Summary

• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 features a balance of traditional superhero action and intimate stories that highlight the city's residents.
• The game portrays New York City as its own character, with stories that make the city feel lived in and realistic.
• The side missions in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 offer self-contained stories that set it apart from other superhero games, showcasing the heroes' interactions with regular citizens and their commitment to helping their community.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has plenty of side content for players to dive into across its open-world version of New York. These include a balance of traditional superhero set-pieces in which Peter and Miles take on menacing cults and dangerous hunter drones, with short, more intimate stories featuring some of the city's residents.

[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.]This balance perfectly portrays what has made Spider-Man such a beloved character to many over the six decades since his creation. Both Peter and Miles have formed an impressive gallery of rogues over the years - arguably one of the best in the superhero genre - and take on large-scale threats side-by-side with The Avengers in other Marvel media. However, some of the heroes' best stories are the ones that don't lose sight of their more street-level heroics, no matter how great or small. The Marvel's Spider-Man games, including the most recent release, are no exception to this.

The Marvel's Spider-Man Games Make New York Its Own Character

The Marvel's Spider-Man games have made New York its own character more than the games starring the webslinger that came before it. Titles such as 2004's Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in did have Spider-Man interacting with civilians in missions like the pizza delivery and Daily Bugle jobs, as well as the infamous balloon fetching city events. However, they mostly just served as one or two brief lines of dialogue that set up an objective before launching players straight into the action. Developer Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man titles, however, have taken the time to tell stories that make its version of New York feel more lived in and depict its residents like real people.

The first game deftly handled the real-world homelessness problem through F.E.A.S.T. and the work that Peter's aunt, May Parker, would do there. While this could have been something that only appeared in cutscenes around Peter's interactions with May and his investigations into Martin Li, Marvel's Spider-Man let Peter explore the homeless shelter at any time. Through doing so, players could interact with some of the people staying there to learn more about their stories and how they fell upon such hard times. Insomniac's portrayal came across as natural and honest without leaning upon negative stereotypes often seen surrounding the topic in other media.

While F.E.A.S.T. is a fictional organization and Insomniac's take on New York features many buildings that don't exist in the real world, such as Avengers Tower, Oscorp, or Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 also incorporates a celebration of some of New York's real-world culture. For example, after returning a series of stolen instruments, Miles is able to explore Harlem's Cultural Museum during its grand opening. He then learns about the neighborhood's rich musical history with facts about real artists such as Hazel Scott and Clyde Stubblefield on display.

The Friendly Neighborhood Missions Are Some Of Spider-Man 2's Best

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales saw the newer Spider-Man move into his new home in Harlem and learn what sets his Spider-Man apart as he grew into his role as a hero. As part of this, Miles and his best friend, Ganke Lee, developed the "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" app as a way to let people in need the hero directly. This allowed Miles to learn about his new community while assisting them as Spider-Man. The "Friendly Neighborhood" app feature was carried over into Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and it's through these missions that players can engage in some of the series' best content.

Aunt May's mantra, "If you help someone, you help everyone" is arguably just as important to this take on Spider-Man as the classic "With great power, there must also come great responsibility." The heroes set out to accomplish this by assisting their communities with any task through the game's missions. Some of these objectives don't even necessarily need a superhero touch, such as helping a student ask someone to a Homecoming dance. The Spider-Men simply take pride in benefiting the lives of their fellow neighbors, which is the beauty of it.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2's side missions are full, self-contained stories in their own right and some of them could work as a Spider-Man short film or one-shot comic. Peter and Miles carry out emotional tasks such as granting a dying man's final wish or helping a panicked granddaughter find her missing grandfather before sitting with him on a park bench and letting him reminisce about his late wife. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 smoothly balances these stories with lighthearted moments such as imparting wisdom on an aspiring photographer who ires Peter Parker’s work or hacking one of Kraven's robots and transforming it into a guide dog for someone who's too allergic to get a real one.

Spider-Man 2's Side Missions Set It Apart From Other Superhero Games

Moments like the ones in Marvel's Spider-Man 2's side missions "Howard," "Find Grandpa," "Photo Help," or "Homecoming" wouldn't necessarily work with some other superhero games such as the Batman: Arkham series, which are often deemed some of the best in the superhero genre. This is simply because those narratives have a different set of characters with alternate objectives. While still heroic in their aims, the characters in those games are focused primarily on defeating the criminals running amok in one night before a major event occurs.

Due to this structure of the games, it makes sense that there isn't a great focus on the heroes interacting with some of the more regular citizens outside Gotham City's police department. Their attention is understandably elsewhere, and it ensures that the games stay focused on defeating the antagonists wreaking havoc on Gotham. It's a different take, but one that works for that particular series.

Of course, Miles and Peter also handle their fair share of villains in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, with major threats such as Kraven's Great Hunt and the Venom symbiote's aim to take over and "heal the world." However, Insomniac's narratives take place over days and therefore allow the time to tell the more grounded stories outside its main campaign. The studio understands that these interactions with the community in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are a crucial part of what makes Spider-Man the hero he is and ensures that the game does justice to the "friendly neighborhood" side of the character.