PS2 Review: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

"Ya get out of the club!"

PS1 Spider-Man was wonderful. Spider-Man 2, though, is everything that game couldn't be on lesser technology. Spider-Man, even more so than Batman in the recent Arkham City, was made for free roam, and SM2 is a rare instance when the unashamed appropriation of a popular and contemporary style (in this case of Grand Theft Auto and its loose approach to video game narrative) works so very well. You have free reign over a virtual, amazingly detailed, faithful NYC. Getting around the boroughs, by slinging webs from rooftop to rooftop, has never been any better. Instead of the nonsensical aerial travel of past games, in which your webs were seemingly attached to invisible buildings, here your webswinging needs to be carefully planned. Whereas before you simply pressed the appropriate button and off you went, SM2 requires you to scale a tall building, for instance, so your webbing has an anchor. From there you can swing from the next building, provided there's one around, building momentum all the while as you gleefully skim the skyscrapers. There's an art in such webswinging, surely, but it's never frustrating, only addicting. Combat is similarly revolutionized. Combos are streamlined, varied, and contextual, and you can earn increasingly complex and spectacular moves as you progress (including our favorite, the spinning grapple piledriver, which can be delivered from the top of the Empire State Building if you're willing to work for it). Obviously, the main storyline of the game follows that of the movie, but it deviates to allow for more villains and more challenges, and when you're not directly engaged in these events (and the game rarely forces you to be), you can pursue a variety of jobs on the side, like delivering pizzas, taking photos for the Daily Bugle, and stopping petty crimes on the street. They're fun diversions for a while, but once you run through the main story, it quickly becomes busywork. Because of the scale of the game, I presume, the graphics suffer for it, and criticism should also be extended to the voice-overs, which range from decent at best, to downright horrible at worst. Toby Maguire sounds particularly unenthusiastic to be there. Still, though, SM2 is the premiere Spider-Man experience on any console, and little touches, like your ability to hang defeated thugs from street lights, indicate the kind of complete world you're dealing with here.