With so much to keep track of in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, from your abilities to your Gadgets to whatever a Surge Meter is, filling your Focus bar can easily go unnoticed as you get used to new mechanics.
It’s essential for any web-slinging superhero, as it’s the sole means of healing yourself you’ll have access to for the duration of the game, but the actual act of filling it can often be a bit difficult.
Once you know what specific actions grant you Focus and how to maximize those Focus gains, however, you’ll never be without some quick healing when you need it.
How do you get Focus in Spider-Man 2?
Given just how important Focus is in Spider-Man 2, it makes sense that you’re constantly given opportunities to replenish it. The game itself somewhat nebulously explains that you can regain Focus by “attacking and defending,” but what specifically does that actually mean?
In practice, you’ll gain a little bit of Focus from basic attacks (pressing the Square button), Web-Strikes, Stealth Takedowns, and using abilities. You’ll also regain a similarly paltry amount of Focus by employing either of your two defensive options, Dodging and Parrying. As you’ll be doing this quite a lot, especially in any of the game’s long boss fights (Why does Wraith have three health bars without any superpowers?), just staying on your toes and responding appropriately to the combat scenarios you find yourself in should be more than enough to maintain a steady supply of Focus.
Note that you can only heal with a full Focus bar this time around, unlike the previous two games, meaning death is always closer at hand than it may seem. If you’re taking a lot of damage, it may not be viable to wait around until you have a full Focus bar on hand.
With this in mind, it may also be worth it to dip into the many Suit Tech upgrades available to both Spider-Men, which vastly expand both the utility of Focus and the means to replenish it. The Focus upgrade path will double and eventually triple the supply of Focus you have access to, meaning you can heal and execute Finishers far more often, but you can also augment your Focus gains by picking up upgrades like Webbed Focus and Focused Strike, which will increase the amount of Focus you gain from certain situational actions (like executing aerial attacks). The only problem here is the ever-increasing resource requirements for Suit Tech upgrades that will likely keep you grinding out Tech Parts for the duration of the game.
With all this in mind, you should have no difficulty tearing through New York’s criminal underworld… as long as those crimes don’t disappear right out from under you first.
