Insomniac Games has announced several new accessibility options for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Most of the support expands on systems found in previous Spider-Man games and other Insomniac titles like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
The announcement came via the PlayStation Blog with Insomniac developers over accessibility design and UX, explaining expanded functionality and those uses.
Alongside the difficulty settings in prior games, Spider-Man 2 also features what Insomniac calls Challenge Level Modifiers. These allow for aspects such as enemies’ health, damage, and awareness to receive some finer tweaking.
Features like Chase Assist alter chases to give players an advantage, such as slowing down the target’s top speed. Repeated button presses from QTEs can also be changed to button taps or holds. There’s even room to adjust Spider-Man 2’s gameplay speeds, with options to play at 70, 50, or 30 percent of the original, real-time rates.
Audio settings are adjustable, too, with high or low-frequency sounds having a toggle. There’s even a filter for notch frequency to remove certain frequency ranges.
Other features will make it into the game after launch. One of these is audio descriptions featuring a voice-over narrating cutscenes and QTEs. The other is a screen reader featuring audio descriptions for elements like tutorials or menus. Those two are especially helpful for blind players but are not coming on launch. Instead, they are a part of an update coming in December 2023.
Increased accessibility in games is always a great thing to hear. It helps expand a game’s potential audience who otherwise might have trouble with certain elements. Hopefully, Insomniac’s accessibility support works as intended to make playing Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as comfortable as possible when it releases October 20 for PS5.
