With two playable Spider-Men in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, some probably assumed that the game might have had cooperative play at some point. However, that’s not the case, as Spider-Man 2 co-op was never an option according to Insomniac Games.
Spider-Man 2 was always considered a single-player game
As stated in an feature about the game on The Washington Post, the outlet noted that co-op was “never on the table” for Spider-Man 2 after speaking with creative director Bryan Intihar. Intihar explained how the studio was always considering the sequel to be a solo title and talked about the initial difficulties that would have come from having to design a cooperative game.
“From day one, we always said we wanted to make a single-player experience,” said Intihar. “There’s a lot of great co-op games out there, but we wanted to tell the experience of two spider heroes. You have to make some big decisions, whether it’s design decisions, tech decisions for something like co-op.”
Telling a story about two heroes naturally explains why the game has character switching, which Insomniac has already talked about. Regardless, it’s still a bit of an outlier consider other comic book games. Given how some superhero titles have gone down the co-op route like Marvel’s Avengers, Gotham Knights, and the perpetually delayed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it wouldn’t have been too surprising if Insomniac had followed that lead.