Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s Hunter Drones are the First Step Toward an Iconic Villain Faction

Highlights

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 introduced Kraven and his hunter faction, including autonomous robot animals, adding an interesting twist to the game’s enemy lineup.
• The hunter robots used by the hunters in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 provided a new level of enemy diversity, especially in stealth gameplay, challenging players in different ways.
• The introduction of the hunter drones paves the way for Insomniac to potentially reinterpret them as spider-slayers in Marvel’s Spider-Man 3, offering new combat and stealth possibilities in the franchise.

Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man has always had twists that are revitalizing in its original continuity, though the original never shied away from basically laying out what fans could expect in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Miles’ half-sequel was an abridged tale separate from any Peter woes and was essentially a standalone game, but both titles gave hefty teases about the symbiote’s role in the eventual full-fledged sequel. Kraven was completely unprecedented until his voice was revealed in the sequel’s initial teaser reveal, though, and the next time the game appeared it revealed Kraven and his hunters in full.

Players got to see precisely what this new Marvel’s Spider-Man enemy faction looks like, complete with crossbows and autonomous robot animals. This was an interesting point of concern since Kraven commonly works by his lonesome and enjoys the challenge of hunting prey himself, meaning that now it was technically his army of mercenaries doing the hunting for him. Either way, the drone enemies the hunters employ are easily the most intriguing part of Kraven’s arsenal, and while the hunters may not be around anymore, there is great utility Insomniac could find with these drones in Marvel’s Spider-Man 3.

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Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 with Spider-Slayers is a Layup Now

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s Drones Made for Great Enemy Diversity

In stealth more than anything, these animal drones offered Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 a ton of enemy diversity. Stealth became layered when players could no longer reliably resort to the scaffolding above to gradually pick off enemies since bird drones would now be patrolling back and forth. That said, stealth still isn’t terribly challenging if players take a bit of time to spin a spider’s nest of web lines to perch from and get overtop of these bird drones before subduing anyone else. Likewise, bird drones can be instantly and silently taken out with zip-kick web strikes.

The hunter dogs, on the other hand, add a bit of nuance to combat because they can activate a jammer that negates the player’s abilities as well as leap at the player and put them in a button-mashing sequence to escape their robotic jaws. Hunter dogs and hunter birds don’t spam attacks on the player as incessantly as some human hunters will, either, which makes them a refreshing enemy type to see in Kraven’s faction. If Insomniac wanted, these robots would easily fit into a third game as repurposed spider-slayer tech.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 Can Reinterpret Drones as Spider-Slayers

Alistair Smythe and his spider-slayer inventions are a niche villain and enemy faction nowadays, but Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 paves a path for them to have a unique place in the franchise. Spider-slayer robots had their most prominent video game appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man, where they were also created by Smythe, and they were popular there too because slayer robots work so well in games as an enemy faction. Not only is there an infinite amount that can be manufactured from a logistics standpoint—rather than the infinite number of militia goons commonly employed in superhero games—but they can also be obliterated carelessly since they’re not human enemies.

Like in The Amazing Spider-Man or even Spider-Man (2002), slayer robots are usually the best when they are designed to look and behave like spiders or arachnids due to the parallels that are created between them and Spider-Man. It would be neat to see Smythe take the scattered remains of Kraven’s drone tech and create slayers from them, adding to their diversity in combat and stealth and even creating gigantic robots for Spider-Man to contend with, though an original take would also be appreciated to not have it rub too closely to The Amazing Spider-Man and other iconic spider-slayer interpretations.