Spider-Man 2 - With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Spider-Man is one of America’s most beloved superheroes, and this has been justified by his recent movie successes. The first two Spider-Man movies have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars on the big screen, thus ensuring hundreds of other Spider-Man memorabilia to follow. Wherever you go, there are Spider-Man t-shirts, lunchboxes, toys, cartoons and video games. The first Spider-Man game for all three next-generation consoles was a success, as copies of the game flew off the shelf despite somewhat lackluster gameplay. The second installment in the Spider-Man series, which is based on Spider-Man 2 (the movie), has been considerably upgraded.

The plot of the main storyline is basically identical to the plot in the movie. First of all, our hero Peter Parker must lead a double-life. As Peter, he is a regular guy just trying to land a decent job and must resort to delivering pizzas and working for the local paper. As Spider-Man, he must save the citizens of New York City, fight crime and defeat all evildoers. In the meantime, Doctor Octavious is conducting an experiment that goes wrong, thus ending the life of his wife and transforming him into Doc Ock. Doc Ock blames everything on Spider-Man, and with the aid of the four tentacles attached to his back and controlled via a controller chip he sets his sights on destroying Spider-Man. Throughout the story, other characters play huge roles, such as Mary-Jane Watson, whose career as an actress is blossoming yet she wants to spend more time with Peter. Harry, Peter’s best friend in real life, also despises Spider-Man because Spider-Man killed his father, which sets up a very juicy and suspenseful story.

The gameplay in Spider-Man 2 has been vastly improved since its predecessor, and this is evident right from the start. In this game, the entire New York is at your fingertips and the size of the map is simply mind-boggling. But if the web-slinging action weren’t fun, fast-paced and spectacular, than most people would overlook this fact. However, this is not the case as Spider-Man 2 is virtually on par with the movies themselves in terms on the web-slinging action. You can web swing and ascend to the top of enormous sky-scrapers, crawl on walls, web-zip, sprint off roof-tops, plunge off 150 feet buildings and swing onto yet another building yet seconds before hitting the ground or even make a sudden halt.

But what makes this gameplay so special is the fact that all of this action is so fluid and natural. Spider-Man just glides graciously through the air from building to building and you really feel like you are Spider-Man, as you receive the same sensation that you did when you watched the movies. What’s even more amazing than when you are outdoors, there is no loading anything of any kind at all, and the fact that the game maintains this fast-paced action throughout the entire game is just amazing. This is what Spider-Man games should be about!

Throughout the game, there is a story mode to follow, yet you are free to explore the city as much as you like and complete as many side-missions as you wish. The story mode is broken up into seventeen chapters. To complete a chapter you usually have to get to a certain point (and it usually won’t be easy) as well as earn a set amount of Hero Points. Hero Points are sort of like money, as you can buy upgrades, which I will mention a bit later. The story mode is where you will encounter all of the boss fights, including the likes of Mysterio and Doc Ock himself (three times!). The boss fights are usually staged indoors to limit your available space, yet there are fairly interesting.

First of all, Spider-Man has a wide array of moves. You will use attacks such as the Interceptor Kick, the Web Hanger, the Whirlwind Kick and the Multiweb Hammer. These moves can be upgraded or new moves can be bought with your Hero Points. New moves are always fun, yet mastering the basics is imperative during boss-fights. Spider-Man also has ‘Spidey-Sense’, which is useful for dodging and avoiding attacks, and even counterattacking later in the game. Finally, there is a ‘Spider Reflexes’ mode, which can be activated via the white button. With your reflexes on, everything around you slows down, which is certainly an advantage, especially in boss fights. This reflex mode is similar to the bullet-time in the Matrix game, and works fairly well.

However, the main story and the chapters come to an end fairly quickly. It will take you approximately 8-10 to zoom through this adventure. Thankfully though, there are hundreds of side-missions that will keep you occupied. These side-missions vary, as sometimes you must retrieve a stolen purse, sometimes you’ll have to stop an armed robbed, sometimes you’ll have save the crew of a sinking ship, etc. Just approach a citizen with a green question mark above him, and you have accepted a side-mission. The good thing is that they are plentiful and you are presented with typical Spider-Man rescue missions. The bad thing is that they get repetitive fairly quickly, as you’ll end up doing the same thing over and over. This is a shame. A little more creativity in sub-missions would have gone a long way.

When you decide to take off the Spider-Man suit for a while and control plain old Peter Parker, you can do a few sub-missions too in the form of mini-games. Delivering pizzas and getting photos for the paper will also earn you a few Hero Points. Finally, in order to maintain audiences the developers included hundreds of tokens laying around the city. There are skyscraper tokens that you can collect on the top of various tall buildings. There are also 210+ tokens that serve as hints, a bit dull yet highly addictive to collect. Also, there are challenge tokens, which usually include races. The great thing is that there are 150 challenges, as well as an ultra-hard option for the very same challenges. As you can probably tell, all of these tokens and sub-missions extend the amount of time that you will spend of this game by atleast as much as the story mode took you.

Spider-Man 2 is a single-player only game, thus there are no multi-player modes offered whatsoever. No deathmatches, no Xbox Live, no co-op modes, nothing. But if you think about it, there is only one Spider-Man, so creating a multi-player mode for a superhero game is really unattainable. That is why I do not consider a lack of multi-player a disadvantage for this game.

Graphically, this game is just eye-candy. All of Manhattan has been faithfully re-created, as you can web-sling to the top of the Empire State Building, try-out your new web attacks in Central Park, take a peek at the New York waterfront from the top of the Statue of Liberty. All of the buildings were accurately rendered, and even Ground Zero can be visited by Spider-Man. The environment that he’s in is also spectacular due to the fact that night becomes day, windows reflect Spider-Man’s image and everyone just looks so right. The characters themselves look stunning, especially Spider-Man himself. He looks almost exactly like he did in the movie, and his cool-looking suit has the same attraction level in the game. His movements are all extremely fluid during the game, and even more amazing throughout the various cut-scenes. The other main characters were also fairly accurately drawn, and the only bad thing I can think of is the fact that a lot of the citizens of New York look peculiarly alike in this game.

The sound department put together a terrific score for this game, as the combination of powerful orchestrated music as well as a few rock tracks here and there really seems to captivate the world of Spider-man. Like in most other games that are based on movies, the background music becomes very fast-paced during frantic points of the game, such as boss fights. The sound effects are brilliant, as all of Spider-Man’s techniques seem to make the sound that one would expect them to make. The character voices were also terrific, mainly due to the fact that Kirsten Dunst, Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina all went into the studio and recorded all of the dialogue, thus giving the game even more authenticity.

Overall, Spider-Man 2 is a top-notch game. It not only succeeds in being a good video game based on a superhero, but it also succeeds in being a good video game based on a movie. That my friends, is a very rare thing indeed. Although the lack of multi-player might turn a few people away from this game, the single-player aspect is ingenious and will keep you occupied for a minimum of 20 hours, and far beyond that if you wish to collect everything and complete every challenge. This game has everything going for it – the fact that it is a Spider-Man game, innovative and fast-paced web-slinging action, amazing graphics included all of Manhattan at your disposal, original actor voicing and an epic score. That alone explains why Spider-Man 2 is worthy of a purchase.

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