Spider-Man 2

"Spider-bland"

Spider-man 2 for the Nintendo DS is one of the launch titles for Nintendo's new system. Vicarious Visions, the team famous for their Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games for Nintendo's previous handheld system the Game Boy Advance, developed the game. Vicarious Visions sure is talented, because their skateboarding games for the GBA were quite a marvel of technology and this game certainly is no slouch either. It boasts beautiful looking environments and the characters are so nicely animated. This is probably what attracted me to the title in the first place. They certainly milked what they could from the license from the summer's blockbuster popcorn flick, and used it to their advantage. However, once I started playing the game, I realized that all the eye candy and flashy graphics in the world can't save the absolutely bland gameplay in this title. The tremendous license property sure won't help either.

You see, when you first turn on the game you are treated to some Full Motion Video footage of what I believe are some of the movies from the console version of the game, which can be described as Spidey meets Grand Theft Auto. This game is certainly not like that. It is a side scrolling beat 'em up with elements of some of Spider-man's best moves thrown in a package to make it appeal to a mass audience. This could work if the right elements that make beat 'em ups fun were added into the game, but it seems Vicarious Visions didn't add them and instead wanted to focus on the awesome graphics. This game is certainly just dull and can be a royal pain to play through.

The game roughly follows Spider-man as he romps through his every day life; seems beating up random bozos with hostages are just a minor occurrence once you are bitten by a radioactive spider. He had just vanquished his former menace the Green Goblin, and he unknowingly has his best friend plotting against him. You have to couple this with the fact that he has to tend over his widowed grandmother, and the girl of his dreams he had recently turned down. This is at the same time the mad scientist/supervillian, Doctor Octopus starts terrorizing town. Yep, the movie has all the elements that make up a summer blockbuster. The game fleshes out some of the minor occurrences that plagued Spidey throughout the movies, but all of it is still just used to help the game sell copies to the mainstream gaming public.

It seems almost every level has the same objective and that is to defeat all of the enemies and rescue all of the hostages. Yep, there are a few levels and bosses thrown in that utilizes the touch screen that is supposed to be the DS's saving grace, but they are few and far between, and even they are extremely boring. The interminable objectives of the game are drawn out even after the first level. There should be many ways to beat random thugs, but the ways certainly don't vary and that adds to the monotony. You see, Spider-man certainly has a decent amount of specialized moves from his arsenal, selectable from the bottom touch screen of the Nintendo DS, but they are only unlocked through the progression of the game and even then they are kind of similar to one another. Spider-man can punch, kick, and shoot webs, and his special moves are only variations of these key things. Spider-man 2 also cashes in on another new gaming cliche, the use of bullet time (or in this case, Spidey Senses). It really doesn't offer you anything more than give you a slower view of the action, so yeah it's also barely more than worthless.

You see, there's really not much more description to the base gameplay than that. There aren't that many games out there that are quite this bland and even most movie licensed games, including the console versions of Spider-man 2, have some gameplay elements that allow them to stand out form the rest. This game has none. The way the game is designed doesn't really help either. The levels are pretty large horizontally, but that is a bad thing in this game. It prevents you from having fun beating the crap out of the thugs or enemies in your way and rescuing the hostages, and instead makes you waste the majority of your time searching for everyone to kill. Yes, the game makes it a chore for you to get every last enemy and subsequent hostage in the level. This can take a long time, and to make matters worse a number of the levels have bogus time limits that you must get them all in. They are incredibly short and unless you've played the levels several times before you know where the enemies are before you can actually muster up enough time to reach the end. They use something similar in the fact that they have ratings for when you beat the levels, apparently to boost the replay value, but you always seem to get D's or F's for the levels when you beat them and you'll have little reason to redo them. The other levels in the game are either boss fights, or crappy side-missions where you have to undo switches using the touch screen. At best they offer a mediocre diversion from the even more mediocre main game, but at worst they are just a plain pain in the ass because of the sluggish touch screen control.

While the gameplay is bland, I certainly cannot use the same word for the graphics. As I stated above I was immediately attracted to the game through them. They are not blocky polygons like those that plague most 32 and 64 bit games, but they are instead smooth and well-animated. The backgrounds are vibrant and in the city levels you can see quite far. Spider-man himself is nicely animated and all of his moves look extremely cool and appealing. In the area of graphics, Vicarious Visions certainly spent a lot of time and effort and it certainly shows. Now, if only they spent more time on better and more varied gameplay, then we might have a somewhat solid game on our hands here.

In the area of sound, it's also pretty mediocre like the game. The background music is droning and can get quite irritating if you spend enough time and actually listen to it. This is one of the games in which the background music doesn't quite matter because you zone out of it. Still some of the levels seem to have overly dramatic tones to them and that isn't good. Granted this is a launch title for the Nintendo DS and most people haven't quite mastered the sound capabilities yet. I'm certain they just added some filler music to the levels. The sound effects and voice samples aren't very good and they're not clearly heard. They often have a slight buzzing feeling about them and they seem to be very low quality. This was another area sloppily done by Vicarious Visions when making the game.

Now, if you caught the gist of this review you'll understand that this really isn't a very good game at all. You're not going to want to play it again and is certainly one of those games you'll likely want to trade-in. The only thing the developers offer up for replay is the rating system of the levels but that is unbalanced and not worthwhile to complete.

In the end, Spider-man 2 is another launch game cash-in using a major license. Vicarious Visions has certainly released some good games in the past for the Game Boy Advance and they are a perfectly competent development company for the handheld system. They truly disappointed with this mediocre game. Many people, including myself, are going to buy the game because of the nice graphics and the true lack of titles available for the Nintendo DS, in hope of getting at least a little enjoyment out of this title. Unfortunately this game does not deliver and will leave many people from fans of the DS, fans of Spider-man, and fans of beat 'em ups in general disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/05