Highlights
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is highly anticipated, building on the success of the previous games in the franchise.
- The reintroduction of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app, previously featured in Miles Morales, is a practical and immersive way to navigate side missions and maintain the momentum of the game without interrupting the action.
- Insomniac has confirmed that the app will be upgraded in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, indicating its return and potential for even better functionality while maintaining its simplicity. Its success in supporting other features and systems is crucial to the game's overall experience.
The upcoming Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is rife with potential and is looking to please both new and returning players. Insomniac's upcoming game follows in the footsteps of 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man and its spin-off game Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, blending together many elements from those two games--including one of the more minor but integral features of Miles Morales. This is likely to work in Marvel's Spider-Man 2's favor.
Whatever the future holds for Insomniac's Spider-Man franchise, this year's release is highly anticipated by superhero and gaming fans alike. These fans may have good reason to be excited, too, since the upcoming game seems to be reintroducing and refining many of the features and mechanics that made the first two games so successful. These features include the satisfying web-swinging system, the sprawling array of suits, and the dynamic, activity-laden open-world of New York City, which now includes Brooklyn and Queens. While both Marvel's Spider-Man and its follow-up Miles Morales game share a lot of key elements, there is one system introduced in Miles Morales that will be getting revamped for the October release, which can only mean good things.
Bringing Back The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App is a Good Idea
When looking at all the great features coming to Spider-Man 2, the reintroduction of Ganke's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app might not stand out as particularly flashy, but it was one of the unsung heroes of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The feature helped bolster the previous game in terms of gameplay, exploration, and world-building, and was all-in-all one of the best additions to 2018's follow-up.
In Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app could be used by the player to check in on Manhattan and keep track of side missions. The app could be accessed by a simple swipe of the controller's touchpad, making it an easy and seamless menu to utilize. Moreover, it allowed the game to strengthen immersion, as players wouldn't have to constantly leave Spider-Man's impressively detailed digital New York to switch between menus and maps. This helped keep the momentum of the game strong, letting players quickly select what side content they wanted to track without pausing the action.
The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app also went a long way towards the world-building of the game. While superhero stories demand some suspension of disbelief, it can sometimes be hard to imagine that a city as large as New York is effectively monitored by one person. Sure, Spider-Man can swing through the streets at breakneck speeds and get a birds-eye view of what's happening, but it's not the most efficient way to keep tabs on individual people in need. As a quintessential superhero, Spider-Man would benefit from a more modern, practical method to point him in the right direction, and the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app is an elegant solution.
In a recent preview, Insomniac commented that the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app will be "upgraded" in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. While it's unclear at this time how exactly the app will be upgraded, the comment is a clear sign that it will be making a return, and will hopefully be even better than before. Insomniac could perhaps improve the feature by adding extra functions, but the developers should be careful not to overdo it; the beauty of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app as an in-game feature is its simplicity, so it shouldn't be changed too much. If the app can be at least as good as it was in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, it would certainly help support Marvel's Spider-Man 2's other features and systems.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20 for PlayStation 5.
