Spider-Man 2 is the best PS5 open-world game

Insomniac's 2023 PS5 hit remains a high-water mark for the genre

For gamers, January is a holy season of rest and relaxation. The release cadence slows to a crawl, the news cycle cools, and all that spare energy goes straight to the backlog. I’ve spent the month digging into one that’s been on mine for a few years: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. It’s been said before (many, many, many times), but holy shit you guys, this game absolutely rules.

I recognize I’m late to the party here. Released in 2023 for the PlayStation 5, Spider-Man 2 continues storylines established by developer Insomniac Games in 2018’s Spider-Man and 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, both of which were appointment playing. Given that Insomniac’s forthcoming Wolverine is set in the same canonical MCU-lite universe, I was bound to catch up on Spider-Man 2 eventually. But the past few years have offered a glut of time-consuming open-world games, and I couldn’t bring myself to pick up another one. Little did I know that Spider-Man 2 offered the most elegant open-world design I’ve seen in years.

Open-world games generally follow one of two philosophies. Games like Elden Ring or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are steeped in intrigue, offer minimal direction, and let players explore. Then there are the icon-cluttered maps of games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows or Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which play like interactive checklists as the game leans on UI to guide you from one point of interest to the next.

Spider-Man 2 is squarely in the latter camp. But what sets it apart from its peers is how hard it leans into the form. Rather than obfuscate its to-do list nature, Spider-Man 2 owns it.

As with both of its predecessors, Spider-Man 2 returns to an alternate version of New York City (one that takes some laughable liberties, like truncating Manhattan at 135th Street or packing the entirety of south Brooklyn into a land mass smaller than the thimble-sized Financial District). Longtime Spider-Man villains like Sandman, Mysterio, and Kraven the Hunter appear in New York City, and serve as narrative vehicles for a range of diverse optional activities. Some of these are uncomplicated punch-a-thons. Others are more complex: stealthy infiltration missions, logic-based environmental puzzles, high-speed races above city streets.

These bite-sized activities are supplemented by meatier side-quests. In one string of missions, Peter Parker teams up with a character from the first game to investigate a cult of arsonists who’ve invented a religion. In another, Miles Morales helps his classmates with their scholarly or romantic troubles. Both versions of Spider-Man can play through scripted “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App requests,” which play out as charming vignettes detailing life in this iteration of NYC: a blind woman on an Astoria porch longs for service animal, but is allergic to dogs; an elderly man, knowing his time is up, seeks a good home for his birds. Spider-Man 2’s main story is obviously given the Cinematic AAA PlayStation Project treatment, but it’s clear these side-quests were no afterthought.

At any point, you can open the world map and see a percentage in the corner showing you how much progress you’ve made in Spider-Man 2. Menus will tell you precisely how many instances of each activity you need to complete to finish them all. In some cases, the game will outright tell you what type of reward you’ll get for finishing, say, all 12 Hunter’s Blinds, so you can assess whether or not the outcome is worth the effort.

You can only unlock fast travel for a particular neighborhood after completing enough optional objectives in that area, effectively forcing you to navigate the open-world naturally before relying on the shortcuts. Swinging through the city remains as thrilling as ever — one of the best-implemented uses of the PS5’s tactile DualSense haptics to date. But Spider-Man 2 also gives each hero a literal wingsuit, and uses New York City’s notorious gusts as an excuse to pepper the map with “wind tunnels” that significantly ramp up Spider-Man’s flight speed. You can swing through skyscraper canyons. You can also Forza your way down Fifth Avenue. Both are valid, and both are more fun than fast-traveling.

Every piece of Spider-Man 2’s design interlocks into a frictionless open world, but my favorite touch is a feature of first-party PlayStation games that’s often criticized: the quips. I often find myself unsure when I should focus on a main mission or spend time burning through side quests. After a major story beat, Peter or Miles will literally tell you (“I’ve ignored the city for too long” or, in classic Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man fashion, “I should see who I can help”). If you want to continue the story, you need to just…chill for a bit before the right mission becomes available.

Some open-world games, especially those that have achieved popularity in recent years, are designed to challenge players, to reward exploration and experimentation, and to encourage endless curiosity — to devour free time, in other words. Spider-Man 2 bucks the trend and offers the opposite, and is better for it.