On the eve of PlayStation 5’s three-year anniversary, Insomniac Games has returned with a new Spider-Man adventure. Built for PlayStation 5, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 expands on the Insomniac’s in-house technology, delivering a game with a larger scope and a brand-new spider plot to follow. The title in this case couldn’t be more apt with players swapping between the two Spider-Men seamlessly over the course of the story as you explore a greatly expanded game world. In DF tradition then, I wanted to break down this game’s new visual and gameplay features highlighting the positives and negatives along the way. At first glance it may feel familiar but, trust me, there is a lot here to unpack.
The release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 marks Insomniac’s fourth game shipped on PS5, following Miles Morales, Spider-Man Remastered and Ratchet and Clank. It’s a level of production efficiency that continues to impress and Spider-Man 2 is perhaps the largest production of the four, expanding the size and scope of the world while doubling down on granular detail. With Miles, there were two major innovations brought to the table on PS5 back at launch: fast loading and ray-traced reflections. Both of these features return in Spider-Man 2 and each have received numerous improvements, allowing scenarios to exist which were not possible in prior entries.
Like Miles before it, Spider-Man 2 loads quickly. Fire up the game from the PS5’s home menu and you’re dropped back into the game world within seconds. It almost feels as if the game was simply suspended in the background, yet it loads with minimal delay. They’ve also leveraged these technologies in additional ways to enhance the experience beyond what was possible in the cross-gen prequels.
The first of these is traversal speed. There’s a moment during the game’s intro sequence where Sandman grabs Spider-Man and hurls him across the map. The speed at which this occurs is disarming at first – despite this ultra-dense urban location, the game seems to effortlessly handle flying across the map. Soon afterwards, you’re given access to the Web Wings which completely changes the pace of traversal. While swinging remains Spider-Man’s primary means of transport, you can now tap triangle to spread your wings and fly. It reminds me of Super Mario World’s cape mechanic, but what it really highlights is what the boost in speed made possible. Flying across the map while trying to maintain altitude creates a similar feeling that you get from using the manual to link combos in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.