Spider-Man 2 Is A HUGE Disappointment

5. Kraven & The Hunters Are Wasted Potential

Even now, after 100%'ing the game, mopping up every last side activity for the lols, I couldn't tell you anything meaningful about Kraven the Hunter, or the Hunters themselves.

Kraven is given the most threadbare justification for what he's doing, tucked away inside optional "Hunter Blind" combat areas, revealing that his reason for tracking various types of game, is because he's actually dying himself.

This could've been a great setup overall, but it's so literally scattered - and up against Miles' conflicting thoughts on Martin Li, or all the Peter vs. Harry stuff - that there's no time for it to breathe or land.

Gameplay-wise, you never remotely feel "hunted" whatsoever. For as much as The Hunter's titular faction are omnipresent across New York, taking up way too much screentime when it comes to random encounters, Kraven himself never once ambushes you, truly scuppers anything you had in motion, or legitimately feels like a threat.

Other than showing him waste Scorpion with his bare hands - a terrifying precedent at the beginning - he then kills Electro, Vulture and Shocker off screen, leaving you to find interactive parts of the environment to spell this out, which are easily missable.

Compared to Spider-Man 1 where we had a solid escalation of street thugs, Martin Li's men, convicts, Sable's goons and various changes to their equipment alongside, Spidey 2 has you fighting grunt-level Hunters for almost the entire game, interspersed with pockets of Sand-men and The Flame cultists, until Venom's symbiotes appear in the final couple of hours.

It's just... strange, and points to a game needing to be released in a certain calendar window, when things could've been handled more memorably.