Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 PS5 Review | PS5 Exclusive

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Reviewed on PlayStation 5 – We thought Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4 was “Glorious and Fun” – Read the review here. Now, a few years down the line, Peter is back with Miles for a new adventure.

I want to assure you all, that after having (now 3) pieces of my writing compared to AI, that I, Kelly, am a human, and so in an effort to be open and honest, this review is brought to you by K-GPT.

Now that that’s settled.

On our hands we have a Sony exclusive. There are always certain expectations of these games, and they always live up to it. Do I think Spider-Man 2 does? Yes, but not wholly.

Watch the Video Review now or keep reading below:

It makes use of all the great things the PS5 has going for it and is supposed to be as graphically beautiful as any 2023 game we have seen on any console. There are different graphics modes, one which is Fidelity Mode, the default setting, which targets 30FPS. Then, you have the Performance mode which trades other aspects of the game off to target a 60FPS experience.

This isn’t new and has featured in a ton of this generation’s games. I definitely preferred Performance mode, but a lot of the time, I felt like something looked off, or dated about the graphics, in either mode.

Swinging through New York always looked amazing, and so did fighting and cutscenes. This is where I enjoyed sharp, exciting, and cool spider-man like moves.

However, walking through New York was lackluster for me. The details of the city felt lost, visually. For one of the busiest cities on earth, there were tons of clones of dumb AI. Sometimes someone wanted a selfie or a high 5, but it just didn’t feel part of the flow of the game, mostly because it wasn’t spontaneous, but rather a QTE. Apart from this, I do think it currently comes in second graphically on the PS5 awesome scale, with both God of Wars sitting in my top spot.

A Tale of Two Spiders

The story in Spider-Man 2 is great, gripping, even a bit emotional for those die-hard Spidey fans. It was genuinely the part of the game I enjoyed most. I think what added to my graphical worries was the use of SO MANY QTE’s. I am sure in one or other of my most excellent reviews, I’ve mentioned I am not a fan of quick time events.

I think it gives the developer a loophole to hide something (in this case, repetitive combat, weird graphics, bugs) and put in this awesome looking cinematic piece and fool the player into feeling like they achieved something by pressing X.

Apart from the story, the open world of the game falls short. The city is supposed to be alive, as I’ve already mentioned, but it isn’t. Central Park is 1) clean and 2) empty. I mean, only in Spidey’s world, right? This is just one of many things that bothered me about the open world setting of the game.

Same Old Song and Dance

You are a crime fighter, so lots of alerts pop up on your HUD for you to pop a few blocks over and beat the baddies. It’s fun, until you’ve done the same event, with the same baddies, 20 times. There are collectibles to encourage exploration, which I appreciated, but the rest of the open world seemed to me to be lackluster. I would have enjoyed a more linear experience if there was more variety in what I was doing.

Talking length, you’re looking at 15 hours for gunning the main story, and about 20 – 25 if you throw in the side quests and collectibles.

The last thing I want to mention is the two Spider-Men, who call each other Spider-Man.

I love Peter, and I love Miles, and I love the diversity it brought to the game, and how it was an easy switch to play as whoever you liked, and that they were both facing their own troubles, but always found each other in the end.

What I didn’t like about this, is that say, you’re chilling as the OG Peter Parker Spidey and taking on some enemies, and the next thing the cooler Miles Spidey is there out of nowhere to help you finish off that last enemy. Like, didn’t I leave you somewhere else, Miles?

So overall, most of the things I’ve raised here are very nitpicky, but if you’re paying close to R2,000 (USD100) for a game, you should probably know the things that aren’t great. Overall, though, a lot of these could be looked over.

Spider-Man 2 is a great testament to storytelling in games, the superhero genre, Insomniac Games, and the PS5. It is a must play for Spider-Man fans, and a good time for others looking for a shorter, fun filled action game.

Verdict: ✪✪✪✪ (Great)

✪ Poor (0-5) ✪✪ Mediocre (6-7) ✪✪✪ Good (8) ✪✪✪✪ Great (9) ✪✪✪✪✪ Must-play! (10)