Spider-Man PS4: 10 Ways It Owes Its Success To The PS2 Spider-Man 2 Game
8. A Grounded And Well-Paced Narrative
What made Spider-Man stand out was the time and attention it gave to its story; splicing in the big comic book moments, yes, but as a backdrop to a narrative with more levels than a Manhattan skyscraper. There's escalation and pacing that leads to payoff in ways that felt significant, where other games would be content to just stuff as many villains as they developers could license in to help with marketing.
Spider-Man 2 functioned very much the same. It helped that it had a strong movie narrative to jump off from, but the effort that gets put into adaptation cannot be overlooked.
Building on the ideas and message in the movie, the game was able to dedicate more time to Spidey's core conflict, add extra wrinkles that felt compelling, and deepen his relationships with other key characters so when the big 'movie' moments arrived, they felt even more triumphant.
Spider-Man on the PS4 knows taking the time to do the same will work because it was so effective here in the first place, and it has the playbook to work off.