Grab your web shooters and pull on your mask, because it is time to save New York from a new threat. Spider-Man 2 is the newest addition to the PlayStation 5 video games, acting as a sequel to the first Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales games.
The game starts with Peter Parker beginning his first day as a physics teacher at Brooklyn Visions Academy, with Miles Morales being one of his students. Sadly for both of them, Sandman, a member of Spider-Man’s Rogue Gallery, goes off on a rampage, causing the two to leave class and slip into their alternate identities as Spider-Man and stop him. Sadly, even though the two were able to put a halt to Sandman’s mindless destruction, Peter was consequently fired for abandoning his class, sending him back to Aunt May’s home where he lives with Mary Jane.
Things then take a turn when Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn, is miraculously healed of his terminal illness and offers Peter a job at his startup, The Emily-May Foundation. While overseeing a prisoner transfer, both Peter and Miles meet with the game’s recurring antagonist, Kraven the Hunter, a Russian big-game hunter who hunts people for sport. After discovering that Kraven plans to hunt every villain in New York and learning that Scorpion, Vulture, Shocker and Electro were already killed by the Russian big-game hunter, Peter and Miles set out to stop him from causing even more harm – before Peter receives a severe stab wound from Kraven. Fortunately, Spider-Man survived, thanks to the sudden transference of a biological exosuit commonly known as the symbiote, which not only healed Peter’s wound and enhanced his other attributes but also gave him a few new powers he never had. However, this new suit Spider-Man obtained may have some secrets hidden within its midnight-hued biomass, some of which are worse than others.
Insomniac Games may have created a game that will achieve “Game of the Year.” The gaming company was created in 1977 during the Age of the Atari 2600 by 9-year-old Ted Price before it was incorporated on Feb. 28, 1994. In June 1994, Price was joined by his fellow graduate and expert in computer programming Alex Hasting, with his brother Brian Hasting joining shortly after. Their new company went under the name “Xtreme Software” for a year before it was forced to be changed into “Insomniac Games” due to another gaming company having the same name. Shortly after the company’s establishment, its employees began working on their first project, a DOOM copy named “Disrupter.” Insomniac Games has made multiple prize-winning games throughout the years, with a few examples being Ratchet and Clank, Spyro the Dragon, Sunset Overdrive, Stormland and the up-and-coming Marvel’s Wolverine.
Most of the mechanics from both the original game and its spin-off, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which features high-speed web-slinging and impressive combat, are again present this time around. However, there are a few changes that have not been seen previously. A few examples of such would be the web wings, a pair of gliders that allow the player to glide great distances and cut down travel time by web-slinging; wind tunnels that increase the speed and distance the player can go with the web wings; and individual skill trees for both Miles and Peter.
Additionally, thanks to Peter bonding with the symbiote and later on in the endgame, adapting his body to the trace amounts of it left after Peter gets rid of it, Spider-Man gains a new set of powers that pack far more of a punch than before. From being able to knock a criminal’s lights out with a tentacle-forged punch and lifting multiple opponents into the air with tendrils before slamming them down into the ground, to allowing Peter’s rage to flourish and make every combo end with a devastating finisher, the symbiote has certainly given Peter more power than he could ever ask for. Miles is not excluded from this new power boost either, as his abilities to utilize his bioelectricity have evolved to grand heights, allowing him to chain electricity off multiple opponents and strike down large groups by using his own body like a thunderbolt.
All in all, Spider-Man 2 is an amazing game that has taken its original counterpart and its sequel and improved them both before merging them into one singular masterpiece. The game was released on Oct. 20, selling at $69.99 wherever they are sold for the PlayStation 5 only, meaning tough luck to those without one.