Is Spider-Man 2 Actually That Good?

Clearly we didnt play the same game. Was the gameplay good. Yes, but not leaps ahead of Sm1. The story and villians of Sm1 are leaps ahead of Sm2.

Personally, I couldn't take Venom seriously once the third act kicked in. His whole "heal the world" shtick is tiresome and cliché. Was it so hard to just have the classic Spider-Man vs Venom showdown instead of throwing everything at a wall and seeing what stuck?

The opening is right out of a God of war opening. Huge boss to teach you controls.

the storyline in this game was so so good, I was genuinely distraught over peter losing himself to the symbiote. I didnt do any side quests or anything during that section. i made an effort to get through that part of the game as fast as possible because it felt so genuinely wrong for peter to be acting the way he was. I'm also so so glad they brought back Martin Li, he's my favorite spiderman villain by far.

At the end of the game, when you’re fighting the symbiotes I could’ve sworn that when defeated they sounded like the Chimera from Resistance. Even if it’s coincidental I like to think it’s Insomniac giving a slight nod to one of their franchises.

I could seriously just websling around the city for hours. This game is so good. The graphics and animation are beautiful, the characters and story are great, and the controls are so smooth.

Venom didn’t have enough screen time.I think they might’ve removed a couple of encounters with him because the concept arts and the trailer for Spider-Man 2 made it seem like you were going to have a boss fight in the middle of the streets with cars being thrown everywhere.tony todd even said that we’d have a chase scene similar to rhino’s in miles morales.

Biggest criticism is that the story just tries to fit in too god damn much, which is typically more of an issue for final/third entries. First game had a very clear "core" with Peter and Otto's relationship that tethered everything else together, but the sequel struggles to find that same grounding. Peter's relationship with Harry vs. Miles, Peter's corruption by the symbiote, Harry becoming resentful towards Peter, Miles' conflicted feelings towards Li, building up Kraven's threat...few of these things ever get the proper time to breath and so their conclusions feel like a half-baked excuse to get to the next plot beat ASAP.

My favorite mission is where spider-man helps find a senior and once he finds him both he and the senior spend a few minutes talking about the senior’s life.

I had some minor issues with the game, like the side missions all unlock one at time so you have to choose between not upgrading and playing the same mission over and over. But my big complaint is the Kraven storyline really overstayed its welcome. It also didn't convince me that Kraven is not one of the most boring Spider-Man villains. Still everything else I loved. And everything else about the story was great (like Miles and Mister Negative, and the Venom stuff).

Considering this is the third Spider-Man 2 that's been released since I was a kid( 4th if you want to count Game Boy and 5th if you want to count The Amazing Spider-Man 2) I still find it funny that only one of those games let you go to the goddamn Statue of Liberty. get your shit together developers I want to swing around that statue again.

quick note on the bugs. I love this game but I've just experienced so many. Suits turning into debug cubes, object clipping/phasing, important NPC character models just not loading in even in cutscenes and then crashing the game when you try to reload your save. Lots of crashes, usually foreshadowed by the visual bugs. the game is otherwise good but they go beyond funny and into game breaking territory. Hope insomniac can patch most of em soon.

100% agree. 10/10 game. Also apparently that cube bug wasn't patched because it happened to me today at the very end of my stream when I was buying all the costumes for the last trophy. It was actually hilarious webswinging around and fighting crime that way. Closing the game and restarting fixed it

It definitely shows you don't read comics because right after you said you don't read comics.. you immediately went to state the obvious about Kraven.. yes him being ruthless is and always has been part of his character. Also a more serious and sad venom ?? you mean... comics venom where Eddie has sad stories. Please don't act like you know what you are talking about when you clearly do not know about the characters you are talking about. If you just liked Venom and Kraven here and that's all. That's fine, even if the symbiote being pure evil is a dumb plotpoint anyway. But then don't act like yes this is a good take on the character and act like you know what you are discussing. Not to mention, yes while you didn't get any bugs it should still be brought up as a critique.. it's still an objective flaw within the game and should be mentioned and critiqued in a review called "Is Spider-Man 2 actually that good". It reminds me of your MGS critiques being stupid with the exposition and retcons criticisms when like.. all stories do exposition and hell you're a sonic and RE fan which are two series that retcon itself all the time, game series' that does those things way worse and yet you still take them seriously, you clearly as a critic do not hold everything to the same standard and this review proves that as you bash Sonic and other games for bugs and rightfully so might I add but then don't hold Spider-Man to the same standard when it also has bugs that players keep encountering.

I'm currently playing through the game now. Couldn't me more excited to see venom in a current gen game. I've been playing spiderman games for a long time and glad to see the series still kicking. Great review 💪🔥🙌

This game is still fresh, and I'm happy to see your amazing review glad to find a funny review while also being super honest.

Are people really that excited playing mediocre stealth missions with Mary Jane? The A.I is so braindead.

No

I had the debug cube right as i got anti-venom, which was hilarious because it looked like the symbiote took back over peter and he just disappeared

I like the game but I don’t think they didn’t do enough to make the open-world unique with meaningful side content. It’s basically the exact same as the first, just faster