would you do that to me? Do you hate me?
Hey dweeb,
A lot has happened, in real life New York and in-game. I feel like not acknowledging it would only be to lie further, and this series is about the small acts of selfishness we learn to take for ourselves. The world is different than it was. We are. And so it goes, and we adapt. We persevere not only because we want to — often we don’t. But because we must. No feelings are eternal, despite what we may think in the midst of their storm.
Complex emotions are, unsurprisingly, the only good aspect of Spider-Man 2’s narrative. Miles has brief, scattered conversations with his mom about the capture of Martin Li, the supervillain Mr. Negative who killed his father during a terrorist attack in the first game. His side-quest finding Uncle Aaron’s secret stashes not only furthers the bond between superhero nephew and supervillain uncle, but does place them in a unique problem: they both understand being superhuman, but for diametric reasons. Miles may love his uncle deeply, but he does distrust him, finding it easier to believe that he has stolen from their apartment rather than getting his own space on the floor above. There’s even some extremely underdeveloped tension between Miles and Peter, who abdicates his mentor role as soon as Harry enters the scene for no real reason other than to flesh out the Spider-Pals over the Spider-Men.
Miles, so far, never yells at Peter, a man who is supposed to be there for him at all moments but again and again pushes him aside for his own personal dilemmas. Peter seems to be trying hard to reclaim some sense of normalcy from an earlier time in his life by cavorting so deeply with Harry, even allowing him to help out during an extremely dangerous mission to free Tombstone from Kraven’s clutches. Despite trying so hard, the entire narrative of Spider-Man 2 lacks tension, with these scattered, compelling moments hitting only when they need to. Most of the side-quests are technically about the duelling ambitions: Marko’s crystals are about comparing the dangerous man from the opening to the caring father he secretly is; the Prowler stashes, as previously mentioned, allow Miles and Aaron to bond while seeing how maliciously integrated into the city the Prowler was; Brooklyn Visions allows Miles to help his fellow students with mundane things that only someone enrolled should care about; the Culture Museum pits white ownership against the artists they stole from and profited off of, while also exposing Miles to a musical history he neglects; Mysterio’s challenge rooms force us to juxtapose someone’s history with their ability to change, and makes us question whether or not “good people” are really good; and the Flame plotline pits Peter against one-time police detective Yuri, who has become a vengeful, murderous vigilante who doesn’t trust the law to punish criminals to the extent they should be. The thematic throughline is there, it’s just so thoroughly ignored and pushed aside for “gameplay” that it becomes difficult to see except a thousand feet up.
The characters in this video game don’t feel like real people, let alone fictional characters. Insomniac’s narrative team lost whatever touch they had from the original game, and no section highlights the utter disaster that is Spider-Man 2 quite like the Coney Island mission. Peter, MJ, and Harry wandering the boardwalk, playing carnival games and riding rollercoasters should, in theory, be a nice bit of scripted character development. It’s rare to get Peter being Peter, to show him and MJ leaning on one another as a couple, to reintroduce Harry back into their lives so everyone can see how he’s a little different since his treatment. But Insomniac decided to go Naughty Dog with it, something they profoundly lack the sauce and technical expertise to do. At the beginning of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Nathan Drake walks around his attic looking at the spoils of his past adventures. Players can twirl the items in space, or fire plastic balls from a gun at targets. The small space is curated to make us sympathize with Nathan, how he feels cooped up, how he misses the life of danger even if he’s happily married and playing Crash Bandicoot on a PSX with his hot girlboss wife. Nathan’s longing fuels the narrative: it places him in the arms of his presumed dead brother, it places an aged Sully in a hard place of lying, it comes back to bite him in the ass when his hot girlboss journalist wife catches on to his lies.
Coney Island is Insomniac’s attempt to let players, and Peter, live a normal life for a brief moment, but it lacks the narrative and technical polish to be anything more than a confusing diversion. Each activity that can be done — three are required, the rest are optional and unlock a goofy accessory for the group/Spider-Man to wear for the rest of the sequence — sucks. Wanna ride a rollercoaster? We programmed one that you can move the PlayStation 5 controller to raise your hands and scream during. Wanna play with water guns and targets? Hold the reticle on the circle for a minute while circles slowly fill. Whack-a-Mole? Swing the controller. Spinny swings? Raise your hand and listen to the insipid conversation between Peter and MJ. The singular interesting piece of dialogue, that Harry is happily surprised his treatment worked because otherwise he would be dead, is hidden behind a bark that occurs while just wandering around the boardwalk. No one comments. Everything feels underbaked and gimmicky, like Sony handed down a “Make the Dualsense do something cool” memo that would be more at home at Nintendo. By the time Kraven’s hunters show up to abduct Tombstone, who is working on parole as a go kart mechanic, I was begging for the entire boardwalk to be destroyed.
Sometimes when I play Spider-Man 2, it feels like I’m being forced to. The game really wrings every single ounce of fun and interest out of anything that isn’t swinging and becomes a wet towel of an experience fast. I can understand why I have friends who call this their “smooth brain relax game”; I can’t understand why they enjoy playing it. I’m already tired of combat, although I will admit the crunch of using the symbiote does invigorate me. I’m already tired of the brutes who require parrying to get through — Spider-Man is too fast to block something, just let me dodge and get the guy off balance and use his own strength against him! I’m already tired of exploring New York for the stupid fucking Spider-Bots or riding a bike around Central Park or seeing all the interesting tension the story (seemingly accidentally) introduces fizzle away. I’m tired of the crappy suit selection and the reality that, despite having completed all the side content available right now, I still have over half of this game to go.
I wanna see someone yell at Spider-Man for bringing them to the hospital for a bill they can’t pay! I wanna see criminals who actively hate Spider-Man. I wanna see consequences that are sowed and then reaped. Everyone gets off too goddamn easy. And I want the game to just shut the fuck up and stop telling me what to do. My favorite sequence of the game so far, MJ stealthing through a North Jersey Zoo equipped only with her Silver Sable taser, could almost be mistaken as a Last of Us II mimic, except MJ won’t stop talking. She’s constantly pointing out where to go, what to do, what needs to be searched. It feels like an accident that this sequence even works: it’s stormy, the hunters are menacing to a mortal, and MJ must be smart and quiet to find Dr. Connors before he becomes the Lizard again. It’s a crunchy change of pace, one that people yearning for hard punches and dodging will hate, but that’s part of why I love it. For the first time, I felt superior. I threw rocks, I snuck behind invisible barriers, I isolated and knocked out the few people blocking me from my goals. Now, if only the puzzles were more complicated and MJ wasn’t speaking to herself every few seconds, this could’ve been a golden break that reinvigorated the story. But then Spider-Man shows up. Punches some guys. Gets stabbed. Briefly dies, a genuinely emotional moment, and is resurrected by the symbiote, which refuses to go back to Harry, thus condemning him to death once more. It’s a juicy, uneven section that should set up for something way more interesting and… it simply doesn’t.
Look, I am not one to say that I want to always reap what I sow. I’m the world’s best liar, particularly to myself, and there are plenty of difficult emotions that I would rather ignore than face head on. If I do so long enough, they’ll disappear like the bridge of my nose (callback!). But that isn’t true. All my avoidance does is hurt myself and those I love, those I swore to protect more than anything. It’s silly, isn’t it, that I feel a greater call to responsibility than the Spider-Men? Maybe it’s because my life is real, and theirs is a facsimile torn between being an uninhibited power fantasy and a good story. It’s harder to say something, mean it, and act on it than Peter and Miles make it seem. There are no heroes and no villains here in our immediate world, just complicated people trying their best. It isn’t always good, and it certainly is never easy, but it really is. An ongoing process. Life itself. The only eternal feeling, even as it changes, is love.
As you’re still a little ahead of me in the game — I’m currently returning to the Emily May Foundation with the Lizard serum after solving literally every other problem NYC seems to have at the moment — I’m curious about your take on the dichotomy of motivations present throughout the narrative. Can we mean good and do good too? How does the complicated nature of being human chafe against the fabricated action figures that are Peter and Miles? Does the story get any better? How can we do what’s right at the expense of ourselves, and what does that do to us?
Toastiest,
Micaela
P.S. Wow, you steal my songs and art AND my sign off. Cheater.