Dropping the last-gen hardware may have seemed harsh on the PS4, but the results of Insomniac’s gamble are clear for al…
I went into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 thinking it would just be more of the same. That’s not a bad thing – with only 1.5 games in the series to date, developer Insomniac knows that this formula ain’t broke, so there’s no need to fix it. And I was largely right; if you’ve played both Peter’s and Miles’ take on PlayStation Spider-verse, there’s very little here that’s going to shock you. It’s gaming comfort food, a safe summer blockbuster, your favourite band’s familiar encore.
But there are small differences, and they serve to underline the whole experience. The biggest change to the setup of the game is the dual-character setup. Story missions will have scripted moments where you hotswap from Peter to Miles, and the open world segments will allow you to do so on a whim. In action, as you whoosh from one hero to another – like GTA 5 did 10 years ago, but better – you really start to realise that this, finally, is a proper new-gen game.
“The PS5 fast loading is something that really helps us,” explains Ryan Smith, senior game director at Insomniac, in an interview with VG247. “Especially with the open world switching – we can swap between Peter and Miles quite quickly. And these transitions give you a chance to see fun animations, too – these transitions have been a place where our animators have been able to get really creative.”
He’s right. Thanks to the chaperoned nature of my preview, I didn’t get to see too many of these instances, but what I did see impressed me – it made the game feel more guided. More curated. More intentional.
“So, by using the PS5 hardware, the animation team can really let this cinematic idea of [playing as two Spider-men] come to life, and it also lets you really feel the city – more so than even in the last games, right? Because it’s one thing to swing and hit those viewpoints, but when these cinematically-crafted transitions kick in… it’s really fun,” explains Smith.
