As promised by developer Insomniac Games a couple of weeks ago, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will receive the highly anticipated New Game Plus mode in early March, specifically on Thursday the 7th.
The main goal of New Game Plus will be to allow players to start a new Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 playthrough on a higher difficulty while letting them keep all of the unlocked abilities and suits. However, Insomniac said they’ll also get to replay just a specific mission, which is certainly a nice bonus. New Game Plus mode doesn’t stop there, introducing Ultimate Levels, Golden Gadget Styles, and more unlockables.
For example, the Ultimate Levels are the way to unlock new suit styles for several of Peter’s symbiote story suits. Players will even be able to choose the color of their symbiote’s abilities. There are even two brand new free suits, the Marvel’s Hellfire Gala suits, made specifically for Peter and Miles. Peter wears the design created by Russell Dauterman, and Miles rocks his iconic look from Bernard Chang’s Hellfire Gala variant cover for Miles Morales: Spider-Man #8.
On top of those, Insomniac Games has partnered with Gameheads to create the Fly N’ Fresh suits, which will be priced at $4.99 for a limited time. PlayStation announced its intention to donate 100% of the proceeds earned from this DLC between March 7 and April 5 to Gameheads, up to a million dollars. The pack will be available for free at a later date, so it should be seen as a way to support the Gameheads organization.
The upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 update also improves Photo Mode, adding stickers and an action figure mode. Furthermore, with the ability to change the time of day after the story has been completed, would-be photographers will have the means to find the perfect lighting. Last but not least, accessibility has been improved as well thanks to the audio descriptions and screen reader features.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launched in October for PlayStation 5, earning widespread acclaim. I enjoyed it a lot, as explained in my review. Insomniac’s latest entry in the franchise also received various awards and has sold 10 million units to date as announced last week during Sony’s quarterly financials.
This would be an enormous success for any game, but Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has become the poster child for the industry’s big problem with ever-growing budgets. The Insomniac leak showed the game cost $300 million, $100 of which went to Disney for the license. Sony recently lost $10 billion in market capitalization following the latest report due to the low profit margins, for which such budgets are among the main causes. Sony Interactive Entertainment Chairman Hiroki Totoki hinted that the company should more aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy, at least for PC.
This could possibly translate into quicker ports of games like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 instead of the usual two-year minimum wait. Though, to be fair, an unofficial build of the PC version is already circulating online following the aforementioned leak.
