Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has a lot to live up to, as the original game excelled in several areas. However, one aspect that was a bit hit-or-miss was the game’s open world content. While the backpack collectibles were entertaining and a good source of lore, the landmarks and research labs were a bit more divisive. Further, most fans will agree that random crimes were too repetitive, something Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 should aim to fix.
While Spider-Man: Miles Morales trimmed the fat from the original game’s open world perfectly, players will surely be expecting a lot of content from a full sequel. Random crimes are also an integral part of the Spidey experience, as they allow players to feel like they are truly a friendly neighborhood hero. As such, they need to be included, with Insomniac making sure that they are always fun to do as opposed to annoying and repetitive.
How Marvel’s Spider-Man’s Random Crimes Can Be Improved
One way that random crimes could be improved for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a lowered frequency. In the original game, these random crimes felt as if they were endless, with several crimes likely to pop up on the trip to a mission objective. Players could complete one crime only to see another appear instantly, having no real break from the rapidly occurring crimes.
Eventually, most Marvel’s Spider-Man players will start to ignore the crimes as they work on the game’s side content or push through the story - though this does not come without consequences. Players who want to 100% the game will still need to do several random crimes in each district eventually, meaning that the last step of the journey to 100% could be a boring one that is filled with hours of the same random crimes. Worse, players will likely feel like they are doing a bad job of being Spider-Man because they are ignoring crimes due to their repetitive nature.
Insomniac needs to take a different approach to random crimes, with one solution being that they do not count for 100% completion. This way, players can ignore them without any consequences, skipping out on doing dozens of the same car chases and muggings so that they can focus on the other interesting content instead. Further, an option to disable the random crimes would be a welcome addition, as players who just want to focus on swinging around can do so without the need to help someone. Significantly lowering the spawn rates of the crimes would also help.
Alongside an approach that makes players feel less pressured to do every random crime they see while swinging, Insomniac should expand on the variety of random crimes. Players are constantly completing car QTEs or stopping robberies in the original game, and while this is certainly fine, there needs to be a greater variety of options to make these types less frequent. Pulling from older games would be a perfect place to start, as Peter Parker and Miles Morales could be tasked with rescuing civilians from burning buildings or swinging injured people to hospitals before time runs out.
Crime happening out of nowhere has always been vital to good Spider-Man stories, as has Spidey’s ability to help whenever he is needed. In the sequel, players should feel excited to do each random crime, as there should be such a large variety of crimes that players only see the same ones a few times. They should also be rare enough to not be detrimental to the experience, adding to the Spider-Man feel without pushing gamers to play a certain way.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is scheduled to release in 2023 on PS5.
