In June 2016 at an E3 conference, Sony revealed the first trailer for Insomniac’s PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game and I was hyped immediately. The graphics looked incredible and the brief glimpses of swinging through the city and combat looked so cool. When the game was finally released in 2018, I was hooked and devoured the game over the summer. It had a few issues but I could look past those and think fondly back on my time with it. Then in 2020, the PS5 launch title Spider-Man Miles Morales came out and in my opinion was an improvement on almost everything about the original. So when Spider-Man 2 was announced in 2021 I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to see how much of an improvement from the last two games this one would be.
I have fought crime, webbed up bad guys and swung my way through New York for 29 Hours in my attempt to earn the platinum trophy for Spider-Man 2, and here is my review.
It’s hard to talk about first-party triple-A titles like Spider-Man on PS5 without praising the graphics they boast. Spider-Man 2 is no exception to this, the city of New York looks incredible as you swing at break-neck speeds through its streets and over its skyscrapers and I found the light and shadows around the city incredibly well done. The character models were good, especially Miles and Peter in their suits, but many of the face models on characters had moments of looking a bit uncanny. I played the game on Performance Mode, as I do most games with the option and had very minimal frame drops or stutters, even when combat was at its most hectic which really made the game feel smooth and immersive when you were wailing on bad guys
This isn’t to say the performance was perfect however; the camera could be a bit finicky sometimes in combat, especially when doing finishers when it would zoom in to show the cool beat-down animation but sometimes get stuck on something or zoom in too close to see what was actually happening. I also encountered a few bugs throughout my playthrough, enemies getting stuck in places they shouldn’t be or crime icons being at places where absolutely nothing was happening but these were manageable. I also suffered from a couple of weird freezes where a cutscene was supposed to start, or a conversation was supposed to happen but the characters just sat there in silence, a quick reload sorted this out every time but by the third instance of this happening it was pretty disappointing. The most annoying bug I had was an issue with the subtitles of the game, a lot of the time they would not be synced up with the audio and the subtitles were a couple of lines behind what was being said, and other times they would jump ahead. I’m not really sure what caused this but they would fix themselves once the cutscene had ended.
Even with these issues though it didn’t put much of a damper on my enjoyment, as there was still so much fun to be had when you were just swinging around the city, and oh boy is there a lot more city to be explored this time around. New York is nearly twice as big as it was in the previous titles, and full of things for a pair of Spider-Men to get distracted by. The simple act of swinging around the city feels just as fun as it did in the previous games, and I loved the addition of the web wings that let you glide around to help you get around faster. Once you learn the positions on the wind tunnels you can glide through it makes getting around the city so fast that I very rarely used the Fast Travel option once I unlocked it. There are 14 districts in the city now and each of them has their share of collectables or side missions that you can do similar to the previous two games. Some of these are locked to each character which I liked as it felt there was always a good reason to switch between Peter and Miles. Most of these collectables were just easy quick things, like grabbing Spider-Bots that are dotted around the map or taking photos of different New York locations or people but some were more involved.
The quality of these side activities those vary greatly though. There are some really cool Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man quests, that range from a short 15-minute quest to help a Blind woman find a new guide dog, or find someone’s missing grandfather, to some more extensive ones that lead to genuinely cool side stories, such as investigating a cult known as The Flame. There are also combat challenges you can do as Miles for a questline involving one of my favourite Spider-Man characters. Enemy bases return from previous games, which you can fight or stealth your way through depending on your preference, and then there are side missions where you just need to beat up small groups of enemies or defend a point from being attacked. Then there are the side events that I found a bit boring or repetitive, such as following a robot bird through a wind tunnel for 2 minutes to download data from it, or almost all of the Science missions Peter has to do. I think I appreciated that the Science missions were at least trying to do something a bit different, but I felt like the puzzles should have either been harder or at least more varied to make them more interesting. This could have been an issue with the way I approached the game, however, as I did leave most of the side content to the post-game. By the end of my playthrough, I was kind of exhausted by the sense of repetition and busy work some of these missions consisted of.
As you can see there is a lot to do in Spider-Man 2, and that is before you even touch the Main Story content there is. In my opinion, though, this is the best part of the game, and I tore my way through it, always eager to see the next story beat or the next boss fight. The Story is one that has been told in comics and movies before, and I will try not to spoil anything that hasn’t been shown in trailers, but the way Insomniac told the story was fresh and interesting enough that even though I could see the broad strokes coming, the moment to moment story beats were really well told.
The narrative is essentially split into 2 parts, beginning with Kraven the Hunter. Kraven is man on a mission to hunt more and more dangerous creatures, including both Spider-Men and many of their roster of villains, and this leads him and his insanely large army of lesser Hunters to enter the jungle of New York to finish their hunt.
The other part of the story is one of the more popular Spider-Man stories, that of the Symbiote. Peter at some point in the story connects with an alien life form that gives him even more power but eventually starts to corrupt him as it takes over his mind. This threat of being hunted combined with the fallout of Peter changing is at the heart of the conflict and it plays out really well in my opinion.
Much of the success and freshness of this retelling of Spider-Man’s Symbiote adventure is due to how the story uses Miles. At this point in the story he is still being mentored by Peter, but he is more confident in himself and his abilities as a hero. Seeing the way Peter’s behaviour changes, and how it affects his perception of those around him is really interesting to see from the viewpoint of the people he is hurting, and it really drives home the struggles that both Peter and Miles are facing throughout the games story. I really enjoyed how well the story balances the two characters and it never felt like one of them was outshining the other for screen time or development. I felt like the game also used its other characters like MJ really well and all of the game’s villains were well written and threatening, always driving the story forward, I liked Kraven a lot as a villain and his pure bloodlust felt very different from the other villains we have seen previously and I am really interested to see what rogues appear in the next game and how Insomniac will tell their stories.
The best story beats are always punctuated with a good boss fight, and Spider-Man 2 does this really well. The boss fights felt like spectacles, thrilling, enjoyable affairs that were quite challenging to beat with many bosses taking me a few tries to get past, which is a definite step up from the previous titles in difficulty. Each of the game’s major boss fights felt unique and exciting and most of them required more mechanically than just dodging the enemy and counter-attacking, with many of them requiring using different environmental interactions. One thing I really enjoyed was the breaks the fights had in them as you depleted the boss’s health. Each boss has a number of health bars, which you can see at the bottom of their bar, and when you deplete one, there is a small scene between each phase. These phases act as checkpoints, but also act as points to introduce new mechanics or moves the boss has and it was so cool to see how some of these bosses progressed.
The combat itself is so good, even if it doesn’t feel hugely different from the last two games. You build up focus by hitting enemies, and you can use this focus to heal or do flash finishers on enemies. Your basic melee attacks for both characters are incredibly smooth, flashy and acrobatic and it is never not fun to launch an enemy into the air, smack them a few times, dodge a rocket that you then catch and throw back at the person who fired it, before returning to hitting the guy in the air. On top of your basic attacks, you also have special abilities you can use, by pressing L1 and a face button, and Gadget attacks, which are mapped to R1 and a face button. You unlock new abilities as you progress but you can only equip 4, and Peter and Miles each have very different abilities, which helps them feel unique. You have 4 Gadgets, which is a lower number than previous games, and these are shared between characters. Both gadgets and abilities recharge over time, and combat is a dance of managing these abilities, and building focus to do big finishers. There is also a parry mechanic that has been added, where you hit L1 just before a move hits you and it opens up the enemy for a few hits, and certain attacks have to be parried, while others have to be dodged. These last two mechanics are more prevalent in boss fights than regular goons but they still need to be remembered.
It’s good that combat is so much fun, as there is a lot of it in the game. Almost every story beat and side quest is full of combat so you will be doing a lot of it. It’s a shame then, that the stealth parts of the game feel so basic in comparison. There are certain parts of the game where stealth is an option, and this is something that I don’t feel has been improved since the first game. You can web enemies up from high vantage points to take them out of combat or do noisier combat takedowns if you don’t want to be sneaky. Sometimes there are shelves or something you can pull down on an unsuspecting goon to knock them out, but honestly, that’s about as complex as it gets, especially with Miles who can briefly turn invisible and lose the enemies focus. It’s disappointing as it feels like, especially with fewer gadgets to choose from, there aren’t many options to make stealth fun, and the enemies are pretty unintelligent when it comes to being aware of you that there was no real challenge. It was clear in the PS4 release how much the Batman Arkham series had inspired the game, especially with the stealth takedowns, but even that series’ first game, Arkham Asylum felt like it had better stealth mechanics. Also returning from the previous games are the Spiderbot and Mary Jane stealth sections. These feel like they have been improved, especially the MJ ones, and they felt a lot more interesting than before but still not enough to elevate the gameplay to something great.
So lastly let’s talk about how to earn the Platinum Trophy, there will be some minor spoilers ahead just to let you know. The game itself isn’t very long even with the amount of side content there is, and none of it is really difficult, or missable.
There are 9 unmissable story trophies, and 7 Trophies connected to Side Quests. Most of the side quests have different steps that will unlock over the course of the story so you can either do them as you find them or wait til the Post-Game and do them all at once like I did.
Then there are the rest of the collectables. You need to get 100% completion of the Map to get the Superior Trophy so you will have to complete all of the following.
Every Photo Op, Every Spider-Bot, Every Hunter Base, Every Mysterium Challenge, Every Bird Drone, All the Symbiote Nests, All the EMF puzzles, All the Prowler Stashes, All the Sandman Crystals and all the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man quests. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of things to do in this game.
There are some combat trophies it is worth keeping an eye on, they are not missable but its easier to do them before you have finished all the other collectables so you are not relying on random crimes. You need to take out 25 enemies from a Webline, which is an ability you unlock fairly early on. These are essentially stealth takedowns that I imagine would be quite hard to do once you have cleared all the hunter bases. You also have to use Miles Reverse Flux move to pull more than 6 enemies to you at once. This is pretty easy to get in any of the Symbiote Nests if you miss it in the area you unlock the ability.
You also have to defeat 100 enemies with both Peter’s and Miles’s abilities. This shouldn’t be too difficult to get as long as you use the abilities a lot. It needs to be the final blow though so make sure you weaken enemies first before using the ability. Lastly, you will need to use Symbiote Abilities 25 times while using the Symbiote Surge, which is like a rage mechanic you can use by pushing in L3 and R3 when the surge bar is full, again not a difficult trophy just remember to spam your abilities when you have used the Surge.
There are also trophies related to upgrades and unlocks, you will need different currencies for these, which you can earn by doing side missions or collectables or through the story. There are also stashes of tech parts, a currency you will need a lot of, around the map and one of the traversal suit upgrades will let you see these in your mini-map when you are near.
You need to upgrade each of the 4 gadgets fully, reach the max level of 60, unlock all of the suit-tech upgrades, which are things like more health or damage, and unlock every suit for Peter and Miles. You will have more than enough currency from doing the story and all the sidequests that these shouldn’t be difficult at all to unlock. One thing to note though, is that many of the suits have different styles you can unlock by spending Tech-Parts, you don’t need all of these for the trophy but you do need to unlock and equip one. If you do unlock too many of them though, you may need to go hunting for extra tech parts to afford all the upgrades you need, as I did, what can I say I love colour variants.
Lastly, there are some miscellaneous exploration trophies. You need to visit May’s Grave in the northwest of Harlem as Peter, and as Miles, you will need to find his and Phin’s science aware which is on top of a church in the southern part of the financial district.
When swinging around the city, try and perform 30 air tricks in a row without touching the ground, it doesn’t matter if you use your web to swing again just dont touch the ground. Also fail a trick and hit the ground while trying one to get the splat trophy. You need to get 10,000 Tech parts for the resourceful trophy but you need more than that I think to unlock everything anyway so shouldn’t cause you any trouble. Next you will need to head to Coney Island and find the baseball field there, run around all 4 bases for the Home Run trophy and lastly you need to earn the Soar Trophy by travelling from the financial district to Astoria only using your web wings. There are two wind tunnels you can use that will get you there in no time from the northeast corner of the financial district glide and head east to the wind tunnel there, travel through then to the river, head east a little more to hit a second one that will take you all the way to Astoria. If you have trouble remember you can press R3 to scan the area and it will show you wind tunnels.
Overall, like the previous titles this is an incredibly easy platinum trophy to earn and even if some of the activities can feel a little repetitive the journey is a good one. The story is great and the combat is engaging and exciting. I just hope in the inevitable third game, they do a little more to mix things up with the side content, and improve on the stealth sections. If you liked the last two games I think you will love this one too, and overall Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a big improvement over them and I can’t wait to see what Insomniac does with this franchise next.
Leave a Reply