Spider-Man 2's Lack Of Suit Powers Are A Major Loss

I knew there was going to be a base level of quality to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2. I like the first game and Miles’ solo outing, the swinging always felt great, and current era 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Insomniac has the same impact on me as mid-'00s to mid-'10s BioWare. I just know it's going to work. I live in fear of the day Insomniac's world comes crashing down thanks to a Sony-mandated live-service grind fest where you fly around in shot puts. But anyway, that day's not here, so I knew I'd like Spider-Man 2. Before I played it, what I cared about most was the suits. Thankfully, it had a lot of surprises up its sleeves, but now that the dust has settled on everything, the suits feel like a bit of a letdown.

There are some places where I must agree with the general consensus around these suits - there are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:way too many MCU ones, and it's odd that a lot of the good ones didn't come back. I'm also all in for variants of the movie suits where rather than colour swaps, they 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:reference other scenes in the movies, like the firefighter helmet. However, there are some places where everyone else is wrong and I am right - Miles' Evolved Suit is pretty neat, especially with some colour swaps. His first suit was not a Miles original even if he made it, it was Peter's suit with new colours and a slightly bigger spider.

But what I'm surprised to have heard so little chatter about is the suit powers. In the original, every suit had a unique ability, though once you unlocked them you could equip different ones to each suit. Here, these have gone away, and every suit is functionally identical, with unlocking new ones only providing a fresh look rather than a new way to play.

There are two problems with this. Firstly, you used to get two new things when you unlocked a suit - as well as the suit, you also got a special power. It meant even if the suit sucked, you got something you could use. The sequel's version of this second bite is the colour swaps, which can help redeem some suits or make others even better, but often when a suit's good it's good, and when a suit's bad it's bad - the colours make good ones better, but there are some that I'll just never wear and that's that.

Spider-Punk's suit power, before and after

It also means we've lost some neat parts of the game. I understand that the combat had some much needed tweaks this time around, getting rid of the annoying gadget wheel to make things easier, while also challenging us more by removing the web grenade that could end a single battle in an instant. But the suit powers don't feel like a tweak made to the game, they feel like a loss. Spider-Punk used to have you leap into the air with a guitar, slamming down to the floor with sonic waves blaring out and damaging everyone around you. It wasn't a one-hit KO move, but it was a nice addition to Spidey's arsenal and looked extremely cool. With Spider-Punk back for Peter and Miles having a musical suit in City Sounds, it could have made a cracking sophomore album here.

The one thing that unlocking new suits does give you is the ability to switch between regular webs and black webs for Peter, but these are fixed to particular suits and inconsistent - the Raimi black suit still has regular webs. It's unlikely that suit powers will make a return (adding them would be a huge task with so many suits and likely more with any DLC), but we could still see some tweaks. Right now, both Peter and Miles have two different types of power-ups that we can change as we unlock them, but the ability to equip different ones for each suit and choose the black webs in the palette selection screen, could give a greater sense of customisation to the game.

You can only wear one suit at once, and there are enough of them that you'll never get bored of using the good ones, so I suppose that all works out. But the suit powers were one of the best parts of Spider-Man's arsenal in the original game, and it's a shame the sequel has killed them off with a whimper.