Composed by John Paesano, and developed by Insomniac Games, Marvel’s “Spider-Man 2” provides an exciting series of events from start to finish. It improves upon many mechanics and ideas from the first game, Marvel’s “Spider-Man,” as well as “Spider-Man: Miles Morales” to provide a more well rounded experience. Unfortunately it can’t escape from the emptiness that plagues many open-world games.

The game follows Peter Parker (Yuri Lowenthal) and Miles Morales (Nadji Jeter). They must defend New York from a group of hunters led by Kravin (Jim Pirri), who is searching for someone to match his skill in combat. While this is happening, a symbiote attaches to Peter causing him to become more careless and aggressive. With some help, he manages to escape the clutches of the symbiote, but it then goes to his friend Harry Osborn (Graham Phillips), who causes chaos in the city as Venom (Tony Todd).

The story is very effective in conveying emotion and giving each character a moment to shine. However, it is a bit weak in terms of pacing, as throughout the game you can tell that Insomniac Games had a lot of ideas they wanted to put in the game, but didn’t always know where. That being said, the voice acting is fantastic, and when the story hits its stride, it’s brilliantly cinematic.

There is less downtime in this game, as the combat was constant and streamlined. This was done by eliminating the gadget wheel, and instead just giving the player four gadgets that they can use on the fly. While this does make things fast paced, there is a bit less variety now. The other big changes are new abilities activated by pressing L1, which also has the option of working as a parry button. These are great additions and keep the combat fresh and exciting.

Unfortunately, it can end up feeling like all the player is doing is mashing the square button, even on the harder difficulties. This problem is somewhat fixed towards the end of the game with the addition of some new enemies, but there is still a pretty decent section in the middle where the combat feels too easy, and doesn’t really evolve. Luckily the boss fights are still executed amazingly, and are very memorable.

The area the game improves on the most is the traversal. The traversal was already sublime in the original, but it feels so much quicker here. This is in large part due to the addition of web wings, which change the whole dynamic of the web slinging as now the player wants to gain enough speed and height to glide for as long as possible. The fast travel system is also incredible, as now the player can travel to any where they’ve already explored, at any time and with no loading screens.

While the side content is improved in this game, the open-world still feels vacant. Once all the main and side content is completed, there are only two types of crime encounters the player can find, these being car chases and break ins. This is an issue because many players will want to come back to the game to swing around the city, so when New York almost feels like a facade, it’s unsatisfactory.

Despite this, Marvel’s “Spider-Man 2” is still a superb video game and the first to feel like it could only be accomplished on the hardware of a PlayStation 5. It is certainly a must buy for any person who’s a fan of superheroes, or action games in general.