7 Hardest Spider-Man Games, Ranked

With Spider-Man being one of the most popular superheroes in all of comics, it makes sense that the character will be the focus of several video games throughout the years. This agile webspinner got his first video game all the way back in 1982 for the Atari, and he is still receiving mainstream attention on modern consoles. It is always great to take over as Peter Parker and fight some of his most famous villains as players swing through New York City. This format has been the case for most Spider-Man video games.

Unfortunately, not all of his games are a casual swing through the park. In fact, Spider-Man has featured in some truly difficult video games in the past.

7 Ultimate Spider-Man

A Cell-Shaded Trip Through The Tricky Venom Saga

Hardest Elements in Ultimate Spider-Man:

• Chasing Beetle in the overwhelming New York traffic
• Playing as Venom when he's being hunted by the military
• The final fight against Venom

The Ultimate Spider-Man game did a lot of things right in terms of allowing players to easily control both Spider-Man and Venom in this open-world action game that is based on the current run of the Ultimate Comics at the time. With a traversal system that is very close to the Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in game from the year before, players will only encounter a few difficult moments throughout this game. Chasing Beetle through New York is difficult for first-time players, and the level where Venom is being hunted by the military can get overwhelming. However, nothing in this game compares to the difficulty of the final boss fight.

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This last fight allows players to use Spider-Man to finally take on Venom in a one-on-one fight on the rooftops. Venom is tanky, and his attacks are hard to dodge, especially when he throws objects at random. Players have to use lightning-fast reflexes in this fight to finally beat this game once and for all.

6 Spider-Man

A Game That Ramps Up Its Challenges Quickly

Hardest Elements in PS1's Spider-Man:

• Defeating symbiotes as they are immune to web attacks.
• The chase sequence during the final boss fight is difficult to beat.

The Spider-Man video game for the PS1 is loosely based on the animated show from the 90s, which means a lot of the foes he normally faces are already established in this universe. This game starts out quite easily, with players having to foil a bank robbery during the tutorial and then having to deal with two easy boss fights against Scorpion and Rhino. Sadly, the difficulty ramps up when players finally encounter Venom.

Spider-Man and Venom are allies in this game, but Eddie Brock brings with him a new set of enemies called the symbiotes. These alien life forms take the form of purple blobs in this game, and they appear on many levels in the back half of this story. They are incredibly frustrating to take down, as they are immune to Spider-Man's web attacks. Add to this the fact that the final boss is a chase segment, and players will find finishing this game a frustrating task.

5 Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six

Poor Controls Let This Game Down

Hardest Elements in Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six:

• The side-scrolling control scheme doesn't go well, especially during boss fights.
• Web swinging isn't as easy as it sounds in a side-scrolling NES game.
• Boss fights take a really long, and you have to play them several times to figure out a strategy.

Putting Spider-Man in a video game where he has to fight some of his most dangerous villains seems like a winning idea. Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is a side-scrolling NES game that sees Spider-Man having to take on each member of the Sinister Six one at a time. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds.

The c ontrol scheme makes it very hard for players to engage with each boss fight. Just figuring out how to webswing is one of the biggest challenges in this game. Then, each boss fight takes an age to finish, as the method needed to defeat each villain is poorly telegraphed. Players will die over and over again before they figure out what to do to progress, rather than through failing to dodge enemy attacks.

4 Amazing Spider-Man 2

Progressing Is Hard When The Game Punishes Players For Having Fun

Hardest Elements in The Amazing Spider-Man 2:

• Players can't ignore the crimes that appear on the map. You'll get attacked by drones if you do.
• You have to constantly fight the drones or complete every random crime that you come across.

Interestingly, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 tie-in video game deviates from the plot of the movie to tell its own story. This story focuses on Spider-Man trying to stop the Carnage Killer while also being mentored by Kraven the Hunter. Everything in this game is fairly standard for a Spider-Man adventure, except for one feature.

Traversal should be fun in an open-world game like this, but stopping to see the sights is not a possibility in Amazing Spider-Man 2, no matter how smooth the web swinging is. The developers decided to include a mechanic that sees drones come out to attack the player if they fail to address the random crimes that appear on the map. As such, players are stuck in a difficult loop of fighting off waves of drones or trying to stop every crime they come across. All this happens before players even get to finish the main story.

3 Spider-Man 2 (PC)

A Port That Adds An Unnecessary Challenge

Hardest Elements in Spider-Man 2 (PC):

• Players have to manually web-swing by pointing the cursor at a structure.
• This gameplay mechanic makes web swinging incredibly difficult, especially during fights.

Spider-Man 2 for consoles is a highly regarded video game that is based on the movie of the same name. Many players praise this game for finally getting the web swinging mechanics right, so playing as Spider-Man in an open-world game is both fun and simple. Unfortunately, the PC port of the same game did not take any of these notes.

Instead of including the fluid, automatic web-swinging that allowed the player to swing around the city so long as there was something for the web to connect to, the PC version of Spider-Man 2 used a manual approach. Players have to use the cursor to point at something they want to swing from every time they want to move around the map. This mechanic makes traversal boring, and the entire game more difficult as a result.

2 Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety

An Old Beat-Em-Up With Too Many Enemies

Hardest Elements in Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety:

• An overwhelming number of enemies appear in front of players.
• The hit detection isn't as smooth and efficient as it should have been.

Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety is the sequel to the highly popular side-scrolling beat-em-up video game, Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage. The idea behind the first game was simple. Players could use either Spider-Man or Venom to walk the streets of New York and fight off the waves of enemies on the screen. Therefore, following up on this game should have been simple.

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Sadly, the developers overdid things on the enemy front in Separation Anxiety. Too many enemies flood the screen at once to make it difficult for the player to cope. Plus, the poor hit detection and the fact that both Spider-Man and Venom play exactly the same means there is little players can do to overcome this gaming challenge.

1 Spider-Man 2 (New Game Plus)

A Game Designed To Be A Challenge

Hardest Elements in Spider-Man 2 (New Game Plus):

• The enemies, including Kraven's goons, have more health.
• Spider-Man's spider sense is reduced, so players will get beaten a lot.
• The final boss fight against Venom is way more difficult than it was during the first playthrough.

The latest update to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for the PS5 has given players the chance to start the game again in New Game Plus. This new version of the story mode is a much more difficult version of the original game, one that should not be attempted by new players. Enemies have more health, and the reaction times on Spider-Man's spider-sense are reduced.

As a result, some of the more difficult aspects in Spider-Man 2's main story now require a lot more skill from the player. The final Venom boss fight is particularly frustrating, with his ability to cover the entire arena in black sludge, and taking out the waves of Kraven's goons is a bit more of a slog this time around. However, it is all designed for the player to have in this new challenging version of the game.

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