As a little kid, as a huge fan of Spider-Man. I watched every episode of the 90s cartoon, played through a lot of Spider-Man video games, and even read some of the original comics. And even though my fanboy-ism of the webslinger has died down a little, I can still enjoy watching the movies. Today, we’re talking about Spider-Man 2 for the Playstation 2. I played this game a ton when I was little, and I loved it so much... Now after a couple of years later, I came back to it, and let me tell you it’s just as good as it was back then. No Spider-Man game has been able to top this one yet.

The Graphics

I really like what I’m seeing. New York is quite accurately rendered, and the people animations are done well. The environment is huge and without loading times, and the game has these very good-looking CGI cutscenes here and there. But at other times, the game looks a little ugly. The movement animations are a little stiff, and the mouths of pedestrians don’t even move when they’re talking. No voice-sync? Whoa. Games managed to involve lip movement since the 90s... What’s more traffic sometimes doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing. You might probably find a taxi driving along the sidewalk. I didn’t knew Jason Statham was in this game as well... But at least the ragdoll physics are fun!

The Sound

Spider-Man 2’s a little less impressive in terms of sound. The music is sparse, and not very memorable; most of the voice acting -be it from the main cast and random pedestrians- is mostly stale even though it’s great that the main cast is actually voiced by the main cast from the movie. Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, Kirsten Dunst etc. All lend their voice to their respective character. Even though Alfred Molina is the only one who does a decent job as a voice actor... But then there is Bruce Campbell, who acts as a narrator, and a ‘mentor’, to tell you neat little things about the game, and trivia about Spider-Man himself. Bruce Campbell, even though he’s sometimes annoying, is undeniably funny and witty, and his performance makes up for a lot of the laughable voice acting of the rest of the game. Once again, aside from Alfred Molina’s job as Doc Ock. He still does a decent job. There’s a small bug in the SFX though, if you jump, Spider-Man repeats the moan he lets out about four times after each other. But that’s barely even worth mentioning, really. What I like as well, is that every once in a while when you’re swinging close to the ground, you can hear the people either cheering at you to “Go get them, Spider-Man!!”, or telling you to “Get a job!!”. Every random pedestrians basically has the same lines to say, but these lines are pretty varied to avoid making it sound repetitive.

The Addictiveness

Well, you’re probably familiar with achievements or trophies, and how people are so addicted about them. Well, this game features an award system, which awards you with a certain title every time you accomplish a certain feat in the game. That’s always fun for the completionists among us. As with a lot of games, once you manage to get a little far, Spider-Man 2 will get madly addictive. At any moment you desire, you can free roam the city to your heart’s content, quite literally doing almost anything a spider can. You can do various missions which always involves saving people. Or... giving a little kid their balloon back after they managed to let it fly away... And this happens randomly, in real-time. It could happen at any time. What would you do? Assist a couple of officers who are in the midst of a shootout, or giving a kid their balloon back who they were dumb enough to let go of in the first place? I’d choose the kid’s balloon over the police officers any day. I’m such a great person who sets his priorities straight...

The Story

The story is basically the story of Spider-Man 2. A brilliant scientist’s experiment’s gone wrong, causing the death of his wife, the scientist blames Spider-Man for his wife’s death and vows to kill him. Meanwhile, Peter Parker has to deal with keeping a fair balance between his private life with his friends Harry and Mary Jane and his superhero life as Spider-Man, but the plot in the game barely focuses on that aspect of the story, which I’m not too fond of seeing as that’s what I always liked about Spider-Man; it’s the thing that set Spider-Man apart from the other superheroes. It made him the most sympathetic, the most ‘human’. But aside from the small part where it is announced that Mary Jane is getting married, the game never focuses on that aspect of the story, which is a pity. Also, in the movie, Peter Parker loses his confidence as a hero, making him lose his powers. This was one of the best things about the movie. And you never see anything of it in the game. Total bummer, dude. Instead, the game throws in a couple of sub-plots with a handful of supervillains like Rhino, Shocker and Mysterio, but only Shocker’s sub-plot is slightly interesting with Black Cat’s involvement. Spider-Man 2 is not a game you play for the plot.

The Depth

Even though most of what’s here is fun, there’s not that much to do in Spider-Man 2, which could lead to repetitiveness. Like I mentioned in the Addictiveness paragraph, you can free roam through the city to your heart’s content, where you can explore a fairly accurate New York City. Here, you will notice these green questions marks over people’s heads. These people will tell you of dangerous events which ranges from a carjacking, to a sinking boat with people on it, or a construction worker who might fall to his demise from his broken scaffolding  twenty stories up. It’s up to you to rescue these guys and save the day! Or not. You could just not do it. There also purple dots present called ‘Petty Crimes’, which is basically the same thing, but there’s no one telling you about it. These often involve muggings in dark alleys, breaking and entering, and like I said the kid who let go of their balloon. You can also do various races and trick runs, but that’s not really fun. As for the combat, there are a lot of upgrades to buy ranging from fight combos to web upgrades. But the large amount of upgrades you can buy don’t fix the repetitive combat. As you progress through the game, the petty goons evolve into super beings of some sorts. They block your every superhuman-powered punches, and dodge your every webshot which travels at super speed. Most enemies need to be hit with a slow-as-a-snail travelling Impact Web or web ball which they somehow can’t dodge in order to be left powerless before you could do anything against them. Or you could just wait for them to attack you so you could counter their attacks which are unblockable for them, but that won’t work when they have firearms. The game lets you shoot them with your web to take those guns away from them, but if they keep dodging your mach-speed web fluid, how are you supposed to do that? Impact Web it is for every fight you encounter, and that gets repetitive really fast.

The Difficulty

Spider-Man 2 is a relatively easy game, and the story is quick to beat. Once when I was little and I had  no school for that day, I beat the game’s story in one day. The Impact Web trick makes combat easy, and aside from a couple of boss fights, they’re simple. Even though some races and trick runs tend to get a little tricky, practice makes perfect and most can be beat in a couple of tries. That’s... really all I can say about the difficulty. It’s pretty easy-peasy.

Spider-Man gets my vote for the best superhero game to date. Yes, I’d choose this over the Batman Arkham games. The free roaming is really fun, swinging feels great, and saving the citizens of New York feels fulfilling. This game does not only let you play as Spider-Man, you become Spider-Man. Welcome to Spider-Man 2, enjoy your stay. Like Peter Parker says during the opening narrative of the game: This is your home. Your Playground. Your responsibility.

Pros:

-          New York City is rendered quite accurate, and free to explore

-          Lots of power ups to earn

Cons:

-          Combat and Civilians In Distress missions can feel repetitive quickly