Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Features

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 from developer Insomniac Games faces a level of expectations only a literal superhero could overcome.

The original Marvel's Spider-Man (2018) went down for many as not just one of the best superhero games ever, but as a standout Sony Interactive Entertainment hit that was on par with, if not surpassing heavyweights like God of War and The Last of Us.

Also critical was staying true to one of the most beloved characters in existence, which it did arguably better than the comic book that started it all has lately.

Luckily for players, Insomniac cleared a similar hurdle with the Miles Morales video game from 2020. Spider-Man 2 arrives with Peter Parker and Morales playable while promising a bigger city, a heart-wrenching story and expanded combat, which has the potential to create a Game of the Year contender and readjust what gamers should expect in the future.

Graphics and Gameplay

Spider-Man 2 is a flex of what the next generation of gaming can achieve.

New York City on its own is the prime example. The explorable area is huge and players are no longer restricted to just Manhattan, with boroughs such as Brooklyn and Queens now accessible at any point while roaming.

Players can now near-instantly swap between Peter and Miles during free roam while exploring a concrete jungle with a jaw-dropping number of vehicles and pedestrians at all times, creating the most lived-in open world we've seen in gaming to date.

Even slowly crawling up the side of a skyscraper will reveal detailed, varied interiors of individual rooms. One room will feature somebody sitting on a couch watching television, in another, an NPC cooks themselves dinner in the kitchen. There are bound to be social media videos pointing out flaws and repetitive scenes as always, but one really has to go out of their way to poke a hole in it—the level of immersion by simply peering in a few windows while zipping about is frankly unexpected.

It's a little thing, but the open world just feels organic. From a high vantage point, for example, players don't need to look at the map to find things to do. They can see, say, a dust storm kicking up around a set of buildings—that's guaranteed to be an encounter against Sandman-like enemies around a crystal that will unlock another of William Baker's memories.

Ray-tracing adds a level of depth to the game most can't match, with shadows and especially reflections on something as small as a puddle in the street after rain borderline distracting in its photorealism.

The rest of the presentation is no slouch, either. While it would be nice to have the series stop overhauling the faces of certain main characters, there is undoubtedly better emoting than ever, which really sells the drama.

Sound design is top-notch, too. Stellar voice-acting across the board is again an expectation and hits the mark, while little details like directional audio and the constant buzz of the city are just chef's-kiss material. Subtle things, like the twang of a web or the difference in sound between punching flesh or a sand-person just ooze quality.

That there are destructable environments while in a scrap really sell the power fantasy too. But there's a nice balancing act going on there—the scale of some of the boss fights is staggering and truly makes nearly overpowered superheroes (from a lore standpoint, at least) feel vulnerable.

Along those same lines, it's stunning to fight alongside allies, not necessarily on how players can combo moves with them for big finishers (sometimes these pop unexpectedly), but in the sense of just seeing someone as strong as the player go about their business.

Web Wings are one of the bigger talking points around traversal and indeed, hitting a wind tunnel and flying off is fun. That said, it almost feels a little unlike Spidey and is in no way a requirement to get places fast. One of the biggest joys in the game is stringing together a few of the unlockable web-slinging abilities, like chaining a web slingshot from the middle of a street into a high-arcing loop that feels like it blasts the player out of a cannon.

It's almost difficult to describe the feeling of traversal other than to say it's a joy. Yes, the city is dramatically bigger, but the spider-folk have been power-crept, or so to speak, with some jaw-dropping abilities that make wicked-fast swinging possible.

Combat gets similar treatment in the best way possible.

Functionally, there are two major mixups to combat. One is the usage of gadgets. Rather than almost awkwardly slowing down time like in the first game to pick and choose what to use, players now map just four to button presses. It's more strategic and fluid as a result.

Two is a parry system expands the combat, giving players more options beyond the dodge-spam of the first game and expansion. The attacks of some enemies can't be dodged at all. This is a very nice evolution, though for those who pumped hundreds of hours into the first two efforts, it's very hard to rewire the brain to stop merely attempting to dodge-spam out of trouble.

As expected, there are new mods for webshooters, such as the ability cast a web line across environments. It's a refreshingly creative way to expand on interactions with the world in combat scenarios and removes what merely felt like a video game restriction from the power fantasy. Now, players can cast a line and walk across it to better maintain stealth—and open up new places to string up bad guys.

The high-end of combat, like building meters to unleash special moves, gets an uptick thanks to the story, too. Peter Parker eventually gets bonded by the symbiote (not a spoiler, this happened in 1985 in the comics!), which creates a whole new realm of gameplay mechanics that are a blast to use.

It all adds up to a very well-balanced experience, be it traversal or combat. This is a brilliant pick-up-and-play experience for all. But the skill gap and the heights at the very top will be awe-inspiring to see, because turning players loose with maxed-out abilities will create some amazing city traversal highlights or combo numbers in combat.

Even the little things get a hefty dose of innovation that keeps the experience feeling fresh. Little mix-ups include spending time as a spider-bot to tackle a quest or navigating tricky puzzles with lethal consequences.

Actually playing Spider-Man 2, just swinging around a city and throwing down with bad guys, is likely the apex of what most thought it would feel like to play the ideal Spider-Man experience.

Story and More

Spider-Man 2 takes place nearly a year after the events of Miles Morales and its weaving narrative one-ups everything before it, within the series and beyond the rest of the genre.

It's a love letter to Spider-Man and its fans, weaving together some of the all-timer stories. There's the backdrop of the ailing Harry Osborne with his father Norman willing to do anything to save him, Kraven the Hunter turning New York into his own urban jungle while prodding The Lizard to go berserk and, of course, the "Black Suit Saga" with the Venom symbiote.

Much has changed for the heroes since the last time out. Harry steps out of the shadows of side missions to play a major role and Peter and Miles continue to grapple with the deaths of loved ones from their respective first entries, never mind the former trying to establish a professional life and the latter the college life.

The narrative goes out of its way to wrap up little side threads from the prior two entries, leaving literally no stone unturned. Its a tight, long web of tales strung together in an interesting way as the perspective loops back and forth, contrasting the differences between the two well.

And while all of that sounds great, most impressive of all is perhaps when Peter and Miles are just... ordinary.

It's easy to see how some players might bemoan these slower, non-super-powered sections as too long. But for hardcore Spider-Man fans, this is super refreshing, especially when the Parker character and his supporting cast are handled so well (as opposed to say, the ongoing comics right now). And it's very rare to actually get this side of the superhero life in a video game. Most games just let the player be the hero and nothing more, ignoring 50 percent or more of the character's life, for the most part.

Off the main path, there are plenty of side missions and collectibles found through the city for both heroes. Again, great care is taken here to keep things versatile and fresh at all times. Even the very open-world standard that is snapping pictures throughout the playable area offers rich detail into the history and culture of New York.

Some side missions are much beefier than one-offs, too, with character-centric tales about the heroes and various members of their supporting cast.

Even overall progression smartly orbits the overarching two-hero theme.

Both Spider-Men have their own skill trees to unlock abilities as they level, while there's also a shared tree between them. It's the no-brainer way to handle this dynamic, given that Peter shouldn't have access to Miles' shocking combat abilities, for example, and the experience doled out feels fair enough that players can spread out the unlocks well between the two.

Kudos goes to the design team too because there isn't some tired trope of "oh no the heroes lost all their powers and players must regain them" going on here. These are Spider-Men and they feel like it right from the jump, with skill trees more feeling like tutorials for cool new abilities they earn throughout the story.

Insomniac paces as an industry leader in accessibility and options once again , too, with things like chase assist and auto-complete QTEs highlights in the latter.

It's as-expected territory in performance too, as it runs incredibly well given the scale of the game. Even swapping to the other superhero on the other side of the city is near-instant. The game also makes fun use of the PlayStation 5's haptic feedback on the controller with some creative minigames such as different levels of tension required on left and right trigger buttons at the same time. There are two graphics settings (visual and performance), with Ray-Tracing enabled on each.

As a total package, it's really difficult to find a hole to even begin poking given the performance despite the scale and the lack of bugs and launch issues.

Conclusion

Spider-Man 2 is everything a sequel should be. It improves upon predecessors across the board. It does so with striking presentation and immersion, with a strategic, brilliant expansion of gameplay and combat and even narratively, weaving complicated threads around multiple protagonists.

Authentic is a big word that comes to mind, too. In the same way Sony stablemates nail down the human side of relationships between Joel and Ellie or Kratos and Atreus, Spider-Man 2 refreshingly dives deep on the rarely-spotlighted impact voluntary superheroing has on these character's relationships, careers and communities.

It's yet another industry-mover that reshapes next-generation offerings and what the medium is capable of doing, while raising a nearly impossible bar for superhero games to leap. Never mind it's one of the best open worlds ever that respects the player's time.

Spider-Man 2 might be the best superhero game of all time, and it might just be Sony's best first-party character-focused game, too. Given the presence of Batman: Arkham Asylum and other superhero games, plus Sony's roster of critically-acclaimed games, that's really saying something. Crowded 2023 or not, it's bound to stick the landing atop the lists of many.