Oh no, the PS5’s Spider-Man 2 game has a silly ‘Puddlegate’ controversy

on May 24 PlayStation held its first large-scale showcase since 2021. While it had some cool games, it lacked the big and wild exclusive games the company has released in the past. However, most agree that the finale is a major gameplay preview of the upcoming PS5 exclusive spider man 2-was a impressive end to the show. Well, unless you ask a few eagle-eyed gamers who have decided to focus on the water of the game.

This has happened before. Ahead of the release of Insomniac’s first Spider-Man action game in an open world in 2018 for PS4, the studio naturally showed off early gameplay and movie trailers to feed the hype beast. At one point during the pre-release hype cycle, people noticed that some area on a construction site was missing some puddles.

This quickly exploded into full-blown controversy:called Puddlegate– some claimed that the developers downgraded the game or that the puddles were removed due to laziness. In the end, Insomniac explained that it was probably just an example of how open-world games – with dynamic times of day and weather – can look different in different screenshots of the same room.

Now it’s 2023 and Insomniac is next Spider-Man game features at least one major battle over the dirty waters of New York City, and because nothing ever changes, people are madly in love with the water again. It’s time for “Puddlegate 2.0.”

In the new spiderman 2 gameplay shown during the Playstation Showcase sees Miles and Peter web-slinging above and around NYC’s East River. However, after the trailer debuted, people started point to “problems” with the water. Some said the splashes look bad. Others had complaints about how the water just looks “rough”. or lacks reflections. Even more gamers began to zoom in on distant details to point issues that they propose to make the game look like one PS3 title. a screenshot—taken from a 1080p stream of the game on someone’s phone-has been shared as an example of how”unfinished‘ is the game.

Some gamers are concerned about the water reflections spiderman 2

On Friday, Digital foundryJohn Linneman tweeted that the demonstration shown on March 24 “looked pretty good, didn’t it?” and pointed out that the game had improved ray tracing and other visual features. Within minutes of tweeting this, however, replied a cadre of gamers that the man who spent years analyzing video game graphics and imagery was actually very wrong. In fact, spider man 2-a game still in development – is ugly and the water is terrible.

At one point, Linneman shared a screenshot of the game’s diffuse reflections on choppy waters and compared it to a real-world photo of reflections on choppy waters outside of New York City. And then, hilariously, someone replied: “The judge looks rough.“The one on the right was the real photo. Apparently the water in real life is pretty bad too, huh?

Before anyone assumes otherwise, I think people should be free to play games, movies, etc. stuff like that.

However, we should also keep in mind that pre-release footage of games is not the final product and a highly compressed 1080p stream on your phone is not fully representative of what the actual game will look like on your own TV. Likewise, it’s silly and not very useful to take a single frame from a game and use that as a weapon online.

It’s also pointless to suggest that game developers are lazy or rushing something simply because you’ve seen a (possible) low-res texture or particle effect in a piece of pre-release footage. If you’re wondering why so many game developers are nervous about sharing early looks at games, well, this is the kind of behavior that probably makes many developers pause before showing pre-release content. Fortunately, I will note that I saw it enough comments from people pointing out how silly these complaints were getting and that it wasn’t right to offend the developers.

Really, everyone just needs to relax, put away the microscopes and get out. Maybe jump into a real puddle. Enjoy your life. I promise it’s a better use of your time.