Insomniac Spider-Man 2 sold 5 million copies in its first 11 days with some people saying that it will win the game of the year award. This review will remain spoiler free. 

      The game is almost perfect. It pushes the boundaries of what Playstation 5 is capable of. Spider-Man 2 has amazing graphics. The game uses light to its advantage and it shows. For example, during the sections of the game that take place during the night there’s still some light due to light pollution from all the city lights. At the same time there are very few stars just like a real city that has light pollution. The game also utilizes ray tracing which helps with the windows reflection of Spider-Man as he runs up the windows. Faces look realistic like they do in the other recent Spider-Man games. Although in the last two games, the faces looked like they were sweating all the time. It was frankly disgusting and it’s good that the issue is fixed.

      One of the things that makes this game better than the first game, or any other superhero games that  try to match Spider-Man, is the gameplay. It truly is one of the best games when it comes to combat in video games. Though the Batman Arkham trilogy may have started this trend of superhero combat, Spider-Man 2 takes the combat and makes it excellent. It is fast paced combat which makes sense for Spider-Man due to him being fast and agile in the comics. Insomniac also added perring to the combat which switches things up and games need this. 

     When a game has a “ just hit bad guy and now game good” mentality about making combat in video games it tends to get dull in most games. There may be a few exceptions to this but it tends to be how bad video games are created. It’s what made Gotham Knights (it’s still not a bad game) combat feel like a deflated whoopee cushion. The fact that some enemies use moves that force the player to parry an incoming attack is good. Though most games make it annoying to deal with these kinds of enemies, Spider-Man 2 makes it easy to parry an incoming attack due to the game giving the player a good window of time to parry the attack. 

     The swinging feels better than ever and the addition of web wings is super cool. It’s truly amazing to fly and each suit has different wings. The suits in the game are really good and have some customization. But in Spider-Man 2 the player can only change to specific presets that were chosen for the player.   The suit customization would be better if it was like Gotham Knights where the player could customize the super hero suit to the specific looks that the player would like though the base model of the suit would remain the same.

     The story was good and it had a very comic book feel and it had amazing set pieces for boss fights or levels. Everyone had a satisfying arc that worked in a way that was satisfying though the game didn’t have the tear jerking moments that Insomniac’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales had. This was a slight disappointment though there were still some parts where it felt really emotional. 

Kraven and Venom both felt intimidating which made them feel truly powerful. Both villains make it clear what the steaks of the situation are and what their motivations are. The game also has great side quests and they feel like their own comics. The side quest that involves the vigilante Wraith is going to lead to something big which is probably going to be a DLC (downloadable content).

     The game has some of the best voice acting in video games. Yuri Lowinthal kills it as Peter Parker. Because Peter Parker’s Spider-Man has the symbiote suit Lowenthal is able to show his talents as a corrupted Peter Parker and it works. Lowinthal’s performance isn’t the only good performance, Jim Pirri is intimidating as Kraven. He does a good job of showing the insanity of Kraven the Hunter. Tony Todd who plays Venom should be the person who plays Venom in all iterations of the character. This game is one of the best video games that has come from Playstation. It surpasses expectations. Spider-man 2 is a game of the year contender.