Spiderman 2

PS2/GC/Xbox

Activision - 2004

Remember those great games called Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1-4? Well, remember who made those games? The boys (and perhaps girl) of Neversoft. Today (well not actually today, technically June 29th, 2004) they brought us perfection in a box. Yes I'm talking about the Spiderman 2 game. A brilliant attempt at GTA-esque fun. FUN. FUN! Go get yourself a copy today, I guarantee it.

Alright, let me start over. The game is not perfect. Nor does it claim to be. For anyone who has actually seen the movie, watching the plot in the videogame is like taking a preliminary script of the movie, putting it in Alta-Vista translator, translating into German, then back into English. Then using that script. Every plot-event in the movie happens here, just in different places, and with the wrong dialogue. Like (SPOILER) Harry tells Doc Ock that he wants Tritinium, when Harry should have no idea that's what OCk wants. (/SPOILER). But I'll live with that because they actually got Toby Maguire to do every line of Spiderman, which there are a lot of. Sure he interacts with every person he sees, but he does only have about 5 contrived lines for them, but Toby did it all! (Unlike a certain Jean Reno who did only the opening and closing in a certain Capcom game... Ok, Onimusha 3.)

Alright, so let us talk about what makes this game good. Swinging from the rooftops/ This game made an actual representation to scale of Manhatten. I checked. Sure the buildings are not exactly right, as they don't actually say what they are, and there are a lot less people and cars everywhere, but it is TO SCALE. So Spiderman can swing from one end of the city to the other WITH NO LOAD TIMES. What more do you want? I was determined not to actually play the game, just wander the city, swinging, which is my favorite part of the movies, Spidey swinging, and now you can do it yourself.

Add to that there are random crimes happening you can stop, you can ask people what problems are happening and help them, and YOU HAVE NO TIME LIMIT. Which means you can play forever before continuing the plot. Just like GTA.

Problems though. There are some. No game is perfect. The problems don't really bother me a lot though. Problem one. The map sucks. It is cool that it is 3-D and zooms out of Spidey and back to him, and there are different sizes, but you get lost so often in this game, and the largest size does not fit the whole map, which causes you to not be able to find what you are looking for until you wander one direction enough to see the edge of the island.

The music score is, well, non-existant. They have one, perhaps 2 songs that play randomly. There will be complete silence in the city, then in the middle of a swing it cuts to dramatic music, and one wonders what they just did to start the music. Music in other games means (and I'm thinking Resident Evil) that something bad happened. In this game, it means the music program forgot to load earlier and just got off lunch break. Also, the voices. Besides Toby, Kirsten Dunst, and Alfred Molina, and especially Bruce Campbell, the voices are horrible. But it is acceptable I guess because they spent a bunch of money on their celebrity voices. But there are no subtitles on the game, so you have to leave the volume on to understand what the people want you to do, which sucks because there is no music in the game, so you have to provide your own soundtrack and mute it at parts.

Here is a tip for the sequel: Add an I-Pod feature. Music plays to Spidey via a walkman he carries, so you can have great music like GTA-Vice City, or even add your own via XBox's thing-that-adds-music. That would add soo much to the game.

Another problem is the faces of the people, doc Octogon (an ode to Neidel), Mary Jane and sometimes even Peter don't look ANYTHING like their respective actors. J.J. Jameson did, but I suppose that's a bit easier to do than MJ, but she just looked AWFUL.

Oh yeah. I should mention the webswining. It is overhauled and amazing. You actually stick a web to a building, so if there are no buildings nearby, you can't swing a web. Makes central park suck a lot. But it also makes the game feel really real.

Lastly, another tip: For the next game, add random supervillains running around town, like Rhino, Puma, Kraven, Scorpion, Vulture, Electro, Owl, and so on (yes I love Spiderman comics) just robbing banks, and you can stop them. Later they will escape prison and be terrorizing the town some more. It would make replay value much longer if they continued to terrorize, even if they did the same thing every time, since of course that is what they do in every comic.

What liked: Spidey Sense to dodge attacks. Swinging around the city. Hanging thiefs from lampposts! The Distiller's Spiderman Theme cover!

What disliked: Short game. The map. No real music.

What to expect: A very very slutty Black Cat. GTA with webswinging. Lots and lots of hidden things to find (we actually think they lie about the amount of stuff you can find. 213 hint markers? I've found 87 and can't find anymore. They lie.)

What not to expect: No skateboard or extra costumes or characters...

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: It is GTA with webswinging. That's enough for me.

Ratings on:

Control: 8 - Great. Sometimes I get pissed, but I think it is my fault, the fighting system is very deep and I can't never remember all those combos.

Graphics: 8 - Great spiderman, silly looking faces of people. Amazing that they made the entire city, but it sucks when you look at actual faces. I'll give it an 8 for just graphical amazingness and a very pretty and fluid Spiderman, and a very sexxxy Black Cat.

Sound: 5 - I'm torn. The voices of Toby and such are great, the voices of the other people are awful. I dropped points for the lack of a real soundtrack.

Style: 5 - Really it is GTA as Spiderman. But swinging is just so amazing that I have to give it some points there.

1st hour: 10 - Swinging is fun!

5th hour: 10 - I'm gonna continue to swing for years.

1st week: 10 - Wait, there are swinging upgrades, so I can swing faster and higher? Wow.

5th week: 10 - Beat the game, trying to collect all the hidden stuff. Swinging still rules.

#1 reason why I hate this game: I want to hear the Distiller's theme for more than just the credits. I beat the game just for the theme. Now release it on MP3.com so I can listen to it always.

by Hawke