admin We are in the middle of a bull market for Spider-People. 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home — which made nearly $2 billion at the box office — gave us three Spider-Men in Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire. That movie’s three-pronged multiverse was a drop in the bucket compared to last summer’s Across the Spider-Verse, which built on the foundation of its predecessor by including no fewer than 280 Spider-People, including an anthropomorphic jeep named Peter Parkedcar. Even Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man-less Spider-Man movies have gained some traction with audiences (at least, the ones that are about Venom and not Morbius the Living Vampire.)
It’s into that increasingly crowded Spider-Verse that the PlayStation 5 exclusive Spider-Man 2 arrives. A direct sequel to Insomniac’s PlayStation 4 hit (and its 2020 spinoff Spider-Man: Miles Morales), the Spider-Man video games are carving out their own place in the canon, carrying the weight of the character’s 60-year history while finding new avenues to explore. “Our philosophy from day one has been that we want to respect the DNA of the franchise, but we don’t want to be afraid to mix things up,” said senior creative director Bryan Intihar in a recent interview.
Having twice nailed the core experience of an open-world Spider-Man video game, Spider-Man 2 is largely an exercise in getting a lot more of a good thing. Where the first two games confined you to Manhattan, this one expands into Brooklyn and Queens, adding a new flight mechanic to help compensate for the boroughs’ lack of verticality. The side missions are more intricate and varied, and often more intimate, offering more perspective on a day-in-the-superheroic-life. And building on the first game’s customizable wardrobe, Spider-Man 2 gives you dozens of unlockable suits — letting you zip through the game dressed as the Spider-Men from every major Spider-Man movie, along with highlights from the comics and some clever original ones.
And whereas each of the first two games left you playing as a single Spider-Man, this one juggles both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, telling two stories and inviting players to swap between them in real time. “When we made the commitment to put Miles and Pete in the same world, we knew that eventually a game would star both of them together,” said Intihar. “There were definitely times I said to myself, ‘Why did we do two heroes?’ But I think when we ask that, that’s how we know we made the right decision, because that’s what’s going to lead to a unique experience.”
The game begins with both Peter and Miles at a crossroads. Peter, as usual, is struggling to balance superheroics with his personal life, though a new job at his rich friend Harry’s startup hints at a possible future where he can change the world in ways that go beyond shooting webs at bad guys. Miles is close to graduating high school and struggling with the college essay he knows could determine his future. (Of course, this is still a Spider-Man video game, so they’re also going toe-to-toe with a series of familiar baddies, including Sandman, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom.)
