Seems like opinions are pretty split for this one. Folks either love it or hate it. As someone who admittedly doesn't read Spider-Man comics, I was always really excited for this game since I love Venom and the black suit arc in the Spider-Man media I engage with (Animated Series, Raimi Spider-Man even if SM3 wasn't exactly good, etc.). I really enjoyed both the first game and Miles Morales's own game, too, and I think this game is ultimately better than both, at least when it comes to core gameplay. It does seem to be missing some small stuff, like no New Game+ (doesn't affect me at all since I never play NG+ modes in games anyway), but its still a good package overall imo.

The gameplay is fun. Spider-Man 2 is one of those sequels that just takes what the previous game established and expands upon it a little. You get a new little wheel of cooldown moves that you gradually unlock new ones for over the course of the story, so now you have both those and gadgets from the first game. As a result, combat felt a little more mashy to me in this game, since a lot of the time I found myself relying a LOT on the little gadgets and stuff whereas I felt like I was actually using the core combat more in the previous games. They try their best to make the boss fights epic and cinematic, in which they succeed, but the actual fights always felt kinda underwhelming in comparison outside of the really cool cutscenes integrated into the gameplay. Some of them drag on too long in my opinion, which can get annoying if one is opening a can of whoop-ass on you, lol. Dialogue repeats every time, which I sorta understand since I never want to miss it, but it does make dying to the same boss a lot extra aggravating. The fight against Scream was particularly annoying in my opinion since it feels very gimmicky and not in a fun way, and you have to beat her down like four different times. That being said, I'm genuinely enamored by the smoothness of PS5 games, where there are basically no load times at all and everything just feels so seamless. This game takes advantage of it big time for an awesome movie feel, which seems to be something Sony games in particular have practically made part of their brand. Call me easily impressed but I really was so surprised by how they did this. Overall, combat is far from the greatest, but was still pretty fun imo. My favorite part was by far that one bit where you get to play as Venom; after having to play as an agile guy that dies pretty quickly, its satisfying playing a big brute smashing through everything. And...I mean, its Venom, who wouldn't love playing as him?

The story seems to be the main selling point here, and I did quite enjoy it. I don't think it got really good until closer to the end since I felt there's just a little too much unnecessary side stuff thrown in there. Not that every part of a story needs to be related to the direct plot, of course, just that these diversions were a bit much to me. Exploring the new science building Harry made with Peter, going to Coney Island with Harry and MJ, going back to Peter and Harry's old school and suddenly playing through a flashback of their time escaping from the school, having MJ and Peter talk to each other in the house...doesn't help that they do this annoying movie game thing I've talked about before where they make segments where nothing happens into interactive walking simulators for the sake of being more "immersive" when it would've been much better off as a cutscene in my opinion. Characters are talkative and actions you make can completely interrupt their dialogue, especially in boss fights, which is like the one thing I really dislike about the presentation of these cinematic games. Also, they tend to come with dumb little minigames, like shooting basketballs or playing a rhythm game. I know these smaller moments are there to make you feel more attached to the characters (and frankly I'd have to be a miserable soul to not enjoy these characters going to an amusement park) and I understand why they're here, but I couldn't help but feel like a lot of it was filler. There's still great moments in the early game, though, like the introduction to Kraven or when Peter and Harry work together to free Tombstone. Speaking of him, Kraven was a pretty good villain in my opinion. I don't get why he considers himself such a master hunter when it feels like his lackeys do most of the work to bring them to him, but he serves as an intimidating presence for the story and it was cool to hear how exactly he killed off some of the villains from the first game. I really liked seeing that a few villains actually had successful redemptions until Kraven came along and killed them (or tried to in some cases). The last few parts of the game are all about the symbiotes and I was loving that; very cool to see Venom make these symbiote nests and try to infect the world in his twisted idea of "healing the world". I tend to prefer my Venoms on the goofier side but I do still like how they handled Harry as Venom here. At first, he's a good guy trying to help out Peter, and his design reflects this since he looks exactly like Agent Venom (which really surprised me) in the comics. But as the symbiote becomes more corrupted after latching onto Peter and feeding on his negative energy, once it eventually goes back to Harry he becomes the Venom we all know and love. I was pretty unsure about black suit Peter at first, he acts barely any different from regular Peter until he eventually goes nuts after enduring a lot of stress from having to fight a bunch of villains. I like the idea of that, but before he gets the suit taken off he spouts a lot of stuff that just felt kinda uncharacteristic for this version of Peter. Dude develops a huge ego about being the hero of this story and his behavior in this state is pretty much the reason Harry becomes Venom in the first place. I have a bunch of other stuff I could describe or nitpick about the story but I'd be here a long time if I were to do that and, frankly, my typical reviews are long enough.

Overall I think Spider-Man 2 is pretty good. Despite all my nitpicks, I do think the game has a lot of great stuff in it and feels like an overall improvement over its predecessors. I'm going to revisit the game to do all the side content (probably not gonna go for the Platinum trophy though), but I figured I'd review it now since I just beat the main story. Pretty good, earns a solid 4 stars out of me.