Over the last four decades, there have been almost 40 Spider-Man games, and there are a handful of mechanics that stay consistent throughout Spidey video game history. For instance, every Spider-Man video game needs to have some form of wall-crawling and web-swinging. But every so often, a Spider-Man game will come along and introduce a brand new mechanic or feature, and one of Ultimate Spider-Man's unique traits is making a triumphant return in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
New York City has always been a core component of Spider-Man's identity as a comic book character. But while the vast majority of Spidey's on-screen appearances have seen him swing through Manhattan, there's one New York City borough that's arguably even more important to the hero's identity, and that's Queens. Located on Long Island, Queens is the largest New York City borough, and the site of Peter Parker's upbringing. As such, it's played a pivotal role in Spider-Man's journey. Despite its importance, however, Queens has only ever made a proper appearance in Spidey video game history once, all the way back in 2005's Ultimate Spider-Man, though that's about to change.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Brings Queens Back For the First Time Since Ultimate Spider-Man
Releasing in 2005 for just about every platform of the time, Ultimate Spider-Man takes the popular comic revival series of the same name, which began just five years prior, and gives it an open-world video game spin. Coming hot off the heels of the beloved Spider-Man 2 tie-in game, Ultimate Spider-Man was also developed by Treyarch, and uses a lot of similar mechanics for both its combat and web-swinging, which both still feel pretty great all these years later. While Ultimate Spider-Man doubled down on what made Spider-Man 2 so successful, it wasn't afraid of forging its own path, and its new setting was just one of its bold new inclusions.
On top of a fully explorable Manhattan, Ultimate Spider-Man also introduced Queens to the open-world. With Peter Parker still attending high school during the Ultimate storyline, it makes sense that he'd still live at home with Aunt May, and naturally, that home is situated in suburban Queens. Unlike the tall skyscrapers and high-rises of Manhattan, Ultimate Spider-Man's Queens borough is populated primarily with small two-story houses, requiring a different approach for players to navigate.
Players can't just swing mindlessly through Queens. Instead, they need to use their web-zip and jump abilities efficiently to clear the shorter buildings. Queens doesn't play too much of a role in Ultimate Spider-Man, but it was great to see such an important Spidey location finally make its way to an open-world video game. Its more suburban layout made for a nice change of pace when compared to the more industrialized Manhattan.
Queens hasn't really been a major part of any Spider-Man game since Ultimate Spider-Man in 2005, though that's all about to change with Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Heavily rumored over the last year or so, and finally confirmed in the recent gameplay trailer, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will allow players to explore areas of New York that hadn't been explorable in the first two games, and one of those areas is Queens. Generally speaking, Queens in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 looks fairly similar to Ultimate Spider-Man's version of the borough, albeit with very different art styles. Short two-story houses seem to be the main feature of Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Queens yet again, likely requiring players to use alternative methods of traversal such as web-launches to get around.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20, exclusively for PS5.
