The best Spider-Man video games are led by Insomniac Games’ PlayStation trilogy — Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018), Miles Morales (2020), and Spider-Man 2 (2023) — followed by 2004’s movie tie-in Spider-Man 2, which pioneered physics-based web-swinging, and Treyarch’s Ultimate Spider-Man (2005). Metacritic scores across the franchise range from the high 60s to a series-best 90.
Last updated September 3, 2026.
Spider-Man has had more video games made about him than almost any other superhero, and the quality gap between the best and worst of them is enormous. This ranking covers eight games with a real, verifiable case for a spot: Insomniac Games’ three PlayStation entries, the PS2-era games that built the template Insomniac inherited, and the two Beenox titles that kept the franchise alive between console generations. Every score below comes from each game’s own live Metacritic page, checked individually rather than pulled from a franchise-wide summary.
Spider-Man Video Games Compared
A side-by-side view of where each game landed critically, who made it, and where you can still play it. Scores are the lead-platform Metascore as of September 2026; several of these games shipped on three or more platforms with slightly different scores on each, which is broken out in the write-up below.
| Game | Year | Developer | Metacritic | Platform(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 | 2023 | Insomniac Games | 90 (PS5) | PS5, PC |
| Marvel’s Spider-Man | 2018 | Insomniac Games | 87 (PS4) | PS4, PC, PS5 (Remastered) |
| Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales | 2020 | Insomniac Games | 85 (PS5) | PS4, PS5, PC |
| Spider-Man 2 | 2004 | Treyarch | 83 (Xbox) / 80 (PS2, GameCube) | PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC, GBA |
| Ultimate Spider-Man | 2005 | Treyarch | 77 (Xbox) / 74 (PS2) | PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC |
| Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions | 2010 | Beenox | 76 (Xbox 360) / 74 (PS3) | PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC |
| The Amazing Spider-Man | 2012 | Beenox | 71 (PS3) / 69 (Xbox 360) | PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, PC, 3DS |
| Spider-Man: Web of Shadows | 2008 | Shaba Games (w/ Treyarch) | 68 (Xbox 360) / 67 (PS3) | PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, PS2, DS |
The Full Ranking
1. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023) — Metacritic: 90 (PS5)
Insomniac Games’ third PlayStation entry is the highest-rated Spider-Man game ever made at 90 on Metacritic, and the highest-rated PlayStation Studios game at the time of release. It splits the story between Peter Parker and Miles Morales, adds the symbiote suit and Venom, and layers a web-wing glide and faster swing arc onto the traversal system the studio had already spent two games refining. Sony Interactive Entertainment announced on October 23, 2023 that the game sold through more than 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios launch in PlayStation history; by Sony’s May 2024 financial results briefing, the game had topped 11 million units sold. Insomniac is now working through a wider Marvel slate off the back of this trilogy — see our breakdown of Marvel’s Wolverine’s age rating and gore and the confirmed footage from the Marvel’s Iron Man trailer leak.
2. Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) — Metacritic: 87 (PS4)
The game that re-established Spider-Man as a system-driven open-world lead rather than a movie tie-in. Insomniac’s own account of building it is well documented: game director Ryan Smith told Shacknews the studio’s goal was explicit about what the swinging needed to feel like: “We wanted to make sure that the swinging worked great. We wanted to make sure that it felt like you were swinging and never felt like flying. We wanted to feel that arc of the pendulum and how it really pulled on you.” That pendulum-first philosophy, plus a combat system borrowed from the Batman: Arkham school of free-flow fighting, is the reason the game holds up structurally seven years later even as the visuals have been superseded by its own sequels.
3. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020) — Metacritic: 85 (PS5)
A shorter, standalone expansion-scale game built for the PS5 launch window rather than a full sequel, and it is ranked on its own merits rather than as a footnote to 2018’s game. Miles’s bio-electric Venom powers gave Insomniac a second combat identity to design around, and a wintertime Harlem redress of the map kept the traversal fresh without the budget of an entirely new open world. It is the shortest game on this list and the most replayed for combat-challenge completionists, which is part of why it still rates a full point ahead of anything made before 2018.
4. Spider-Man 2 (2004) — Metacritic: 83 (Xbox) / 80 (PS2, GameCube)
The movie tie-in that the rest of this list keeps getting measured against. Treyarch designer Jamie Fristrom, unhappy with the fixed web-swinging in the 2002 game, built a system that used ray casting to find real anchor points on buildings so every swing attached to an actual surface instead of an invisible ceiling — the same physics-first principle Ryan Smith described building toward 16 years later. Its open-world design took a direct cue from Grand Theft Auto III, and it is the earliest Spider-Man game still widely cited by critics and by the developers who came after it as the series’ formal starting point for open-world Manhattan.
5. Ultimate Spider-Man (2005) — Metacritic: 77 (Xbox) / 74 (PS2)
Also Treyarch, and often confused with Spider-Man 2 because it shipped the following year on the same hardware, but it is a different game with a different mission: a cel-shaded adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man comic, told through panel-style cutscenes that mimicked a comic page turning rather than full-motion cinematics. Traded some open-world scope for that art direction and for playable Venom sections, and scored lower than its predecessor as a result — but it remains the series’ clearest attempt to make a game look and read like the comic it was adapting, rather than the movie.
6. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (2010) — Metacritic: 76 (Xbox 360) / 74 (PS3)
Beenox’s first Spider-Man game after taking over the license from Treyarch, and a deliberate change of format: four self-contained, level-based worlds instead of one open city, each starring a different Spider-Man variant (Amazing, Noir, 2099, and the symbiote-suited Ultimate). Trading the open world for hand-built levels meant no free-roam swinging city to explore, which is the main reason it sits below the sandbox-style entries on this list despite strong reviews for its combat variety and voice cast.
7. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) — Metacritic: 71 (PS3) / 69 (Xbox 360)
Beenox’s follow-up returned to an open Manhattan for the first time since Web of Shadows, tied loosely to the Marc Webb film but built as its own story rather than a level-by-level movie retread. Its standout addition was Web Rush, a slow-motion targeting system that let players chain traversal moves and combat takedowns from the same menu. Reviews were mixed rather than bad, and it is a clear step up from the games below it — the gap between this and its own 2014 sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Metacritic 49 on PS4), is one of the steepest quality drops anywhere in the franchise.
8. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008) — Metacritic: 68 (Xbox 360) / 67 (PS3)
Developed by Shaba Games with Treyarch assisting on production, not a solo Treyarch game as some franchise round-ups list it. Its hook was a red-suit/black-suit morality system: symbiote powers hit harder but drained the city’s opinion of Spider-Man, and the choice changed which allies and boss fights showed up later. The open-world New York was bigger than anything before it, but Venom-symbiote traversal and combat overshadowed the swinging itself, which is a large part of why it scores lowest of the eight games with a real open world on this list.
How the Swinging Physics Track With the Scores
Line the eight scores up against how each game actually implements web-swinging and a pattern holds across 20 years of releases: every game built around physics-anchored, pendulum-based swinging as its core traversal system outscores every game that treated swinging as one traversal option among several. Spider-Man 2 (2004) introduced ray-cast anchor points specifically so every web had to attach to a real surface; Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) was built, in Ryan Smith’s own words, to feel like swinging rather than flying. Both lead their console generations on Metacritic. By contrast, the three games that scored below 80 — Shattered Dimensions, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Web of Shadows — are the three that spend the most design attention on something other than the swing itself: level-based dimension-hopping, Web Rush’s combat targeting, and symbiote combat powers, respectively. None of that makes those games bad, but it is a consistent, checkable pattern rather than a coincidence: when a Spider-Man game’s central mechanical identity is the swing, it rates higher than when the swing is supporting cast to something else.
Honorable Mentions
Spider-Man: Edge of Time (2011), Beenox’s follow-up to Shattered Dimensions, swapped that game’s four open dimensions for a linear, puzzle-driven time-travel structure and scored notably lower (57 on Xbox 360), which is why it isn’t ranked above as its own entry. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) is the franchise’s clearest low point at 49 on PS4, rushed out alongside its film with barely any connection to the movie’s plot. Free-to-play mobile Spider-Man games are excluded entirely: none of them carry a critic score or a design case substantial enough to rank against a console release. If you’re also tracking Marvel’s other current games, our Marvel Rivals season 10 coverage runs down what’s changing in the hero shooter side of Marvel gaming.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the highest-rated Spider-Man video game?
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023) is the highest-rated entry, at 90 on Metacritic for the PS5 version as of September 2026, based on 145 critic reviews.
Which Spider-Man game invented modern web-swinging?
Spider-Man 2 (2004), developed by Treyarch for the movie tie-in, is widely credited as the first game to use physics-based, ray-cast web attachment points instead of scripted swinging. Its designer, Jamie Fristrom, built the system specifically to require a real anchor point on a building for every swing, and later games including Insomniac’s trilogy followed the same core principle.
Are Marvel’s Spider-Man and Miles Morales the same game?
No. Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020) are separate releases from Insomniac Games. Miles Morales is a shorter, standalone game built for the PS5 launch window with its own story, map redress, and combat powers, not an expansion pack for the 2018 game.
How well did Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sell?
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced on October 23, 2023 that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sold through more than 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios launch in PlayStation history. Sony’s May 2024 financial results briefing put lifetime sales at over 11 million units.
Who developed Spider-Man: Web of Shadows?
Shaba Games developed the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Wii versions of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (2008), with Treyarch assisting; the PS2 and PSP versions were developed separately by Amaze Entertainment. It is often misattributed as a solo Treyarch game.
