‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ review: a new standard for superhero games

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2‘s opening setpiece, an eye-popping fight against shapeshifting villain Sandman, could have easily been a third-act showstopper. Before the initial adrenaline of its web-slinging can subside, you’re thrown between pockets of frenetic combat and introduced to a cavalcade of cool new abilities. But this is just the tutorial of a sequel built with remarkable conviction, one that raises the stakes across the board and builds towards a profound crescendo.

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This time around, you juggle your time equally between Peter Parker and Miles Morales, both at different stages of their careers and learning how to co-habit the Spider-Man-tle. Swapping between them feels like wizardry – all it takes is a few seconds of loading, no matter where they are in The Big Apple.

Parker’s story concerns an unexpected reunion with his terminally ill childhood friend, Harry Osborn – further complicated by the introduction of the Symbiote, a tentacular alien life form that fuses to its chosen host like a suit of armour. Morales, on the other hand, is still reeling from his father’s death and trying to find a balance between saving the world and coming of age. Both heroes are also dealing with the arrival of Kraven, a sadistic killer who’s arrived to hunt and murder fellow supervillains. These narrative threads constantly intersect, so it never feels like two separate stories. You really get a feel for how different the Spider-Men are from each other this time around, but also how much they need each other beneath the mask.

Spider-Man 2 succeeds in its ambitions as a blood-pumping action game – the combat is surprisingly complex and challenging – but it also manages to deliver powerful ruminations on grief and rehabilitation along the way. It’s a hopeful story that uses the meaty Spider-Verse developer Insomniac Games has built to explore the difficulties of doing the right thing, but you don’t need to play its predecessors to follow along.

Several small stories that wouldn’t make it into anything other than an open-world Spider-Man game rear their head, and many tug hard on the heartstrings. As well as a tense game of fish market chicken with The Lizard, you’ll help a worried daughter find her ageing grandpa, who has wandered off in the park searching for old memories. You’ll preserve the history of jazz music in one quest-line and receive illuminating ecology lessons in another.

Its characters are just as lively, and the way Insomniac expands upon its deaf character, returning Miles Morales star Hailey Cooper, is particularly moving. Text-to-speech, hearing technology and sign language are integrated in an attentive and empathetic manner.

Elsewhere, combat has been expanded considerably, and it’s a massive thrill when you flip the symbiote switch and indulge in its corrupting alien power. Building focus to earn takedowns is important to your survival, with a renewed emphasis on dodging, parrying and juggling enemies to keep them from overwhelming you.

The balance of new powers and gadgets is solid for most of the story, but when you get into the late game, you may find yourself spamming them all before throwing a punch, as it tends to be a quick, albeit anti-tactical way to crush enemy squads. This is flipped on its head in stealth, though, where ingenuity is always encouraged. Specifically, we adored the addition of the Web Line gadget, which allows you to create paths above the battlefield to tie up enemies and create a literal web of shadows.

Naturally, there’s also something to be said about how wonderful it feels to swing through the city. There’s a dedicated tree for upgrading your abilities in the air, and eventually, you’ll be whipping around corners and blasting off into the skyline, stringing together Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater combos that double as a smart way to level up between missions. ‘Photo Mode’ nerds will have a lot of fun here, as Spider-Man 2 has spectacular visual flair – from the sand dusting across the floor of a classroom, to the wet blood on a hunter’s finger as they track their next kill.

More than most games, Spider-Man 2 makes wonderful use of the ‘DualSense’ to embellish its superhero fantasy. As well as emulating web torsion on the triggers, the feedback as you glide, dive, recover, and parry enemies is wonderfully intricate. Especially in one of Spider-Man 2’s epic multi-stage boss fights, it’s the atmospheric notes, such as the haptics and triumphant score, that finesse the experience.

It would be great to see the brilliance of the base game expanded with downloadable content, as Insomniac’s NYC can feel lifeless when you aren’t on the job, as it did in previous games. You aren’t compelled to walk around and smell the roses once you wrap up all the side content, and if you catch it at an unfortunate angle, The Big Apple can look like a flat toybox world full of unconvincing NPCs.

There’s also a sense that Spider-Man 2’s world is a bit stuck in the past sometimes, with its uncanny branding, preppy fashion sense and didactic podcasts. There’s real maturity to its storytelling, and the final act is a climactic masterclass, but there are some flat jokes and already-ageing dialogue smattered amongst its commentary on enduring contemporary anxieties. Yet, in a game of such incredible quality, nitpicks like this feel like splitting hairs.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 strives to set a new benchmark for the superhero simulator, and by that measure it thoroughly succeeds. It’s all killer and no filler. The world below doesn’t need to be hyperrealistic when you’re in the sky 90 per cent of the time. And when you’re up there, immersed in the web-slinging fantasy and defying an evildoer’s master plan, there’s really nothing quite like it.

‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ launches on October 20 for PS5