…And Washed The Spider Out

Author's Rating:

Pros: Superb web-slinging fun, the huge Manhattan layout, production values

Cons: Herky-jerky combat, some graphical difficulties, gets old quick, script

The Bottom Line: 
The Distillers make an appearance playing two songs--and one is the Spiderman theme. Yep, they sold out.

Author's Review
Spiderman 2 came out June 30th and up to now it has become the highest grossing movie of the summer—or even one of the highest grossing movies of the year earning almost as much as the first movie did when it came out in 2002. A game came out for the first movie by Treyarch and was published by Activision, but it was a huge mediocre game that was plagued by horrible camera angles and shortness. At least it wasn’t as bad as the first couple of games that were released by Activision years earlier. Anyway, when Spiderman 2 came out in theatres (the epic second film headed by Sam Raimi with an all-star cast from Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst) the second movie game was released and I was looking forward to it; who wouldn’t have? After seeing the polished screens, nice displays of gameplay, and other tweaks I had high hopes for the second movie game and a lot of my expectations were met, but others just fell flat on their faces.

Since the ending of the original movie/game, Peter Parker (AKA Spiderman) has been having it tough what with trying to find a job, getting low income, and totally blowing his friends off, but things change when a new villain is introduced—Doctor Octopus who tests Spiderman’s skills. Will Doc Ock defeat Spiderman or will Spidey “stick-it-to-the-man” and save the city again? When being a superhero becomes hectic, Spiderman must conjure up the courage to remain the city’s bravest protector, but at the same time he’s growing sort of tired of the same old gig. The folks at Treyarch added in more villains to fill out the plot so you can expect cameos (and boss battles) from the Rhino, Mysterio, and Shocker as well as the only worthwhile supporting character, Black Cat.

The first thing I just have to talk to you folks about is the horrid script and plot of the game. It’s based on the events of the movie, but is really only a “timeline” if you will. The game just sums up the stuff that happens in the movies. All of the cutscenes don’t delve into the characters as the movie did and the storyline is more of a Spiderman 2-lite. If you haven’t seen the movie and you play the game all of the way through then you won’t think that it’s like watching the movie because it’s not. A lot of the plot was cut out and a lot of the dialogue was trimmed down to meet the standards. I was extremely disappointed while playing the game in this light.

Spiderman 2: The Movie Game just shouts production values with its out of this world lifelike reproduction of Manhattan, which is the most stunning huge environment since Vice City. And you can travel around the whole city even swinging across the bridge to Roosevelt Island. It’s wonderful how you can wander all over the city right from the start going from Soho all the way to Times Square whenever you want seamlessly. The whole city is yours and you can spend hours just swinging through the city and finding secret areas to hang around. Swinging? What am I talking about? Are you crazy?

If you’ve never heard of Spiderman then you have truly been living under a rock for fifty-some years. Spiderman is a comic book hero who was once a nerdy kid until he was bit by a radioactive spider and received the spider’s powers like spinning webs, sticking to walls, and having superhuman strength. But with great power became great responsibility—oh, hell, you must have heard of this guy! Anyway, you play as Spiderman and you can use your skills to spin webbing and swing all around the city. Treyarch did a fabulous job with this technique of rolling through the city.

The controls in Spiderman 2: The Movie Game are basically pick-up-and-play just like the Tony Hawk or Mario games. To swing you just press R2 and you’ll throw a web to hang from and swing. It’s a simple formula that’s easy to master right from the start and with you jumping and swinging from rooftops you will get the full potential from the game. In fact, the web-slinging along is the only reason to purchase—yet alone rent—this game and if it was just by itself then the game would receive five stars. I can’t fully begin to tell you how much I like about this gameplay of swinging through the city. The developers did a great job getting things right to translate the hero’s powers into the gameplay.

It’s been a long times since I’ve been out of breath while playing a game, but imagine climbing to the very top of the Empire State building and panning around the view the whole city (which is possible) and then jumping off and watching the air pass around you while you quickly gain speed before you launch a web and swing with full force over the traffic of New York City. It’s all possible in Spiderman 2. I do that scenario about five or six times a day just to make myself feel better and I almost crap my pants every time because I’m afraid of heights. You will never grow tired of traveling around the city! Trust me. Just swinging is a blast. That’s amazing that such a simple thing could make such a huge effect.

Like Jak II before it, Spiderman 2 really takes some pages from the book of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. While traveling through the half-scale model of the city that never sleeps you’ll run into missions that you must complete. There are certain goals that you must accomplish in each chapter (there are eighteen), but alongside those then you have requests or tips brought to you by pedestrians and they report carjackings, robberies, and people falling off of buildings for you to catch. You can also deliver pizza. But there are also ones that just happen by themselves like purses being stolen, balloons being lost, thieves up to no good, and some good-old-fashioned fights between citizens. Sadly though, these missions lack depth and you’re virtually doing the same things over and over again the whole game in order to achieve hero points.

You have to obtain a whole mess of hero points before you can complete each chapter and even more if you want to go the Spidey store and purchase new skills like fighting moves, swinging speeds, tricks to do while you’re flying through the air, and web techniques. There is a good selection of things to buy with these points, but after you buy all of the fighting skills, you have to remember all of the button mashing combinations in order to win fights. I found that after buying all of the techniques I only used a couple because those were the only ones I remembered. And some of these moves are too difficult to pull off like the one where you can spin a web over an enemy and hang them from traffic lights and street lamps. I’ve always wanted to do that, but it’s hard to do in this game. Another thing that sucked about the fighting gameplay was how you virtually do not have to think in order to win a fight. All you need to do is button mash and you can easily win a fight. You don’t need any strategy whatsoever in order to beat the game and that’s a huge drag.

I guess it wouldn’t be an arguable statement if I said that Spiderman 2: The Movie Game is the best superhero adaptation out there on the market. I mean, in between playing a guy who flies through hoops the whole game or playing a dark hero who’s gadgets barely work right it’s hard to say that there are any good comic book-based games out there, but this game successfully puts you in the shoes—er, tights of Spiderman and that’s probably one of the biggest praises I can give any game. With all of the great graphics featured in The Movie Game from the huge Manhattan or from the nice rag doll physics ever to be featured in any game, there are some graphical mishaps to be seen. The Playstation 2 version pedestrian models could be higher resolution and the buildings you swing past could have been more detailed whether it be with simple textures or maybe some much needed reflection effects.

The sound in Spiderman 2: The Movie Game is total missed potential. Tobey Maguire lends his vocal chords for the game and although some of his work is really good in the game, a lot of it is just sucks. He slumps with some of the lines because they are cheesy and I found that he didn’t voice his character to his fullest potential. Bruce Campbell, who made cameos in the first two movies, provides his voice for the game’s tutorial (which is really helpful) as well as for the help icons scattered throughout the city. He has some funny lines and he’s definitely one of the best parts about the game and he’s also a total bada*s in Bubba Ho-Tep and the Evil Dead movies. Kirsten Dunst offers her voice for the game and she supplies the worst voiceover ever to be captured in a video game. Not only is she not good looking and not a good actress, but her voice is annoying and she can’t even get the job done when she’s simply reading lines. Alfred Molina, who plays Doctor Octopus in the movie, voices his character, but his lines are also pretty shallow and it just comes to show you how much talent is wasted.

James Franco, who plays Peter Parker’s friend Harry Osborne, didn’t sign on for the game and he’s replaced by a crappy actor who sounds nothing like him. Among some truly bad vocal work, you also have some truly uninspiring music—wait, what music? While you’re flying around the city there isn’t any music at all. All you have is the sounds of webs being launched and about two or three comments repeated over and over by citizens (“Go Spidey!” or “Menace!”). But sometimes the score made by Danny Elfman is triggered when special events happen, but that happens few times. His score is beautiful and I only wish that it could have been used much more in the movie and I even wish that they got that old lady from the movie to come in and sing, “Spiderman, Spiderman, Doing What A Spider Can”. Is that too much to ask, goddamn it? The game’s too silent.

The game’s critical path of storyline is short. It can probably be completed in two or three sittings easily. The things that the developers added to keep you playing the game past the expiration date are pointless. I collected all one hundred Skyscraper tokens found throughout the city hoping to maybe get a bonus costume or some scenes from the movie, but what I got was a friggin’ rank. A high score type thing. A virtual award. That sucks balls. All of the things that you can do after you beat Doctor Octopus are useless because you don’t get anything for your efforts. All I did after beating the game was just swing around the city and I did that for hours before returning it to Hollywood Video. I wish that the developers added more things to do with more variety and some rewards to get for the strenuous collecting. That would have made my day.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I found that Spiderman 2: The Movie Game pretty much sucked outside of the whole swinging around the city thing. The first five minutes of the game is incredible. You’ll thrilled when you deliver your first pizza and kick some a*s, but as the life cycle of the game winds down then you will be far more then disappointed by how much this game truly lacks. The team spent too much time on the web slinging and the design of the city and although that paid off, they should have spent equal time tuning the combat and missions. If they had done those things then the game could have easily been one of the best games on the market, but besides the web swinging this game offers nothing much. You don’t get anything new that the movie didn’t offer and you get not really superb voice acting. The game’s just a huge drag aside from the graphics and web slinging. I tell you the truth.

I have many fond memories from gaming like coming to the end of the Metal Gear Solid 2 or getting the high score on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and even when I first saw that Samus was a woman. Spiderman 2: The Movie Game can be added to that list. Even if a lot of the game sucked, but the web slinging is one of the best things ever to be done in a game. I actually felt like Spiderman as I swung through the city and that feeling alone is worth the rental. Flying through the city is more entertaining than anything else and everything in the game plays second fiddle to it. It would be an overstatement to say that the game is one of the best games of all time—because it’s not, but the web slinging is one of the coolest things ever to be captured in a game. I got the chance to play all three versions of the games although the PS2 version was the one that I played. The Xbox version is far prettier than the PS2 version and the Gamecube one, but the controls were very difficult for me and the GC version was the underdog of both games due to major graphical problems and control issues. So, what I’m saying is that the PS2 one is the best one. Yeah.

When Spiderman 3 is released in 2007 there will undoubtedly be a video game to accompany it and since I will be in my last year of high school I will probably see it and play the video game, I hope that all of the bugs in this movie game will be worked out. Despite how the original movie game got a higher score just by a little bit, this game really surpassed the older one in terms of graphical detail and gameplay and hopefully by that time the third one will have everything fixed and make that game five-star worthy. Since I first picked up this game my thoughts—like Spiderman—swung all over the place. I loved the game, but at the same time I knew that the game really lacked in a couple of places. By the time that I wrote this review I am still pretty much giving off mixed messages about the game. It’s very good with the web slinging and the game really has some good production values, but at the end of the day it just left more to be expected and I was thoroughly disappointed by it.

© Jason Haskins, 2004

“JiggyJay”




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