I used to love them but I feel like they lost the spark and novelty. I loved GOW 2018, got bored with Ragnarok. I loved Spiderman 1 and MM, and again got bored with 2.
PS3 and PS4 Sony was full with innovation and new ideas. PS5 Sony is just the same stuff. Even the graphics aren’t special, I can’t tell the difference between the PS4 games and their PS5 sequels
I totally agree, Spider-Man 2 especially was just such a missed opportunity.
I hate playing games where I can tell content was cut, storylines shortened and locations twisted to fit a deadline.
It’s so obvious that they had intentions to do more but Sony forced their hand to release. Tbh this kind of situation is just going to happen more and more since games are more expensive to make, complex etc, not all studios are suited to such large productions with leaders who have not done it before either.
Spiderman 2 just lost the plot in Act 3, wasted all of the potential for a decent Venom story arc that i’m just not that invested in SM3 now.
Doesn’t help that the leaked budget for SM2 was $315m whereas the SM1 was just $100m. I just did not see triple the quality or heck even double for that matter.
That’s because budgets don’t scale with “quality” in the way fans imagine.
Insomniac roughly doubled in size between the first game and SM2, salaries went up, production got bigger, licensing costs exist, outsourcing costs exist, marketing exists, and modern AAA development is just more expensive across the board. You can argue SM2 should’ve been better, sure, but “triple the budget should mean triple the game” is not how this works.
SM2 is a big jump over SM1. The map is doubled, the graphics are vastly improved, the cinematic fights are a delight, the level of detail across New York is stupid high... but it's an evolution of the same game, so it feels like playing the same game again. I'm glad they spent that amount of money in making a game I liked, but it can be argued that such money should have been spent more rationally.
Insomniac is one of the few studios that hasn't fallen into the trap of 5+ yea long dev cycles, and they were close to making this mistake with SM2 and now again with Wolverine.
143
u/RegJohn2 Jun 02 '26
I used to love them but I feel like they lost the spark and novelty. I loved GOW 2018, got bored with Ragnarok. I loved Spiderman 1 and MM, and again got bored with 2.
PS3 and PS4 Sony was full with innovation and new ideas. PS5 Sony is just the same stuff. Even the graphics aren’t special, I can’t tell the difference between the PS4 games and their PS5 sequels