Black is the new Black.
Marvel’s Spider-Man and its follow-up in Miles Morales showed that Insomniac has a great handle on the essence of the characterization of both Spider men, offering emotional experiences that pull from each character’s past while making those stories feel truly unique to the world they have crafted here. While Spider-Man 2 can in many ways feel like more of the same, its story and use of Peter Parker and Miles Morales is significantly more improved with a selection of villains and a supporting cast that service the story in smart ways. While Spider-Man 2 does tend to rely far too much on padding its length with the same open-world busywork and tedious mini-games that plagued its predecessors, its action and emotional set pieces outpaced the prior two entries to create an almost perfect Spider-Man experience.
Spider-Man 2 continues to build on the events of the prior two games in such ways that allow those moments to have a greater sense of resolution. From Peter continuing to work through the loss of Aunt May to Miles still struggling with the loss of his father at the hands of Mr. Negative, they each carry with them an amount of emotional baggage. And in typical fashion, both Miles and Peter are trying to balance their life around being Spider-Man, the narrative core of almost every iteration of the character. Peter has taken a teaching position at Miles’ school while Miles is attempting to write his college essay in hopes of continuing his higher education, especially as those around him are all planning their future.
Another aspect that works in the game’s favor is that the supporting cast of both Miles and Peter know of each other’s roles as Spider-Man, something that prevents the story from needing excuses for both characters to disappear at a moment’s notice. This allows characters like Mary Jane, Rio Morales, Ganke Lee, Aaron Davis, and Hailey Cooper, the latter being a romantic interest for Miles, to be more front and center in the story than watching it from the sidelines.
Part of what has made Spider-Man such an endearing character over the years, regardless if it is Peter or Miles, has been its reliance on making its supporting cast feel as important to the story as Spider-Man themselves. This is especially felt with the inclusion of Harry Osborn, Peter's best friend and a major focus of the game's story. Harry and Peter's friendship is something that has been a major part of the character across various depictions and this iteration is no different. Harry's presence was partially felt in the first game, but here he is one of the game's central characters, especially as he is able to offer Peter a possible job at a foundation created out of the loss of their respective loved ones. Through various missions as well as the main story, you get to understand their friendship, their past, and what the future has in store for the both of them.
When it comes to Spider-Man’s legacy, his villains have also become as important and recognizable as the wallcrawler himself. Spider-Man 2 pulls from several rich characters from Kravan and the Lizard to Sandman and more, allowing for a wide range of villains to color the story in their own way, some in rather surprising circumstances that I honestly did not see coming. However, while Kraven occupies a greater presence in much of the game’s length and narrative, Insomniac’s take on Venom clearly dominates the whole experience, creating a version of the character that borrows from both the Fox Kid’s animated series and that of the Ultimate Spider-Man run by Mark Bagely and Brian Michael Bendis.
While Insomniac has been coy about the identity of Venom, anyone who has played the first game to completion can certainly put two and two together to see where this adventure will go. Is it predictable? Sure, but it’s also smartly done and is an original take on the character that I really enjoyed. While different versions of the character have largely been focused on Eddie Brock, that same approach simply would not have worked here, nor having the suit first find Mac Gargan, the scorpion, who has also been a previous host of the symbiote as was the case with Flash Thompson. And while others have taken the mantle at one point, none of them would have allowed the story to feel as deeply impactful or emotional as what Insomniac has chosen to go with here. Again, it’s wildly predictable, but it is for the right reasons.
Kraven the Hunter has appeared in several Spider-Man games before but always as a secondary or throwaway villain, one largely meant to be an encounter that is a small hurdle in the grand scheme of things. By promoting Kraven to having an almost lead role as the villain here, grants the character significant depth that we rarely see. Kraven’s biggest impact on Spider-Man was the 1987 arc in Kraven’s Last Hunt, a storyline that was well over 30 years ago, thus showing how little Kraven has really been a major player for the modern Spider-Man. Honestly, the last time I recall Kraven being any sort of focus was his involvement in 2002’s Ultimate Spider-Man #16, which was a huge departure from the character we all grew up with, but was nonetheless still quite enjoyable.
This lack of a real modern Kraven allows Insomniac to have a good amount of flexibility to reinvent the character to their needs given he hasn’t been a villain loaded with the depth as someone like Norman Osborn or Otto Octavius. Various writers have tried to make him a more complicated character over the years, but I strongly believe that Insomniac has likely created the most layered and definitive version of the character yet. Kraven is a force to be reckoned with, a man who has chosen his final hunt out of a way to define his life and hopefully, his death. His role here services many characters, as he comes to New York to hunt the likes of the Lizard, Sandman, and more, allowing the core storylines of both games to focus on giving Kraven the hunt he deserves.
While Kraven enters into the picture quite early, the opener features Sandman in what might be one of the best sequences across the series, especially one that shows the real power of the PS5 as you are flying through the city at a breakneck pace without a single instance of pop-in anywhere. While enjoyable, this battle is a bit heavy on the QTE side and very limited in your movement, but is a stunning showpiece and tone-setter to this whole package. It’s also a way for the game to build up towards the threat of Kraven while tending to the personal lives of our two web heads without front-loading the game with too much character work and not enough action. Honestly put, it’s one impressive opener, even if it is very much an on-rails experience.
While I certainly prefer the Christmas setting of the New York present across the Miles Morales solo adventure, largely since few games at all have featured a holiday-themed version of the Big Apple, the New York present in Spider-Man 2 is the best-looking and biggest version to date, largely due to the inclusion of Brooklyn and Queens, even if you tend to perform the same overall activities that you do elsewhere, making them feel really no different than the rest of New York. It’s not a bad thing they were included as it makes New York seem far more immersive and genuine, but they don’t feature as well in the gameplay department as I would have hoped. I also found it frustrating that another whole section of New York is visible but entirely blocked off, even though it clearly is viewable and featured on the map. Whether it was a tech limitation, an area for future DLC, or its inclusion would have ballooned the budget, I’m not sure.
Still, regardless of my own personal issues, New York has never looked better. The population that walks its streets; however, is a completely different story. While the bulk of the game has you web-swinging through its streets from high atop its skyscrapers to ripping through the city as you chase numerous stolen cars, the pedestrians that make up the crowds below look noticeably weaker than any character model that has a role in the game’s story. While this is likely to hit the technical marks Insomniac wants from its various graphical settings and gameplay, to make New York feel as populated as possible, it’s a shame they just don’t look better, especially considering we are on PS5 hardware this time around and not held back by PS4 architecture. Honestly, it’s my only major gripe with Spider-Man 2, despite how trivial it is in the grand scheme of things. Does the game look incredible? Yes, but not all of it, and that’s why I bring this up.
Exploring New York City hasn't changed much, You still web-swing around as you discover the dynamic crimes that pop up around the city while tending to the numerous side quests and main missions that progress the narrative. As for the crimes that randomly pop up, it's a shame we still don't have interior bank robberies, hostage situations, or rescuing people from burning buildings, apart from a brief moment of something similar in one of the main story quests. While the main story and the accompanying side quests are the best we’ve seen across the series, with a few that are incredibly memorable, the randomness of New York’s criminal threat hasn’t grown or changed for the better, it simply is.
Each segment of New York has a task list to complete, which unlocks fast travel in case you require it. The various activities range from collecting a series of Spider-Bots and stopping a flock of robotic birds from tracking their prey, which has an extremely cool conclusion to it that some fans may not be aware of, to a series of Eco-Friendly missions that require the smarts of Peter Parker. While these activities are more interesting and thought out than what we had in 2018's Spider-Man, we do see the return of mini-games that I have personally grown tired of seeing. Thankfully, you can skip each and every one of them in case you feel the same way. As you progress through the story, you’ll take on a variety of new experiences and quests that continue to give you a great number of things to accomplish, many of which provide a new suit for each Spider-Man as a reward.
2020's Miles Morales brought us the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App as a way to catalog your tasks and various requests that New Yorkers can make. It also doubles as a cellphone to converse with the quest giver, allowing the story to not require you to return to that person for any closure. It's a great system that lets you know which Spider-Man is tied to which mission and the distance you'll need to travel. That said, I do wish that each Spider-Man could tackle some of the other missions, allowing for a decent bit of replayability as you get to see how each Spider-Man would resolve the given task, although I do understand why the missions are tied directly to that particular wallcrawler, especially those that continue from their previous adventures.
While most of the crimes and activities that you'll tackle are open to any Spider-Man, you'll often run into the other as you drop down to combat a series of bad guys or even have the other Spider-Man web-swinging next to you. It really allows the city to feel like there are actually multiple heroes patrolling its streets. And, it's not just the other Spider-Man you'll encounter, but we will leave it at that. After completing the fight, you can interact with them, such as Peter and Miles hugging it out. It’s charming and something I hope they expand upon in a potential sequel.
While web-swinging is back and largely the same exhilarating experience it was before, Peter and Miles will have access to an old favorite from the comics; web wings. While the web wings have been a staple of the original Spider-Man costume, since his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, they haven't really had much practical use apart from the odd moment across the character's rich history. Here, however; both Spider-Men can use them to essentially glide. You'll have updrafts and wind tunnels to fully take advantage of them, but they rarely feel like a legitimate replacement for web-swinging and more of an option that compliments your ability to still swing around the city. They also serve a great purpose in getting you across big bodies of water, which can be a bit of a drag to keep traversing over and over again.
Between the story missions and simply taking on the threats that lurk all over the city, from random cultists to Kraven’s hunters, and beyond, combat has evolved to be far easier to get into with options that make it more seamless and engaging. Basic mechanics return such as simple punches, kicks, and dodges, as well as webbing weapons out of an enemy's hands to webbing up and at foes, making them helpless and vulnerable. Your combat options are mapped to the L1 button with four available at any given time. As you’ll have more than four to choose from as you work through your skills, you’ll find the ones that work for you and often stick with them.
Adding to combat are your gadgets. While 2018’s Spider-Man had plenty of gadgets to use in combat as you selected them from a wheel, holding R1 allows you to instantly bring up four options at once, making them seamlessly work into combat in better fashion than before. While you only have Web Grabber, Sonic Burst, Ricochet Web, and Upshot to work with, this selection still is more than serviceable and has layered upgrades both in their respective menus as well as through the story. While we lack the web bomb, trip mines, and impact webbing from the first game, I found I didn’t miss them as much as I thought I would and found the options here to get the job done.
Your combat options also grow with the inclusion of three skill trees. Both Miles and Peter have their own skill tree that tends to their specific skills with Miles’ Venom (Not the character) Stun capabilities and Peter relying on the use of his mechanical spider arms that really open up his combat potential, making him feel very different than Miles. The third skill tree is one that reflects both Peter and Miles, such as web whips, throws, bounces, and traversal and gadget-based perks and bonuses. And should you tackle each and every quest the game throws at you, you’ll easily unlock every single skill by the time you reach credits.
New to Spider-Man 2 is the parry system. This allows Spider-Man to pull off a counterattack should you time it correctly. This is useful against the heavier brutes that can really deal out significant damage. Holding L1 brings up your combat options whereas tapping it at the right time will cause Peter’s spider arms to lash out whereas Miles will use his Venom Stun to gain the advantage in the skirmish with a follow-up attack also an option. It’s a system that helps combat without being too involved or too complicated.
What is great about how the combat system works is that both Miles and Peter are very unique from one another. Though they share in basic fundamentals, Peter will have both his spider arms and the symbiote to really stand out, making his combat feel more hard-hitting whereas Miles is one built upon finesse and his different powers in his electrical and Venom Stun abilities. Both Miles and Peter each played differently in their own solo games, but having them both together allows those differences to be seen far more dramatically. And given you can swap between the two in a span of two seconds, it allows you to see those differences very quickly.
Another new feature to Spider-Man 2 is the web line. This new mechanic allows Spider-Man to shoot out a stable web line that he can traverse the environment on, high atop the foes who seemingly cannot look up. Regardless, this allows you to customize the battleground to take advantage of the stealth systems present in the game. From webbing up foes to leaping at them for a brutal strike, you’ll clear out bases in no time provided you do so when they are marked as “safe” or as “danger” will see you become spotted and trigger a battle with the whole compound. The web line is a solid new addition that creates a good amount of flexibility and adds to your ever-growing arsenal.
One of the best features behind both of the first two games was that both Peter and Miles had a wealth of costumes to unlock. While several are locked behind pre-orders and deluxe edition BS, Spider-Man 2 has 78 costumes in total with many having four color variants. The ones that don’t are the more iconic suits like those from the films or the animated Spiderverse movies. Still, some of the costumes are very impressive with a few that I could easily have done without. While not all my favorite from the first two games are back, there is a lot of equally impressive outfits that I truly adore.
One thing about the suits that is a bit of a weird choice is that they have removed Suit mods. In Marvel’s Spider-Man and Miles Morales, each suit had a perk that you could unlock that would make it accessible across the entire collection. Instead, we have Suit Tech that replaces this, but I feel this was more of a system to streamline the process than to devote resources to creating perks across each suit. Suit Tech fleshes out your health, damage, focus, and traversal systems, which go on to complement almost every system across the game. It’s a smart system even if I would have preferred the original’s take in making the suits very worthwhile in sampling.
And of course, one suit that plays a huge factor in the game is the symbiote. The take on Venom here is pretty damn interesting, if pulled and manipulated from numerous iterations, especially that of Ultimate Spider-Man. How Peter gets the suit is wildly inventive and is a very memorable scene that I wasn’t expecting to see here. The suit does all the tricks you imagine as well as making Peter pretty insufferable, creating a divide between him and his loved ones. Still, when it comes to combat, it aids Peter in becoming stronger, faster, and far more deadly.
While Miles and Peter are the focus of this adventure, Mary Jane does return to inject a bit of variety into a few moments of the game. While nowhere near as groan-worthy as her involvement in 2018’s Spider-Man, these stealth and combat moments for her are actually pretty enjoyable, especially as she has had combat training via Silver Sable and is outfitted with a taser gun, allowing her to take down foes faster than either Spider-Man can. In fact, she can down one of the brute-like enemies found in the late game far quicker than either Spider-Man. These moments are pretty fun, but if they had been removed I don’t know if I would have missed them.
Across both Peter and Miles, as you start to upgrade your skills, you'll bring that full arsenal to the game's boss encounters. While there are a few featuring characters I haven't mentioned, only a few really stand out. There is one that takes place in one of the neighborhoods that felt like it dragged on a bit too much, due to them having multiple health bars. While this fight is the length it is to accommodate a lot of talking between them and Spider-Man, it simply felt far too long. Even the final showdown with Kraven, which from a presentation standpoint is incredible, felt a bit lacking mechanically. This lack of mechanically interesting fights does translate to many of the other encounters, but that particular fight stands out as it is one of the major encounters in the game.
Now that said, I don't think there is a single bad encounter, but the battles here are far from my favorites across both games. Most bosses feel like enhanced versions of the encounters you have across the game with some of the brutes; foes that require the use of the parry system until you level up your skills to deal with them a bit quicker. And, on that note, I still have issues with normal humans being able to block Spider-Man's punches as if their forearms are suddenly superpowered and able to withstand a flurry of Spidey's hardest punches. The fact that regular folk still take a full combo-and-a-half to go down feels like narrative padding to make combat last longer. I get why it’s done this way, but it makes me feel less powerful than I should be.
From the scale to its replication of New York to its wealth of costumes and villains, Spider-Man 2 is a gorgeous experience whose only real blemish is the populace that make up its city. The presentation and direction across its cutscenes, battles, and combat all excel and provide a vastly engaging experience that honors each and every character in its story. While I am still not sold on the more youthful look of Peter, given he is meant to be a mentor to Miles, I do have to say that Miles has the best character model in the game by a mile, with Kraven being an easy second. Lastly, when it comes to additional presentation, I'm not a fan of the menu UI and find it far too basic and overly uninspired. It’s a small gripe, but one I sat with constantly through my roughly 25 hours.
In regards to performance, Spider-Man features two settings; Fidelity and Performance, resulting in both being suitable depending on the type of experience you want. I settled with Performance as it still features ray-tracing and offers a pretty locked 60fps, with only one single moment where I noticed even the slightest stutter. Fidelity, while also sporting 4K, provides additional detail to its world, but at the cost of the action being 30fps. Personally, I don't think the trade-off is worth the lower framerate. And for those with 120hz displays, you also have support for VRR as well.
Continuing the trend of providing a wealth of accessibility settings to its first-party titles, Spider-Man 2 does a lot to allow players to customize their experience. From different shaders to help with visibility, changing the speed of the game, to assists like reduced enemy health, and chase speeds, to automatic heals provided you have the bar charged up. This is on top of narrated ASL, a variety of hints on how to solve puzzles to being able to skip them entirely. For a complete list of all settings, click here, as there is a massive amount of helpful settings.
Spider-Man 2 is certainly not a perfect experience with a few issues that have remained from the previous games, but it is still a wildly impressive entry that illustrates Insomniac's desire to create one of the most genre-defining experiences out there. The stories for both Peter and Miles have strong emotional ties to their history and relationships, culminating in a fantastic finale showcasing an interesting path forward for each character. It stumbles here and there, but ultimately is yet another near-perfect Spider-Man adventure that is certainly worth your time and worthy of the character.
Developer - Insomniac Games. Publisher - Sony Interactive Entertainment. Released - October 20th, 2023. Available On - PS5. Rated - (T) Blood, Drug Reference, Mild Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5. Review Access - Spider-Man 2 was purchased for review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.