Highlights
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2 builds upon the groundwork of its predecessor, offering bigger and better combat abilities, traversal mechanics, action set pieces, and side missions.
- The sequel resembles Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in the sense that it follows its model of expanding on mechanics and delivering a larger-scale story with impactful moments.
- Like Jedi: Survivor, Spider-Man 2 gives players access to most of the previous game mechanics from the start, adding a sense of excitement and justification to any re-unlockable abilities.
There was a lot of pressure on Marvel's Spider-Man 2's shoulders before launch. Coming out of the gate swinging with Marvel's Spider-Man back in 2018, all eyes have been on Insomniac Games ever since, with fans desperate to see what the developer would do with its Marvel universe next. And while Spider-Man: Miles Morales was another excellent entry, it wasn't quite the full sequel experience that fans had hoped for. Fans really needed Marvel's Spider-Man 2 to go above and beyond, and according to the vast majority of fans, it's pretty much succeeded in doing just that.
By all accounts, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is an excellent sequel that takes its predecessors' groundwork, and builds upon it in some major ways. From combat abilities to traversal mechanics to action set pieces to side missions, every single element of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 seems bigger and better than ever before, and in this way, it seems to have taken the best lessons from another of 2023's great sequels, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Is Another Great 2023 Sequel
Back when it launched in 2019, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was widely regarded as a surprisingly great single-player Soulslike adventure game. Though it certainly wasn't perfect, the basic structure and mechanical bones of Fallen Order showed a lot of promise, a promise that an eventual sequel might have been able to realize. Flash forward to April of this year when Star Wars Jedi: Survivor hit store shelves, and while it again wasn't perfect, the vast majority of fans and critics agreed that it was an ideal sequel, building upon its predecessor in just about every way.
Though Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's story definitely had some shortcomings, it felt much more large-scale than its predecessor, with bigger and better action set-pieces and plenty of impactful character moments along the way. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor also expanded on practically every mechanic found in the original, giving players a ton of new lightsaber stances, new Force powers, a more expansive set of open-world locations, more intuitive exploration, better traversal mechanics, and a plethora of genuinely exciting collectibles.
In many ways, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 follows Jedi: Survivor's model pretty closely, and it's mostly for the better. Much like Fallen Order, 2018's Spider-Man wasn't perfect, but it laid out some impressive groundwork for future titles. Miles Morales built upon this groundwork a little, but it's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 that really ups the ante in just about every way. From new traversal mechanics and brand-new powers to two playable Spider-Men and some excellent quality-of-life improvements like instantaneous fast-travel, Spider-Man 2 is a definite improvement on its predecessors, just like Jedi: Survivor was earlier in the year.
But that's not the only lesson Spider-Man 2 learned from Jedi: Survivor. One of the biggest highlights of starting Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was learning that players still had access to the vast majority of Cal Kestis' Fallen Order abilities, right from the get-go. Not only does this make complete sense in-universe, as Cal wouldn't have just forgotten his past abilities, but it also means that all future unlockable abilities are completely brand new and exciting to unlock. Spider-Man 2 follows a similar model, giving players access to most of Peter and Miles' prior game mechanics from the jump. And for any abilities that players need to re-unlock, they're at least given a bit of a rework or placed early in the trees, ensuring they still feel a bit rewarding.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is available now on PS5.
