M’colleague Eduardo reviewed Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 back when it was released on PS5 in 2023; a sequel to the original 2018 game and the standalone 2020 “sidequel” Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the PC version of which I reviewed in 2022. Now in 2025 we’re back again with Spider-Man 2 arriving on PC, uniting both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as dual Spider-Men protagonists. It’s great that Sony are investing in their PC versions, with the vast majority of their console exclusives now getting PC ports, with some notable exceptions (cough, Bloodborne, cough). Unfortunately, Spider-Man 2 at launch isn’t quite up to the standard of Nixxes Software previous PC ports, and a few more patches are needed to iron out a variety of bugs and performance problems.
Picking up 10 months after the events of Miles Morales, Peter and Miles have fallen into a routine as New York’s resident crime-fighting heroes, opening the game in dramatic style as they stop Sandman (Flint Marko) who is going on a rampage in the financial district, covering lower Manhattan in large drifts of sand. At the same time, Kraven the Hunter has decided to start a new hunt in New York, picking off various other superheroes with the objective of trying to find the ultimate hunt. The plot has myriad twists and turns and is divided roughly 50% between Peter and Miles (and you can often swap freely between them), who play slightly differently and have some unique abilities, most notably Miles’ electrical abilities. The in-engine cutscenes have always been excellently done and that trend continues here, meaning even the more story-heavy moments feel nicely engaging.
Gameplay hasn’t really changed much since the original game, while also adding in Miles’ abilities from his game. The wingsuit first appeared in Miles Morales and has been expanded here so that Peter can also use it, and makes zipping around the map very speedy, especially if you’re able to take advantage of the wind currents, which are highlighted when using Spider-Vision. Web-swinging still feels very satisfying although the default PC key mappings are a little confusing, and I had to rebind numerous keys until I found an arrangement which felt just right. Likewise combat continues to be an evolution of that first popularized by Batman: Arkham Asylum, with the rhythmic variety of punching and countering merged with various gadgets and special moves. I confess I did often forget what extra abilities I could use because each combat encounter gives you so many options; you are truly spoilt for choice of the number of ways you can pummel bad guys.
The number of side-activities is also increased; alongside stopping randomly generated crimes, you can take pictures as Peter to unlock abilities and also further his photojournalist credentials, find memory shards from Flint Marko, alongside many others. The stealth sections likewise make a return, some of which have you playing as Mary-Jane, Peter’s girlfriend, who is armed only with a stun gun. The Arkham-style predator takedowns are still the most satisfying variety of these, where you can bypass the normal brawl entirely if you’re effective at silently picking henchmen off one by one.
On a technical level unfortunately at launch this isn’t a flawless victory. With DLSS enabled and all ray-tracing turned off, the game achieves a reasonable framerate although there are no options to tweak it, except to match your monitor refresh rate. There is some stutter, not thankfully no egregious shader compilation ones. There are some very ugly screen-space shadows used for reflections when ray-tracing is off, which was clearly not the intended look. With ray-tracing enabled, performance takes a hit even with DLSS set to performance mode, and although my Nvidia RTX 2070 Super is getting a bit long in the tooth, the game graphically doesn’t look that much better than Miles Morales had done four years earlier, which doesn’t warrant the performance dip. True, New York is fantastically detailed and almost matches the fastidiousness of The Division 2’s Warlords of New York DLC, which recreated a large section of lower Manhattan on a one-to-one scale. New York is scaled down here, but includes additional boroughs including Brooklyn, Astoria and more of the Bronx.
If you’ve been enjoying the Insomniac Spider-Man games previously on PC, Spider-Man 2 absolutely scratches more of the same itch. If you’ve not really been into their amalgam of punching, swinging and occasional stealth, the sequel does nothing to switch from this formula, and in many ways is a very safe sequel. On PC it’s something of a mixed bag at the moment, and while hopefully patches will go a way towards addressing the majority of problems, it’s disappointing that Nixxes wasn’t able to get it fully polished in time for release.
