Spider-Man 2 Review

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a man can – with a few jumps here and there and maybe a bit of web-slinging. This was the case, at least, in older gaming iterations of Spidey’s adventures. It would seem that thankfully this is no more, with the movie tie-in Spiderman 2 revealing new levels of freedom and opening up the real super powers that the arachnid super-bloke has at his disposal.

Following on from 2002’s disappointing Spiderman The Movie, Treyarch’s latest offering takes the basic template offered up by the prequel and… Well… Ditches it. You’re still Spidey, you still fight the bad guys, but that’s about it. With a new engine in use, the whole of New York City is opened up for your crime-fighting exploits and the freedom to roam as the red-and-blue hammer of justice is offered up to the player. Comparisons to the GTA series have been voiced by a number of quarters – a living, breathing city to explore and fight crime in as you see fit certainly does match the similarity that is hearkened on about. With randomly occurring crimes, hidden items to collect and challenges to complete, the resemblance certainly isn’t unfounded.

Opening with an informative tutorial, voiced by your guide and unseen companion for the game, the returning Bruce Campbell, the player is soon thrust into the thick of things and told to put their newly-learned abilities to good use, roaming the city and looking out for citizens in distress. This is when the player will notice that they are not confined to the building they are on top of. They are not confined to the street they reside on. Not the block they are on, nor the district they are in. The entire city is open to explore from the get-go and the freedom to run, jump and – most satisfying of all – glide through the air on strings of web. Thankfully the moves are easily implemented through the control scheme, which although using most of the available buttons on the pad still manages to be simple and intuitive for the player, though it does take a bit of getting used to before the more complex manoeuvres can be pulled off. Starting with a nice mix of powers, the player acquires â€hero points†by fighting criminals and completing missions, which can then be spent in shops dotted around the city to purchase new abilities. These range from superficial enhancements, such as new twirls and flips for Spidey to pull off during jumps, to all new powers and combos that he can attack enemies with – the ability to web up numerous bad guys at once, pile drivers and air combos being amongst what can be purchased. The list goes into dozens of new abilities, for ever-increasing hero point prices.

New York City is rendered very accurately – not in a way akin to The Getaway, where everything was everywhere it should be – but modelled in an accurate-but-modified-to-suit-the-game way, with buildings being suitably climbable and the larger landmarks (the Chrysler Building, Ground Zero, Lady Liberty) present and correct. Put simply – it’s massive. A mini-map is always at the bottom of the screen, helping to navigate areas in detail, with helpful markers showing distance and height in relation to the player, and a large map of the entire city is available at the push of a button, highlighting all available areas of interest – shops, challenges, mission waypoints and suchlike. The system helps the player to save themselves from frustrating levels of disorientation, and stops the city being as daunting as it could have been.

The player is first introduced to the game with a flyby of the city, and this is where one of the most glaring faults of the game first kicks up a stench – the graphics are shoddy. Now this is understandable, with the massive scale of the city and the number of cars and people needing to be rendered in real time, but there are a great number of graphical issues in the game that come across as unfinished or rushed. Hideous popup in the near distance, repetitive NPC models, lacking facial animation of any kind except for in certain cut scenes (giving characters a robot-zombie of doom look about them) and the less said about the Peter Parker model the better: he has – to be fair – around two whole frames of animation, and though the player spends little time as Spidey’s alter-ego, it is a little disconcerting that such an elegant and acrobatic superhero looks and moves like he’s made out of melted Lego when not in his costume. Though the look of the game is generally acceptable, the unfinished air about things puts a dampener on proceedings – while it isn’t on the levels of some other shoddy releases, it is still improper, even if a game does have to be released to tie in with the cinema release.

Of all three versions, the Xbox version comes out on top, with a generally sharper look, smoother frame rate and better draw-distance. While the Playstation 2 version has the slight lead over the GameCube on draw-distance, the GameCube has more detailed textures, especially in the distance. The most obvious difference is seen when you use your Spider Reflexes. On the Xbox and Playstation 2 everything will distort and bloom, almost appearing like you have set the contrast on your television too high. The GameCube version doesn’t pull this off as well, and settles for a marginally distorted image.

The faults don’t just lie in the graphics though, as the ‘freedom’ offered by the game isn’t exactly what one would expect, especially with the comparisons to GTA that Spidey 2 has been receiving. â€You’re free to do whatever you want!†they scream, â€ANYTHING!†they carry on, just before passing out from lack of oxygen. Whilst our breathless counterparts may be onto something, they are not exactly correct, and this is another area whereby the game falls short. Being a superhero, you have to fight crime and so cannot commit any naughty deeds – this is fair enough. Seeing as you can only carry out acts of good, it is a shame that the random crimes that can be solved across the city are so ferociously repetitive – the number of times a workman will be hanging for his life from a building through the game is frankly ridiculous – do they not teach people how to not fall off buildings in New York? The challenges and collectables available are things that only the most committed of players will want to pursue, as their monotonous nature will put most players off. This discredits most notions of a ‘sandbox’ game and puts Spiderman 2 in the realms of being a less limited than normal, but repetitive experience.

Fans of Spidey will be happy to know that the game doesn’t just follow the path of the movie, and includes run-ins with a number of the comic’s most popular super villains. Boss fights against Rhino, Shocker and Mysterio help the game inject fresher ideas than a straight film-to-game conversion could have, and the inclusion of Black Cat helps to differentiate the story more from the movie with the introduction of the Spidey/Cat/MJ love triangle. Doctor Octopus is, of course, the game’s main villain and manages to involve the player in some of the most frustratingly annoying battles this side of Ninja Gaiden, with his maniacal activities causing many headaches. A lot of the fighting in the game, not just in the boss fights, suffers from high irritation levels, with common street thugs being able to block Spiderman’s super-powered punches (?!) and dodging his web sprays with ease – these factors smack of artificial difficulty and don’t help the game retain fun levels, they just make for a more frustrating experience.

Overall Spiderman 2 is fun, though a repetitive and maddening game. The feel of truly being Spidey is stronger than it ever has been before and the liberation of swinging freely through the city is one that should be experienced by all, add to this the beautiful Danny Elfman musical score and voice acting carried out by the movie’s actors and you have a pleasant and generally well-presented (graphics aside) title. Nonetheless, the game is hampered by the unfinished air it puts out, and though this doesn’t detract too much from the experience, it does bring enjoyment levels down considerably in certain parts of the game. Forcing the player to collect points for the story to progress is not a recipe for fun. The game is enjoyable, especially for those who like to get 100% completion levels in their game playing experiences, and should at least be rented by fans of the movie and/or superhero. Spiderman 2 is a fantastic foundation for any future sequels, but right now it just isn’t as good as it should have been.