Spiderman 2

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: X-Box, PS2, Gamecube, PC
Allegiance: Activision
Vintage: 2004
Rating: T
Intelligence Agency Report by: Dave K
As Spiderman, it’s your duty to protect the citizens of New York from any harm that may come. Unfortunately, that duty gets a lot harder when an experiment fuses some mechanical arms to Dr. Otto Octavius, driving him insane in the process. Now, you must take to the towers of New York City as Spiderman and foil Dr. Octavius’ evil plans.

Weapons Expert Report by: Dave K
Story/Premise
Gameplay
Impact
Visual
Audio
8.75
10.00
9.00
8.00
9.25
Overall 9.25
(not an average)
Version Reviewed: X-Box I’m a fan of Grand Theft Auto 3 and GTA: Vice City all aspects of the games. I’m also a big fan of Marvel Comics and Spiderman in particular. So when I checked this game out, I was incredibly pleased to see that it had combined these two things, and had combined them so well. 

Simply enough, Spiderman 2 is called such because it follows the story of the second Spiderman movie. There are some differences between the game’s story and the movie, with the game actually having more screen time for Spiderman, as well as including several other villains to fight including Shocker (who reappears after his debut on the GBA), Rhino, and the man with the fishbowl on his head: Mysterio. I found that the game played rather similar to Grand Theft Auto. Granted, instead of running or driving, you’re wall-sprinting or swinging on buildings, but the similarities are noticeable in the range of abilities available. You can jump, attack, web attack, dodge, sprint and web-swing – sound sort of familiar? I’m not sure if there is any corroboration between Activision and Rockstar Games, but I can’t help but notice the similarities, which in my opinion only helped spread the popularity of Spiderman 2

The visuals of Spiderman 2 are high-quality and the cut scenes are generally well animated. However, there are some really noticeable clipping issues that can occur in the game such as citizens walking through each other, people walking through cars, cars driving through each other, etc… However, the level of detail that the city of New York is depicted with is quite nice, although you can’t leave Manhattan Island except to go to Liberty Island or Roosevelt Island. 

The voice acting for Spiderman 2 is excellent. Toby Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina reprise their roles from the film, and Bruce Campbell does an excellent job as the “tour guide” who tells you how to play the game. The people around the city all have humourous stereotypical New Yorker accents and there’s a great little inside joke about “All Your Base.” The music is nothing that stands out as great, but it does the job quite well as a large part of it is taken from the movie. The game also includes the entertaining song “Beat Your Heart Out” by The Distillers

Overall, Spiderman 2 is definitely a game worth owning. With the time it will take to beat the various missions and then to complete all the mini-games like delivering pizza and racing around the town, you could be playing for weeks. This is one game that will have you playing for hours upon end keeping you glued to your system. Spiderman 2 is a definite must amongst any Spiderman fans.