Spiderman 2 (the game)

Cafe Society
1

Ardred got this for me last week and I ADORE it.

It’s a Grand Theft Auto style free for all, but instead of carjacking and drugrunning you catch purse snatchers and defeat supervillians. I could never play GTA for very long because I got tired of being the bad guy.

There is tons to earn, tons to do and everything is fun.

The only thing I don’t like so far is the auto mission triggers. For example: if the mission is “go to Mary Jane’s apartment” and you don’t want to yet because you’re racking up hero points to buy something new at the spidey store, but you happen to get too close to MJs, the mission will trigger and you can’t do anything else until you do the MJ thing.

I love the hint markers with Bruce Campbell alternately making fun of you and giving you hints for gameplay.

Anyone else playing it? Love it? Hate it?

2

It’s a good experience; a great web-swinging simulator, but a so-so game. The web swinging is pretty much exactly like the movie, the animation is superb and the physics seems to be spot on. The challenges, photo and pizza mini games (all variants of checkpoint racing) take full advantage of the web swinging, and to complete those you’ve got to completely master the webswinging. A basic physics model has been applied to the enemies, don’t expect rag-doll’ing but you can swing and throw enemies around.

The missions… well… I’m not exactly a great gamer, but I finished the story missions in 12 hours, of which 3 hours were spent on four boss battles. They all follow the movie, with a few other comicbook cameos to bulk it up (just like the first game). There’s also three boss battles involving hitting switches - all of them bloody fustrating. There is only 6 types of random missions, and while the difficult does slightly ramp up as you go through chapters, they are all pretty easy once you get the knack of air combos. The challengers really are the saving grace for longevity.

It’s a pretty good game, and well worth buying if you’re aware of the shortness.
Other points:

  • Did I forget to mention that MJ’s face looks like it got repeatly pummelled by The Ugly Stick? I mean, Ms Dunst is pretty hot, but they really screwed-up the face scanning. Can’t do a decent voice-over either.

  • Toby McGwyer (sp?) sounds pretty much like he does in the movies, but is a bit too laid back for a VG voiceover.

  • Bruce Campbell almost justifies the price of the game just on his quips and ad-libbing.

  • You would think that pile driving someone from the 15 stories up would take them out, wouldn’t you?

  • No Spidey yo-yo! Come on, it’s a classic move that’s been left out! It’s the upside-down descent thing he does when he stalks the Uncle Ben’s murderer in the first movie.

  • The game ending is the same as the movie. They should really put a large spoiler tag on the box, or something.

  • Black Cat is depressingly (or is that male pleasingly?) chest-heavy. As Bruce mentions, 38 - 24 - 36, IIRC.

  • Except for two more speed upgrades, a few demo movies and a battle warehouse , there’s no known unlockables. Zip, nada. No costumes, and no playing as Doc Ock. There’s been a few fakes brandied about, but nothing concrete yet.

3

I hate everyone involved in the game. I was looking forward to it for months only to have this abortion released on the computer with near identical packaging.

It’s probably the first time in history the PC gets the dumbed down version.

4

So, you hate Activision, not TreyArch, right?

'Cause the TreyArch version is pretty damn cool.

I finished it last night. That last boss battle was just lame and frustrating.

Now I’m off to collect stuffs.

5

If Treyarch was involved in hiding till the last minute that their version wasn’t coming out for the PC but still promoted it for the platform then yes, I hate them too.