You swing from building to building, fighting crime and saving the city, all while J. Jonah Jameson is throwing a fit on his podcast about you. This is what Insomniacs Games tried to emulate with their newest installment in their series, “Spider-Man 2”. “Spider-Man 2” had very big shoes to fill, because the previous game was a Game of the Year-winning title. Though it had these expectations, I believe it did a very good job satisfying the fans and doing the Spoder-Man name justice.

“Spider-Man 2” had a ton of great parts to the story, but one of the elements that really shined was the villains. Spider-Man has a ton of villains, but the ones that Insomniac picked for this game include Kraven the Hunter, The Lizard, Mr Negative, Scream and the main big bad, Venom. All of these villains were very well written out, and their boss fights were very original. The only reason some of these fights were not as good is because the combat has fundamentally not changed. The combat in Spider-Man is still fun but it isn’t as new as it once was. 

Another big part of the “Spider-Man 2” game has to be the swinging. In this game, they nail it. The swinging can be two times faster at some points, but you can also do tricks and do different moves in the air, which leads to an insanely fun experience. 

“Spider-Man 2” was exclusively released on the PS5 to maximize the graphics in the game. This led to the game being very beautiful and with a stunningly realistic New York City. Some of these features that they added was that the trees were more dynamic and they put more things on the street. Overall, the city feels alive and lived in. 

The overall story of the game was pretty strong, but was a little too short compared to games that have come out in the past. In the story there are Mary Jane Watson missions that were unpopular with the fans in the first game, but in “Spider-Man 2”, her missions were fun and were a refreshing experience compared to the Spider-Man combat. The dynamic with the two Spider-Men is good, and there are times where they are forced to go against each other in a very epic fight. 

One of the most emotional parts from the story was from the side mission with Howard the pigeon caretaker. In this mission you help Howard, who you also help in both games prior, to let his pigeons free into a good place. As Seabird plays, you find a perfect place for the pigeons— but Howard hangs up. When you got back to where Howard was, he had passed away and was put in the back of an ambulance. 

Overall, the story was great but short, the gameplay could have been improved upon a little bit and the villains were some of the best in any game. I thought that this was a great game, and a strong contender for Game of the Year.