Nostalgic Reviews: Spiderman 2

Rating: T

Score: 9.0/10

“Nostalgic Reviews” is a new series I’m going to start, where I will review older games. Why? Because there are some games that received less credit than they deserved. Some games were not appreciated as they were considered minor characters in a minor game. Spiderman 2 is going to be the first in this maybe-series.

Spiderman 2 received a lukewarm reception for one main reason. It was a movie-based game. Most movie-based games stick too close to the movie, and sacrifice gameplay for story. Spiderman was different. All of the Spiderman movie-based games were slightly different than the stories. It usually broadens the story to include Marvel Comic villains as well as the normal villain(s) in the movie.

This game is available on the Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox, PC, Playstation 2, PSP, Game Boy, Nintendo DS, N-Gage, and Mac OS X. The game being reviewed, however, is the Gamecube, Xbox, PC, Playstation, and PSP version. The others were different.

The gameplay was a sandbox style game set in Manhattan. If you’ve forgotten what sandbox game is, which I told you in prior reviews, it’s a game where you’re free to run around an area until you feel like playing one of the missions. These games unusually have side quests for money/points too. The story mission will range from chasing somebody/something, destroying something or someone, or just simply getting from point A to point B. Side quest ranged from rescuing people, stopping thieves (with your fists, of course), or stopping a car (again, with your fists, of course). You perform these missions for “Hero Points”, which are basically monies that buy you more fighting techniques, and upgrade older fighting techniques.

You can also find a lot of extra tokens. When I say a lot, I’m not joking. There’s about five hundred or so. Rough guess, since there’s a hundred skyscrapers, sixty some enemy bases, hundred “secret tokens” (tokens for finding secret goods, like the exact place on the bridge where you killed the Green Goblin, in the first movie), among others. There’s also some “hint” tokens, where Bruce Campbell narrates a hint for you. These are usually quite humorous, but also helpful. He perfectly explains attacking, and why you don’t button mash the attack button: “Everyone looks at the controller and whines, [in a whiney voice] ‘There's only one attack button’. Will you gimme a break, just because there's only one button *called* attack, doesn't mean it's the only one you can use. It's called a manual. Try to show a little innitiative at least.” He’s talking about the “Web” button, which you can use along with the attack button in a combo to make more stylish combos.

The gameplay is a little bit repetitive, and the “Follow Black Cat” stages are more tedious than fun. The slightest slip-up will have you falling to your doom from a 30 story building. Some missions are way too easy, like the “Go from point A to point B”, especially the ones without time limits. This means there’s almost no possible way to screw up, unless you throw yourself into the ocean. Speaking of which, this is one of the few games were there’s a legit excuse for the main character not being able to swim. Have you ever put a spider in a body of water? Not pretty.

A lot went into the game. You can accomplish a lot of moves (such as Wall Sprinting, Wall Jumps, among others you’d only know existed if you came across it yourself by playing around). They also hired actors from the movie to voice the game as well. Seems kind of sad that a game like this didn’t get a large amount of fan support and praise (nor did it get a worthy sequel, but we’ll save that for another review).