The day has finally arrived, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out in the wild. It’s scoring incredibly high, Insomniac’s top-rated game since 2004, and is likely to be a GOTY contender. But above all else, it’s just a really fun game.

This is a game where I don’t think there’s that much advice to give, as it’s designed to sort of play itself between its upgrades and tactics, but I think there are at least a few things about Spider-Man 2 that are worth knowing from the start, based on my near-100% playthrough during the review period.

So, here are five things I wish I knew when I started Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

1. The Best Skill Perks – While yes, you will be able to buy everything eventually when you hit max level, there are some I think you should prioritize first as they will provide the most benefit to you in combat. All of these are in the dual Peter/Miles category as the others are skill-specific to each hero. But in the dual column, the best ones are:

• KO Recharge – Abilities are partially recharged when performing KOs, finishers or stealth takedowns – This triggers all the time and is key for getting your abilities back.
• Fired Up – Higher Combo count increases Focus gain rates – Easy to get up to high combos in this game, so this is extremely useful.
• Heavy Lifting – Allows you to web up, throw and electrify brute enemies – These are easily the strongest in the game and you will end up seeing a ton of them. Anything that gets you an advantage against them is worthwhile.

2. The Best Gadget – Web Grabber, it’s the Web Grabber. Sink your resources into this as often as you can. At higher levels it will essentially grab an entire room of enemies and slam them into one point, allowing to web down a couple of them before they can even get up, and set up the others for easy assault. The last upgrades allows you to throw the grabber after the fact to electrocute enemies.

3. Prioritize Traversal Suit Tech – In terms of what you can feel the most immediate impact from, I would say Traversal Suit Tech over health, damage and focus. Really really improves swinging and web wings especially. In Damage, as a side note, I’d make sure get to rank 3 for increased damage to airborne enemies quickly, as you will be doing loads of fights in the air and that’s very useful.

4. You Can Mainline The Campaign, But Don’t – I am not just saying this as a “stop and smell the roses” warning, as you’ll miss a lot of richness to the world if you just blaze through the main campaign (which you will), but because you will mostly only get XP through campaign missions, while the materials you need for the Suit Tech and Gadget upgrades will be found in specific side missions, so you can’t ignore them unless you want no upgrades. And you will need those materials if you want to buy any of those super cool suits you’ve seen as well.

5. You Can Drastically Change How Swinging Feels – Spider-Man 2 has far more settings than Easy and Hard modes. Specifically, it really gets into the detail of how it feels to web swing in the game with some settings you can change. There are settings to make cornering easier harder depending on how much you want to whip around the corner. However, the web assistance setting you can move from 1-10, and I believe it’s 10 at default, will drastically change swinging. While a lower number makes swinging “harder,” as in you will crash or hit the ground more without game assistance, it really, really makes swinging feel better and more physical, as it’s using more physicals. I went all the way down and it felt amazing.

That’s my advice, hope you have a blast!

Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.