Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Review: 4 Ups & 2 Downs
Peter Parker and Miles Morales face off against Venom and Kraven in Insomniac's Spider-Man sequel.
If you've been keeping up with the marketing for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 you'll probably have its tagline of "Be Greater, Together" burrowed firmly into your brain. It's a fitting summary for the Insomniac Games-developed sequel, which I'm happy to confirm is bigger, better, and more bombastic than its predecessor in pretty much every way, but apart from it also being a clever play on words regarding the Peter, Miles, Symbiote trifecta, it also intimates the nuances of an immaculately crafted narrative - which turns out to be a prescient, post-pandemic treatise on work-life balance, trauma, and coming of age.
So many of us are constantly striving to "be greater" in our own lives, whether that's in being greater at our jobs, being greater at looking after ourselves, or just being greater people in general. But what does "being greater" actually look like? Is it something we achieve by being stronger and more resilient in a difficult world, or are we greater when we achieve a stated career goal? Perhaps, we find greatness by putting our own needs aside for someone else.
As Marvel's Spider-Man 2 deconstructs, being greater isn't always so simple, and striving to be the better version of yourself can either lead to genuine, introspective improvement, or, like Peter Parker, leave you with a symbiote of self-destruction.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has been a long time in the making. It's been five years since Marvel's Spider-Man left us with that fateful shot of Harry Osborn suspended in that green tank with the symbiote, and after providing a lovely stop-gap with 2020's Miles Morales spin-off, anticipation for the full-fledged sequel has been riding high. I have to concede that I'd almost been taking Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for granted before its release though - sporadic trailers and gameplay showings had looked strong, but given the already high bar set by Insomniac in 2018, I wasn't sure just how much of the ceiling was left for the studio to swing/crawl/web-wing its way to.
Turns out there was a lot, because Insomniac reaches a storytelling and presentation peak pretty much from the beginning of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and maintains that level for the remainder of the game's main story. The end result is something that not only illustrates the studio's erudite grasp on the Marvel mythos in a way that transcends much of the wall-crawler's recent comics history, but also serves as a true showcase for the PlayStation 5. That same familiar open-world Spider-Man core is preserved, but with added gameplay flourishes that reinvigorate combat, traversal and stealth - much the same way Rocksteady did when the studio made the jump between Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City in 2011, a landmark sequel on the seventh generation of consoles.
There are some disappointing criticisms to level at the lack of open-world improvements, which become particularly pronounced once the main story's credits come to a close, but make no mistake: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is a rich, moving, and exhilarating effort from Insomniac - a feat that's made even starker given the general level of Disney-produced superhero fatigue and burnout that's blighted the genre over the last few years.
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