Reviews

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a fantastic PS5 exclusive game packed with web action

This is one of the best games of the year and the best exclusive on PS5 in 2023.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 takes everything you loved about the first game and improves upon it.

That means an even-better blockbuster storyline that rips along at searing Hollywood pace, excellent highly-layered gameplay mechanics and visuals and audio that showcase the console like never before.

Spider-Man 2 is slick as hell, with Insomniac Games staffers taking everything they’ve learned from their debut web crawler title and the impressive Miles Morales spin-off and doubling down on the gameplay.

This time they’ve smashed both protagonists, Peter Parker and Miles, together into this ridiculously fun bumper title to give a many-hours superhero tale that you’ll want to play over and over again.

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And the city of New York has never looked more stunning as you switch back and forth between the two fully playable stars, swinging joyfully across instantly-recognisable streets and landmarks like Times Square.

The emotionally-charged story revolves around many a baddie in this game, but hunter Kraven and the iconic Venom are the stand out nasties this time around.

As trailers and gameplay demos have already revealed publicly, you’ll get to suit up as Spidey complete with the alien symbiote inhabiting your body, which means a host of new deadly and screen-popping fighting moves.

As the game progresses, the evildoers threaten to destroy Peter and Miles’ lives, their city and the ones they love.

And the stakes have never been higher as excellent writing and pacing get you invested in every epic boss battle and street fight you come across.

Once booted up and reacquainted with your heroes, the city opens up and it is astounding how much there is to do away from the main missions.

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This is a packed New York, full of people who need your help, and you’ll find yourself regularly taking time away from the main tale to nip into Spidey’s handy social media to answer the calls, doing daring little investigations around things like dodgy fireworks imports, or rescuing everyday folk from Kraven’s various Hunter factions, taking them to the nearest hospital for aid.

Then there’s all kinds of mini games and puzzles to solve – DNA puzzle breakthroughs to crack, drones to fly, even rogue, trippy Mysterio VR gaming platforms to infiltrate and debug.

The amount of activity is huge.

And it’ll keep you coming back for more Spidey action well after the credits roll.

If you played the previous games the gameplay itself is largely the same, they’ve just added in way more fighting moves, including a series of Slotted Ability special moves, and a brilliant new web-wing flying mechanic to help you traverse the much larger open world – nearly double the previous game – at speed.

It means you can really express yourself as a brawler, bouncing between enemies, unleashing hell in what can become manic, packed sandboxes of violence.

For those out there who love to hunt around, there are loads of collectibles too.

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You can spend hours hunting down iconic photo spots to shoot as a cameraman, seek out different types of Spider bug bots dotted around the city and there are said to be some 70-odd Spider-Man outfits to earn to customise your characters.

The PS5 shines in this game too.

Major set pieces transition seamlessly back-and-forth between cut-scene action, quick-time events and in-game play and it really is a tribute to all things New York, bringing the city to life with minute detail, clever NPC animation and tons of little eye-catching moments to make things feel truly alive.

The voice acting is second to none and the cut-scenes are incredibly animated to ensure we get maximum emotion and character as the story powers along to its dramatic close.

What a game. Web-crawlingly brilliant at every turn.

Top marks Spidey, top marks.

VERDICT 5/5

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