Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Continues Insomniac’s Mastery Of ‘Third Entry’ Games

After the success of the previous two games, I can see why so many people were hyped for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. And yet, for me, there was this nagging problem. See, I love Spider-Man and its developer Insomniac, but neither Marvel’s Spider-Man nor Miles Morales were quite the Godly games I had been hoping for.

In fact (whisper it) I thought both were fairly average.

I liked the gadgets in the first, and I liked to focus on the friendly neighborhood elements of Spider-Man examined in Miles Morales. But, the gadget wheel was too big, the Venom abilities were too small, and neither wowed me with their storytelling.

Then along came Spider-Man 2, and what do you know? It delivered! Abilities got a much bigger selection while not overstepping, and the gadgets were much more fine-crafted. The story this time around was wonderful, and the focus on community issues and general heroism over basic video game violence was incredible.

Thinking about it some more, I realized looking at Insomniac’s past games that they always make the third game in a series an absolute masterpiece. So let’s take a jaunt back through Insomniac’s history and talk about Spyro and Ratchet & Clank, shall we?

Past The Gateway To Glimmer

My mother and I were at our local Toys R Us when I was very young, already the owner of a PlayStation One. She let me pick out a game to buy, and there was something about that little purple dragon on the cover that instantly made me beg for Spyro. At that time, my PlayStation library was just licensed games like Looney Tunes Racing and Monsters Inc. Scream Team, so to little ol’ me it felt like a risk playing something not involving a movie or cartoon.

But Spyro, he taught me what a video game is. I still remember the awe of being able to freely glide over to an area in the background that was actually mapped-out level rather than just a painted-on backdrop. In many ways, the original Spyro still has a sense of discovery that modern games need to catch up with.

But Spyro 1 had some wonky controls that didn’t age well, and were outdated by the time of its 1999 sequel, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. Spyro could hover now, letting you land easier on platforms, and if you ran while jumping you jumped higher and further, something the original game didn’t understand.

New characters and a genuine attempt at a story also brought real height for the purple dragon, from his maybe love-interest Elora to the bastard Moneybags who decides it’s only fair to charge you “a small fee” for learning how to swim or unlocking a necessary level. I blew through that game in a weekend and while it’s not the first game I 100%’ed, it’s the one that stuck with me.

But something big was lost. The first game nailed this sense of being able to glide to new locations and discover entire other parts of the levels, but Spyro 2 forwent that for hidden rooms with puzzles to solve, and sometimes those rooms were just barely hidden.

And while Gnasty Gnorc from Spyro 1 was not much more than a comedy villain with a terrible bossfight, he still drove the plot by freezing all the other dragons. Versus the sequel’s titular Ripto, whose titular Rage ultimately was only in cutscenes; none of the people Spyro helps out in the world of Avalar seem to be that affected by him, they have their own problems Ripto is just plain not responsible for.

The third game in the trilogy, Year of the Dragon, came out in 2000, and it fixed all of that. It brought back the feeling of open exploration from Spyro 1, the villainous Sorceress drove the plot directly like Gnasty Gnorc did, the plot was the best it had ever been, and by God, the new playable characters were just the perfect addition. Sheila was just Spyro with a massive jump, Sgt. Byrd could free fly with endless missiles, Bentley was the slow powerhouse, and Agent 9 was pretty much a prototype Ratchet. They even made the speedways good! Year Of The Dragon is in my top five games of all time, as it’s everything great about Spyro with none of the baggage.

Hey There, Fuzzball

Then there was Ratchet & Clank. The first game, which I only got round to playing around 2013, instantly captivated me with its satirical story and how it dared to make Ratchet a bitter jackass who needed to learn how to be a hero. Chairman Drek is also maybe one of gaming’s greatest diabolical villains. But it was severely held back by its design: the currency system of Bolts were stingy despite needing them to progress, and every gadget that was free was so cryptically hidden you’d be two or more playthroughs deep before you found it

The sequel, Going Commando, fixed much of the original’s weirdness. The guns now leveled up the more you used them, creating a nice sense of progression. Health worked the same way as well: every hit Ratchet took filled a meter that once filled, you gained another hitpoint. Unfortunately, the story was scattershot. Gone was the believable character development, and the villain was swapped out both halfway through and then again at the last second, making the final boss fight feel disconnected from the rest of the game rather than a climactic showdown.

But Ratchet & Clank really found its groove with the third game, Up Your Arsenal, which brought together the best elements of both preceding games. The script was tightly written with tons of believable character development again, and not only did your guns and health continue to grow as you played more, but Insomniac even looked at the guns from the previous games that still stunk and made them finally not just useful, but in some cases overpowered!

And I may have just said I love Chairman Drek, but even I agree Doctor Nefarious is the villain that makes Ratchet & Clank. Drek was a monster, a soulless CEO selling out his species for a buck, while Nefarious got a sympathetic backstory that made you understand his incredibly dark motives, and on top of that they got Star Trek’s Armin Shimerman to voice the character, delivering a fantastically screechy, hammy performance.

I look at Insomniac’s games like this: the first installment is bread-and-butter: you get a lot of mileage out of that combo, and some people even swear by it their whole life. Come the second game, Insomniac decides to toast the bread first, trim a bit back on the butter, and see what a mix of jam and peanut butter do. Come the third game, use just a dash more butter, a little less jelly, be sure the edges of the bread aren’t burned this time (and for God’s sake who thought ketchup was a good idea?!? No more of that, thanks).

Insomniac evolves instead of snoozing on its past successes, truly making it Sony’s best in-house studio.