Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Might Fail to Beat Its Rival for the No.1 Superhero Game Crown on Metacritic

Spider-Man 2 early reviews are out and it’s massive! The game has reached a Metacritic score of 91, which is an incredible feat. And it’s no surprise either. The Insomniac Games Spider-Man franchise has been extremely successful so far. And according to reviews, the franchise just got better. Whether it’s design, gameplay or story, the game has excelled and the reviews speak for it. However, there’s one milestone the game hasn’t achieved yet.

Spider-Man 2 might be one of the best superhero games ever made, but it’s not the best superhero game ever made. That crown still belongs to another game from the franchise that truly defined the superhero genre in gaming.

Spider-Man 2 fails to beat the Metacritic score of Batman Arkham Asylum and City

Insomniac Games decided to give their fans a much darker story this time around. With some heavy-hitting villains as well as some very interesting story lines, the game aims to capture the imagination of Spider-Man fans in a game like never before. And Insomniac Games has succeeded. Hence, its 91 Metacritic score is justified, at least according to early reviews. Yet, it failed to beat Batman.

Batman Arkham City and Arkham Asylum. Batman Arkham Asylum, though not the first game chronologically, was the first game in the Arkham story. It kickstarted the franchise and how it did. It holds a Metacritic score of 92, while its sequel, Arkham City, holds a score of 94.

Spider-Man 2 is 1 point behind Arkham Asylum which is somewhat trivial. There’s no saying what could make such a difference in the score of these games. But City has a better lead compared to Asylum. It sits three points ahead of Spider-Man 2. Since the wall crawler’s latest adventure hasn’t released yet, players surely don’t know what to make of this. However, fans of the superhero genre can surely understand why Arkham City boasts such an incredibly high score. It has a beautifully crafted, dark story. They made an extremely bold decision regarding Joker. Further, the devs did a fabulous job in designing Arkham City. The combat was brutal. And let’s not forget the Mr Freeze boss fight, which is widely recognized as one of the best boss battles in a superhero game. Further, side missions also felt more relevant to the story with villains like Victor Zsasz, Mad Hatter, Deadshot and Hush.

While there are plenty of reasons to praise Arkham City, surely Spider-Man 2 is a worthy adversary, boasting an incredible lineup of villains including Venom, Kraven, Sandman, Lizard and more.

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Developer Rocksteady appeared to have gone for a quality-over-quantity approach in both cases, and Insomniac Games has done the same with the Spider-Man games. So Arkham City is still at the top. But there’s always scope for future superhero games to dethrone the caped crusader.

Is it possible to break this score barrier?

While Spider-Man 2 failed to reach the score of the abovementioned Batman titles, it would be safe to say Insomniac can still do it. They are surely getting closer. Maybe Spider-Man 3 would do the trick? When it releases, if it happens, it could. If Insomniac Games can go bigger than Spider-Man 2, then surely it can dethrone Arkham City.

Wolverine is another contender for this as well. This upcoming game by Insomniac has the chance of reaching or even crossing that 94 mark. Given the fact that Insomniac seems to be going all out with this game, with its R rating. The game is slated for 2024. While not much is known about the game, judging by Insomniac Games’ track record with the superhero genre, the chances of them not replicating the success is slim to none.

While fans await the release of Spider-Man 2 and wait to hear more about Wolverine, there is an Iron Man game happening too. EA will be teaming up with Motive Studio to make an open world Iron Man title which was announced in 2022. With more superhero games coming into the fold, it will be interesting to see which game will beat Arkham City and when.

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