The day I bought my PlayStation 2, there were 2 games that came home with me: SPIDER-MAN and EVIL DEAD: FISTFUL OF BOOMSTICK. I imagined Evil Dead would be the one I spent most of my time on, and for a while it was. But when I hit a standstill on that game, I was forced to either give SPIDER-MAN a try, or buy some new games. So I put in SPIDER-MAN to see what was what. I didn't play anything else until I'd beaten it. I was hooked.
Using the Sam Raimi movie as it's starting point, SPIDER-MAN for PlayStation 2 builds on that story to give a more complete look at Spider-Man's world with additional villains Shocker, Vulture and Scorpion. You start as Toby Maguire's Spider-Man in the wrestling costume and must go through a few levels in search of Uncle Ben's killer before you get the trademark suit and the real competition starts.
After a bank robbery, you chase Shocker through the sewers of New York, then climb a burning bell tower to reach Vulture before chasing him through the skies on your webline. Then you'll face off against Scorpion before finally getting to Green Goblin. Once you reach the Goblin, the real play starts; everything else, while difficult in its own way--especially battling Vulture in the air--it's all nothing compared to what the Goblin has for you. You'll rescue Mary Jane from a runaway balloon, disarm a number of time bombs the Goblin has placed all over the city, sneak in Oscorp and battle their security robots--my LEAST favorite level and the one at which I almost gave up (you'll find some levels are infuriatingly difficult the first dozen times until you realize what skill it is you need to get past it. This was the level where you have to just sit back, take your time, and let the stealth mode work for you), all finally leading to the big battle at the end against the Green Goblin over the bridge. So while the story line follows the movie in the important points, it obviously uses that as only a starting point.
What I really admired about this game was that each level built off the last one; there are tricks and maneuvers you learn in one level on a practice basis that will come to be vital a few levels later, for instance the stealth mode. You're introduced to this in level two but it's not until level . . . . 8 or 9 that you HAVE to use it to survive. Early web-swinging levels are important to moving forward, but the levels themselves are pretty simple so you're really just getting used to the physics of web-swinging, but later on when you HAVE to be good at it, you've had enough practice from earlier levels that it's pretty simple.
Toby Maguire and Willem Dafoe lend their voices for their characters, and Bruce Campbell comes in as your tour guide. He takes you through the tutorial, explains what the different symbols and glyphs you'll come across mean, tells you how to navigate with the compass (and thank God for the compass, which shows you where your enemies are not only left, right, forward, or reverse, but where they are in terms above or below you as well), and he's there for the first couple levels just until you get the hang of what everything is. Bruce's dialogue alone is enough to buy this game just for the tutorial. At one point, you can tell he's eating a sandwich as he's recording his lines. It's not what he says, but how he says it, the man's comedically brilliant.
Through the course of the game, Spider-Man picks up a number of combo moves to use in battle. I found these useful for that particular level--the combo I picked up battling Scorpion turned out to be the only move that eventually took him down--but they're quickly forgotten--and there's quite a few of them so unless you're writing them down, you'll forget anyway. Some moves you won’t even use. I never did figure out the yo-yo OR the web-yank, but I made it through the game just fine.
The graphics were pretty great. I've seen others describing the likenesses and how they look exactly like the actors, but that's a little exaggerated. The Peter Parker does look like Toby Maguire, you can tell that's who he's supposed to be, but it's still very much just a computer-generated "likeness". And the Norman Osborne looks even less like Willem Dafoe. The Mary Jane looks nothing like Kirsten Dunst.
Now that I’ve reached the end of the game there are, as with anything else released on CD these days, extra features. Beating Green Goblin unlocks hidden features like Pinhead Bowling, which I’ve yet to try, and it enables you to go back and play the game again in either the wrestling costume, or as Peter Parker. Now that sounds interesting. There are also “movie stills”, which are not from the movie but from the game’s between level “movies”, as well as cheat codes and level warps which, in the interests in beating the game on my own, I left alone.
Considering the time I spent playing and the enjoyment I got from it, SPIDER-MAN has turned out to be the best PlayStation 2 purchase we've made so far. We've added considerably to our collection of games, but so far none have received as much play as SPIDER-MAN, because none have quite that combination of challenging fun that SPIDER-MAN does. With the movie sequel looming, I'm eager to see what comes out for SPIDER-MAN 2.
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