All I could think was "That movie came out 19 years ago."
It's true that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, a sequel to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, came out in 2004. This video game has nothing to do with that.
In fact, confusingly, Wikipedia tells me that it is the third game in a series that began in 2018 with Marvel's Spider-Man, which was followed in 2020 by Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. So not only are we inclined to confuse it with the movie of the same name, but even if our only context is video games, it still doesn't make sense within the chronology of its own franchise.
There are a couple reasons movie franchises have largely gotten away from numbering sequels -- or at least, having a number be the only factor differentiating the title from its predecessors. One is that it doesn't say much about what actually happens in the film, whereas a title like, say, Rise of the Silver Surfer makes it easier to say "Oh yeah, that one."
But then there's also the fact that you can really only use a numbered title once. How much confusion did it cause when the second Rob Zombie Halloween movie was called Halloween 2 -- same as the sequel to the original Halloween. Maybe not confusion in the moment, but at least confusion when you are looking back on it years later and trying to discuss one of the two without all sorts of qualifiers to clarify what you're talking about.
The issue exists even when you are talking about different types of media. Because the title Spider-Man 2 belongs, in a very real way, exclusively to Raimi's movie, it leaves a person like me wondering if this is actually some weirdly delayed video game adaptation of that movie. The existence of two Spider-Men and the absence of Dr. Octopus might tell me it wasn't, but I don't know for sure. I don't really understand the video game world and most of the time, I don't try to.
And then there's just the basic lameness of the title. There's no intrigue in it at all, and the packaging, with puts Peter Parker and Miles Morales against a generic red background, is the perfectly boring accompaniment to that title. Like, if you didn't even want to make the game, just don't make it.
Well, the game is a huge hit. Again according to Wikipedia, it debuted last Friday to critical acclaim, and sold 2.5 units in the first 24 hours, making it "fastest selling first-party title in Playstation history."
It's clear that I should just bow out of the discussion because I have no idea what a "first-party title" is. But the lame title obviously didn't negatively impact this first-party title. Gamers bought it up even if they did think it was the long-awaited video game incarnation of Dr. Octopus.
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