Does Much More Than Whatever a Spider Can

Author's Rating:

Pros:  Wildly addictive on the whole. Fighting, swinging, wall-sprinting, it’s all good!

Cons:  Not very movie-related. Cheap graphics. A bit of a button masher. No multiplayer mode.

The Bottom Line: 
I found this an insanely fun game to play and definitely worth buying. But it’s not perfect and some flaws will drive people away.

Author's Review
When I first got Spider-Man 2 as a Christmas gift, I was just off the movie’s bandwagon (I saw the DVD). I called that movie my favorite ever (I’m not sure that’s true anymore). But anyway, I found the game to be far, far better. It’s just ridiculously addictive.
Now, I rarely use the word “addictive” for video games. An addictive video game is something I get drawn into instantly and only my obsession with playing more than one video game per session can take me out of it. An addictive video game is something that I can play for what seems like five minutes but is actually half an hour. Rarely is there such a game. There’s Madden 2005, but I find it hard to label a game I lose at so frequently addictive. There’s Rayman 3, but that game isn’t deep enough. Spider-Man 2 is the perfect mixture of challenge and depth, making the addictive video game. Now I’m going to go into more depth.

STORY
Are you kidding?!? You didn’t see the movie so I have to explain the story here!? What kind of person are you…actually, if you didn’t see the movie, it’ll probably be to your benefit. The game has very, very little to do with the movie. Which makes sense: the movie wasn’t too action-oriented; it was more chick-flick than the first movie. And trust me; a chick-flick-y game will not sell much, if all. Where was I? Oh yeah, the story of this game. Basically, you have to live Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s double life as a college geek/superhero. How do you live it? By mercilessly beating up criminals, taking pictures, delivering pizza, mercilessly beating up criminals, meeting with Black Cat, mercilessly…oh, you ask who Black Cat is? She’s actually the main NPC (non-playable character) of the game: a slender girl who wears a black superhero suit that reveals a lot and has the superpower of… jumping and fighting. Anyway, she likes Spider-Man and somewhat helps him through his hard times as Mary Jane (his original girlfriend) distances herself from him as Peter Parker forgets her over and over as he fights crime. Black Cat’s something of an anti-heroine: she steals a fancy vase to give it to the cops, for example. I kind of think she and Spider-Man should have their own game: maybe she’d get her own Marvel comic!
Anyway, the main problem with the game is probably the fact that the game has quite little to do with the movie. I mean, since it’s such an open-ended game, it’s kind of expectable, but still, even movie-based events don’t even happen the way they did in the movie! Example: In the movie, Spider-Man hears of Mary Jane’s engagement to John something-or-other by going to the ceremony as Peter Parker to get pictures for The Daily Bugle. In the game, Spider-Man hears the news by looking through a rooftop window and only hearing the part about the marriage. Right then, Black Cat appears and consoles Spider-Man by taking him to fight Shocker, who never appeared in the movie! What’s going on here!? And why are Mysterio and Rhino in this game? Anyway, there’s definitely a problem with the story, but I can get past it.

GAMEPLAY
This is where the game blows all competition away. It’s just wild. Pretty much, all of your missions revolve around fighting and swinging around the Big Apple itself. Yep, you’re in New York now, and trust me, it works beautifully. Most of the buildings from reality are there (my friend was irritated that the Virgin Mobile sign building wasn’t there. I don’t know where it is, I’ve never been to NYC). Fortunately, the Empire State Building is there, which means virtually everyone who plays this game will succumb to the temptation to jump off the top in a suicide attempt. (Thank goodness the game doesn’t give you a limit on lives). All of the real district names from New York are there (I assume). I did notice there isn’t much in the way of ghettos, though. I mean, no big city is perfect, so why didn’t Activision throw in a ghetto? That’d be sweet.
So now you know where you are, but what do you do? That’s the great part. Spider-Man fights crime, right? And Grand Theft Auto III ’s open-ended-ness started a whole wave of games, right? That’s where this game comes in.
The whole point of the game is its open-endedness. Objectives are set, but you can do it any number of ways. Heck, you can even do one mission for years: you don’t need to do some of the objectives till you feel like it. So basically, this ain't your typical action game. Now, what do you do in this open-ended NYC-based game, exactly?
You web-swing around, fight crime, and save Civilians in Distress.
Web-swinging is downright exhilarating. It’s simple to do: jump, point the left stick at an anchor, hit swing, scream like you’re on a roller coaster, repeat. The anchor is a smart idea: the game feels more realistic if Spidey can’t just swing on a cloud or something. Since the game is set in skyscraper-rich NYC, it’s pretty hard not to find an anchor (as long as you’re aiming at it, which is easier than you think). You cab even hitch a ride on a chopper flying overhead (necessary to get to certain points of the game).There are cool tricks you can do with swinging: web-zip (a quick boost where the anchor doesn’t need to be higher than you) and slingshot jumping (fire two webs and catapult yourself).
Course, as awesome as web-swinging at 200+ mph is, it’s not the only way to move. You can climb up, down, and across walls easily and fairly fast. You can even sprint up those walls for a short time. You can run (but why would you?); you can jump insanely high, and a few others for you to figure out.
Then there’s fighting. Since this is New York, there are going to be criminals committing random crimes. It’s your job, as Spidey, to beat the crud out of them. How do you do that? The game has a simple attack system: square is punch, circle is dodge, and triangle is web-tie. Obviously, that doesn’t sound too powerful, so the game introduced a combo system: certain button press combos pull of more powerful tricks. Using a mix of the face buttons, you can pull off deadly tricks like the Whirlwind Kick, the Air Pile Driver, and the Stair Steps Kick. This brings up a minor flaw: some moves are virtually one-hit kills. Thus, strategy is limited once you memorize the control for the stronger attacks. However, to add strategy I guess, Treyarch (the game’s maker) made terrain a factor. For example, throwing a foe into the water instantly kills him, throwing him into a wall adds more damage, and flinging him off a building will usually kill him (stupid ground-level awnings…) It’s not bad, but they could have gone deeper. Despite the flaws, fighting is wildly fun and makes me wish there was a multiplayer mode for this game.
The final main aspect of gameplay is Civilians in Distress. As you swing around, you will notice some people with circled green question marks over their head. If you talk to them, they will send you on a mission. These missions vary from saving a construction worker who’s about to fall to foiling an ambush to destroying giant robots. They give you many Hero Points (more on that later). However, if you fail or die in the process (which is generally pretty rare), you’re docked 100 Hero Points. I think it’s a good system, but when I’m fighting (and getting killed by) the giant robots, I wish they didn’t dock points for death (but it’s fair).
Now I explain why you do this stuff. The game revolves around the concept of Hero Points. You earn Hero Points for completing missions and bonus areas (more bonuses later). You spend Hero Points at Spidey Stores, where you can buy powerful attacks, higher swing speeds, bonuses, and other doohickeys. You typically need a certain amount of Hero Points to complete chapters (levels) of the game (anywhere from 2000-50,000) and you get Awards for getting particularly high amounts of them. You can also earn them with Tokens. There are four sets of tokens to my knowledge: Buoy, Skyscraper, Hideout, and Secret. Basically, you find Buoy and Skyscraper tokens on…buoys and skyscrapers (bet you didn’t see that one coming!). Hideouts are hidden in thug hideouts and Secrets are hidden everywhere. There are a TON of these tokens; if my counting is correct, there are 377 of them. Since the game is pretty big, that’s a high total.
Other Hero Point-getters are Challenges and Hint Markers. Challenges are little spinning tokens with a star on them. When you access one, markers are thrown around areas near you. You have to go through them however you’re told to get through them. They vary from simply getting through to wall-sprinting through to orbiting around it on a web to many others. Depending on the challenge’s difficulty (Easy, Medium, Hard, Insane), you get a varying Hero Point bonus. I’m not good at most of them because I’m a better fighter than web-swinger (I tend to swing past the markers, darn it...)
Hint Markers are little green tokens with question marks. You access them and Bruce Campbell gives you a hint that you’ve probably already figured out. Then you get either 10 or 50 points, depending on what marker it is. What sets this apart from other hint-givers is that there’s 213 of them. I’ve heard a lot of cheesy hints, and I’ve only got about 80 of them!
Speaking of Awards, they are little recognitions of accomplishing certain tasks that also earn you free Hero Points. If you foil x amount of robberies, save x amount of falling construction workers, accumulate x amount of Hero Points, etc, etc, etc, you get an Award.
Spoiler Warning Now, I hate to reveal too much of the game, but to point out the game’s flaws, I must. First off, the last level is infinite: it never ends. As BRILLIANT as that is (you can beat up thugs without having to worry about any objectives!), it means that anyone with time to spare can get 100% of the game pretty quickly. The problem with that is it virtually defeats the purpose of the Awards. I mean, it’s not a great accomplishment to get 200,000 Hero Points when you have all the time in the world to get it.
(The spoiler is still in effect!) Another gameplay flaw: the Fight Arena, a bonus you can unlock. It’s wildly fun, since you beat up dozens of enemies as fast as you can. However, it leaves a big question: why wasn’t this a multiplayer mode!?!? It would be so awesome to beat up criminals to your heart’s content and try to do it faster than your buddy.
Ok, spoiler over. Now, in summary, gameplay ain’t perfect, but it’s a thrill ride nonetheless.

GRAPHICS
I am a bit disappointed here. The graphics are satisfactory, but they could have been spectacular. The whole engine doesn’t look great; it’s a bit too sharp and un-rounded and at times blocky. Spider-Man looks great, but most of the NPCs are really blocky. Heck, when civilians talk, their mouths don’t move!
Fighting graphics are ok. Every hit produces a comic-esque explosion thingy. I think Activision wanted to make the game look showy, because Spidey seems to pause with every hit. Some find it (as JiggyJay put it) herky-jerky, others will consider it like a freeze-frame. I don't care, you get used to it after a few hours (although it doesn't help the game's Game Mechanics rating).
The city on the whole is decent. None of the buildings look completely identical, but they all look a tad too smooth (there’s not much texture). They are a bit bland, though, and you can rarely go inside a building that’s not a Spidey Store. The oceans are pretty nice; at least they’re not terrible. The city looks good at night because the lights shine everywhere and you can’t usually see the bland exteriors.
The biggest graphical gripe, however, is the lazy modeling. There’s only about 8 or 9 different thugs, and after you’ve killed a few hundred, it really gets bland. Mix that in with just 5-6 different civilians, and boy, I get the feeling that this game was rushed. Treyarch could have delayed the making of the game a month or two and made this game close to perfect in every department.
SOUND
The sound is decent. Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, and Kirsten Dunst all appear as Spidey, Doc Ock, and Mary Jane, respectively, and do a decent job. Ok, most of the time, all you'll hear is Spidey, so it can get repititive, especially since I tend to fall into the water a lot hunting for Buoy tokens, and he only has about 4 lines for that situation. Mucho reptitive. Civilians have a similar problem: after you kill about half a dozen thugs, you can swing by and hear someone shout "Menace!" for the umpteenth time. Ugh.
The SFX works well. Mostly, all you'll hear is the "whack" (for lack of a better word) that sounds when you hit someone. But the whooshing from swinging and falling is great. The splashes are realistic, and so are mostly every other effect.
The music is actually decent. Activision hired a band called The Distillers to do the music, and their SFX-laden rock works well. However, it does feel weird when the music starts and stops for no good reason. But it's good situational music: when you hunt down the criminals in a gunfight, the music gets your adrenaline up. Although the Mary Jane mission music is really odd, and I'm not sure what's up with the Italian folksongs that pop up as you deliver pizza (yes I know it's an Italian restaraunt, but the music is weird!).
GAME MECHANICS
Well, I’ve already explained the fighting system and how it works. Once again, there’s a key flaw. I was trying to pull off some really strong attacks like this: punch, wait till the animation ends, kick, wait…punch, wait…, kick. Course, that wasn’t how you do that attack. Unlike other games with combo-based fighting systems like Dragonball Z Budokai 2, timing isn’t really a factor. As long as the victim isn’t blocking your attack, all you need do is press the buttons as fast as you can and watch Spidey pull the trick off. I find this cheap. A timing-based system would make it a tad harder to pull off the more devastating moves, making the game a bit more challenging.
Anyhow, here’s one very nice addition to the game: Spider Reflexes, a sort of bullet-time mode. Everything (including you) slows way down and you can see an attack coming way before the foe actually attacks. Also, you can execute more powerful attacks. This is essential to fighting some foes, but it’s also a great cinematography trick: I mean, turn on Spider Reflexes, swing, spin the camera around, and jump off. It’s awesome stuff.
Obviously, Spider Reflexes isn’t permanent. To fill up the meter that powers it, you have to do “stylish” things like dodging attacks without the mode on, pulling off air tricks, or sometimes just charging your jump all the way and letting it rip. Ok, the last one, I think, wasn’t supposed to be part of the game.
Now: the swinging system. You can go with normal swinging mode, which lets you take more control of Spidey’s swinging, or easy swinging mode, which requires fewer button presses. I prefer normal; it feels more natural. With easy, you just need to tap R2 to let a web go and hit it again when you’re done with that web. With normal, you hit R2, jump off when you’re done, and then hit R2 again. Simple enough, right? Yep, you’re right.

Overall, Spider-Man 2 is a fantastic game, but not flawless. However, if you can look past the flaws, it is a wildly fun game.
Rating: 4 ½ stars