Marvel’s Spider-Man’s combat marries freeflow counterattacks with midair juggling and a slew of exciting gadgets. This allows players to not only stand toe-to-toe with enemies, but in fact they are encouraged instead to leap around the available terrain to make use of environmental interactions while avoiding gunfire. Paired with stealth at the beginning of any encounter to ensure that fewer enemies needed to be tackled ordinarily, there is hardly any limitation to what players can achieve in combat, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 now affords much more variety to that benchmark.

Indeed, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales also made significant changes to combat, but these changes were more necessary in terms of fans playing a completely different Spider-Man. Miles has entirely separate abilities that had to be accounted for in his gameplay, which meant he didn’t need as many gadgets as Peter had equipped. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will make Peter more distinguished now with four metal arms as seen on the Iron Spider suit, as well as the game-changing black symbiote suit. However, both Spider-Men will now also be required to parry certain attacks.

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Parries May Throw a Wrench into Combat for Both Spider-Men

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 featuring a dedicated parry mechanic is a great way to add a bit more urgency to encounters. Players will already be familiar with the dodge prompt always appearing as a spider-sense alarm triggering over Spider-Man’s head, alerting them to dodge an incoming attack. This was then improved tenfold when players could activate a perfect dodge skill and web-zip toward their attacker for an instant KO.

Parries have no doubt become gradually more prominent as a mechanic in games lately, bolstered by Soulslikes and action games alike. Resident Evil 4’s remake is only one example of how parries can positively impact gameplay, especially within a game that fans might never have expected one to appear, nor would they have thought it desperately needed it.

Parries might not be ubiquitous in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and it is difficult to predict how they may be engineered around both Peter and Miles’ individual skill trees, but any new mechanic is sure to stand out. Based on the two instances of parries shown in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s gameplay reveal, even regular enemy types will be able to throw out attacks that players need to parry.

The timing window seems remarkably generous, though, and another simple button input may not be too demanding for players. Spider-Man will still have his spider-sense alert him to the incoming attack, but parryable attacks seem to place a similar alert atop the enemy’s head in a yellow glow. Once parried, the glow becomes red. It also appears as if any attack can be used to parry an enemy, which would be neat seeing as how parryable attacks cannot be dodged and must be reacted to.

This could also become frustrating in higher difficulties if enemies are designed to lob more parryable attacks at the player, and it would not be surprising to see parryable attacks interrupting the player’s desired string of attacks or gadget deployments. Moreover, it does not seem like parries are distinguished between either playable Spider-Man, but it will be interesting to see which character has more of an issue with parries interrupting their combat flow.

Miles’ bioelectric abilities allow him to send parried enemies hurtling backward and knocking out nearby enemies, for example, and he may be better suited to crowd-control tactics than Peter. The symbiote’s effect on Peter’s gameplay will hopefully shine through in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s parries and let players have that same impact when tendrils come sprouting forth from his arm to reach distant enemies.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20, exclusively for PlayStation 5.

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