Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is a great game that I had a miserable time playing. Let me explain.
Ain't No Rest For The Webhead
I had been looking forward to Spider-Man 2 since it was announced, and as its release approached, I was eager to recreate the experience I had with Insomniac's first Spidey game and Miles Morales. Both of those came out in the last few months of their respective years, and I had an incredibly relaxing time playing games that went down so smooth while the weather outside was so pleasantly crisp. I even wrote about how the series has consistently given us perfect autumn games.
But when Spider-Man 2 finally arrived, my plans were foiled by a culprit far more insidious than any villain from the Webhead's rogues gallery: my PS5. See, my Spider-Man 2 playthrough was the inciting incident that led to my console crashing constantly. While playing Spider-Man 2, the console would shut itself off, unprompted, at least once an hour. At first I thought it was an issue with the game, as there had been some complaints about bugs in reviews. But, like the Symbiote spreading its sticky tendrils to another host, other games were soon infected, too. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor started crashing, and I had issues with Alan Wake 2. Eventually, I popped my PS5 open and cleaned out a bunch of fuzz, and was able to finish the games without issue.
Unfortunately, that was a temporary fix. This year, my PS5 started having the same issues (despite being dust-free, I checked), and I eventually needed to send it in for repairs. Now, it's back home and working great, and I'm back to using it as my primary console. I've been gaming up a storm, playing indies like Crow Country and Harold Halibut, and triple-A titles like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Rise of the Ronin, feeling like a pretty happy PS5 owner. My newly repaired (or straight-up new, I'm not sure) console has a new lease on life, and I'm appreciating it again as a great piece of hardware for playing new games.
The Triumphant Return Of My PS5
This has me thinking back to the games that got short shrift while it wasn't working well, and Spider-Man 2 is foremost among them. It's the game where I felt the disappointment most acutely — I was fully enjoying everything the game was doing on one level, but a constant sense of dread lurked beneath the surface. When that's the way you feel while playing a game, you can't really enjoy it, and you certainly can't use it as a route to relaxation.
In fact, playing Spider-Man 2 was even a minor cause of anxiety during that time. Imagine you're terrified of roller coasters, but one of your friends has convinced you to ride one. You're on the first hill, and it keeps going up, and up, and up. You know it has to drop at some point. But as it continues to tick-tick-tick up the incline, you start to believe that, hey, this might be the first roller coaster that only goes up. And then, in that stupid, deluded state, you crest the hill, rush down the other side, and feel even worse because you started to believe. That's kind of how it felt to play my PS5 during this time. I'd trick myself into thinking that I had fixed the issue, and then, every hour, on the hour, the PS5 would crash.
That couldn't help but affect how I saw Spider-Man 2, and how I played it. I sped through the main story, racing to beat the crash. I ignored a decent amount of side content because I didn't want to waste the hour I had before an inevitable shutdown. I did everything in exactly the opposite way of how I wanted to when I was waiting for the game. I owe the game another go. And, hey, fall will be here in a few months.
