“Spider-Men Peter Parker and Miles Morales face the ultimate test of strength inside and outside the mask as they fight to save the city, each other and the ones they love, from the monstrous Venom and the dangerous new symbiote threat”

Spider-Man, like many others, has always been my favorite Marvel super-hero. It’s hard for the character to not be when you grow up with the 90’s show and Tobey Maguire’s movies. I had tons of Spider-Man toys, video games, comics, coloring books, you name it. What I never had though were the Spider-Man games from the late 2000’s – early 2010’s. I may have played a little of The Amazing Spider-Man, but I had never owned Web of Shadows or Shattered Dimensions. Spider-Man 3 on Xbox 360 was the last game I had until Spider-Man on PS4 in 2018. While I had my criticisms for the 2018 game, I still enjoyed it and really liked Miles Morales. If Spider-Man 2 fixed my issues with the first entry and really delivered on the symbiote / Venom arc, I’d be ecstatic. Now having 100% completed the game, I can say it mostly fulfilled my expectations.

Spider-Man 2 allows you to control both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as you come across Kraven the Hunter, Lizard, Venom, and many other villains from the Spidey universe. Peter and Miles both have their individual and a shared skill tree you can spend points on for new combat abilities. The typical swinging, stealth, and damage & health upgrades return. The gadgets return as well, and are way easier to use as the item wheel during combat has disappeared. A new feature is the introduction of the web-glider. In trailers, it looked like the web-glider made getting around New York almost too easy, taking out the impact of swinging, but I’m glad to say it’s actually fun to use and have availlable (for example: getting over rivers).

The symbiote suit is pretty awesome, giving you special combat moves and buffs. Kraven and Venom both deliver as excellent villains. One of my complaints from the first game is that I never particularly cared about Mr. Negative (that changes in 2), and Doc Ock was…meh? I just have high expectations for Doctor Octopus since the 90s and Alfred Molina’s versions are the best. All the other side quest villains are good too, and there were a couple revealed in the final part of a side quest that surprised me.

I played Spider-Man 2 in performance mode – it’s a gorgeous game and the frameroot was smooth. Unforunately, I did experience a good chunk of bugs. All but one were minor that had me restart back at a checkpoint to proceed further in a mission, but each were noticable. There’s a new patch dropping soon to add New Game+, extra suits, and hopefully fixes for all these bugs I encountered.

I never bought the DLC for the first game. For 2, I most certainly will. It’s a fantastic game that every PS5 owner needs to have, and if a supposed Venom spin-off game is in the works, you already know I’ll be picking that up.