Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Review Summary

Excellent core gameplay and enjoyable traversal are marred by severe performance issues and disappointing side quests, while the engaging story is undermined by a weak portrayal of Peter Parker.

Core gameplay is excellent: Players consistently praise the core gameplay, describing it as amazing, enjoyable, solid, and well-balanced. The game is considered a fantastic experience overall, with many noting that almost everything except the main story is fun.

Traversal is highly enjoyable: Web-swinging and traversal are frequently praised as incredibly fun, insanely good, and the best part of the game. New additions like web wings and the ability to partially disable autopilot are appreciated, making movement feel fluid and enjoyable.

Story is engaging overall: The story receives mixed but generally positive feedback, with many calling it awesome, good, or better than the movies. Side stories and intimate character moments (e.g., Miles and Hailey, Peter and MJ) are often considered better than the main plot, and boss fights are cinematic spectacles.

Graphics are stunning: The graphics are repeatedly highlighted as beautiful, detailed, and stunning, especially on new consoles. The New York City setting is described as big, detailed, and visually impressive with ray tracing.

Combat is deep and fun: The combat system is praised as great, amazing, and agile, with improved depth and parrying mechanics. Fighting Venom and using symbiote powers are highlighted as particularly satisfying.

Severe performance issues: Players report severe stuttering, frame drops, and lag across cutscenes, combat, and traversal, even on high-end hardware and after multiple patches. The game is described as unplayable on average and high-end PCs, with poor optimization compared to previous titles.

Disappointing side quests: Side quests are described as boring, woke, forgettable, and cringe. They are hit-or-miss and fail to engage players.

Missing Turkish language: Turkish language support is missing despite the game including many other languages. This frustrates Turkish players who feel overlooked.

Weak Peter Parker portrayal: Peter Parker is portrayed as a loser, whiner, and weakened compared to the previous game. His character is poorly written and downgraded.

Open-world with web-swinging traversal: The game is an open-world superhero title set in New York with web-swinging as a primary traversal method. Web-swinging mechanics are central, though some segments feel like walking simulators.

Combat includes parrying and dodging: The combat system includes parrying, blocking, dodging, and a large dodge window. Players can parry attacks, but the dodge window is generous, making combat feel forgiving.

Large open world with side activities: The open world features side activities and is the largest map in the series, similar to Assassin's Creed. This provides plenty of content but may feel overwhelming.

Symbiote abilities and healing: Symbiote abilities are available, including a healing mechanic that requires a full venom bar. These add variety to combat and traversal.

Wingsuit and new traversal options: New additions include wing suits, wind tunnels, and symbiote abilities. The wingsuit provides a fresh traversal option.

Graphical glitches and texture issues: Users encounter various graphical glitches including texture loading problems, T-posing NPCs, white artifacts, blue squares, character pop-in, and models constantly unloading. These bugs detract from visual quality.

Random crashes and system shutdowns: The game crashes randomly, including during gameplay, cutscenes, and even causing PC shutdowns or GPU restarts. High-end systems with i9 and RTX 4090 are also affected, indicating stability problems.

Frequent crashes during cutscenes and menus: Frequent crashes occur during cutscenes, menus, loading saves, and the first run. Some users report the game failing to start or crashing before reaching the main menu, making it unplayable.

Steam Deck performance is poor: Multiple users report that the game runs poorly on Steam Deck, with low frame rates, stuttering, glitches, and battery drain. Extensive tweaking and frame generation are required to achieve playable performance, and even then the experience is subpar.

Audio sync and delay issues: Users report audio delays, voice sync issues, dialogue sync problems, and audio bugs such as voices disappearing or ambient noises muting. These issues affect immersion and gameplay.

Strong do-not-buy advice: A large number of players strongly advise against purchasing the game, citing disappointment, ruined experience, or wasted time. Many express regret and urge others to save their money.

Poor performance on Steam Deck: Multiple players report that the game runs poorly on Steam Deck and average PCs, with many recommending playing on PS5 instead. Some suggest using Lossless Scaling on PC as a workaround.

Wait for deep discount: Many players recommend waiting for a significant discount or sale before purchasing, with some suggesting a 70% off or deep discount. The game is not considered worth its full price.

Poor optimization and performance: The game is described as poorly optimized, with issues like stuttering, freezing, and crashes. It is considered unplayable without a high-end PC, and even then, performance problems persist.

Refund requested by many: Several players have requested refunds and advise others to do the same, indicating dissatisfaction with the purchase. Refunds are seen as a necessary action.

Community fair range: $20.00 - $40.00.

Game completion: 30.0h.

Story completion: 17.0h.

Session length: 4.0h.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 offers immediate fun through its web-swinging and combat, but a lengthy prologue and early technical issues can delay the full experience until about 2 hours in when the open world opens up.

Reported time to anchor: 2h.

Friction: Lengthy prologue; Technical issues (crashes, performance); Tedious early missions (bike section with Harry); Boring side content; MJ stealth missions.

Performance-Weary Patient Gamer: Tests and tweaks graphics settings, waits for performance patches, monitors frame rates, and often delays purchase until deep discounts or hardware upgrades. Motivation: To achieve a stable, high-quality gaming experience without crashes or frame drops. Stance: deep sale.

Franchise Faithful Story Seeker: Focuses on the main narrative and character arcs, completes story-driven side content, tolerates repetitive open-world elements for the sake of plot payoff. Motivation: To experience the next chapter of Insomniac's Spider‑Man universe and see character development. Stance: sale.

Action-Focused Momentum Addict: Maximizes combat combos, explores the city through web-swinging and web-wings, challenges boss fights, and often completes side content for gameplay rewards rather than story. Motivation: To enjoy fluid, visceral combat and exhilarating traversal mechanics. Stance: sale.

Across all hardware cohorts, the game exhibits widespread performance issues including crashes, stutters, and poor optimization, with only a minority of players reporting smooth experiences after extensive tweaking.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: mixed. Players report a mix of good frame rates and frequent crashes, with some praising optimization and others citing instability and HDR issues.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: negative. The game is widely described as poorly optimized, with frequent FPS drops, crashes, and visual bugs making it difficult to play.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: mixed. Opinions are split: some players enjoy stable performance, while many others experience crashes, stutters, and VRAM-related problems.

Steam Deck: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is widely reported as broken on Steam Deck despite its 'Verified' label. Users experience severe performance issues (stuttering, low FPS, visual bugs), frequent crashes, and glitches. The game requires extensive tweaking (Proton, FSR, file edits) to even approach playability, and even then performance is inconsistent. The majority of Steam Deck-specific reviews deem it unplayable, with many refunding or warning others. The score reflects a broken experience (70-100 range) due to frequent crashes and unplayable performance.

Linux and Proton: Spider-Man 2 runs on Linux/Proton with minor tweaks. Users recommend Proton GE and specific launch options. Some experience hanging during cutscenes, and performance is acceptable but not perfect. No reports of being broken or unplayable.

Monetization: The user reviews focus almost entirely on dissatisfaction with DLC (lack thereof, quality issues, or pricing of separate products) and vague complaints about grind. No reviews mention any form of real-money microtransactions within the game – no paid gacha, loot boxes, currency bundles, battle passes, or pay-to-win mechanics. The few references to 'overpriced' relate to DLC or other games, not to in-game purchases. According to the scoring criteria, complaints about traditional DLC, base price, and grind without paid solutions cannot push the score above 20. Therefore, the monetization is considered fair and non-predatory.

Mod reliance: Reviews consistently mention needing community performance fixes and general patches to make the game playable. There are no claims of crash-on-startup, so the score is capped at 50. The feedback indicates a notable mod tax for acceptable performance and stability, placing the game in the 'Buggy but Playable' category.

External guides: The primary Wiki Tax complaint is the need for external maps to locate hidden collectibles (spider bots, tech crates) for 100% completion, classifying this as Tier 3 'The Student'. However, the majority of feedback focuses on technical issues (bugs, alt-tab crashes, graphical glitches) and performance problems, which are secondary but prevalent.