Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 takes everything Insomniac learned from its previous two Spider-Man games and finds new ways to raise the bar of superhero game design. No frame is left untouched. No character model is left with subpar lighting. Simply put, after playing for 3 hours, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 looks set to continue Insomniac’s winning streak.
We were dropped a ways into the game on level 25 versions of Miles Morales and Peter Parker. Each is dealing with their own difficulties in life, with Peter trying to pay a mortgage and help cure his friend’s disease while Miles is simply trying to write his College entry essay but Spider business keeps distracting him from the task at hand.
Besides the personal battles being fought by Peter and Miles, there are also other factors at play that will push them further to the edge. Parker has donned the symbiote suit known as Venom and it’s affecting his personality in ways he doesn’t realize. And Kraven is doing everything he can to upset the peace in New York by attacking Peter, and forcing Doctor Connors to transform into an even more powerful version of his alter ego, the Lizard. The Doctor Connors storyline is particularly bittersweet, as you’re really hunting down a father who wants nothing more than to return to his family, but now he’ll be doing so with a few Spider-Man and Kraven-inflicted injuries.
This fight will actually take you across a large portion of New York City that Insonmiac boasts is two times larger than the previous games. Taking full advantage of the PS5, Spider-Man 2 will allow you to travel across the city faster than ever, not only because of the zippy new web slinging animations, but also because of the Web Wings that you can access at any time with a press of the triangle button. Web wings are a lot of fun to use versus swinging, but they will lose momentum over time, so you will still need to use your webs, unless you’re in a wind tunnel. The wind tunnels will let you go to specific places in the city extremely fast by flying incredibly quickly to that destination on the air currents. But in addition to all of these traversal options, you can also simply swap to Peter or Miles on the fly instantaneously, a la swapping between Trevor, Franklin, and Michael in Grand Theft Auto 5.
I had the opportunity to ask the Insomniac team about how the PS5 SSD allowed them to accomplish instant travel, and faster web swinging. Mike Fitzgerald, Core Technology Director at Insomniac, clarified a few other details, including that the slingshots where Peter or Miles will pull back on two extended webs and catapult themselves forward allows Spider-Man to travel three times faster than in the first game. And that characters are “more detailed and lifelike that help [them] tell better more nuanced stories.” Insomniac also noted that the Dual Sense controller is being used in some unique ways, like a mini-game that we got to play in the reactor that will force you to pull the triggers with just enough pressure to move onto the next segment. And they outlined that the audio team took the time to develop the soundscapes for missions so that 3D audio can be fully utilized. Ambisonics and positional audio were used for objects in the scene, making for a more realistic audio experience making for clearer indications of the player versus a target location.
More noticeably on the Graphics side of things, Spider-Man 2 will only have two visual modes, Visual and Performance. The third mode was removed because no matter which you choose, Ray Tracing will be turned on by default. The baseline for Performance mode will be what was previously referred to as Performance Ray Tracing mode with a better framerate and resolution simply because the PS5 can handle it. Fitzgerald clarifies, “There’s no mode in this game that has the Ray Tracing turned off because there’s really no need for it. We figured out how to deliver what is the right Spider-Man picture and visuals and we want to make sure every player is seeing that.”
The visuals of Spider-Man 2 are impressive. The character models are more expressive when delivering their lines, resulting in more believable performances from the actors that will in turn do a better job of pulling at your heartstrings. The ray-traced reflections add more depth and realism to the world. Breakable environmental additions make it feel like you’ve succeeded in unleashing havoc in an arena after a devastating combo.
But my favorite improvement in Spider-Man 2 is the heavily reworked combat. Now both Peter and Miles have a wide array of abilities and gadgets at their disposal, but more on that in a moment. While exploring in the open world there are several different mission types to explore, meaning that yet again we will have no shortage of side missions to get lost in. Personally, I will always favor the combat arenas, and I spent so much time enjoying them that I lost track of time and never got to experience the aforementioned Lizard boss fight for myself. I was too busy trying to perfect my combat skills in the arena, gawking at the ray traced reflections on everything, staring in awe at the sheer amount of traffic, pedestrians and puddles in every scene, or stopping an assault-in-progress as it popped up on my mini-map. That was the best part. New York is covered in cool things to do as Spider-Man, and while I could have pursued the main storyline with my limited time, I was just having too much fun doing all of the other little things that pulled my attention away. Insomniac also noted that there will be missions that only Miles or Peter can complete, so it sounds like my quest to clear the map is going to be filled with variety.
But to dive into combat a bit more, the enemy density is really ramped up and will sometimes offer you a bit more of a challenge than you may expect. In Spider-Man you could maybe get away with only using your main attacks, but in Spider-Man 2 I found that more often than not I absolutely needed to use my Venom abilities and gadgets in the combat sections. The one small critique I have is that the not-dodgeable parry indicator color is red, and that’s the same color as other things you need to dodge like a bullet from a rooftop sniper. It took a bit of getting used to, but by the end of my demo window I was parrying and unleashing my gadgets and Venom abilities with ease.
The cherry on top of an already impressive gameplay session was when they let us get a sneak peek at some of the new costumes that Peter and Miles will be able to wear when web-slinging around the city. In total Insomniac says there are 65 suits to unlock, and that each has different variations bringing the grand total to 200 different combinations you can wear. In the build we saw, Miles had a 2099, 10th Anniversary, Boricua, and Encoded suit while Peter had the classic Black suit, Webbed Black suit from the Sam Raimi films, Secret Wars Civil War Suit, and Apunkalyptic suit available for wearing. And for the suit tech upgrades your classic Health, Damage, Focus, and Traversal perks were available, with the latter option focusing on things like speed with your web wings. Gadget-wise we only had access to web grabber and upshot attacks that would pepper opponents with bursts of electricity. Miles also has access to Venom abilities like Chain Lightning, Power Overwhelming, or the Venom Smash Jolt. Those attacks and gadgets are very easy to execute by simply holding L1 for Venom abilities, and R1 for fast gadget access. It makes combat incredibly fluid, and will force players to pick and choose the strongest combination of eight to pair together as you patrol the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
I had high hopes for Spider-Man 2, and this preview did nothing to stifle my optimism. I cannot wait to see what the rest of Spider-Man 2 has in store. For our final thoughts, swing on back to IGN when Spider-Man 2 launches this October.