Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will follow Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales in an original canon, though there are certain similarities its chosen events and characters share with other wall-crawler stories. Kraven, Venom, and Lizard being together in the same game will undoubtedly have some fans thinking of parallels between Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and the Spider-Man 3 game adaptation, for example. Likewise, these antagonists’ appearances in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 may produce nostalgia for older Spider-Man games that also featured them.
Marvel characters have obviously become overwhelmingly saturated in media and fans will probably already have their favorite iterations of most Spider-Man villains at this point. It will be interesting to see how Insomniac develops Kraven, Venom, Lizard, and any other previously unseen antagonists in the franchise, and it will also be fun to see how they compare to previous interpretations. In order to have a strong reference basis, there are several key games fans should play before Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches in October.
Spider-Man (Neversoft)
Spider-Man is one of the titular character’s most beloved games, but it wouldn’t have earned a spot here if it wasn’t for how prominently and iconically Venom is featured. If fans are looking for a classical rendition of the anti-hero with equal parts insidiousness and sass, the PS1 and N64 classic Spider-Man is absolutely essential. Spider-Man is a good point of reference in general for fans unfamiliar with the web-slinger’s gaming pedigree and even features lizard enemies in a massive sewer network that could end up inspiring new enemy types in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Ultimate Spider-Man
Between an erratic control scheme and an egregious emphasis on mundane open-world activities, Ultimate Spider-Man wasn’t for everyone. Its cel-shaded comic book presentation would easily be what distinguishes it from other Spider-Man games if not for the fact that fans play as Venom for half of it. Venom’s gameplay and mission structure boils down to being relatively formulaic and repetitive, but it is still terrific to bound around and scale buildings as a hulking brute while needing to consume innocent passersby and enemies alike for health regeneration.
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows arguably has the opposite problem from Ultimate Spider-Man, where its gameplay is still rallied behind by many fans while its presentation and acting in particular has been regarded as ranging from lackluster to awful. The ability to swap between the red-and-blue costume and the black symbiote is fantastic for moment-to-moment combat and narrative choices are made that much more entertaining for allowing players to tap into that darker side with fairly profound consequences.
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions’ inclusion here is twofold—there is no Venom, but it does prominently feature the symbiote as the Ultimate Spider-Man’s whole gimmick since this particular Peter Parker involuntarily wears it, and Kraven is featured as the game’s opening villain. Ultimate’s symbiote abilities are centered around an integral Rage meter and have wide-sweeping AoE attacks, which is mimicked a lot in what Ultimate Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man’s own symbiote abilities can achieve. It’s also been rumored that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 could have a multiverse, which would make it wholly comparable to Shattered Dimensions’ premise.
Honorable Mention - The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was received about as well as the movie it was barely associated with, but it’s nonetheless important for how it implemented Kraven in his largest video game role yet. The impetus is now on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 to dethrone it with the most memorable Kraven, but for now Sergei’s motivations seem to be similarly elementary.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20, exclusively for PlayStation 5.
