Reviewed on: PS5

Once again Insomniac delivers, and Spider-Man 2 brings plenty of quality, but without being perfect or revolutionizing the genre.

PlayStation and Marvel have teamed up again, bringing another adventure of the web-head, which for now is exclusive to PlayStation 5.

I’ll leave a Pros and Cons list here first, and further below there is something more detailed.

Pros:

Good additions to the Spiders’ movement around the city.
The city feels very organic, with lots of people and vehicles passing by.
The start of the game is INSANE, with lots of action, cinematic scenes and incredible visuals.
The new side missions are really cool.
Big map, almost 2 times larger than in the previous games.

Cons:

Combat is still almost the same as in the previous games. There was little evolution.
The story is cool, but with many clichés and some forced scenes.
Quite a few silly bugs, such as enemies clipping into the scenery or disappearing.
MJ’s role was increased. Probably without anyone asking for it.
Little new content after the endgame.

The Spiders’ movement with the new Web-Wings, together with the wind tunnels, made traversing the city much more dynamic.

Web-swinging was always fun in the first games, but now we have these new ways of moving to mix everything together and make it all more fun.

New York City looks beautiful. Playing in Fidelity mode, the city feels alive, with reflections on windows and puddles working very well, and plenty of foot and vehicle traffic.

Besides being prettier, the city is 2 times bigger than the map in the previous games.

The start of the game is frantic, full of action and breathtaking scenes, and also works as a tutorial, teaching the new and old controls.

The new side missions are cool, basically mini-stories that have no influence on or involvement with the main story, but show more of Spider-Man’s Friendly Neighborhood side.

In combat, I liked the addition of the “defense” button, something the previous games didn’t have. With this button you can parry some attacks.

But apart from the parry button, combat is basically the same as in the previous games, with only the characters’ abilities updated.

The story is cool, but it has many parts near the end that are pure cliché, with quite forced scenes.

This time, Mary Jane has a bigger part in the game’s gameplay overall, but even with her style changed (her missions, which used to be stealth, are now a third-person shooter), most of the time it all feels very forced.

I ran into quite a few bugs and errors while playing. Some silly ones that were insignificant and made me laugh, others more annoying that made me angry during a mission, or even kept me from moving the story forward.

Example: when receiving a new power because of the story, the prompt appears on screen for us to press the button combination to trigger the new ability for the first time. But when I pressed the buttons, the game didn’t recognize the command and just sat there waiting.

I had to restart from the last checkpoint a few times, until at some point the game accepted the command, activated the ability and the fight went on.

After finishing the game, only one new mission appeared on the map, and it wasn’t even really new, but rather the last part of one of the side missions.

All in all, my score for Spider-Man 2 is an excellent 8.5, I highly recommend this game, even though it’s not perfect.

Insomniac managed to make the game prettier than it already was and delivered some of the coolest boss fights in a long time, but at the very end of the game, it didn’t manage to excite me as much.

The final battle, to me, wasn’t as epic as the rest of the game. Unfortunately.

Still, I enjoyed every minute of the game, and loved the references and secrets, especially the end of one side mission dropping a hint about a possible next enemy, and an extra suit for Miles, whose look and name even made my heart skip a beat with joy.

I finished the game doing everything possible. I cleaned up all the side activities on the map before going to the final mission, which took about 23 hours.

In total, I got the Platinum and the PS5 shows 25 hours of play.

Unlike the previous two games, this time there is no trophy that requires finishing the game again in New Game+.

PlayStation