Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Review: Swinging Forward

By the time any series reaches its third installment, there’s an idea that it has to do something drastically new. Most players are cool with a second title being iterative and simply improving on the formula of the first two games, but we tend to be ready for the franchise to push forward by the time we reach the third title. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 largely ignores this push. There are absolutely new things to do and changes to the formula here, but the core game is still very similar to that of Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales.  

That’s mostly a great thing. By continuing to refine its core mechanics, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 gives us more of what players loved in the first two titles while continuing to work this formula down into its best form. A diamond under pressure, what’s left at this point is the best version of what this world can be.

Two Is Better Than One

Two Spider-Men are better than one, or at least that’s what the team at Insomniac is betting on. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 decided not to pick between Peter Parker and Miles Morales but to let you play as both of them. Throughout most of this open-world adventure, you can swap between the pair with a couple of button presses, with a quick comment from the characters giving way to a change that requires almost no loading, thanks to the PS5’s SSD. Certain story missions require you to play as one of them or the other, but for large portions of the game, you’re free to choose which spider hero better serves you.

Each of the pair has their own skillset. Miles has electrical powers like he showed off in his own game, which get a few new tweaks. Peter gets a whole new set of abilities as well, thanks to a certain symbiote that fans of the character won’t need me to name. These new abilities do help to keep things fresh, even if the combat largely feels similar to what we experienced in the first two games in the series.

On The Hunt

For the most part, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 does a good job at balancing their story around two characters as well. Our main enemy this time is Kraven the Hunter, a character who is always after the biggest game and has come to New York planning to hunt supervillains. That a number of those villains have moved on from their lives of crime and are trying to be good citizens doesn’t much matter; he sets them back up to become their worst selves in an effort to take them down. This leads to the return or escape of several of Spidey’s most dangerous foes, some of whom need to be taken down while others need your help.

Meanwhile, Peter’s best friend Harry is back from a period of near death with a new lease on life and a job offer where they can chase their scientific dreams together. Thanks to that same symbiote I mentioned earlier, his health problems have been cured. Messing with symbiotes, though, is a dangerous path, and eventually, things have to go wrong, so we have a story. Somehow, this side of the story is both messier and more compelling at the same time. The characters have a far more personal connection to each other, which helped to pull me in, even if it often is the part of the game that leaves Miles, my preferred Spider-Man at this point, feeling a little bit like he’s on the outside looking in. Kraven struggles to be anywhere near as compelling because it’s hard to connect with his motivations in any way. His parts of the game are more compelling for the characters around him.

The final acts of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 really don’t come together, and there are moments that are simply frustrating. I love that Insomniac has put their own spin on some classic events in Spider-Man’s history and that there are moments that feel familiar but also like they have their own twist. At the same time, though, some of these events feel rushed through in order to fit them all into one game. Peter’s time with the symbiote and how that impacts him seems to happen so quickly that there’s little impact. Meanwhile, some of the story events around Miles feel brushed aside. It’s a story filled with fantastic moments that don’t fully come together in a satisfying way.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Problem Solver

Thankfully, this is a game filled with more compelling side content, and a lot of that content tells its own stories. Whether you’re helping to revitalize a local museum, helping a former friend, or just connecting with the local community, the content here is incredibly well done and gives players every reason to fully explore the now much larger game area, which has been expanded to include Brooklyn and Queens. I love that Insomniac didn’t recycle the same content again. You don’t need to go find towers to fill out your map. You’re no longer asked to complete a set number of random civilian events in each area. There are random crimes you can step in to help with and be rewarded, but you no longer feel like you’re checking things off when you do.

Instead, you’ll find Spider-Bots naturally while exploring. Photo spots encourage you to engage with the excellent photo mode while having a narrative tie-in. There’s still stuff to do all over the place, but it feels far more natural this time around. I’m not sure that I love the choice to tie fast travel to completing a lot of it, but that rarely felt like an issue because I wanted to complete this content, and even when I wasn’t, moving through this world felt so good that I didn’t want to fast travel anyway. I only really used the feature in the late game when I was cleaning up some of the last side-content I hadn’t yet gotten to. Otherwise, whether I was swinging around or using the excellent new glider, which allows you to move through this now larger world faster than ever, I can just enjoy moving down random streets even if I’m not doing anything there.

Repeating The Same Mistakes

Beyond the story not coming together to be as strong as the sum of its parts, there are a few other issues that rear their head. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 once again asks you to spend several missions throughout the game controlling Mary Jane in stealth-based missions. They’ve reworked these sequences since the first game, but they continue to not be any fun. The stealth system here isn’t strong enough to be enjoyable without spider powers to fall back on. Mostly, I found these sequences incredibly frustrating. A side mission where you get to play as a friend of Miles, in comparison, is a ton of fun, but it helps that it features no combat, is only a single mission, and is optional.

Meanwhile, most of the bosses here also aren’t a lot of fun to take down. There’s one early on that stands out, but after that, most of the boss fights you’re thrown into make the same mistake of being overly long, repetitive sequences that leave little room for creativity. Three games in, fighting Spidey’s greatest foes shouldn’t continue to be the least engaging part of his games.

Conclusion

There’s still a ton of things to like about Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Insomniac wisely kept the formula that worked so well in place and expanded it, removing a lot of what didn’t work and filling it in with new side content to leave players with plenty to do. There are few open-world games that are anywhere near as engaging, in large part because so few of them can capture the genuine joy of simply moving through the world in the way these games do. That so much of the game’s content has been broken down into its best parts makes it all the more frustrating, though, when the game continues to make a few major mistakes it’s been making since the very first entry. Still, any fans of the first two games will have a blast returning to this world in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: PS5 (Reviewed); Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment; Developer: Insomniac Games; Players: 1; Released: October 20th, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $69.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a retail copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.