10 Spider-Man Games That Had Better Villains Than Players Remember

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Published Jul 31, 2026, 2:27 PM EDT

Daniel Trock is a Contributor at DualShockers specializing in PC games, lists, and reviews. He has been writing professionally since 2018 and covering games since 2020, with previous work spanning guides, news, lists, and reviews across multiple publications.

Before joining DualShockers, Daniel contributed guides to GamerJournalist and lists to TheGamer. He currently covers tech topics for SlashGear and BGR. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Marist College and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University.

Much like any comic book superhero, a big part of Spider-Man’s enduring appeal lies within his rogues' gallery. While he may have gotten his start dealing with ordinary alleyway thugs, Web-Head has gone toe-to-toe with some certified weirdos over the years, whether they be animal-themed, technologically-enhanced, or just some dude with a bad attitude. It goes without saying, then, that you can’t have a proper Spider-Man video game without representing at least a handful of the villains.

There have been a lot of Spider-Man games over the years, but a good few of them, especially the older ones, tend to focus almost exclusively on one of the IP’s A-list villains, which isn’t a bad thing per se, but it’s not quite as fun. Some of my favorite Spider-Man games are the ones that have you deal with a variety of villains over the course of the game, whether they’re all working together toward a common goal or you just happen to stumble upon them in side stories.

10 Spider-Man (2000)

My First Web-Swing

The 2000 Spider-Man game for the PS1 wasn’t just my first wall-crawling adventure, it was largely my first major exposure to Spider-Man as a whole (though, technically, I played the N64 version). I attribute my appreciation of Spidey’s stable of villains to the large antagonistic cast present in this game, not to mention their distinct boss fights.

This game features a healthy spattering of Spider-Man’s major foes, including, in order, Scorpion, Rhino, Venom, Mysterio, Doc-Ock, and Carnage. The Lizard also shows up in a cameo, having been imprisoned in his sewer lair after Venom… somehow assumed control of his legion of lizard-men, and after you defeat Carnage, you get a final boss against a Carnage symbiote-infused Doc-Ock, aptly named “Monster-Ock,” who still grosses me out to this day. Also, sidebar, this game has one of my favorite Mysterio encounters in a Spider-Man game, thanks both to him inexplicably turning gigantic and getting some pretty awesome BGM.

9 Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro

Dipping Into the B-Listers

Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro

The PS1 Spider-Man game received a direct sequel a year later, Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro. This one wasn’t received quite as well as the first due to some mechanical foibles, but it still told a good follow-up story to the first game, complete with some entertaining B-list villains which, paradoxically, I think makes the game better.

As the title of the game implies, the chief baddie here is Electro, who’s running an elaborate scheme to steal a priceless gem that, when inserted into a science doohickey, will allow him to amplify his electrical powers. In his corner, he’s got Hammerhead, Sandman, and Beetle, and we also get some semi-related boss battles against Shocker, as well as a proper boss encounter against the Lizard. No wacky symbiote fusions this time, though Electro does manage to power up his doohickey and transform himself into “Hyper-Electro,” something we’ll be seeing a few more times on this list.

8 Spider-Man (2002)

Good Ol’ Goblin

2002 saw the release of the first theatrical Spider-Man film, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, which is still a pretty excellent movie. This was at the time when movie tie-in video games were still a thing, so, of course, there was an official game to go with it, which even featured Maguire in a voice acting role. However, the game decided to get a little more diverse than the movie in the villain department.

Obviously, the main threat in the game is still the Green Goblin, also played in-game by Willem Dafoe, but if he was the only villain in this open-world New York, that wouldn’t be very interesting. As such, the game diverges from the film and throws a few extra villains into the mix, including revamped depictions of Shocker, Vulture, and Scorpion, each of whom are loosely woven into the overarching narrative of Spider-Man’s public debut. The Xbox version of the game also had an exclusive encounter with Kraven the Hunter in an abandoned zoo, which would be used again in a different game years later.

7 Spider-Man 2 (2004)

The Funniest Thing Mysterio has Ever Done

The second Sam Raimi Spider-Man film came out two years later in 2004, another banger if I may say, and like its predecessor, it too received a video game tie-in. Though, compared to the first movie’s game, the second movie’s game actually has an even better reputation among open-world superhero games thanks to its surprisingly realistic and engaging swinging mechanics.

Once again, the main focus is on the film’s villain, Alfred Molina’s depiction of Doc-Ock, plus the return of everyone’s favorite jobber, Shocker, thrown into the mix. On top of them, we have the Raimi video game-verse debut of Rhino, as well as Black Cat in an anti-hero role. My favorite thing in this game is the handling of Mysterio, though you initially encounter him as regular ol’ Quentin Beck. After disarming his traps over the course of the game, you finally confront Mysterio in person… while he’s in the midst of robbing a convenience store, and he goes down with a single punch. It’s hilarious.

6 Ultimate Spider-Man

Old Faces, New Takes

In the early 2000s, a separate line of Spider-Man comics with a more modern reimagining spun off from the main series, titled Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate Spider-Man reused its fair share of characters, elements, and plotlines from the original series, but with a younger, more impulsive Peter Parker, plus some revamped villain origins and depictions. We saw this in an interesting way with the release of the 2005 Ultimate Spider-Man game.

In this game, you switch off control throughout the campaign between Spider-Man and Venom, who both have their own unique abilities and story threads to follow, eventually converging in the end. While the ultimate confrontation is between the two of them, they both get into their own scrapes with different antagonists; Peter takes on the likes of Rhino, Green Goblin, and Silver Sable, while Venom rumbles with Electro, Beetle, Carnage, Silver Sable as well, and even gets into a street scrape with guest star Wolverine, of all people.

5 Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

More Symbiotes, More Problems

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

Following the release of the third and final Raimi Spider-Man film in 2007, Spider-Man’s symbiote suit became a little more intertwined with his marketing and iconography, which meant that its byproducts like the symbiotes themselves and Venom did as well. I can’t say for certain if that had anything to do with the creation of 2008’s Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, but the timing certainly lines up, as does its symbiote-happy story.

In Web of Shadows, Manhattan is in the midst of a major symbiote invasion, infecting and parasitizing not just the regular citizenry, but the city’s various super-residents, good and evil. This means that, not only do you have to tangle with Spider-Man’s usual suspects like Rhino, Electro, Vulture, and of course, Venom, but also symbiote-infected versions of heroes like Wolverine and Black Cat. The PS2 and PSP versions of the game have slightly different stories, which include additional scrapes with Shocker, Kraven the Hunter, Jackal, and a symbiote-infected Spider-Woman and Luke Cage.

4 Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Did the Spider-Verse Before Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

In the modern day, Spider-Man’s branding has, for better or worse, become semi-synonymous with multiversal shenanigans, thanks in large part to the Spider-Verse films, as well as the Spider-Verse comic storyline that ran in 2014. Before those particular Spider-Verse stories made the concept cool, though, there were multiple different Spider-Men stories running semi-concurrently, and four of them were brought together for 2010’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

This game sees four Spider-Men from across four realities gathering fragments of a dimension-warping macguffin coveted by a mystically-empowered Mysterio: regular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, and Spider-Man Noir. Each Spider-Man encounters their own versions of the typical baddies, plus a couple of guest stars on loan from X-Men. Regular Spidey battles the usual versions of Kraven the Hunter, Sandman, and Juggernaut, Ultimate Spidey takes on slightly different versions of Electro, Deadpool, and Carnage, 2099 Spidey tussles with futuristic versions of Hobgoblin, Scorpion, and Doc-Ock, and Noir Spidey rumbles with old-timey versions of Hammerhead, Vulture, and Green Goblin.

3 Marvel’s Spider-Man

A Modern-Day Sinister Six

2018 saw Insomniac and Sony’s major landmark endeavor to bring Spider-Man-centric gaming into the modern age with Marvel’s Spider-Man. It was, and remains, one of the biggest, most feature-rich wall-crawler games to date. Fittingly for such a monumental developmental endeavor, the game absolutely had to be as packed with villains as realistically possible.

The game begins with a brief scuffle with Kingpin before moving onto the meat and potatoes. There are two primary antagonists, starting with the video game debut of newer Spidey villain Mr. Negative, before returning to the classics with Doc-Ock. Alongside those major threats, other villains are interspersed throughout the game, both in the main story and side quests. We get a couple of Shocker jobber moments in the front half of the story, while the story’s back half sees appearances by a fresh iteration of Doc-Ock’s Sinister Six, including Mr. Negative, Electro, Vulture, Rhino, and Scorpion. Meanwhile, in the side stuff, we get appearances by a few C and D-listers, including Taskmaster, Tombstone, Screwball, and in the game’s DLC, Hammerhead.

2 Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Gadgeteers and Corpos

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Following the success of Insomniac’s first Spider-Man game, the burgeoning franchise received its first spin-off, focusing on the newly-named second Spider-Man, Miles Morales. Since this spin-off recycled a lot of stuff from the first game and focuses on a newer, younger Spider-Man, there’s unfortunately not as many villains saturating this one, but we still get a few interesting ones.

The game’s chief antagonist, Simon Krieger, isn’t actually a supervillain at all, he’s just a nutty CEO who cares more about his bottom line than peoples’ safety. Miles also has a brief video call with Kingpin, but that’s as much as we see of him. As for villains you actually get to fight, Miles’ inaugural battle is against Rhino with Peter’s help, while the rest of the game’s villainous endeavors are headed up primarily by the Prowler and the Tinkerer. Since there are fewer villains in this game, these two get a lot more screentime and narrative focus, chiefly in the revelations of their personal relations to Miles.

1 Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

You Can Never Have Too Many Symbiotes

After the first game and Miles’s spin-off burned through a good chunk of Spider-Man’s usual rogues' gallery, 2023’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 needed to dip into the classics bin to find something to get everyone interested. As seems to frequently be the case with Spider-Man stuff, when in doubt, it’s time to release the symbiotes.

The game’s initial antagonist is Kraven the Hunter, a major escalation of role for someone who’s usually a B-lister at best, plus downplayed reappearances of Mr. Negative, Scorpion, Sandman, and Tombstone, as well as the first appearance in this continuity by the Lizard. Mysterio also shows up, though to my mild disappointment, he’s mostly reformed. After Kraven’s out of the way, though, the real star of the show becomes Venom, and a particularly powerful version of Venom at that who’s able to parasitize most of the city in short order. In a rare treat for Spider-Man games, we also get to see one of Venom’s seldom-used offspring, the symbiote Scream, specifically parasitizing Mary Jane. This is technically different than the host used by Scream in the comics, but it’s a thematically-compelling choice, so I wasn’t complaining. Oh, and also, there’s a sidequest appearance by pre-Carnage Cletus Kassidy, but that’s not as interesting.

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