Getting this out of the way first, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac Games is great, impressive, fun, gorgeous, a must play exclusive for the PlayStation 5. From my experience the most impressive thing was how naturally it pushes you through to near full game completion in pace with natural progression of the campaign. As the final mission warning hit, I decided to go with that classic RPG approach and level up a bit more before dealing with it. This felt like the natural progression as the game does an exceptional job of upping the ante as you approach the endgame, once you are doing battle with Venom’s faction of enemies everything feels more challenging, the game scales brilliantly. However once the campaign is done that is where the two biggest drawbacks of this otherwise great game set in.

There is almost no real reason to play the game once you beat the campaign, there is a really touching epilogue mission that takes place, and depending on your playthrough there are possibly some side missions to wrap up…but as mentioned with my playthrough I was nearly at a natural 100% by campaign end. After that is done all there is to experience is a cycle of repetitive crimes to stop over and over again by the various factions throughout the city. This lack of end game content isn’t unique to just Spider-Man 2, but an issue with open world games in general outside of Grand Theft Auto or Read Dead titles. And while this will be fixed to a degree when the eventual update adding New Game+, open world games need to figure out a better way to keep the world feeling alive and useful after the campaign ends.

The other glaring issue with the game for me was after the initial amazing boss fight with Sandman, which sets this massive scale and stage that really isn’t seen again throughout the remainder of the game. Boss fights after that for the rest of the campaign are a strange process of fighting them until their health depletes, then fighting them again until their health depletes, and then sometimes fighting them again…until their health depletes. This usually has a cutscene that pushes the story along through the fight, but it was frustrating in more than one scenario when you have to perform the same repetitive tactics to beat the boss only to do it over and over again. And while some of the boss fights have some cool set pieces or some neat features, they are mostly the same process, which is disappointing when compared to what that intro mission sets up.

However aside from those two big drawbacks, Spider-Man 2 is as initially stated an exceptional game, there is far more good and even great here than there is bad. Another massive highlight of the game are the suits, there is an abundance of suits for both Miles and Peter to unlock throughout the game. Thirty-four base model suits for each playable character and beyond the base models there are color variants unlockable as well thirty-one for Miles and eighteen for Peter. Each player will come across their own favorites during the game, again for myself unlocking the Forever Suit for Miles, honoring Black Panther, was a fantastic surprise and easily became my suit of choice when playing as him. Check out the video below from our IG to see the full sampling of base suits for Miles, and check out Peter’s suits on the profile.

Unlocking all those great suits comes from a mix of completing certain side missions within the game and from utilizing tech from various side quests in the game like in previous Spider-Man games from this series. Again coming very naturally as you progress through the game, complete the Prowler or Mysterio side quest missions and earn a suit themed in their likeness while other suits come from various version of Spider-Man from other properties such as the Spiderverse suits for Miles or the MCU suits for Peter. All of this is part of what makes the game flow and progress so well. The campaign sets things up great, switches you back and forth between Peter and Miles when needed for certain story elements as well as letting you swap on the fly throughout much of the campaign.

Another really cool element within the gameplay is when you are playing as either character and you go to stop a crime there is a chance you’ll stumble across your fellow Spider-Man in the fight, you can even get the classic Spider-Man meme pose after finishing off the objective. This is such a cool experience the first time it occurs and feels great even many times later, whether it’s Miles coming across Peter or vice versa. During the course of the game you’ll hit story lulls, but these are always used as opportunities to introduce new side missions or encourage some exploration of the city and again this all serves to pace the gameplay perfectly. And without spoiling any of the actual story of the campaign, it is great, keeps you engaged throughout and has some decent twists as well.

The final big standout for the game is the design elements of the game, again it looks great, is an absolute standout game for the PS5. But aside from just looking great it plays great too, the team at Insomniac Games do not disappoint. Controls are smooth and responsive, you get plenty of great power-ups over the duration of the story and much like the theme with everything here, it feels paced in such a natural way and builds towards what makes sense in the game. In addition to the gameplay designs some of the character designs as well are brilliant, Venom especially looks just perfect, the design of the Lizard work great, and as mentioned previously all the variety of the suits for both Peter and Miles just show the level of detail and care from the dev team.

Overall I highly recommend the game, obviously it would be best to play the original and the Miles Morales half sequel first but aren’t completely necessary. And despite a couple of gripes about the game, this is a great experience with fun gameplay, an incredible story, and again an exceptional pace. Much like many others I would welcome additional content in the form of DLC and will hope that we see an eventual Spider-Man 3.

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