Spider-Man 2

"Spider-Man 2 takes the movie plot and expands on it incredibly."

It's an amazing thing how much terror a movie based game inspires in both gamers and movie fans alike. The incredibly low quality of the majority of these games has made this a well deserved reputation. So when there is a very good movie based video game it usually comes as a huge surprise. The first Spider-man game for the PS One was actually a good game, so even thought this was a movie based game, I had high hopes for it. Luckily, I wasn't disappointed.

The story for this game takes the basic storyline from the movie and weaves another story around it. The basic premise is the same: You control Peter Parker, the famous Spider-Man, and you must stop the crime spree from the emerging villain Doctor Octopus. However, as this goes on a number of other villains will rear their ugly heads, as well as nobody criminals taking advantage of the chaos in the city. As the webbed wonder you must stop all of these criminals in their tracks.

I am incredibly happy to say that the gameplay for this game is as awesome as it gets. You can web-swing around the city with the greatest of ease, climb up walls and do some fun acrobatics all over the city. All of this is actually very easy to do and it comes naturally with some practice. There are even a number of unlockables moves and a number of awesome web swinging stunts you can pull off. All in all this makes the game an incredible amount of fun.

However, the combat feels a bit loose and even somewhat spastic. Spider-Man has a number of combo's at his disposal, but they all feel kind of similar. I personally found myself using only a few of these combo's over and over because they were easy for me to do and they took out the enemies quite easily. There are some web abilities you can use to stun enemies, damage them or even cocoon them. Moves such as these let you pick apart groups of enemies and fight them one at a time. However, all of the options in the world don't stop the combat from being repetitive and they get really repetitive.

Another thing that gets repetitive are side missions that you can do. There are only so many times that you can carry a citizen to a hospital or break up a money truck robbery. They are nice ways to build up your characters abilities and get used to the game, but they grow kind of tired feeling after awhile. But seeing as how these are simply diversions from the main game it feels acceptable to deal with this repetition.

Graphically, this game is only a little bit better than other free roaming games, such as GTA: Vice City. Spider-Man and the main villains all look great, but the city itself feels kind of flat and the pedestrians are all very generic and bland looking. That's not to say that there is no incredible sense of scale when you are climbing up buildings, and my girlfriend complained of vertigo many times while I was playing, but the actual textures feel pretty bland.

The audio in this game is quite good however. It seems as if all of the actors in the movie tossed their hats into the game and lend their voices to their respective characters. They even have Bruce Campbell acting as the narrator and the tutorials. That is so incredibly cool! Many of the sound effects for this game are a blast to listen to and the sounds of the big city are all here.

Overall, it's very clear to me that they were trying to not overdo the graphics but not simply to cut costs. I figure that they were simply trying to avoid slow-down while you are web-swinging across the city and fighting bad guys. This is understandable and if it was a trade off between graphics and the free roaming around the city, then I'll take the merely okay graphics anyday.

Spider-Man 2 is a phenomenal game, which is made twice as impressive by the fact that it is a movie based game. I am incredibly fond of this game and I don't really think I can praise the developers quite enough for what they have managed to do. They took two parts web-head and one part GTA and somehow managed to make this really awesome game out of it. I honestly didn't think it could be done, especially as I am not a fan of this genre of games, but they sure blew it out the water with this one.

Pros: You really get to feel like you are Spider-man, it's a huge blast to climb some of the skyscrapers and it's a huge blast to free roam all over the city.

Cons: The combat system was a bit spastic and some of the boss battles were annoying.

Score: 9

Recommendation: This game is a definite must own if you like either Spider-man or free-roaming action games.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/07