‘Spider-Man 2’ Review: Sony’s Brilliant Video Game Sequel Understands Spidey Better Than the MCU Ever Has
David Ehrlich
As the exceedingly good “Spider-Verse” movies have shown in any number of eye-popping ways, Spider-Man can be anyone, but not anyone can be Spider-Man. To one degree or another, that axiom is foundational to the nature of Marvel’s friendliest and most neighborly superhero; always a feature, never a bug, and — at least for the people responsible for building a video game around the character — sometimes a nightmare. How do you interpolate that core ethos into a piece of interactive entertainment whose very existence hinges on the premise that literally anyone can be Spider-Man (so long as they have a PlayStation 5)?
It’s the kind of conceptual headache that wouldn’t bother most video game developers, let alone most video game buyers, but Insomniac’s “Spider-Man 2” never loses sight of that paradox. A super-traditional open-world action sequel so intelligently conceived and absurdly well-polished that it often seems revolutionary just by dint of how spectacular it feels to play, this blockbuster follow-up to 2018’s “Spider-Man” — and 2020’s Miles Morales-centered spinoff — soars above so much of its competition because of how relentlessly it confronts you with the fact that virtually no one could be Spider-Man. Or maybe it’s because the game pretty much allows you to fly around New York from the moment it starts. That’s pretty cool, too.
“With great power comes great responsibility” has become so endemic to Spider-Man’s whole deal that people might be fooled into thinking that Stan Lee first coined the phrase, but not even Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2” — which remains the most poignant dramatization of Peter Parker’s central dilemma — was this effective at conveying the practical realities of shouldering great responsibility or wielding great power.
Building upon the rock-solid foundation left behind by the previous games, Insomniac’s “Spider-Man 2” drops players into a vibrant metropolis where the weather is always sunny and the streets are so teeming with violent crime and socially conscious youths that it feels like a scare-mongering Fox News segment come to life (the game’s politely ACAB politics include celebrating diversity in all its forms and a mid-fight lecture about the dangers of America’s gun fetishism). In other words, it’s a New York City teeming with good people who need your help. At the same time, however, this massive steel playground is also home to one of the most purely enjoyable open-world games ever made, which presents an unusual conundrum for anyone with a joystick in their hands.
Thanks to the fluidity of the controls, the addictiveness of the sidequests, and the ecstasy of the various combat and traversal mechanics that “Spider-Man 2” either refines or introduces into the franchise, anything you actually choose to do as Spider-Man comes at the temporary expense of 10 other things you might wish you were doing at the same time. Sure, you could go save a few pedestrians from the pyromaniac cultists trying to blow up a gasoline truck on 5th Ave., or stop a car full of high-tech hunters as it speeds away from a crime scene along the FDR Drive, but ignoring the police scanner in favor of infiltrating another one of Kraven’s hidden bases will probably reward you with a cool new suit, and the stealth missions here — in rather extreme contrast to 99% of action fare — might be the most fun part of the entire game. After all, you can’t save everyone, and it’s not like there won’t be another rash of small-scale terrorism across Manhattan tomorrow.
Such decision-making is obviously baked into the DNA of the open-world genre (and present in the previous “Spider-Man” games in much the same way), but it’s never been easier or more euphoric to navigate around an open world than in “Spider-Man 2.” The bliss of actually wanting to do everything available to you perfectly aligns with the moral compass of a superhero who accepts his privilege as an obligation. Most people won’t necessarily feel bad if they choose not to drop everything and swing a wounded NPC to a local hospital, just as most people won’t lose sleep over the number of crimes they might have stopped during the afternoon that Spider-Man spends helping a gay high schooler (Krishna Kumar) ask his boyfriend to homecoming, but in eliminating tedium from a genre that often seems dependent on it, Insomniac has made it so that players find themselves pleasantly overwhelmed by the fact that they can’t be everywhere at once. It’s a game about the agonies of striking the right work/life balance, and it’s such an addictive time-suck that Spider-Man’s problem soon becomes your own.
The plot of “Spider-Man 2” pays all of the usual lip service to the catch-22 of being a superhero, but the game most viscerally conveys the stress of Peter Parker and Miles Morales’ responsibility by transmuting it through the joys of their power. Flying above the Brooklyn Bridge is an absolute blast that never gets old, but “Spider-Man 2” is so liberating to play because it instills a palpable awareness that having to do any of this stuff in real life, with real consequences, would be an impossible weight to carry, even for someone with Marvel strength and god-like stamina. That sensation is baked into every spectacularly animated combat move and MCU-worthy cinematic (I almost felt out of breath just watching my character move around), and it spikes even higher when you start ignoring the main missions in favor of futzing around the city, especially once the story begins cohering into an emotional saga about — what else — Spider-Man’s struggle to balance his life between optional side quests and mandatory objectives.
“Balance is a process,” someone tells Peter during the opening chapters of “Spider-Man 2” (a fantastically paced adventure that lasts for about 25 hours without ever losing steam), and that process has been suffused into every aspect of the game. The most obvious example of that might be Insomniac’s decision to (almost) evenly split this sequel between Peter and Miles, which forced the studio to balance every aspect of this experience across two characters with similar move sets but very different problems.
Played again by Yuri Lowenthal, Peter begins the story as an emotionally stunted adult still grieving the death of his beloved Aunt May and struggling to move out of her house; he wants to find a proper job and be a more fiscally responsible partner for MJ (it’s never not funny that Spider-Man can’t find a way to make money). But his girlfriend’s ascendant journalism career is pushing them both into the next phase of their lives faster than Peter can make peace with the previous one. Perhaps that’s why he takes such comfort in palling around with his sickly childhood friend Harry Osborne, getting a lot stronger thanks to the weird, symbiotic black goo his billionaire father has injected into his bloodstream. I’m sure nothing bad will come from that. Harry is painfully underwritten for a game whose plot hinges on Peter’s allegiance to him, but the Venom storyline allows for all sorts of compelling tension between personal desires and the public good. “Spider-Man 2” eventually stretches that interior conflict until it threatens to subsume the entire world.
For his part, Miles (a zealous but wounded Nadji Jeter) is still raging over the death of his father at the hands of Mister Negative and hoping to graduate high school without sacrificing his soul at the altar of revenge. Miles’ arc is less central to the game’s overall story, and its motivating bloodlust lacks the emotional nuance that allows Peter’s side of things to feel so much richer than any of the MCU Spider-Man movies (it’s unfair that Miles has to compete with “Across the Spider-Verse,” while Peter just has to be more interesting than Tom Holland). But the purity of the character’s purpose makes a strong foil for Peter’s inner tumult in a game where both Spider-Men are hoping that being good might be enough to recuse them from doing good.
While most of the story missions require you to be one character or the other, players are otherwise free to switch between them at will. The difference in their abilities is slight at first, but juggling between the two heroes gradually adds to the sense that both are busy scrambling around the city at all times. That point is hammered home with amazing flair whenever the other Spider-Man swings by to help you out in a streetfight, as these impromptu team-ups tend to result in movie-worthy action combos and congratulatory Spider Hugs.
Such flourishes add tremendous vitality to a game world that can still feel too much like a simulation, as do the seamless moments when Peter or Miles put an important phone conversation on hold because you suddenly decided to fly a bee-shaped drone around Central Park or DJ your way out of a trap sprung by a famous villain. Expanding the map to Brooklyn and Queens goes a long way, and little details — like the ability to see people on the other side of the windows as you sprint up the outside of a skyscraper — further support the illusion of a city in motion. The game world is so fluid and photo-realistic that it becomes impossible to ignore what you can’t do in it, thus confronting players with uncanny-valley-like effects every time they try to go in a subway station or web onto a passing helicopter.
While that balance continues to defy what’s possible in even a mega-budgeted AAA game like this one, Insomniac manages to achieve it in virtually every other regard. Combat is a treat from start to finish (despite a super forgiving checkpoint system that makes random encounters feel more high-stakes than even the world-saving final mission), and if the enemies prove a tad repetitive, their difficulty scales up in such perfect sync with Peter and Miles’ growing powers that every encounter feels somewhat fresh and wholly satisfying.
Kraven the Hunter and his “most dangerous game” fetishism provide for a wild array of fun battles, including multi-stage boss fights that do their best to marry the epicness of a Soulsborne game with an experience more driven by spectacle than difficulty. The danger these villains pose allows the game’s real threat to develop organically in plain sight. As a result, the rush of the action — always grounded and staged with enough clarity and quick-time interaction to keep your eyes from glazing over like they might during a CGI-driven MCU setpiece — is balanced against the thrill of discovery.
A peak “Spider-Man 2” experience might involve flying over Times Square on your way to meet up with MJ, only to stumble upon a robbery that you begin to stop before your feet even touch the ground, or a collectible that gets you one step closer to unlocking the costume that lets Miles play the game with a bodega cat strapped to his back (it’s so worth it). Everything blends together with a rare sense of purpose, allowing for a blissful kind of flow state that naturally emphasizes Peter and Miles’ shared frustration over the fact that they can never just be Spider-Man. Striking the right balance — between work and life, sure, but also between your responsibility to yourself and your obligation to others — is a universal challenge that’s only gotten harder in a world overcome with possibilities. “Spider-Man 2” recognizes how the identity conferred upon people by their jobs can become dangerously seductive when life threatens to spread them too thin.
This game and its characters are too cutesy and guileless to explore the nitty-gritty of Peter and MJ’s relationship or to deepen Harry beyond the pity he inspires, but there’s something raw and bone-deep about how viscerally it understands the nirvana-like simplicity of being consumed by your work. It’s telling that the darkest chapters of “Spider-Man 2” find Peter more eagerly prowling the streets than ever, and that its big bad tempts its potential victims with the pleasures of belonging to a hive mind — of being liberated from the never-ending headache of trying to balance desire and sacrifice, selfishness and availability. A quantum leap forward for its franchise despite the general familiarity of its mechanics, “Spider-Man 2” is far from the first story to suggest that being Spider-Man is harder than it looks, but the game represents such a significant addition to the ever-expanding multiverse of Spidey stories because it so vividly conveys how impossible it must feel for Peter to be anything else.
“Spider-Man 2” will be available for PlayStation 5 on Friday, October 20. Review code was provided by Sony.
