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[Oni Jazar]

I've been playing the game throughout the weekend. (Xbox version) I'm about 30% in. Mixed feelings ahead...

There's a lot of fun to be had with mastering the art of webslinging. It's something that you can see with patience and practice you can really swing through the city with ease. The lessons are humbling though as you start out slamming into buildings and swinging straight to the ground more often then not.

The non vital NPCs are embarrasing and should never have had any close ups. Even the major NPCs don't look great imo. (Peter Parker, Mary Jane...) Though Spiderman himself and Black Cat look real nice.

One of the big gripes I have with this game is the Audio. First off I hear the Dolby Digital 5.1 is flat out horrible which should be a crime for a game which relies on a large and living 3d world. The rear and center speakers hardly get any love when in fact it would be awsome, nay vital to the experience, to hear crowds, traffic, cheers, and jeers from all around.

Also on the topic of audio, what's with the horrible soundtrack? Since they decided to take ideas off of GTA why didn't they also realize that an excellent selection of music would have added tremedously to the experience. The rock tunes that play so repeticiously in the same missions are so bland you almost wish they would fade off into oblivion. (Oh and dont get me started on the pizza delivery tune. Ya its cute... the first 20 times) I would turn off the music completely but there are some rare occasions where the instrumental tunes from the movie kick in which is nice. Hey Activision, if you're not gonig to get any good license tunes (how bout the ones from the movie soundtrack?) why not at least let us use the songs saved on our Xbox? That would've helped tremendously.

The combat is adequate and fun once you get the hang of it. Lots of nice little varied movies that give you choices on how to humiliate the competition.

I love how you can view the entire city from high locations but I wish they could've handled the lower detailed buildings a little better. Perhaps its too much to ask for this generation. TOO BAD THERE'S NO PC VERSION that could've whooped the consoles' asses.

Even with the gripes and nitpicks the game is still has lots of fun if you're willing to try and learn something new and unique. Which is basically what this game is: a web-slinging simulator.

 

[ohamsie]

Which version is best out of the Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 versions? I got the Xbox version of the first one recently and was surprised to find out that it had three extra levels in it, is there anything like that in Spider-Man 2?

 

[miyuru]

I couldn't believe the reviews after renting this trash. It was awesome at first, jumping so high and swinging around, it felt so cool, you've never done anything like that in a game before. Once you get accusmtomed to how fast/high/efficiently Spidey can move around the city, you realise the actual game itself SUCKS.

Voice-acting: sucks.
Random crimes: suck.
NPCs: embarassingly suck.
Pacing: sucks.

This game sucks, don't buy it. I'd give it a 5/10 (average), if only for the webslinging.

 

[Ghost]

The rest of the game isnt great, it gets very old and you probably wont want it once you've completed the (short) main storyline and bought all the swing upgrades.

But i'd still say everyone should play this game, probably via rental just to experience the swinging as you might not see anything as fun in a game for a while.

 

[segasonic]

This is the best Spider-Man game ever. Don't listen to the hatas

I'm really digging it!

IGN review > Gamespot review

 

[segasonic]

Once you get accusmtomed to how fast/high/efficiently Spidey can move around the city, you realise the actual game itself SUCKS.

Moving around fast/high/efficiently IS 90% of the actual game.

 

[calder]

Once you get accusmtomed to how fast/high/efficiently Spidey can move around the city, you realise the actual game itself SUCKS.

Yeah, as you get better at moving around it gets so damn fun. I spent an hour or two early just looking for skyscraper tokens and doing the odd random crime. So it was fun enough to ignore the boringness of the random crimes and the really bad character models and stuff. The way you build up speed makes the web-swinging fresh throughout the game, but 90% of the fighting moves you unlock I didn't use once.

But when I started really going into the story missions it started getting worse and worse. Mysterio's level was the turning point - after that few of hte missions were more entertaining than annoying and the boss battles became extremely dull or frustrating. The Statue of Liberty finale was just awful. After trying for seemingly ever to finish the last boss fight I was SO HAPPY to be done the game - it was "credits start rolling, eject disc, delete save" about 30 seconds after the (poor quality) end CG.

 

[Wellington]

I'm enjoying the game a lot. I was a huge fan of Spider-Man as a kid so this is like an awesome kick in the pants experience for me at the moment. The swinging around is a lot of fun, as are the rest of the 'locomotion' moves.

I really enjoy the GTA style city and missions... rescuing random people from peril is pretty damned cool.... however, it gets really boring really fast. There are only a few different types of NPC given mission, and they get stale pretty quickly. Stop the car, armored car hold up, shoot out, ambush, get the balloon, and stop the mugger are pretty boring after a while. The main missions are even worse, most of them are just racing to whatever destination Peter is late to. Which, after the third or so time get's damned annoying, especially considering that the pizzeria missions and the MJ missions are in the same vein.

I dislike combat. Maybe it's just my ineptitude, but the thugs that block all of your hits are boring to fight. I just end up jumping up and kicking them in the head or whatever.

Even with those fairly large deficiencies, I am considering buying the game immediately after sending it back to Gamefly. The feeling of zipping through the city on weblines is just too fantastic.

Had they combined the goals of Spider-Man (and the graphics) with the swing mechanics and free form city of Spider-Man 2, it'd be the perfect game.

 

[Oni Jazar]

Had they combined the goals of Spider-Man (and the graphics) with the swing mechanics and free form city of Spider-Man 2, it'd be the perfect game.

I was just going to say that. I felt the gameplay was much better in the original but the swinging and huge city is obviously better in this one. Shame they didn't work on all aspects of the game as hard as they did with web slinging.

 

[maharg]

Um, I think I'm unfashionably late to this party, but I rented this on Friday and I have to agree that the levels suck (I alternated between completely ignoring them and rushing through them as fast as I could) and the boss fights suck even more, the swinging and such makes the whole thing worthwhile, and I'm even thinking of buying it for that alone later when it goes down in price.

Actually, when you finish the game and let the credits roll (or skip them) you get into pretty much freeplay mode with some more difficult crimes to solve (those mechs are shooting things/people up, I saw a full fledged car crash as opposed to the usual falling into manhole thing where you have to bring someone to the hospital). I want more games with freeplay modes like this (with no plot and/or timers getting in the way). I've always wanted it in Crazy Taxi, but this'll do.

 

[The Faceless Master]

This is the best Spider-Man game ever.

which isnt saying much...

 

[Wellington]

which isnt saying much...

NeverSoft's Spider-Man on PSX was magnificent.

Been playing more and more of the game, but I have been very sporadic (what with ESPN NFL 2k5 out ;p). There have been some portions of the game which totally brought my enjoyment of the game to a halt. The Mysterio Statue of Liberty sequence was nut bustingly hard and annoying. Rather, getting there was. Whoever cooked up that sequence over the Hudson River to get to the statue should be shot dead. Not to mention that other portion with Mysterio in which you had to get to him when he was shooting that electron gun or whatever it was... or when Otto had the accident and the force field from the fusion reaction was going nuts. Ugh. So much wasted potential in this game.

 

[maharg]

Yeah definitely the part where you have to sling your way across the damn river was a pain in the ass. I only even made it in the end because I dove into the water just past the line and came up on the other side instead of at the start.

And the Otto fights were terrible. It's sad that a game with such great mechanics in general has you basically fighting them instead of the enemy so much of the time.

Also some of the plot changes from the movie are really baffling.