Early on in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Peter Parker and Miles Morales wind up in a fight against a kaiju-sized Flint Marko, a.k.a. Sandman, that covers Lower Manhattan in a skyscraper-demolishing sandstorm. The fight sees both Spider-Men fighting in unison, and as the player control switches between the two characters seamlessly, you’ll weave through buildings, dodge debris, dump water towers on Marko, and use Miles’s electric powers to turn Sandman into glass. At one point, Miles will get thrown by Sandman into a skyscraper so hard that he crash-lands in a different borough, and has to swing his way back to Manhattan.
In almost any other game, this would be the ne plus ultra of boss encounters, but in Spider-Man 2, it’s the first of many to come. Which isn’t to say that Insomniac’s sequel is all astonishing boss fights all the time, but even its most mundane moments are doing understated, invisible work pushing what the PlayStation 5 is capable of. There are seamless transitions between huge, detailed environments; a much more lively New York City to explore, expanded to include truncated but faithful recreations of Brooklyn and Queens; and even dimension-hopping that puts even Insomniac’s own Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to shame.
Not a single load screen gums up the works. As for the DualSense’s haptic vibration, it feels magical again, with everything from plain old web-slinging, to knocking a criminal’s head against a steel beam, to squealing feedback from a loudspeaker all creating distinct sensations in the controller. And yet, for all the kinetic swagger of that opening stretch, for all the considerable technical wizardry of Spider-Man 2, its true greatness begins to blossom right after, in the aftermath of the attack, as Peter and Miles swing around the city, bringing bystanders to the hospital, putting out fires, and keeping organized crime looters at bay.
Even more than in 2018’s Spider-Man and 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Insomniac emphasizes ground-level heroism in incredibly obvious but moving ways, and the Spider-Men helping with emergency services is only the tip of the iceberg. But, really, that’s all only a mere taste of what unfolds during the course of the game. As a whole, Spider-Man 2 is an absolute clinic on the things that big-budget, AAA gaming has the ability to do and far too often doesn’t.
Insomniac got the fundamentals right in the previous two games in the series, and as expected, this sequel elaborates and refines the ways that playing as Peter or Miles can differ. Spider-Man 2 revels in the unfettered joy of swinging and—thanks to the much needed practical addition of Spidey’s web wings—gliding through the streets of New York. Life in New York is more vibrant than ever, with its populace reacting to Peter and Miles’s presence in tiny but appreciable ways. It all creates an environment where even the smallest task or collectable quest leads to incredibly unexpected interactions with the characters and the world they inhabit, running the gamut of tone. And through it all, players are urged to innovate and improvise during combat.
Helping the very traumatized Flint Marko recover his memory leads to his daughter Penny’s doorstep, and him receiving the mental help that he needs. Helping Yuri Watanabe, a.k.a. Wraith, settle an old score by taking down a cult leader that got away when she was a cop leads to a frantic, fiery conclusion that teases a character’s debut in this universe that should unnerve even those in the know. And helping a bystander find her missing grandfather leads to one of the most beautifully humane, gentle moments in a game this year.
Therein lies an unassailable truth that a depressing few developers seem to take to heart when designing an open world: There are no meaningless tasks here. Everything you do has meaning, and being citizens of this city, our Spider-Men get to see the fruits of their labor in real time.
And yet, despite the overwhelming scale of helping a city like New York, none of the ancillary tasks manage to overshadow the main story, which, by itself, would make this one of the best-crafted narratives of the year. The broad strokes are of the typical Marvel variety, with a cure being found for Harry Osborn’s mystery illness, and courtesy of a mysterious bio-organic substance grafting itself to his body and granting him superpowers in the process. At the same time, though, Kraven the Hunter sets up shop in New York, looking to hunt the city’s superheroes and supervillains until one of them can grant him a Spartan-style beautiful death.
Naturally, Harry’s bio-organic helper goes horribly wrong and latches itself to Peter, and any good Marvel fan knows what’s coming after Spidey gets a black suit. The particulars are where Spider-Man 2 gains considerable thematic power. Much of the story is focused on rehabilitation rather than retribution, with Miles increasingly obsessed with finding and taking revenge on the newly released Mister Negative. Throughout, a number of Peter’s greatest foes reappear, and all of them are at least trying to do something different with the lives they have left. Unfortunately, that’s all playing out just as Kraven comes calling them back to becoming their worst selves.
That theme of redemption, and what the Spider-Men and the people they’ve hurt owe them once they’ve done their time, doesn’t go too deep—this is a Marvel game after all—but the game’s gesturing to that theme is suggestive, and explored with an unexpected amount of empathy for all involved. The big miracle is seeing how all of that remains a crucial part of Spider-Man 2’s plotting even as the mood drops in the campaign’s latter portions, when the story takes an unexpected and astonishing turn into full-blown cosmic horror territory.
In Spider-Man 2, we have the most elevated idea of what a AAA open-world game could be. Insomniac’s New York City isn’t an empty place for the player to destroy at will, Peter and Miles aren’t audience ciphers, and the story isn’t there for padding. Great power has been employed to bring this world to life on a scale unprecedented, even for AAA games. Insomniac’s great responsibility was in filling that world with life, love, and something even Peter’s Uncle Ben forgot to imbue his nephew with, and most games of this type must aspire to emulate: Insomniac’s Spider-Man sequel is a game driven by great purpose.
We reached out to Sony Interactive Entertainment for review code but received no response. This game was reviewed using a retail PlayStation 5 copy purchased by the reviewer.
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