In 2018, Sony and Insomniac shocked us with the sudden introduction of an original Spider-Man story unique to the video game universe in Marvel’s Spider-Man. Both familiar and obscure Spider-Man friends and foes entered the narrative with new backstories and fresh twists. With highly polished gameplay and a script to rival the best of the MCU, this Playstation-exclusive series has become a powerhouse in its own right. 

The Good:

• Gameplay is refined and extremely fun
• The story is fully fleshed out and well-paced

The Bad:

• Feels unfinished, technically – tons of minor bugs and glitches
• Dull, repetitive boss fights

The Ugly:

• If you’re playing woke bingo, you will run out of cards

Spider-Man 2

Set directly after the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 is a third-person action game set in a near-future aspirational vision of New York City.  Players will switch between playing as Spider-Man and Miles Morales to accomplish the mutual and exclusive goals each of them have throughout the course of the game. Players will fight street thugs, solve puzzles, collect and upgrade equipment, and try to thwart the mysterious plans of Kraven. Where they follow their individual goals, Miles uses his superhero duties as an excuse to procrastinate on writing his college entrance essay and also to support the underprivileged community with missions like saving a music museum dedicated to musicians of color. Peter Parker will complete experiments for the Emily May Foundation to generate clean energy with wind power and develop GMO crops to feed the homeless.

1 Vacation

2 Shop

3 Amazon

Story: The Gift of Gab

One of the things that sets this series apart from other action games is just how much story it manages to squeeze in while still providing extremely well-refined and varied gameplay. In games like Assassin’s Creed, the story and dialogue are concentrated around cutscenes and maybe a handful of set-piece events, but in Spider-Man 2, the dialogue almost never stops. Every fight, from the iconic plot-centric boss battles to the generic street crime skirmishes, is filled with constant commentary or repartee. Every time you pick up an object or come close to a side objective, someone has something to say. Even just traversing the city from one objective to the next, Spider-Man and Miles can’t go more than a couple of minutes without audibly musing or getting a cell phone call that furthers one of a dozen concurrent story threads.  

It’s difficult to decide which is more impressive – the sheer volume of non-repetitive dialogue or the fact that all voice actors sound on top of their game (no pun intended – well, maybe a little).  Aside from being laced with woke ideology, the content of the dialogue is very well written. The jokes land perfectly, and the drama is only hamfisted when it’s serving some ESG quota. Otherwise, it comes across as sincere and realistic.

Gameplay: So Many Options

Just because the game is story-centric doesn’t mean the developers let the core of the action slide.  While the bulk of gameplay is still combat-driven, the game never misses an opportunity to introduce a new type of interaction. This often happens in the form of minigames, such as solving puzzles to splice plant genes, isolate chemical compounds, or find hidden items, but it also manifests in races on the ground and in the air or controlling drastically different types of drones to train AI models or repair a broken security system. And the list goes on and on.

Gameplay: Traversal

Getting around in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 can be a sheer joy. Web-swinging through the streets has a rhythm that feels almost natural. As if that wasn’t good enough, the new web-wings ability, which turns the spider suits into wingsuits, gives players even more crazy-fun ways to zip around skyscrapers, across bridges, and over the bay. 

The ability to fast travel is locked behind completing a certain number of side objectives in each borough of the city. This is a fairly organic way to make sure players don’t start skipping chunks of the environment until they’ve had a chance to see and experience it.

Gameplay: If You Can’t Be Original, Be The Best

This game borrows most of its combat system (as do many other third-person action games) from Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), so the attack-dodge-parry combat isn’t new or unique, but this implementation does set a high bar among imitators. As with environment traversal, there’s a rhythm to combat that just feels right when you manage to sync up with it. Wade into a crowd of a dozen thugs unprepared, and you’ll get your butt handed to you, but get into the groove, and you start to feel unstoppable. 

The game still offers its share of cheap deaths from baddies that have attacks that can soak up half of your health in one shot if you don’t manage to parry or get out of the way fast enough. While frustrating, it also incentivizes the player to take a more frenetic and aggressive approach on the next attempt. 

The player and the enemy aren’t the only elements of combat. There are always environmental actions available to give the player an edge in combat  Sometimes, it’s just loose objects scattered around that you can web up and throw as projectiles, and sometimes, it’s something specific to a boss fight, like a water pipe, or a trapdoor. 

Several enemies are immune to direct attack, meaning that you constantly have to adjust your approach – for example, enemies with shields can’t be defeated head-on, so you have to get behind them to do any damage, and enemies with hand weapons can only be hurt by special attacks or a well-timed parry.

Boss fights are a little repetitive and predictable.  Every boss has to be defeated three times per encounter, and while there’s some variation in what environmental advantages can be used, there’s otherwise very little variety in the combat. In this, the designers clearly chose cinematics over gameplay.

Gameplay: Shhhh Be Very Quiet

During sneaking sequences, it’s up to the player whether or not the character is discovered.  If discovered, the enemies will attack until they’re defeated, or the player manages to break line of sight long enough for them to lose track. The stealth mechanics here are nothing new (most again taken right out of the Batman Arkham games), but they are well-implemented.  For instance, enemies have realistic lines of sight and respond somewhat convincingly to distractions. Environments are arranged to give the player plenty of opportunities to strategically separate the bad guys and use silent takedowns to incapacitate them.

Audio: A Feast for the Ears

The audio production is nothing short of fantastic.  The high-quality voice acting is mixed perfectly with the sound effects and music and is never difficult to understand. Full advantage is taken of multi-channel surround sound setups, not just to provide convincing ambiance but to give players positional awareness.  The music is well orchestrated and borrows heavily from the most recent Spider-Man films while still delivering unique performances. The Spider-Man “theme” gets multiple context-based renditions, including a rhythm-action game they managed to slip in.

Technical Evaluation: A Spider Web Full of Bugs

As polished as much of this game is, it was also released clearly unfinished. Minor bugs and glitches are evident throughout. If you’re curious why it was dinged for performance and technical issues, a fairly comprehensive list exists here. While disappointing, they amount to annoyances more than hindrances.

Final Thoughts

From start to finish, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is paced like an Avengers film; the action and story comprise a flashy, dense, nonstop feast of dopamine.  It’s clear that a lot of the right kind of passion, i.e., art, voice acting, complex storytelling, gameplay design, environment design, and audio design, went into this project. Unfortunately, a lot of the wrong kind of passion – DEI, decolonization, misandry, and a litany of other woke concepts also found their way into this virtual world.  It presents an Overton Window in which non-woke, non-leftist ideologies don’t even exist. As great as this game is technically and as fun as it is to play, it amounts to 20-ish hours of woke propaganda targeted at young people. Don’t let your children play this without at least first discussing that superpowers and future tech are not the only things in it that are at odds with reality.

WOKE ELEMENTS

To the writers, the true villain of this story is not Kraven or Venom; it’s whiteness. The reason this game gets such a high wokeness score is because it is fundamentally a story about decolonizing Spider-Man, and nearly every part of the narrative supports this though it isn’t necessarily obvious while you’re playing. You’ll find a lot written about “decolonization” online, and like all politically controversial topics, there is little consistency in how it is meant and how it is applied.  James Lindsay delivered a speech about wokeness that addresses decolonization if you want a based opinion, but it basically means removing white people from positions of power, public life, and, to some, from existence.  

Spider-Man’s woke slant is not worn on its sleeve. The writers didn’t try to make either Spider-Man gay, plaster the environments with pride flags and trans-rights slogans, or stop every five minutes to acknowledge the indigenous peoples that used to inhabit New York.  Everything it does is subtle, almost subliminal, and many players will, no doubt, brush off what they see as innocuous or coincidental, if they even notice it at all.  When I tell you this game ranks high on wokeness, I won’t be shocked if some readers who have already played it are dismissive or skeptical. You won’t necessarily be dealing with it the whole time, and that seems to be the point.

Spider-Man 2 resists the temptation to depict racial inequality between Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Indeed, without making Miles literally homeless, it would be difficult to depict him as less privileged than Peter. There are indirect inferences to racial inequality in the way that a music museum seems to struggle, specifically because its theme is “musicians of color,” but in thousands of lines of dialogue, no one cries “racism” out loud. If anything, Miles’ advantages over Peter (still has one of his parents and isn’t dirt poor) are meant to bring balance to Peter’s one advantage of being white – this is what the woke call “equity.”

One of the woke categories that Spider-Man 2 scores some points in was surprising to see in a video game at all.  That is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Google has memory-holed most articles that aren’t fawning endorsements of this concept so it was difficult to find a good one to share. Chances are you, however, have already encountered it and know exactly why it’s a plague on the corporate world, but if you would like an elegant and clear primer on it and how it relates to wokeness, you are encouraged to watch the James Lindsay speech linked above as it also touches on the elements of DEI.

On the surface and taken a piece at a time, the woke elements are scattered and appear unrelated.  Moreover, the sheer volume of dialogue effectively dilutes the woke parts, as prolific as they are, blending them in with what is an impressively large tapestry of narrative.  Despite the laundry list of problems, narratively speaking, the game isn’t all bad. There are great themes of friendship, familial loyalty, mentorship, honesty, and redemption throughout. Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, there are undeniable patterns that reveal the woke parts are not innocuous. 

As a game marketed to young people, the most immediately troublesome parts are the messages it sends to girls about boys and boys about themselves. For example, Peter’s self-effacement goes beyond healthy humility, and MJ’s beyond expressions of her own insecurities.

Some understanding of Venom is necessary for the context below. It is a symbiotic alien creature. Very analogous to demonic possession, Venom can take a person as a host and affect the person’s mind, blending his thoughts with theirs. This also causes them to lose most of their inhibitions. Since Venom is a creature of pragmatic self-interest, it magnifies a person’s aggression, anger, and resentment while suppressing empathy and compassion. Most of the words they speak are still their own but without a filter.

Anti-2nd Amendment

• While fighting a group of thugs looting a gun store, Peter monologues about how irresponsible it is to have a gun club in the middle of New York City, implying that the owner is at least partly to blame for the crime.

Anti-capitalism/Pro-communism

• Peter lectures, “Profit shouldn’t be part of the equation when it comes to basic human necessities.” Here, he’s referring to a non-profit being morally superior to other tech companies because it open sources the spliced genomes of modified plants. This is done expressly to make them available to feed the homeless for free as opposed to profiting from them the way normal corporations do.  How a homeless person is going to use an open-source gene sequence to grow food for themselves without the need for equipment, specially educated personnel, land, and raw materials is not fully explained.
• There’s a podcast that you will hear snippets from between missions and while traversing the city.  In one of these, the caster, Dana, laments getting cut off while having a riveting discussion about “philanthropy and using the means of production for good.” This is a blatantly Marxist concept.

DEI

• Sometime before Aunt May’s death in the first game and the start of this one, Norman Osborn, Harry’s billionaire father, set up a non-profit think tank in the middle of New York City called the Emily May Foundation to celebrate her legacy.  While Harry’s father set things up, Harry himself “changed a couple of things” when he recently took it over.  He casually mentions that he “Installed a diverse board to keep us on track.”  “Diverse” in this context refers to basically anyone who is either non-white, non-straight, or female. Harry’s change can only mean one of two things. The first one is that he fired any straight white males who were already serving on the board in order to replace them, and the second is that there was no board, to begin with, and no straight white males were considered for positions. Either way, this is anti-white racism doled out as casually as choosing the color of the floor tiles. Not to mention the naivety that comes with hiring people on the basis of something other than their qualifications and thinking this is going to keep things “on track”. 
• It isn’t just the board of Emily May that’s “diverse.” With the exception of Harry, Peter, and Dr. Curtis Connors (a.k.a. The Lizard), who is there as a short-lived plot device, there are no white males working at Emily May. In fact, out of the sixty or seventy people you see milling around, there are no white males in the building at all. This is subtle but 100% intentional.
• There’s a point after Peter is merged with Venom when the symbiosis is nearly complete, so Peter’s inhibitions are gone.  He begins ranting about how he is the only hero and that he has to save everyone. It’s a rare moment where the dialogue takes a turn for the awkward because there really isn’t anything in the plot up to that point that supports him having that belief, even subconsciously.  When Miles confronts him in order to bring him back to himself, he says, “I’m trying to save you, Peter!” Peter answers, “I’m the hero, you don’t save me, I save you!” Suddenly, the awkwardness of this left turn in the dialogue makes sense. The writers are tacitly apologizing for legacy Spider-Man being a White Savior.  This is the notion that much popular fiction depicts white people as the only ones who can be endowed with special powers to save everyone else as a way to promote white supremacy.
• Additional items can be found in the [Spoilers] section below.

Misandry

• In the opening sequence, Peter is fired by his black female boss. If the roles had been reversed and a white male had fired a black female for the same infraction, we would be reading about how “problematic” this game is in the actual New York Times.
• MJ, in an act of feminine chivalry, offers to pay Peter’s mortgage for him. (His altruistic Aunt May mortgaged the house and donated all of the money to a homeless shelter before she died. Since his lady boss fired him, he can’t pay the mortgage.) Later in the story, she uses this to emasculate him.
• During a fight scene when Miles has just met Felicia (a.k.a. Black Cat) five minutes prior, they’re confronted by an enemy vehicle with a turret on top, causing Miles to panic and ask Felicia what he should do.  Felicia tells him, “You got webs, use them,” which his panic has obviously made him forget. This is a blatant attempt to make Miles appear weak and uncertain and show how cool and collected Felicia is.
• In one scene, we’re treated to a sparring match in which a female soldier uses brute strength to overpower a male soldier who easily has a seventy to ninety-pound weight advantage over her. She knocks him to the ground and gleefully kicks him in the ribs over and over. In real life, a single punch from this man would probably have caved in her skull. As a bonus, the scene is on a loop, so she kicks and mocks him over and over indefinitely until the player triggers the next event.
• Upon their first meeting, the main antagonist, Kraven, explains to Peter that he “hunts that which man most fears.”  Kraven is using the term inclusively – when he says “man,” he means mankind.  Peter’s witty retort is, “He’s hunting failure? Intimacy?” implying that these are exclusively masculine fears.
• During a mission, MJ finds out that one of the Hunters has a lady boss, and she uses this, along with her sudden fluency in their language (deus ex machina much?), to impersonate his boss over the radio in order to learn the location of an access code. Once he tells her where the code is, she piles on a little verbal abuse and belittlement. Lest we mistakenly believe she was just being nasty to sell the part of a gruff paramilitary boss lady, she immediately remarks to herself it felt “kind of nice” to emasculate him.
• MJ is completely aware of the fact that Venom is altering Peter’s behavior; however, when he calls her to tell her the good news that he was freed and apologizes, she urges him to “go on,” as though she’s owed a more groveling apology.
• Peter’s character is a model of humility and selflessness. Throughout all three games that make up this series, he could hardly have been more empathetic and self-sacrificing.  This makes what happens when MJ is caught by Venom and turned into the symbiote monster “Scream” all the more disgusting. The character only exists for the duration of a fifteen-minute boss fight, but the entire point of it seems to be the diatribe of feminist grievances and attempts to emasculate Peter that plays out in the background as MJ (as Scream) lobs verbal abuse at him. Here are some highlights:
  • “I’m done begging for validation from you…or anyone!”
  • “For once, it’s not about you!”
  • “I’m finally in control.”
  • “I live in your shadow.”
  • “You just want to stay the stronger half.”
  • “You always patronize [me]!”
  • “You can’t keep a job.  You can’t pay the mortgage.”
  • At one point, Peter starts to say, “I always fix things,” then catches himself and amends it to “We always fix things,” before descending into sickening self-effacement where he apologizes for things that he didn’t do and that are not even in character for something he would have done off-camera.
    • “I’m sorry, I was wrong. You don’t have to trust me, but trust yourself.” 
    • “You’re right. I was selfish. I was so wrapped up in my own life I never thought about yours.”  

Gay Agenda

• Black Cat, Cat Woman analog and ex-girlfriend of Peter Parker, reveals through the course of conversation that she’s bisexual now. Just in case the player didn’t catch it the first time, the dialogue gratuitously works her “girlfriend” in several more times, as well as getting Miles to virtue-signal his allyship when he characterizes his motivation for saving her from the hunters as “We’ve got to get you back to your girlfriend.” 
• In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), when Miles attends a local fair at a park, we’re introduced to a lesbian couple, and the game makes sure we have a conversation about it. In this game, Miles revisits that same park to complete a mission. Standing in the exact same spot is one of the girls from the first game, and out of an entire crowd of people with whom he is familiar, Miles singles her out to ask about what else, where her partner is. This is done in order to remind us that she’s a lesbian and that Miles is an ally.

Atheism is not a religion

• The writers use the diminutive lowercase “g” when using the proper noun God.  This is not just bad grammar; it’s the hallmark of a zealot who does not believe his/her religion is a religion.

[Spoilers Warning] Do not read below if you don’t want spoilers. [Spoilers Warning]

[Spoilers] DEI

• Lest you think the early reference to the White Savior trope was isolated, the game ends with Peter quitting his role as Spider-Man and passing the torch to Miles.  The only way to completely avoid the White Savior trope is to not tell stories with white heroes or to diminish their roles to sidekicks and supporting characters.
• What Marvel presentation would be complete without post-credits scenes? This game has two. One is to set up the next game’s villain, and the other is to complete the pattern of “decolonization” by introducing Cindy Moon, a character that fans will know as Silk – essentially a female Spider-Man.