I bought a PS5 in early 2022 and played it enthusiastically for about four months. Then life got in the way — a new job, a house move, a relationship that required actual time and attention — and the console ended up on the shelf in the living room, occasionally dusted, never switched on. By the time I thought about it again, over a year had passed and I felt vaguely guilty about the money I'd spent on something I wasn't using.
My girlfriend Sasha suggested I either sell it or actually use it. She was right, as she usually is. The question was what to play. I'd been out of gaming long enough that I didn't know what was good anymore, and I didn't want to spend money on something that would confirm my suspicion that I'd simply grown out of it.
Why I Needed the Right Game
I'm 29, I work in financial compliance in Leeds, and my relationship with gaming has always been about escapism rather than competition. I'm not interested in online multiplayer or leaderboards. I want a world I can disappear into for a couple of hours on a Friday evening — something with a story, something that feels cinematic, something that rewards the time you put in without demanding more of it than you have.
I'd played the first Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4 years ago and loved it. The web-swinging, the open world, the way it balanced action with a genuinely engaging story. When I started looking at what was worth playing on PS5, Spider-Man 2 kept coming up as the game that best demonstrated what the console could actually do. That felt like the right place to start.
Why Spider-Man 2 Specifically
The Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for PS5 had everything I was looking for in a single package. Dual protagonists — Peter Parker and Miles Morales, each with distinct abilities — meant the gameplay would stay varied rather than becoming repetitive. A massive open world version of New York City that I could explore at my own pace. A cinematic narrative with iconic villains and genuine emotional stakes. And the PS5 hardware doing what it's supposed to do: lightning-fast load times, stunning visuals, and the haptic feedback of the DualSense controller making every web-swing and combat encounter feel physical in a way that previous generations simply couldn't.
I ordered it on a Thursday. It arrived on Saturday morning. I told Sasha I'd play for an hour to see if it was any good.
The First Session
I played for four hours. Sasha brought me a cup of tea at some point and I didn't notice until it was cold. That hadn't happened to me with a game in years.
The opening sequence sets the tone immediately: you're thrown into the action, the city is alive around you, and the web-swinging — already the best in the series — has been refined to the point where it feels genuinely effortless. Within the first hour I'd switched between Peter and Miles, encountered the first major villain, and been completely absorbed in a story that felt like a proper Marvel film rather than a game trying to be one.
The PS5 hardware makes a difference that I hadn't fully appreciated until I experienced it. The load times are essentially zero — fast travel across the city takes seconds. The visuals are the best I've seen on any console. And the haptic feedback in the controller is something you have to feel to understand: the resistance when you pull a web, the impact of a punch, the texture of different surfaces. It sounds like a gimmick. It isn't.
The Story
I won't spoil it. What I'll say is that it's better than I expected, and I expected it to be good. The writing treats both Peter and Miles as fully realised characters with genuine emotional arcs, not just vehicles for action sequences. The villain work is the best in the series. There are moments in the second half that genuinely surprised me, which is harder to achieve in a superhero story than it sounds.
I finished the main story in about fifteen hours across three weeks of Friday and Saturday evenings. Then I went back and started working through the side content, which is substantial and consistently well-made. I'm still playing it now, two months after I started.
What It Actually Did
It sounds like a lot to say that a video game changed something for me. But the honest answer is that it reminded me what gaming is actually for. Not competition, not achievement hunting, not keeping up with what everyone else is playing. Just the experience of being completely absorbed in something for a couple of hours, in a world that's been crafted with genuine care and ambition, doing something that feels joyful.
I'd forgotten that feeling. Spider-Man 2 gave it back. The PS5 has not been back on the shelf since.
Sasha has since watched me play it on three separate occasions without being asked. She doesn't play games. That, I think, is the most accurate measure of how good the storytelling is.
You'll find it in the Physical Video Games, Video Game Software, and Software collections. If your PS5 has been gathering dust, this is the game to switch it back on for.
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