Spider-Man 2 came out on the PS5 on Oct. 20, 2023.. It’s the follow up to the 2018 Spider-Man game as well as the spinoff game Spider-Man: Miles Morales from 2020. All three games were made by the video game studio Insomniac. Spider-Man 2 quickly became the fastest selling Playstation game beating out God of War: Ragnarok and The Last of Us part 2. It’s many people’s game of the year, including mine. In fact, I would put it in my top-10 video games of all time.
This game would definitely be up there with Last of Us Part 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2 as some of the best graphics in a video game. On top of that, you get introduced to the amazing gameplay that is improved on a lot from the 2018 Spider-Man game. The big improvement here is how you do the special moves. In the first game you had to remember all these elaborate button sequences but in the second game they get rid of that and instead on the moves page you just assign a special movie to one of each of the four buttons: x, square, circle and y. Then while playing you just press the left bumper and whichever button corresponds with the move you want to do. This makes gameplay a lot smoother.
Two more new mechanics are the iron spider legs and the awesome web wings which are for sure one of the best additions to the game. You also throughout the game can switch between Peter and Miles, which allows you to have two different characters with different power sets and side missions. Plus the game effortlessly switches between characters at the tap of a button with no load screens.
Kraven the Hunter, voiced by Jim Pirri, serves as an amazing main villain for the first 3 ⁄4 of the game and steals the show in a lot of ways. Throughout the game, he captures and hunts other villains and fights them to the death as he wants to find someone that can beat him and put him to rest. One of the people he wants to fight is Curt Conners, who he forces to turn back into the Lizard. Lizard is the first real boss fight in the game. This game’s boss fights take a huge step up from the first game. Whether you are talking about Lizard, Siren, Kraven, Peter or Venom, they are all great boss fights and unique in their own way and just challenging enough to be hard but not drive you crazy.
The last thing to talk about is the best part of this game, which is the symbiote. The gameplay with the symbiote is incredible and so much fun and the storyline is dark, intriguing and for sure the best part of the game. First, you have the symbiote on Peter as you see it corrupt him and change him. Yuri Lowenthal, who voices Peter, is already, and in my opinion the best Spider-Man ever, but he proves himself even more in this game by giving a whole new voice for this corrupted Spider-Man. Once the symbiote leaves Peter and goes to Harry he turns into Venom, who is voiced by the incredible voice actor Tony Todd. He makes the character scary and awesome at the same time. Plus, when Harry first turns into Venom and you get to actually play as Venom for a short time, including fighting Kraven, was an awesome surprise and is for sure one of the funnest parts of the game.
In conclusion Spider-Man 2 built on everything the first one already did. It added awesome new mechanics and characters and built on the already existing characters and world. It also gave an even better story than the first game’s already great storyline. The voice acting and graphics are also some of the best ever. All in all I would give this game a 10/10 and would highly recommend it to anyone whether you’re a Spider-Man fan or just a video game fan.
