Oh Spidey, you're my hero!
Anyways, on with the introduction. We all know about Spider-Man. A freaky little weakling called Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, which then gave him the powers of a spider: Spider-Sense, the ability to stick to walls, and great strength and speed. Kinda silly, but there you go. Also, if you follow the movie, on which this game is loosely based, he has web-shooters in his wrists, which fire out a sticky stream of web for him to swing around New York, if you're a comic-book geek, then he has crappy mechanical web-shooters.
It is worth noting that Spider-Man is the greatest superhero of all time. That's not just my opinion, that's scientific fact, I swear to you. Spider-Man is great because he's so… normal. Take Superman. Now, he's great, he can fly, lift things, see through women's clothes, etc, but we can't possibly imagine being him, can we? Unless Earth suddenly explodes and we are sent to the planet of Krypton, where their green sun makes us fly and see the Kryptonian women's underwear, we can't really imagine being him. And the Fantastic Four just kinda scare me. Like, I wouldn't want to be The Thing, and I forget what the other guy's powers are. They mustn't have been popular or something. Let's not even start on the Super Friends. Well, maybe Batman.
But Spider-Man was a normal guy. He has normal problems, he's late for classes, he's bullied, he's not even extremely good-looking (sorry Tobey), yet once he dons his Spider-mask and puts on his Spider-suit, he's the web-slinger. Great.
Right, rant over, let's review.
Story 7/10
Not exactly a re-hash of the movie, which is nice. I suppose designers Treyarch (who are responsible for Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Tony Hawks Pre Skater 2 and not much else that I'd bother commenting about) decided that, like the first movie, making a game consisting of the fights Spidey has with the Green Goblin would make a total of three levels. Thus, they have a bunch of side-quests where Spidey fights other supervillians such as Rhino. This is good, because it takes the action away from the tasks at hand, but it's kind of annoying how Spidey can leave certain supervillians to wreak havoc about the city while he goes and flirts with Mary-Jane or something. Silly.
However, the nice thing is that Black Cat's in it. Wooooo! Black Cat kicks ass, and, if you're into drooling over polygonal women, she shows off her cleavage! I know, it's like this close to an actual woman. I was excited too, I assure you. Even if she does have white hair. Okay, sarcasm over.
The game is split into chapters, each moving the story forward and giving you a bunch of things to do before it moves onto the next chapter, and, thus, the next stage of the game. Each chapter change is kinda like a "level" and helps you split the game up into sizeable chunks of web-spinning action.
Gameplay 10/10
Oh-ho! A ten! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is where the game really shines. When you heard that you can do whatever a Spider-Man can, you really can do whatever a Spider-Man can. Remember in the movies, where he swings through New York, sings down close to the ground, through traffic, swings up, jumps, shoots out two web-lines, catapults himself forward, swings close to a building, runs on the side, dives, swings again, etc, etc, well you can do it! Yes! Wooo! It's absolutely epic. Easily one of the greatest things about this game is the swinging around the city, especially later on when you upgrade him to move faster, hit stronger and generally be better.
Which leads me nicely to the Hero Points system. Like any self-respecting adventure game these days, Spider-Man 2 allows you to upgrade your character with a variety of new skills and moves. Whenever you defeat an enemy, finish an objective, find a secret, whatever, you're given some Hero Points for your troubles. These, like delicious money, can be traded into one of the game's many Spidey Stores that are dotted around the city, and you can swing faster, use a new move, or just do new acrobatic tricks in the air. Great addition in my view, which, after all, is the one that counts. Just kidding.
Spidey can also use his Spider-Sense, which is limited to his head flashing when he is about to get attacked. You can either move quickly away during these points, or you can tap a button which makes him do a Matrix-like dodge. Groovy. You can also sprint, which I suppose should be called a Spider-Sprint, but it's not, and you can turn on Spider-Reflexes, which is reminiscent of that scene in the first movie, where everything slows down and he can sense where attacks are coming from. Which is exactly what happens. Time slows down and you kick ass. Woo.
You may have also heard about the game's Grand Theft Auto-style free-roaming new gameplay. Unlike the first Spider-Man game, where the city was just a bunch of buildings that you swung between, and, falling too near to the ground made you die, the city is now an actual city, which you can go everywhere, from the highest point on the Empire state building, down to running between traffic, talking to people who need help, and stopping random street crime like a mugging, ambush or lost balloon.
The swinging has also been upgraded. No longer do the weblines hang onto nothing in midair, like in the first, now they actually do attach to buildings, making it harder, but oh-so-more satisfying to swing around the city from one area to another. All the super Spider-moves are in there, and I think the only ones that are missing (or maybe I just haven't found out how to do them) are when he hangs upside down from the ceiling, or when he fires two web-lines and stretches them back to catapult himself forward. In their defense, both are included in cut-scenes, and you kinda can do the catapult move in mid-air when you fire off two weblines.
The game also has a lot of throwaway extras, like finding all of the Secret Tokens, Skyscraper Tokens, Buoy Tokens, Hideout Tokens… you get the idea. Very collectable-like, and fun to do for a while, but in the end, the city is so vast that it'll take you ages to find them all.
Graphics 6/10
This is the bad point of the game. Unfortunately, the game is a direct port from the PS2 version, with just the controls changed. Thus, the graphics are Gawdawful. To show how bad they are, the original Spider-Man: The Movie, which, I might remind you, was released way back in 2002, actually looks better than this. I suppose you can blame it on the amount of stress the graphics processor is under. After all, it is trying to create an entire city as well as making Spidey looking groovy, but this is the GameCube, which is more than capable of making the city look good as well as moving everything forward at a decent speed.
One of the first things you notice, as it is most noticeable during the opening sequence (and is actually pretty rare during the rest of the game, to be honest) is the pop-up. Buildings, trees, textures just kinda appear out of nowhere, and, once, in a very funny situation, I actually swung and smashed clean into a building before I even saw it. I swear, I thought it was a bug with the game, and then a building materialized before me. The developers would probably say that it was Mysterio playing silly buggers, but I don't buy it.
The city is an actual representation of New York, complete with Times Square, Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and everything in-between. However, it still looks kinda small, so it must be to scale to save on processing power. Not that it helps it much.
Another thing is character models. Spidey is gorgeous, and I mean that in a platonic way, but seriously, he shines where he's supposed to shine, he looks perfectly rounded and every movement he makes looks natural. The animations he makes look like they're taken directly from the movie. Great. But then there's your standard pedestrians and crooks, who look like they were made with a total of 20 polygons. Even the original Lara Croft, made with her triangular breasts looked better than most the peds. Again, you can claim it's the city and its enormity, I claim its bad porting.
While I'm on the subject, when they talk to you, their lips don't move. They do the old PS1 job of looking exactly the same while a disembodied voice talks in a stereotypical New York accent, screaming at you to save a monkey or something. I can't even remember the last time I played a game that did that. Maybe the in-game engine was under too much pressure when they tried to make the peds look half-realistic, so they dumped that part, and it wouldn't annoy me that much, only a good portion of the game is based on helping people, so you have to look gormlessly at these badly-constructed beings a lot. Grarg.
That said, the game isn't all bad. The FMVs of Spidey swinging through New York look like they were taken directly from the movies, and who knows, they might have been. The cut-scenes using the game's engine (luckily, this time with character models that have a higher polygon count and can move and look realistic and have moving lips) are great as well, especially those with the aforementioned Black Cat, even if she does reuse the same "stretching" animation over and over, bless her thieving heart. I'm not obsessed, I swear. It's only obsession if you admit to it. Anyways, these gorgeous in-game scenes should be what the game normally looks like, damn you Activision! But I digress.
Sound 7/10
Two words: Bruce Campbell. Oh yes, the star of Evil Dead returns as the Tour Guide, the disembodied voice that gives you dogs abuse and tells you how to do things. Grrrrreat.
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina also appear as their respective characters, Spider-Man, Mary-Jane Watson and Dr. Otto Octavius. Tobey's voice acting is a little better this time round. In Spider-Man: The Movie, he sounded as enthusiastic as a wet sponge. Now, he's a bit more of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, with his witty remarks on villains and random running commentary. He still sounds bored during some scenes, but they're mostly "I wonder where Mary-Jane is,"-style comments, and he'd only be talking to himself anyway during those, so that's acceptable. This time.
The music is okay too, and is especially rocks during the chase or fight scenes, getting the adrenaline pumping. There are a few glitches where the music doesn't end normally, like the end of a track, but just stops abruptly, as if the whole song wasn't loaded onto the game. It then loops. Annoying, but you'll be too busy swinging to notice or care.
The fine citizens of New York also shout out randomness to Spidey, either good or bad things, to which he usually replies with something witty. Also, during chase scenes or fight scenes, Spidey may banter with whoever he's fighting with or against, but they're usually so low in volume that you can't hear them. Kinda annoying, but who cares? It's Spidey!
Presentation 8/10
There aren't many menus in the game, but all are nice looking, and contain all the info you'd want to know anyways, such as a map displaying all the hint markers, challenges, locations, etc, and the compulsory stat screen, telling you how many people you've beat up and how far you've crawled. Stuff like that.
Control 9/10
The controls work well. The Analogue stick moves Spidey, the C-Stick moves the camera, the D-Pad activates Spider-Reflexes and the lock-on camera, R lets loose a webline, B is your attack button, Y your web button, X is to grab onto walls and A jumps. Its pretty easy to get used to the swing-jump-swing pattern of swinging, and fighting is pretty easy too. Not too hard to get used to things.
Extra features 10/10
Whether you like it or not, you can collect every single token in the entire city, finish all challenges, buy everything in the Spidey Store, collect all the awards and fight crime until your heart's content. Whether you have the patience to do all that is another matter, however, but that's your prerogative, as they say.
Play Time 8/10
If you simply play the game and don't deviate into the separate side-quests, only doing so to gain enough Hero Points to go into the next chapter, it should clock in at about 7 hours or so. But that won't be enough. Oh no. You'll want more. It's like a drug, this web-spinning, swinging game. You'll come back for more, you damn junkie. So, if you milk it for all it's got… that should bring it up to the mid-20s. Maybe higher, if you suck.
Replayability 4/10
Well, if you mean replay the entire game after you complete it, there's not much point, like. Why go through the pain of finding all those tokens again? That's just stupid. However, if you mean just to play the chapters again, then, yeah, there is a bit of replayability there, but it's much more fun swinging around the city like an insane Tarzan.
Buy or rent? 10/10
Rent couldn't possibly do this game any justice. Plus, once you start wall-sprinting, you can't stop. Really. Read the above drug comment. It applies here too.
Overall, a damn good game, vastly superior to the original, only let down by the bad graphics and the fact that the story eventually ends.
Percentage: (The separate scores added together) 89%
Gamespot score: (Not an average) 9.0