Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 review: A more Venom-ous bite

Spider-Man 2 has a lot to live up to. The first game was one of the most entertaining PS4 titles and gave players the full experience of being Spider-Man, swinging around New York city to their hearts’ content. Could the sequel offer the same joy, beauty and an equally interesting story while delivering on the dual-protagonist concept? Yes, yes it can — though Insomniac skimped on a couple of areas they shouldn’t have.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 offers a version of New York where both Miles and Peter exist on the same timeline and are both Spider-Men. It also adapts the infamous Black Suit comic story line that introduced Venom to Spider-Man’s redoubtable rogues gallery. How does the game manage to balance multiple protagonists? By making “balance” a key part of the story.

To accommodate its multiple heroes, Spider-Man 2 has expanded the map. Miles and Peter now have Brooklyn and Queens to look after, and they have access to a whole host of new Spider-gadgets and traversal mechanics to deal with the city’s crimes. This makes for an experience that feels fresh, cheerful and still comfortingly familiar. That said, the game doesn’t improve on some things from the original that could have used the polish. (Also, just for housekeeping’s sake, when I say “the first game,” I’m referring to both Spider-Man and the Miles Morales expansion.)

A symbiotic relationship: The story

In the new title, Peter Parker and Miles Morales share top billing as Spider-Man, and both are going through their own fresh growing pains. Peter, still grieving the loss of his Aunt May in the previous game, is struggling to adjust to life truly on his own, especially when his inherited mortgage comes due. Miles, meanwhile, is so focused on being Spider-Man that he’s pushing away his supportive friends, many of whom are on their way to college while Miles languishes. Even Mary Jane is having a hard time as her new job under J. Jonah Jameson takes more and more of a toll on her.

In the midst of all this, two people arrive to shake things up: Kraven, a mysterious Eastern European master hunter who rolls into town with a private army for reasons unknown; and Harry Osborn, Peter and MJ’s terminally ill friend who is suddenly back, in perfect health, and sporting a mysterious black “exosuit.” This kicks off a rollercoaster of a story as Kraven causes a prison break that dumps multiple supervillains back into the city, and Peter and Miles have to find a balance between their duty to the city and their personal lives.

As always, the story is carried along beautifully by the performances from the main characters. Yuri Lowenthal puts his whole back into his performance as Peter Parker dancing on a knife’s edge. Laura Bailey gets a chance to add some extra vitriol to the first game’s rather bland version of MJ. Nadji Jeter is a delight as Miles, who almost sees Spider-Manning as a break from the horror show that is teenagerhood.

But the two standout voices come from the villains. Jim Pirri plays Kraven as a dark mirror to Spider-Man, someone with unlimited determination who flips off death with both hands. As for Venom, Tony Todd is a fantastic choice for the symbiote’s speaking voice, giving it a nasty, inhuman fry. It’s a pity that both villains have comparatively small roles, as both are character who choose to speak only at pivotal moments. But Todd, especially, makes every single line count — the very first time you hear him speak, he says only one word, but it’s enough to make your stomach drop.

If the story has one problem, it is, ironically, balance. Both Miles and Peter are given roughly equal screen time, which is good. However, both characters face an unexpectedly pernicious enemy throughout the game: Rubble. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time a major character is incapacitated by a piece of falling masonry – well, the game would pay for itself. This might sound like I’m being petty, but it’s indicative of a larger problem. It feels as though the writers would consistently knock one of the Spider-Men out because they didn’t know how to account for two of them. It gets annoying after a while.

Let’s get swinging: The gameplay

If there’s one thing the first game had that the sequel didn’t need to touch, it was movement. Spider-Man’s swinging was already basically perfect as-is. However, Spider-Man 2 decides to top itself by introducing new movement mechanics, including web wings that let Peter and Miles glide over the city. This helps keep the much-larger map from feeling like a chore to traverse, and the ease with which Spider-Man can switch from swinging to gliding just makes it even better.

As with the first game, New York is full of small activities for Spider-Man to do to gather resources. These include raiding tech stashes, saving civilians from Mysterio’s Mysteriums or collecting wayward Spider-Bots. These are not difficult activities, by any means — in fact, they’re much simpler and less varied than the side activities in the first game. However, they do serve the purpose of giving Miles and Peter something more to do outside of the main story, which is slightly shorter than the one in the first game.

If there’s one area where the game lets itself down, it’s the boss battles. Very minor story spoilers here: The very first thing that happens in the game is a massive, city-wide boss battle with Sandman, where Miles and Peter must swing for their lives as the kaiju-sized supervillain wrecks the Upper East Side. Opening with a boss battle that would have been an endgame fight in the first title gives me major Bayonetta 2 energy, which is a compliment of the highest order coming from me. The problem is that the game never manages to reach that same level of quality and scope with its boss battles again – not even during the endgame fights.

The first game featured several massive arena fights that allowed Peter and Miles to use their superior mobility against their opponent. The sequel, however, squishes several of the boss fights into areas roughly the size of a strip mall parking lot. Many of them are set up so that Miles and Peter are completely grounded – the space simply isn’t big enough to swing. I could understand this for the boss battles with characters like Kraven, who is an ordinary human powered by money and audacity. But for the boss battles with supervillains, the fact that these take place on the ground in such tight confines makes no sense.

One more note: If you didn’t like the stealth sequences in the first game where you play as MJ or a depowered Miles, then I have bad news for you: Spider-Man 2 has several of those. Personally, I didn’t mind those sections in either game — and they serve an even greater story purpose in Spider-Man 2 — but if you didn’t like them already, the sequel will not endear them to you.

Should you buy Marvel’s Spider-Man 2?

It’s hard to see a world where I wouldn’t recommend Spider-Man 2, at least to the series’ fans. If you enjoyed the first game, you’ll almost certainly enjoy this one. The sequel would have to have a lot more flaws and shortcomings than it does to squander the goodwill of its predecessor. The story is enjoyable, with every actor bringing their A-game, and everything is so beautifully animated the sight of New York will make you weep.

That being said, there are flaws and shortcomings within the game. It doesn’t improve on areas of the original game that were screaming for an upgrade. It also struggles to deliver a story where not only both Spider-Men but their supporting cast feel equally served, though this is saved somewhat by the excellent performances.

Sony provided us with a code for the purposes of this review. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20 on PlayStation 5.