Table of Contents
- What Is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2?
- Story and Setting
- The Villains: Kraven, Venom, Lizard, and Sandman
- Playable Characters: Peter Parker and Miles Morales
- Web-Swinging and Traversal
- Symbiote Abilities and Suit Powers
- Combat and Gadgets
- The Open World: An Expanded New York City
- New Game Plus and Endgame Content
- Platform, Release Date, and System Requirements
- Critical Reception
- Tips for New Players
- Who Is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 For?
- FAQ
- Conclusion
- External Authority Sources
Few sequels arrive with as much pressure as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Insomniac Games had already delivered two acclaimed entries in Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), and the follow-up needed to expand the formula without losing what made swinging through New York feel so good in the first place. It succeeded. Released exclusively on PlayStation 5 in October 2023, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 doubled the size of its open world, introduced a second playable hero working alongside the first for the entire campaign, and built an entire combat and traversal system around the arrival of the Venom symbiote. Whether you are deciding if this is your next PS5 purchase, trying to understand the story before diving in, or looking for a breakdown of every gameplay system, this guide covers what the game is, how it plays, and why it became one of the highest-rated titles in Insomniac’s catalog. From the mechanics of web-swinging and Web Wings gliding to the symbiote’s corrupting influence on Peter Parker, from Kraven the Hunter’s citywide manhunt to the practicalities of New Game Plus and PC system requirements, this is the single resource to read before or after you pick up the controller.
What Is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2?
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is an action-adventure, open-world superhero game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment under the PlayStation Studios banner. It is the third major entry in Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, following Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and the smaller-scale Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), and it continues the shared continuity often referred to by fans as “Marvel’s Spider-Man Universe” or the PlayStation Spider-Man continuity, which is distinct from both the mainline Marvel comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The game was released on October 20, 2023, exclusively for PlayStation 5, making it the first Insomniac Spider-Man title built solely for a single console generation rather than shipping alongside a PS4 version. A PC port followed on January 30, 2025, bringing the full PS5 experience, including all post-launch content, to Windows via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Structurally, it retains the core identity of the earlier games: a third-person, open-world action title where players swing across a detailed recreation of New York City, complete side activities and crimes, follow a linear main story through cinematic missions, and unlock new suits, gadgets, and skills as they progress. What sets it apart is scale and duality. The map is significantly larger, the story splits its focus between two playable Spider-Men who each have distinct powers and personal arcs, and an alien symbiote storyline reshapes both the plot and the combat toolkit partway through the campaign.
Story and Setting
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 picks up roughly ten months after the events of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Peter Parker and Miles Morales have settled into a partnership as co-protectors of New York, splitting patrol duties across a city that has grown too large and too dangerous for one Spider-Man to handle alone. Peter is also juggling a teaching job and his relationship with Mary Jane Watson, who returns as a supporting character playable in select stealth-focused missions, continuing a role she held in the first game.
The story’s central conflict begins when Kraven the Hunter arrives in New York with a personal crusade: track down and defeat the most dangerous “prey” the city has to offer, including super-powered villains and Spider-Man himself. Kraven’s hunt destabilizes the city’s criminal ecosystem and forces a reckoning with several established threats, including Dr. Curt Connors, who has continued to battle his transformation into the Lizard.
Running parallel to the Kraven storyline is the arrival of an alien symbiote, introduced through Peter’s old friend Harry Osborn. Harry, suffering from a terminal illness, is revealed to have been secretly treated using the symbiote, and when his condition worsens, the entity transfers itself to Peter Parker to save his life during a moment of crisis. The black suit initially amplifies Peter’s abilities and gives him a rush of confidence and power, but it also begins altering his personality, making him more aggressive, impulsive, and willing to cross lines he previously wouldn’t. This corruption arc drives a wedge between Peter and the people closest to him, including Miles and Mary Jane, and eventually forces a confrontation between the two Spider-Men themselves. The symbiote storyline and the Kraven storyline ultimately intersect, with the game weaving personal drama, family stakes for both Peter and Miles, and citywide superhero spectacle into a single connected narrative rather than treating them as separate side plots.
Alongside the central story, Miles Morales has his own arc dealing with life after high school, his responsibilities as a hero, and his relationship with his mother, Rio Morales, and his community in Harlem. The dual-protagonist structure means the campaign consistently shifts perspective, letting players experience both heroes’ emotional stakes rather than sidelining one in favor of the other.
The game’s opening hours establish this shared patrol arrangement through a large-scale set piece in which Peter and Miles work together to stop Sandman from rampaging through Lower Manhattan, a sequence that doubles as a tutorial for the game’s dual-hero systems and immediately signals that this story is designed around two heroes operating as a team rather than one lead supported by a sidekick. From there, the narrative alternates chapters and objectives between the two protagonists, periodically forcing players into one hero’s perspective for story reasons even during otherwise free-roaming stretches of the campaign.
The Villains: Kraven, Venom, Lizard, and Sandman
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 assembles one of the densest villain rosters in the franchise so far, anchored by two central antagonists and supported by several other classic Spider-Man foes.
Kraven the Hunter functions as the game’s primary antagonist for much of the story. He is not a typical crime boss or mad scientist; he is a big-game hunter who has traveled the world seeking increasingly dangerous prey, and he sees New York’s population of super-powered individuals as the ultimate challenge before his life ends. Kraven’s arrival triggers a wave of violence against other established villains in the city. Several previously known threats, including Vulture, Electro, and Shocker, are confirmed to have been killed by Kraven before or during the events of the game, largely off-screen, underscoring how dangerous and methodical he is. Kraven’s hunt for Spider-Man and for Curt Connors becomes one of the story’s driving forces.
Venom is the other headline villain, though the symbiote’s role is more complicated than a traditional single antagonist. Rather than introducing Eddie Brock as the symbiote’s host from the outset, the game has Harry Osborn bind with the alien first, using it as a secret treatment for his illness. The suit later transfers to Peter Parker to save his life, turning Peter’s own body and mind into the battleground for the symbiote’s corrupting influence. This approach lets the game use the symbiote as both a gameplay mechanic, granting Peter new black-suit abilities, and a narrative device exploring themes of power, addiction, and loss of control, before the story pushes toward the more familiar Venom conflict later in the campaign.
The Lizard, Dr. Curt Connors, returns as a tragic figure rather than a straightforward villain. Connors’ reptilian transformation, the result of his own scientific experiments gone wrong, has left him with ferocious strength and speed, and his storyline intersects directly with Kraven’s hunt, since Connors is one of Kraven’s primary targets. His arc carries forward the original game’s sympathetic treatment of Connors as a scientist undone by his own ambition rather than a purely malicious threat.
Sandman, Flint Marko, also appears as part of the game’s rogues’ gallery, giving the campaign a boss encounter built around his sand-manipulation powers and adding to the sense that Kraven’s hunt has thrown every established threat in the city into chaos simultaneously. Combined, these storylines give Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 a villain lineup that touches nearly every corner of Spider-Man’s classic rogues’ gallery while keeping Kraven and the symbiote as the connective tissue holding the plot together.
Playable Characters: Peter Parker and Miles Morales
The defining structural choice in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is that both Peter Parker and Miles Morales are playable throughout the entire campaign, and the game allows players to freely switch between them while exploring the open world outside of scripted missions. This is a significant departure from the previous two games, where each protagonist largely had their own dedicated title or campaign segment.
Peter Parker retains his established skill set from the first game: a versatile, gadget-heavy fighting style built around webs, tech-based tools, and, for a significant portion of the story, the black symbiote suit that grants him additional strength and new attack options. Peter’s suits and skill trees lean toward mechanical ingenuity, reflecting his background as a scientist and inventor.
Miles Morales brings his signature bio-electric Venom powers, inherited from the same events that gave him his abilities in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, along with his camouflage ability that grants temporary invisibility. Miles’ kit is built more around elemental, electricity-based offense and stealth utility, giving him a distinct combat identity from Peter even though both characters share the same core traversal tools and many gadget types.
Because players can switch between Peter and Miles at nearly any point during free roam, the open world effectively becomes a shared playground where progress, side content, and collectibles are tracked across both characters, while story missions assign a specific hero based on what the plot demands at that moment. Mary Jane Watson also returns as a limited, non-Spider-Man playable character for select stealth and investigation sequences, continuing her non-superpowered but resourceful role from the 2018 game.
Web-Swinging and Traversal
Traversal has always been the signature pleasure of Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 pushes it further with the introduction of Web Wings. Both Peter and Miles can deploy a webbing membrane between their arms and body to glide across the city, converting momentum from swings, ledge jumps, and updrafts into sustained, high-speed aerial travel. Web Wings dramatically increase the effective size of the playable space, since players can glide over water, between boroughs, and along wind currents rather than relying purely on skyscraper-to-skyscraper swinging.
The core swinging mechanics remain rooted in the physics-driven system introduced in 2018, where webs anchor to real geometry and momentum carries between swings, but the sequel adds a slingshot-style boost that grants a burst of speed when launching into a swing or dive. Combined with faster web-zip target selection and smoother transitions between swinging, gliding, and wall-running, the traversal loop is noticeably quicker and more fluid than in the previous two games. New York’s added verticality across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens gives the improved traversal tools more room to shine, and Insomniac tuned wind tunnels and thermal-style air currents specifically to reward players who combine gliding with directional awareness rather than just holding a swing button.
Fast travel is also available through a stylized loading sequence themed around each hero, useful for players who want to jump straight to a specific district or activity rather than swinging the full distance, though the improved traversal speed means many players choose to swing manually even across long distances.
Symbiote Abilities and Suit Powers
The Venom symbiote is the game’s most significant addition to the combat system for Peter Parker. While wearing the black suit, Peter gains access to a distinct set of symbiote attacks layered on top of his standard moveset. These include extending a symbiote tendril from his arm to grab, launch, or drag enemies across the battlefield, unleashing area-of-effect slams that can stagger or damage groups of enemies at once, and firing a symbiote projectile that ensnares targets in black, tar-like goo. A signature ability lets Peter rise into the air and summon a cluster of symbiote mass that crashes down as a devastating impact attack, useful for clearing crowded encounters or dealing heavy damage to tougher enemies.
Beyond the symbiote, both Peter and Miles have their own suit-based tech and power trees that expand as the story and side content progress. Peter’s tech gadgets emphasize mechanical and web-based tools, while his symbiote abilities operate on a separate resource that fills through combat and can be spent on the tendril and slam attacks described above. Miles’ bio-electric Venom powers let him charge up devastating electrical strikes, temporarily increase his speed and jump height with a bio-electric boost, and vanish using his camouflage ability to reposition or set up stealth takedowns. Both heroes also unlock a range of cosmetic and functional suits over the course of the campaign, many of which carry their own unique suit powers pulled from different eras of Spider-Man comics, film, and animation, giving players a strong incentive to experiment with different suit-and-power combinations rather than settling on a single loadout for the whole game.
Combat and Gadgets
Combat in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 builds directly on the freeflow-style system established in the 2018 game: fluid chains of light and heavy attacks, dodges timed against telegraphed enemy strikes, and web-based crowd control that lets players thin out groups before they close the distance. The sequel adds new enemy types and factions tied to Kraven’s hunters, which push players to vary their approach rather than relying on a single dominant tactic.
Gadgets remain central to combat variety. Returning and new tools include the Web Grabber, which fires webbing in multiple directions to yank several enemies together into a cluster that can then be hit with an area attack, and the Upshot, a deployable drone that peppers nearby enemies with web shots to keep them pinned or interrupted. A Web Line gadget provides extra mobility and footing during stealth sequences, useful for repositioning without breaking cover. Concussive and gadget-based crowd-control options let players manage the game’s larger, more aggressive enemy groups, which Insomniac scaled up specifically to make use of the expanded gadget wheel and the two heroes’ distinct powers.
Because Peter and Miles have separate gadget and suit power trees, combat encounters play differently depending on which hero is active, and switching between them mid-mission during certain sequences adds a layer of tactical variety not present in the earlier games. Stealth remains a viable alternative to direct combat in many open-world encounters and story missions, particularly those involving Mary Jane, with takedown chains, environmental distractions, and the web line gadget supporting a quieter playstyle for players who prefer it.
Encounter design also scales with the story’s escalating stakes. Early missions favor smaller, more manageable groups of street-level enemies, while later chapters, particularly those involving Kraven’s hunters, throw larger, more coordinated squads at the player that mix armored, ranged, and shielded enemy types. This forces players to rotate between webs, gadgets, and melee combos rather than repeating a single winning tactic, and it rewards players who keep an eye on the enemy-type icons that appear during combat to identify which counter or gadget will break through a particular defense fastest.
The Open World: An Expanded New York City
One of the headline upgrades in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is the size and scope of its open world. The map covers approximately 20.8 square kilometers, roughly twice the playable area of the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, and for the first time in the series expands beyond Manhattan to include explorable versions of Brooklyn and Queens. Roughly a quarter of the total map is water, with the remaining three-quarters made up of the city’s landmass, reflecting New York’s real geography and giving Web Wings gliding genuine purpose when crossing between boroughs.
The city is divided into 14 distinct districts, including Harlem, the Upper East Side, Central Park, the Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, the Financial District, Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Little Odessa, Downtown Queens, and Astoria. Each district carries its own visual identity, side content, and collectibles, and Brooklyn and Queens are deliberately built to feel more residential and lower-rise than Manhattan’s dense skyline, which changes the rhythm of swinging and gliding when players move between them.
The open world is populated with the series’ familiar mix of side activities: crimes in progress that interrupt free roam, base takeovers tied to Kraven’s hunters and other factions, collectibles and landmarks tied to both Peter’s and Miles’ personal stories, photography-style challenges, and side missions that flesh out supporting characters. Because both heroes share the same map and progression is tracked across the whole game, players are encouraged to explore with whichever character suits their preferred playstyle at any given moment, rather than being locked into one hero’s version of the city.
New Game Plus and Endgame Content
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launched without a New Game Plus mode, but Insomniac delivered it as a free update on March 7, 2024, alongside additional suits and other features requested by the community. New Game Plus lets players restart the story while carrying over previously unlocked suits, gadgets, and upgrades, letting them experience the campaign again at a higher power level and with access to the full arsenal from the start rather than unlocking it gradually.
The update also introduced new difficulty options for players looking for a tougher challenge on repeat playthroughs, along with additional suits beyond those available at initial launch, expanding the customization options for both Peter and Miles. Combined with the game’s collectible completion systems, skill trees, and suit tech unlocks, New Game Plus gives Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 meaningful replay value beyond a single story completion, particularly for players who want to revisit the campaign with every combat tool already unlocked or push through content on a harder difficulty tier.
Platform, Release Date, and System Requirements
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It released on October 20, 2023, exclusively for PlayStation 5, making it the first Insomniac Spider-Man game built without a PlayStation 4 version, a decision that let the studio lean fully into the PS5’s SSD-driven fast travel, haptic feedback, adaptive trigger support, and 3D audio capabilities.
The game later expanded beyond console exclusivity with a PC release on January 30, 2025, available through Steam and the Epic Games Store, bringing the complete PS5 experience, including New Game Plus and all post-launch content, to Windows. For players considering the PC version, the published requirements are as follows.
Minimum requirements call for an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card, 16 GB of RAM, and roughly 140 GB of SSD storage space. Recommended requirements step up to an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor alongside an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 graphics card. The PC version also supports upscaling and frame generation technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3.1, and Intel XeSS, giving players on a range of hardware options to balance visual fidelity against performance.
On PS5, the game supports the console’s standard performance and fidelity display modes, letting players choose between higher frame rates or enhanced visual detail depending on their television or monitor setup and personal preference.
PlayStation 5 owners buying the game at launch or since have access to Digital Deluxe content in addition to the standard edition, and the console version has received its own post-launch patches and balance updates alongside the March 2024 New Game Plus update, keeping the PS5 release the definitive baseline that the later PC port was built to match feature-for-feature.
Critical Reception
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was met with widespread critical acclaim upon release, and it stands as the highest-rated entry in Insomniac’s Spider-Man series to date. On Metacritic, the game holds a score of 91 based on over 120 critic reviews, surpassing both the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, which scored 88, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which scored 85. That 91 rating also ties Spider-Man 2 as one of the highest-rated games in Insomniac’s overall catalog, alongside earlier studio classics.
Critics consistently praised the game’s narrative, particularly the handling of the symbiote’s psychological effect on Peter Parker and the emotional weight given to both protagonists’ personal arcs. The expanded traversal system, especially Web Wings gliding layered onto the series’ already well-regarded swinging, drew strong praise for making the larger map feel purposeful rather than padded. Reviewers also highlighted the game’s technical presentation on PS5, including its visual fidelity, load times, and the way set-piece moments used the hardware’s capabilities, as well as the added depth and variety that dual-protagonist combat brought to encounters compared to the previous games.
Beyond the aggregate score, the game was frequently cited in year-end and awards discussions following its 2023 release, with commentators pointing to its combination of technical polish, emotionally grounded writing, and refined traversal as evidence that Insomniac had matured its formula rather than simply repeating it. Comparisons to the studio’s earlier Spider-Man titles consistently framed Spider-Man 2 as a clear step forward in production values, voice performance, and mission variety, while some critics noted that the game’s structure still follows familiar open-world conventions, including recurring crime types and collectible categories, that longtime players of the series will recognize from the 2018 and 2020 entries.
Tips for New Players
Players jumping into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for the first time, whether newcomers to the series or returning fans of the earlier games, can get more out of the experience with a few practical habits. Take time with Web Wings gliding early on rather than defaulting purely to swinging; learning to chain glides with wind tunnels and dives significantly speeds up traversal across the larger map and makes crossing into Brooklyn and Queens far less tedious. Switch between Peter and Miles regularly during free roam rather than sticking to one hero, since their gadgets, suit powers, and combat feel are different enough that alternating keeps encounters fresh and helps you learn both skill trees in parallel rather than falling behind on one character’s upgrades.
Don’t ignore side content purely for completion’s sake; many side missions tied to supporting characters add meaningful context to the main story and unlock suits or gadgets that are genuinely useful in combat, not just cosmetic. When the symbiote suit becomes available for Peter, experiment with its tendril and slam abilities against tougher enemy groups rather than saving the resource, since it regenerates through combat and is most effective used proactively. Finally, if you finish the campaign and want to keep playing, the free New Game Plus update, added after launch, is the best way to revisit the story with a full arsenal already unlocked or to push through on a higher difficulty for a tougher challenge.
Who Is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 For?
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is built for players who enjoyed the traversal-driven, story-focused open-world formula of the previous two Insomniac Spider-Man games and want more of it at a larger scale. Fans of superhero fiction who appreciate character-driven storytelling, particularly around themes of power, responsibility, and personal cost, will find the symbiote arc and the Peter-Miles relationship central to the experience rather than a side attraction. Players who specifically enjoy fluid movement systems, whether from other open-world action games or from the swinging mechanics of past Spider-Man titles, are likely to find Web Wings and the refined swing controls among the best traversal systems in the genre.
Because the game is a PS5 exclusive at launch (with a later PC release), it is primarily a draw for existing PlayStation 5 owners or players willing to invest in a compatible PC to access it. It is less suited to players looking for a purely open-ended sandbox with minimal narrative structure, since the campaign is tightly authored around its story beats, or to players seeking a punishing combat challenge from the outset, since the base game’s difficulty is approachable, with tougher options only becoming available through New Game Plus.
FAQ
Is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 a PS5 exclusive? Yes, at launch. The game released exclusively on PlayStation 5 on October 20, 2023, and there is no PlayStation 4 version. It later came to PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store on January 30, 2025.
Can you play as both Peter Parker and Miles Morales? Yes. Both characters are playable throughout the entire game, and players can freely switch between them during open-world exploration, while story missions assign a specific hero as needed.
Who is the main villain in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Kraven the Hunter and the Venom symbiote drive the central story. Kraven arrives in New York on a hunt for the city’s most dangerous super-powered individuals, while the symbiote, after bonding first with Harry Osborn and then transferring to Peter Parker, corrupts Peter’s personality and abilities as its own storyline.
Does Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 have New Game Plus? Yes. New Game Plus was added as a free update on March 7, 2024, letting players restart the campaign with previously unlocked suits, gadgets, and upgrades, along with additional suits and difficulty options introduced in the same update.
How big is the map in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 compared to the first game? The map covers approximately 20.8 square kilometers, roughly twice the size of the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, and expands beyond Manhattan to include playable versions of Brooklyn and Queens for the first time in the series.
What are the PC system requirements for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Minimum requirements include an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card, 16 GB of RAM, and about 140 GB of storage. Recommended specs raise this to an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 graphics card.
Conclusion
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 delivers on the promise of a bigger, more ambitious sequel without losing the traversal feel and character-focused storytelling that made Insomniac’s earlier Spider-Man games stand out. Splitting the campaign between Peter Parker and Miles Morales, weaving the Venom symbiote’s corrupting influence directly into both plot and combat, and expanding New York City to include Brooklyn and Queens all give the game genuine reasons to justify its scale rather than simply padding it out. Add Web Wings gliding, a deep and varied gadget and suit-power system for both heroes, a critically acclaimed 91 Metacritic score, and a free New Game Plus update that extends its replay value, and the result is a game that holds up as one of the strongest superhero titles available on PlayStation 5 and, since January 2025, on PC as well. Whether you’re drawn in by the story of Kraven’s hunt, the tragedy of the symbiote’s effect on Peter, or simply the appeal of swinging across a fully realized New York, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 remains one of the most complete open-world superhero experiences currently available.