The 10 Best Side Quests in Marvel's Spider-Man 2

10 Best Side Quests in Spider-Man 2

Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’re swinging off the beaten path to help out or friendly neighborhoods of New York.

Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t helped New York’s everyday citizens while swinging through the city.

Spider-Bots

After Ganke contacts the Spider-Men about a weird signal piggybacking off their Spider-Man signal, Peter and Miles begin to scour the city for these little robo-buddies and track down its source. Each Spider-Bot is designed after not only one of the many Spider-Men from across the multiverse, but also some other familiar faces as well. They might be a bit harder to track down than Peter's backpacks in the 2018 game as they don't appear on the map and are instead tracked down by their multicolored pulses, but the reward for finding and snagging all 43 is worth the effort. After collecting the final bot, Ganke will trace the signal to a random ally where a portal opens to a mysterious bartender who seems to know about Spidey and his counterparts. This character was cut from the recent Across the Spider-Verse movie, further tying all versions of Spidey together no matter the medium.

Cultural Museum

A large part of Miles’ character has always been his connection to not only his neighborhood but also his heritage and the side quest Cultural Museum manages to give both these elements their time to shine. After a museum has their priceless instruments stolen just before their grand opening, Miles attempts to track them down to save the museum from being shut down and finds the simple robbery goes much deeper than he expected. After rescuing the instruments and bringing all the perpetrators to justice, Miles gets to attend the grand opening night and learn the history of not only the significance of the instruments and their continued impact on music today but also the musicians themselves. The entire mission culminates in a touching moment between Miles and his mother Rio that offers a very heartwarming end to what easily could have been a standard heist side quest.

BV Club Fair

Balancing life and his responsibilities as Spider-Man, Miles is still in the early days of figuring things out and something as simple as attending a college fair becomes entangled in Miles’ balancing act. After overhearing one of the school’s teachers has gone missing, Miles is able to track her down, right as Mr. Atlas, who oversees scholarships for the college Miles desperately wants to attend, calls him to do an interview. The mission itself is fairly standard but the addition of watching Miles squirm as he attempts to deal with not only the enemies in the area but also Mr. Atlas’ questions really nails home how difficult it can be for the Spider-Men to find a perfect life/work balance.

Uncle Aaron’s Stashes

After the events of Spider-Man Miles Morales, Uncle Aaron has vowed to hang up the Prowler suit for good so he can be there for his nephew and be the role model he needs to be. However, being unable to reclaim his Prowler tech he has scattered around the city, he asks Miles to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. With each stash that Miles finds, Uncle Aaron breaks down its significance while also giving Miles glimpses into Uncle Aaron and Jefferson’s brotherly bond growing up as well as their numerous close calls as Jefferson pursued the Prowler during his criminal career. However, after finding the last Prowler stash, Miles believes his uncle might be returning to his old ways and rushes back to his apartment complex only to find his mom Rio has followed Miles’ lead and helped give Aaron a second chance by cosigning the next door apartment. Family runs deep after all.

Monster in Queens

Given the numerous types of villains Spidey has faced throughout the years, receiving a call that there’s a “monster” in a neighborhood isn’t as strange as it might initially seem. Taking up the request, Spidey finds an older blind woman complaining that some kind of monster has been terrorizing her backyard and asks Spidey to investigate. However, instead of finding a “monster”, Spidey instead finds one of Kraven’s robot dogs malfunctioning. Affectionately nicknamed “Fido” due to his coding, Spidey ends up defending the robotic pup from Kraven’s men attempting to reclaim their tech. With Fido still on the fritz, Ganke manages to reprogram Fido to be the best doggo he can be by downloading an entire internet's worth of dog videos to his programming, making him the perfect guide dog for an old blind woman with animal allergies.

Find Grandpa

Sometimes the quietest missions are the most important. After receiving a request in the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app, players will find a distraught woman whose grandfather has wandered off. While attempting to track the old man down, the woman laments how she’s been lax in her responsibilities to care for her ailing grandfather while trying to maintain her own personal life, something Spidey can relate to balancing his responsibilities as Spider-Man and his own personal life struggles. Spidey eventually finds the old man sitting on a bench and sits with him until his granddaughter arrives, listening to the old man recall his fondest memories of his life and his time with his wife and how nervous he was to propose. It’s a small side quest but also one of the most touching in the entire series.

Target Identified

One of the strangest missions the Spider-Men can pick up but one with the most surprising endings of all the side content in Spider-Man 2. What initially begins as tailing missions in which Peter or Miles must race across the city to download data on what they presume are more of Kraven’s targets, the mystery deepens further as they discover many of those on the list have been deceased for many years. With the final piece of the puzzle in hand, Spidey traces the source to an apartment where it seems the owner was expecting Kraven and had laid a trap for the famous hunter. Spidey quickly figures out this apartment belongs to the Chameleon and not only that, but that the Chameleon and Kraven are actually brothers. It’s a great twist to a standard side mission and continues to deepen the lore of Insomniac's corner of the Spidey universe.

Sandman Shards

After the outstanding opening battle against a skyscraper sized Sandman, the Spider-Men were left wondering what led Marko to go off the deep end. By tracking down numerous shard clusters scattered around the city, they would get their answer, but Marko certainly isn’t going to give up these memories willingly. Inside each crystal is a memory shard containing part of Marko’s broken psyche as well as clues to what led him to attack the city after being dormant for so long. Somehow Kraven and his hunters had tracked Marko down and captured him, but his only concern throughout everything was that his daughter Keemia was safe. As Spidey finds and releases more and more shards, Marko’s condition stabilizes, and he requests Spider-Man give his daughter the memory shards which when pieced together form a statue of Marko and his daughter. Even going clean is a struggle for many of Spidey’s rogue’s gallery.

The Flame

Yuri’s turn during 2018’s Spider-Man DLC left many fans wondering what became of Spidey’s former police force ally and in Spider-Man 2, Yuri reemerged as the anti-hero Wraith. Continuing to dish out her own brand of justice, Yuri is tracking The Flame and his doomsday cult which looks to burn the city to the ground one building at a time and demands absolute compliance from its members. As Spidey and Wraith team up to stop the cult and their plans, the stakes are significantly raised as their true agenda is revealed that they were after a piece of the symbiote Oscorp was transporting, and the pair inadvertently put it right into the hands of Cletus Kassidy who promises it will bring truth, judgment, and carnage. It’s a fantastic twist that only die-hard fans could have seen coming and will likely play a major role in the inevitable Spider-Man 3 as Yuri vows to track Cassidy down.

Howard

Players were first introduced to Howard and Pidgey in 2018’s Spidey adventure as Spider-Man had to track down all of Howard’s missing birds. Howard returned in Spider-Man Miles Morales and asked the new Spidey to track down 3 of his birds who turned out to be used to commit crimes. Guess they were jailbirds! In Spider-Man 2, fans receive a request from Howard to join him on the pier and he talks to Spider-Man about his life in New York and relives some of his most important memories with the webslinger before asking Spidey to find his pigeons a new home. Spidey obliges and brings Howards birds to a park near Aunt May’s before returning to tell Howard his birds are safe and sound, only to find Howard had passed away from natural causes and had spent his final moments with a friend and making sure his birds were safe. We’re not crying, you’re crying!