Creating a sequel to a bestselling game is a lofty creative tightrope that would give even Spider-Man vertigo. Stick too close to the original formula and you’re considered complacent and unambitious; stray too far, and you risk losing what made the game successful in the first place. With Spider-Man 2, Insomniac has walked that narrow path with the grace of an olympic gymnast.
Once again we’re back in an astoundingly detailed and beautiful reproduction of New York City, bigger now, and more alive than ever. Featuring both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, the game lets players swap between the two as Kraven the Hunter invades the city with a plan to free a bunch of supervillains then hunt them for sport. Meanwhile, the alien symbiote behind Marvel’s Venom character lurks in the most unexpected of places waiting to pounce.
As in the first title, the game is built around ever escalating set-piece battles against familiar spider foes and their henchmen, with both Spider-Men calling on a vast range of web-slinging moves and melee attacks, augmented with a feast of combos and specials. You can scoop enemies up into the air and batter them while suspended; you can blast out web strikes and swing kicks, and fire off chain lightning – it’s a whirlwind of superhero violence. As you progress, you earn XP and tokens that can be spent on skill trees and suit upgrades, enhancing your arsenal of abilities. Although the two characters have slightly different powers, they use the same button layout, which is extensive and at first slightly bewildering – there are a LOT of button combinations. Those who played the first two games will have an advantage because the foundational combat mechanics are the same – until Peter Parker picks up some astonishing new powers thanks to … well, let’s not get into that.
The rhythm of the game too is similar to the others. Each district of New York has various types of sub-quest that pop up around the place – sometimes you’re stopping street crimes, sometimes finding enemy hideouts (and sneaking about in high places for hours, picking off guards one by one), or getting involved in little local crises. There are a certain number of these in each region of the city, so you pick them up naturally on your way to main story missions – although completists will want to zip about and do them all. It’s familiar, yes, but the fresh cast of baddies, the new subplots and the enhanced city work together to ensure things are interesting. It’s great that we now get to explore Brooklyn and Queens, with their dockside factories, leafy brownstone neighbourhoods and sprawling suburbs: they add new textures and visual wonders to the exploration element.
But what the game does really well is to combine the stories of Peter and Miles without making the narrative feel crowded or shallow. Their interlocking tales sometimes align, sometimes contrast, all the while bringing out unexpected depths and nuance. Parker is trying to make his way in life as an adult, looking for jobs and moving in with MJ, while Morales is still dealing with the death of his father and struggling with his own sense of inferiority.
These aren’t just background details, quickly spoon-fed to us in cinematic sequences. Amid the noisy set-piece battles, the game carves out lots of quiet little moments of humanity, friendship and emotion. There is a nice scene with Peter, Harry and Mary Jane at Coney Island amusement park, where you take part in sideshow games and ride rollercoasters, all the while getting a sense of the ties between the characters. Meanwhile, a whole subplot involving a community centre in Harlem and its collection of jazz artefacts is a fascinating diversion, written with care and knowledge. You might not come to a Spider-Man game for a fascinating treatise on the connection between bebop and rap music but you’re going to get it.
Actually, one of my favouroite sequences in the whole game doesn’t involve the lads at all – it’s a side quest where Miles’s hearing-imparied friend Hailey teaches another graffiti artist how to have confidence in her work. The way Hailey’s understanding of the world is portrayed on screen is imaginative and moving. It shows that Insomoniac is up there with Naughty Dog in the way it is able to merge story, subtext and meaning into profound interactive moments.
The exhilarating traversal mechanic of the first game, which let you effortlessly swing from web lines like a pro, is back, but now Insomniac has added a wingsuit function, so Spider-Man can also glide for long distances. It works beautifully, enhancing the sense of fluidity and grace and allowing you to swoop along the chasm-like avenues before rising up into the sky, the bustle of the city far beneath you. It’s a lovely feeling, aided by wind currents flowing along certain streets and over the Hudson and East rivers allowing you to stay airborne for long distances. In less sure hands, gliding could have been an over-powered feature rendering the web-slinging almost defunct, but instead it’s a perfect partner, extending your reach without feeling too superhuman.
There are some missteps on the way. Most of the boss battles really outstay their welcome, piling on stage after stage of sequentially tougher action when a couple of phases would have been plenty. There are also a few hallucinogenic/VR fantasy sequences that, as always, are simply frustrating and boring rather than thrillingly surreal. More trying are the occasional user interface failures: in a game with such an intricate array of moves and actions, you need super clear signposting and sometimes, it’s not at all obvious what you’re supposed to be doing in a puzzle sequence, often because the control scheme can be slightly different from one stage to the next.
But it is a genuine pleasure to play something that has been so lovingly envisaged, and which is so true to its source material. It’s a game everyone with a PS5 should experience, augmented by an admirable range of accessibility options to ensure as wide a group of potential players as possible can be Spider-Man. This is what mainstream action adventure video games should be: a big, wholehearted fantasy, invested with rewarding details and loaded with conflict and emotion. In all the ways that count, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is the embodiment of that famous Stan Lee motto: Excelsior!
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is released on PS5 on 20 October
