Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was one of this year's biggest titles, with a much bigger map and story than the first game, though some fans have pointed out a major plot hole in the game's opening sequence.
The game opens with Peter Parker stepping away from the high school class he is teaching to help Miles Morales take on the Sandman, one of Peter's oldest foes, in a massive, wide-scale boss fight spanning several set pieces and swapping player control between both Spider-Men. However, there is one major issue: the first game features a collectible that tells players that Sandman spent the last two games trapped in a laboratory vial full of sand, creating a significant plot hole that the game's director, Bryan Intihar, admitted to overlooking during development. "See, this is the stuff that keeps me up at night," Intihar said on IGN's Beyond! podcast, "When you guys talk about that I'm like 'Oh my God, I didn't think about that?! What are we going to do?!'"
Marvel's Spider-Man on the PS4 featured backpack collectibles that the player could find while exploring Insomniac's New York City, containing comic book Easter eggs and various references to characters from Spider-Man's massive catalog of supporting characters. One of these backpacks contains a vial said to contain the sand that holds Flint Marko, aka Sandman's, soul. Despite this, Spider-Man 2 features the villain, having somehow gotten free from the vial and targeted by the game's secondary antagonist Kraven the Hunter, with no indication as to how he managed to break free.
Intihar did little to attempt an explanation for the continuity error, simply stating that somehow, Sandman escaped between the first and second games and is now on a rampage. Of course, as seen in the first game, Spider-Man's villains are notorious for being impossible to keep imprisoned for long, as they almost always escape to return to their lives of crime shortly after the wall-crawler puts them behind bars. It's possible that Sandman simply flew the coop off-screen in a similar manner.
Nonetheless, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 saw rave reviews on release, with a recent trailer from Insomniac showing off the game's many accolades from various media outlets. It has quickly become one of the bestselling games of 2023, with fans praising its upgraded traversal mechanics and combat abilities, as well as the inclusion of Venom as its main villain and both Peter Parker and Miles Morales' Spider-Men as playable characters with their own unique sets of abilities.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is available now exclusively on the PS5.
Source: IGN Beyond! podcast