I can't believe that we're doing this again, but gamers are being weirdos about Spider-Man 2's water, apparently not remembering how silly they looked after the first game's infamous "puddlegate incident".
Spider-Man fans were treated to a long-overdue look at Spider-Man 2 a few days ago during the PlayStation Showcase, which finally confirmed that Peter will get the Symbiote suit and a whole host of new abilities alongside it. The footage ended with a cinematic setpiece that featured Miles and Peter swinging above the waters of Queens and being chased by the Lizard and, while most fans were impressed with the sequence, it seems that some are choosing to repeat history and focus on a minor graphical detail.
Twitter user Dream_Walker shared a small clip from the gameplay reveal of Miles swimming around in the water, with the caption, "Look at the water! That splash VFX, no physical interaction, Miles doesn't even look wet... Not what I expected from a PS5 Only game by Insomniac. The game clearly needs much more time. Delay it". That tweet has more than 1,500 likes as of the time of writing, suggesting that it's an opinion that a few gamers worryingly share.
Although Dream_Walker's tweet is the most popular one sharing their dislike of the water, they're not the only one. Not only is the comments section full of other gamers who also think that the water looks bad, with some even claiming that Insomniac is being stretched thin by PlayStation, but Twitter user NatalyaNatflix is also rather annoyed, tweeting “Spider-Man 2 saved the #PlaysationShowcase” - you F. Kidding me!? 🤡! PS3 water physics!".
This weirdly specific complaint is ignoring the fact that Spider-Man 2 is still in development and that the gameplay demo shown was still a work in progress, but it's also such a minute detail that no one should care about. If this was an Aquaman game, then sure the water would be sensible to focus on, but here's it's just nitpicky console war behaviour. Thankfully, the comments underneath both posts are also full of Spider-Man fans calling out the complaint and not taking it seriously.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first time that gamers have been weirdos about how the water in a Spider-Man game looks. In fact, Spider-Man fans are likely feeling like they've travelled back to the awful days of "puddlegate". For those of you who are lucky enough to not remember puddlegate, it was a ridiculous controversy stirred up by gamers trying to get mad about Spider-Man's graphics by pointing out that a puddle shown in one scene of the first game's gameplay reveal wasn't as detailed in the final game. Yes, really, a puddle.