TL;DR:
I feel like the new gadgets poorly integrate with each other, basic attacks and ability moves, making combat a lot less engaging. I think insomniac missed the mark in making combat less OP and Miles Morales did an ability focused combat system better. My solution being to add all the gadgets back and make the eight face buttons modular, allowing the player to customize their load-out.

It’s my only real gripe with SM3. I can excuse the lack of character bios, podcast replay option, FNSM random crime selection app, selfie mode, social media feed etc. I can even excuse the story since I have more hours logged playing enemy bases than story missions, but I believe players lost the ability to do a lot of cool dynamic stuff with this new selection of gadgets, and as a result the combat took a hit in quality, in my opinion. The fix would be to re-add all the gadgets back—maybe as a NG+ reward—and make the eight face-buttons modular allowing the player to choose which gadgets and/or abilities they want to mix together and create their own customized load-out.

Want to web-electrocute an enemy and tendril punch him through a crowd, carrying the current? Sure. Want to tack a remote mine on an enemy and then concussive blast him into a group of enemies? By all means. Want to directional yank an enemy into a trip mine you placed to the left of them? Knock yourself out.

This feature would make combat way more dynamic as you figure out which gadgets play well off each other and come up with your own combos.

According to Bryan Intihar, Insomniac changed the combat system from gadget focused to an ability focused system and made the gadgets function as “set ups” for the abilities. They made the gadgets more defensive, and gave less of them because they wanted to make the player less OP.

I have several issues with this:

1. Most gadgets don’t set up abilities

Only one gadget out of the four truly “sets up” enemies in a way that amplifies an abilities move.

I define “set up” as a gadget whose function maximizes the damage output of an ability move. The web-grabber is the only one that does that. It groups enemies into a cluster, allowing the player to get the most out of any of their AOE damage focused abilities. Other than the web-grabber, what gadget sets up abilities?

You don’t need a sonic burst to set up a tendril slam—you’re just choosing whether to slam a group of standing enemies or ones that are already down. In what way would an upshot maximize the damage of say, a spider-arm rush or venom punch? If the majority of ability moves are AOE attacks, the only gadget that functions as a set up would be one that groups enemies together.

And even then, the web-grabber is kind of broken. They added an upgrade to the web-grabber that pulls in miscellaneous objects as well, knocking enemies away. Why would they add a knock back feature to a gadget whose purpose is to group enemies together for follow on ability moves? Especially if most of the abilities would knock them back anyway, and super especially if you already have a sonic burst gadget that fulfills that purpose in the first place? This “upgrade” directly contradicts the gadgets purpose, basically making it a less functional version of the gravity well from Miles’ game.

2. You’re still OP

They tried making the game less OP, but missed the mark given the fact that gadgets can still be used to wipe out groups of enemies. Just sonic burst the crowd and then ricochet web the downed enemies. The remaining can be cleared with the rest of a players gadget ammo, abilities, finishers, and an ultimate that replenishes abilities to start the loop over.

“Gadgets made combat in SM1 braindead easy, SM2’s gadgets actually force you to utilize them in a more strategic way than pressing an instant-kill button.”

I’ve heard this sentiment repeated a lot in this sub. With the concerning amount of hours I’ve spent on each game, I’m not seeing how SM2 is any more of a challenge for the reason I listed above. If Insomniacs goal was to make gadgets less OP, that sonic burst + ricochet web combo threw that goal out the window, and thats before you spam your remaining arsenal of gadgets, abilities and your ultimate.

Not to mention, there isn’t any strategy to them. They’re AOE “get off my back” buttons. You use them when you’re being overwhelmed, which is all the time. The strategic time to use them is when you have them, which in turn helps refill abilities faster, which in turn charges finishers, and soon after, your ultimate. Sure you may have not instant KOed all of them, but it’s not hard to get a rhythm going of AOE crowd control gadget, punch punch, AOE crowd control ability, punch, ultimate that can make combat feel just as easy to breeze through as the first game. Which brings me to my next point

3. You’re still OP, you just can’t do creative, cool stuff anymore

The game is still as easy as before, yet due to this new selection of gadgets, all the depth from the combat system in the previous games is gone. We’ve already established the only gadget that can set up ability moves combos is the web-grabber since it groups enemies up and most abilities are AOE based attacks. This has turned combat into “web-grab enemies into a group, then use ability move.” If overwhelmed, use any of the other gadgets and then keep fighting until your ability cools down. There’s just not much to see here.

Gadgets are what makes the combat engaging IMO. The real challenge in combat hasn’t been the enemies IMO, but how creatively you could dispose of them. SM1 and arguably MM’s gadgets allowed for a higher skill ceiling as to how good you could get at the combat system, and they could only do that with gadgets that synergized well with each other, ability moves and basic attacks.

Sure you could web bomb + concussive blast through the entirety of SM1 if you wanted, but you could also upper cut an enemy, tack a web bomb on him and then concussive blast him to a group of enemies shooting at you from across the room right before the bomb detonates, webbing them all together. That’s awesome, and rewards you for thinking to do it. You could tack a trip mine on enemy A and call it a day. Or, you could tack a trip mine on enemy A, and swing kick/throw/impact web/concussive blast enemy B into A’s trip mine, webbing them together. That too feels very satisfying to do. You could electrocute an enemy, pull them in and kick off throw them behind you into other enemies, electrocuting them.

These gadgets felt fine tuned to each other; they gave players full control to manipulate the battle and come up with their own dynamic combos, and they were cohesive with basic attacks in a way that is lacking in SM2’s selection. There was a gadget minigame in SM1’s DLC encouraging the player to combine gadgets to see what they could come up with. They added that minigame because THEY KNEW they created some dope shit and wanted the player to realize it too. I don’t think they could do the same thing had SM2 had DLC.

Try to shoot a webgrabber after a ricochet web or vice versa. Often times the enemies body physics don’t know which gadget to respond to, resulting in them stuttering in place. Same applies whenever you try to directional yank or swing kick an enemy after shooting one of these gadgets. 50/50 chance your swing kick awkwardly slides off, or the directional yank doesn’t register because the game has a hard time deciding which input to respond to. That’s not cohesion.

“We never really lost the old gadgets, they just consolidated them into four.”

I hear this a lot and I’d have to disagree. Sure at first glance their functions seem similar, but the difference is in the lack of player control with the new selection:

• The sonic burst is the concussion blast without the ability to blast in an intended direction, it just knocks enemies back in every direction.

• The ricochet web is a web bomb with zero player control. You shoot and it bounces randomly around enemies.

• The impact was made into an upgrade for your web-shooter, but because you can only use against enemies directly near you, you can no longer shoot an enemy directly upward, at enemies approaching you, or shooting you from afar.

• The upshot selects four random enemies to knock in the air. Depending on how many enemies are in the room, you can’t predict which enemy would get hit.

• The web-grabber is functionally worse version of the gravity well from Miles Morales due to the upgrade that pulls in objects to knock the grouped enemies away.

You can’t reliably set up combos with gadgets that don’t have predictable outcomes.

Miles’ game did the ability move focused combat system better:

Honestly speaking, I don’t prefer an ability move focused system where gadgets are supplemental to abilities over an arsenal of gadgets with unique functions. I think there’s only so many combos you could come up with in an ability focused system, especially if abilities are mostly AOE knock-backs. That being said, I still feel it was done better in Miles Morales’ game due to the synergy between the gadgets and miles abilities. You could tack a remote mine on an enemy, venom dash at him and chuck him into a group of enemies, then detonate the mine stunning the group. Tack a remote mine on enemy A, then a gravity well, watch as enemies get sucked towards him, and then detonate the mine. Gravity well enemies in the air with you, tack a remote mine on the ground under you, and venom slam them down to it before detonating the mine to clear the rest of them.

SOLUTION:

Add all the gadgets back. If they’re so bent up about the player being OP, make it a NG+ reward. Why should I have to choose between 3 abilities mapped to the X button? What if I wanted to spider-arm rush and symbiote rush?
The possibilities in combat would triple, and maybe they’d even add that gadget combo mini-game back.

Listen dawg, I love this franchise, particularly its’ combat. It’s what made me switch from xbox to playstation in 2019, and upgrade to PS5 in 2023. I don’t like shitting on it, but when I see people say “The story wasn’t good, but the swinging and combat was way better,” I just don’t agree, and I feel like I have valid reasons why. Regardless, I’m rooting for the next game

UNRELATED COMBAT NITPICKS IF YOU’RE STILL READING:

• The throw move where you pull an enemy into your feet and spring-kick them off in an intended direction (square, hold triangle on a close-ranged enemy) has become way less reliable to pull off

• Basic attacks feel a bit more sluggish compared to SM1

• The web-yank is slower due to the added delay meant to allow players time to input for a directional yank, making web slams/yanks sluggish and often forcing you to dodge out of it to avoid getting shot when playing on ultimate difficulty

• You should be able to dodge out of that new “swing-kick-into-vault” move that pulls enemies into the air. On ultimate, an enemy can place his sights on you after you’ve started the move and shoot you before you finish it, meanwhile you’re locked into the animation until it’s done. Frustrating if you’re going for a no-hit enemy base run.

Combined fresh start, FFH, superior, tasm 2, antivenom and upgraded classic

Not a big deal at the end of the day. But rival’s mcu design would lead you to believe the liberties they took with the adapted suit was because mcu designs would still need to fit a rivals art style, whereas one look at this guy’s mod will tell you nah that isn’t necessarily the case.

While the skins that are inspired by suits from other media obviously can’t be 1-1 renderings given they have to fit within the confines of the marvel rivals art style, I think the distinct identity of spidy suits lie in their lenses, which is why it doesn’t look quite right to me. The lens shape is angled similarly to rivals default skin. So it just looks like rivals spidy wearing the BnD body suit. I don’t know if I’m articulating this right, so I added an edit I made of Tobey Maguirre’s skin to kind of visualize my point. I swapped his lens with Andrew Garfield’s and would argue it gives the suit an entirely different look.

TLDR, I wish the devs stayed true to the lens shape of the suits they replicate from other media

As a melee player mainly, Starlord made me realize—and Cyclops confirmed—it’s not that I don’t like poke characters, I just don’t like their general lack of mobility. This mfer makes me feel like an sci fi 80’s action hero zipping and zapping around #AllHailTheClops

The dev’s thought process for which skins get legendary treatment with all the bells and whistles of vfx and recolors nearly feels as though they aren’t true fans of Marvel. Lol, I know that’s a crazy claim to make but holy shit. You’re telling me iconic suits from the comics like DD’s Man Without Fear and Spider-Man’s BLACK SUIT aren’t legendary but a luna race car skin and a college professor sue skin are? And don’t pull the larger customer base card because spidy players collect skins like infinity stones.

Coulda made his billy clubs white or wooden. Coulda given him white smoke instead of flames and a smoke dome for ult. Coulda gave black suit spidy tendrils in during ult, darker voice-lines (if you think thats overdoing it, see: lady loki) and a symbiote taking over emote (bully maguirre still cool though).

It’s like the character art team all main sue, luna and psy, and spend their free time workshopping skins for them and every time the lead game designer tells them they need to make another insert character comic skin he’s met with groans and rolled eyes. DD’s man without fear skin literally has the default clubs holy shit. It is the epitome of “Here damn”

Replace GOHT/uppercut with venom abilities I guess.

He could probably have a midrange lighting bolt or something.

I really really don’t want a situation where they give him less swings to compensate for his damage being higher than peters in his other abilities

In fact I only really use wall-climbing when not in combat: to set up ambushes or to cover more ground quicker while I wait for swing cooldowns. I think we’re long overdue for a QOL buff to his passives.

That felt REALLY good. (also did my uppercut no reg?)