search66's Full Review: SpiderMan for PlayStation 2
Chances are, if you read a review of any game that is based on a movie, you’ll always find a well-written opening paragraph and disclaimer. You know the ones I’m talking about. You’ll have the writer stating how it’s very difficult to make a successful game based off of a movie, blah blah blah.
It’s sad, but true. Very few games have successfully captured the essence of a great movie. If you were a fan of the original Spiderman movie, and played the game, you would have been pleasantly surprised. The game showed class, polish and was just downright fun. The visuals were clean and the game play was quite solid. The biggest downfall of the original was the difficulty level (or lack thereof) and the length of the game. So, what you basically had was a short and sweet fun rental.
When I saw advertisements for the new Spidey game around the time that the Spiderman 2 movie was released; I was anticipating some good stuff. All of the talk about the “open ended” gameplay was buzzing around in the Spiderman junkie circle. As “good” as the first game was, you still couldn’t go on the ground. Spiderman 2 not only allows you to roam freely within the game, it is fully interactive…. Well, that’s what the box cover says.
This is one of the famous game developer “white lies”. In fact, you can free roam just about anywhere you want, and yes “some” of the environment is interactive. However, is it done well? Not even close. Spiderman 2 is a huge rip-off of the basic foundation Grand Theft Auto 3 was based off of. It’s like Activision took the skeleton of GTA and made it family friendly. At first, this doesn’t sound too bad. Why not have a family-type game with what really made GTA great? Sadly, the interaction is miserable.
Roaming the streets lacks the personality a GTA would have. Everything looks fairly similar, and you can see how the developers simply copied and pasted code to fit their city streets. Other than the monotony, the interactions with pedestrians are terrible. There couldn’t be more than a dozen different phrases the people will say while walking by (or actually into them). You just never truly feel a part of the “world” that Activision tried to create. And for some reason, the announcer guy really hates when you run around the streets. No really, walk around for too long and you’ll get scolded for not webslinging. I kid you not.
Putting the lack of personality aside, the game is well laid out. You have your main objective, as well as secondary optional objectives. These secondary objectives are done by finding citizens with a green indicator over their head. Interact (can’t help but laugh) with them and a quick cut scene will show you a “crime” in progress, and you have a limited amount of time to reach the destination and stop the baddies. Do a good job and you get “hero points”. These points can be used to buy upgrades for Spidey. You also need a certain amount of points to progress to the next level, so do your good deeds, netizens.
If you are like me, you like Spiderman and Spiderman games primarily for the satisfaction of webbing things up and swinging like a madman. I was a bit disappointed in the overall “feel” of webslinging. The original, although simplistic, was quite fun. You could swing anywhere and at any time, even if there wasn’t a building to latch on to. This time around, the game is a bit more realistic. This is a good and bad thing. Swinging from building to building and manipulating yourself takes a while to get efficient with. It’s much more precise, and if you try to sling your web and there’s nothing but air… you are going nowhere fast. One thing I did find well done was the effect of falling. You get a nice “whoosh” and things begin to blur as you nearly plunge to your death. The same goes for speed. If you get the “swing” of the game, you can really whip around the city…
Ever play a game that made you feel embarrassed for the developers? After only my first battle with a group of baddies, I sulked in shame and just wanted to give the quality assurance folks over at Activision a big hug. The fighting is probably the worst ever in any game. There are a ton of combos you can use, but it’s the style on how their done that ruins the actions. Anyone who has played a good fighting game (from Street Fighter to Soul Calibur) knows that combos can be off the hook by giving them the good ‘ole “pop-up”. This is where you pop the guy up in the air, and land a few more critical hits on them. Well, I’m not sure where Spidey2 was going with this, but it’s hilarious. You can easily pop-up the bad guys and literally bounce them all day. I think my record was 8-minutes on the same guy. Shameful.
I know what you’re thinking. The saving grace of the game is going to be the outstanding visuals and media. I hate to say it, but the visuals were the worst part of the game. This is one game where I truly felt lied to by a developer. The commercials and even the box looked great. Even screenshots from “cutting edge” video game sites (clears throat) made the game look fabulous.
The second I popped the disk into my PS2, I knew I was in for trouble. The opening movie was pitiful. I couldn’t believe they even included this. The buildings were pixilated, grainy and just looked plain awful… and this was from the intro. That’s not a good sign, folks. I’m not saying graphics are key to a successful game, but this was disgusting. I’ve honestly seen N64 games that had better graphics. Everything was blocky and the colors were way off. Things looked bland and unfinished; which made the game a real eye sore. Other things like character movement was some of the worst I’ve seen in some time. Characters on the street talked and were lifeless, but I was even more surprised to watch cut scenes where none of their mouths were moving when the characters spoke. That is truly unacceptable in 2004. You may have gotten away with it five years ago, but definitely not now. While I’d admit the camera angles were smooth as well as the scrolling, much of the mediocrity was sucked dry by the subpart animations and 64-bit graphics.
If there was a bright spot within Spiderman 2, it would have to be the great soundtrack. The music really gives the game a nice movie-like feel. The voice-overs were well done, but lacked any sort of depth. What I mean is that all of the phrases (by the main characters as well as pedestrians) were highly overused and repeated far too much. Sound effects were subtle and fit the bill fine, but a lack of ambient sounds (like city noise) went completely untouched.
Spiderman 2 is probably the worst game of the year, and definitely on my top 20 worst games ever. It was truly disappointing. The bottom line here is that the game was severely rushed. While it had potential for becoming a very good game, the developers were obviously rushed to meet a deadline. The game appears to be about half finished, and a few more months fine-tuning the game would have saved Activision and Spiderman fans a lot of embarrassment.
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