| Nintendo Reviews Rating: Age 11+ |
| Posted: March 28th, 2005 |
| Spider-Man 2 continues along the movie storyline with a couple different plot twists. The game boasts lots of freedom in a huge rendition of New York City. Is this game as good as the movie? |
| Sound There's actually quite a lot of sound effects. You will hear many repeated, including bullets and punches and kicks. This all seems to come naturally, so it's not as repetitious as it could be. You will be fighting crime on the streets, so other sound effects like tire screeches, and car horns are common. Spidey's web is also the same web sound you'll hear. This all would seem better had they included Dolby Surround sound. If you can get used to hearing a lot of sounds again, then you'll enjoy the amount. The music is part from the movie, and part made just for the game. The music is decent, but by no means impressive. The music themes are all short-lived, although some are 2 minutes long. There's a lot of music repeated, but you won't hear any music while cruising the streets, so it's not in any way unbearable. The movie music is orchestrated, and is nice to hear again. The game music focuses on rock themes, and is edgy at times, but not the best I've heard. None of the tunes are hummable, either. The voice acting isn't too great. Bruce Campbell commentates, and is the best sounding. Tobey Mcguire, Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina pitch their voice talents for their characters, but it just doesn't have the same feel as it did in the movie. It's also a shame to see Dr. Conners, Harry Osborne, and Aunt May with other voices, because those aren't very good. The Daily Bugle employees, including Jameson, are also voiced by other people. Once again, we hardly get the same emphasis on the characters as we do with the movie actors. The citizens also have pretty bad voices, but you won't hear too many of their lines repeated. Overall, the sound is decent. It's not the worst I've heard, and it's pretty good for a third-party company. There are just some minor areas that could have been fixed. Dolby support would have been nice, too. I am somewhat satisfied, though. |
| Control The game has a lot of freedom, involved with traveling around the city slinging your web onto a myriad of buildings. Your hands may get sore after half an hour, because you will be pressing L and R a lot, not to mention A. Y slings out your web attack, while X dodges. You will be using these only in battle, along with B. It feels that B dominates the battles, and you will only be using Y while your in the air. The style is similar to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; it even includes a slow-motion mode, executed by pressing Up on the Control Pad. Of course, it's called 'Spidey-Sense' in this game. Spidey-Sense drains your blue meter, and you'll regain it by being 'stylish'. It's not too hard to replenish the meter, and it becomes very handy it most battles. You'll be using the down control pad usually only for bosses or big battles. Pressing down will lock on to enemies. This is the only time the camera can get kind of glitchy, but even here, it cooperates usually. The fighting style as a whole isn't perfect, but it seems to work out. There's a ton of moves to learn in this game, but you really won't be prone to knowing how to use them. Sure you can read the instructions before you buy it, and when you pause, but when your in the middle of a battle, it seems like you are just pressing random buttons furiously trying to get something to work. The game doesn't do a very good job at training you, unless you find the arcade. I didn't even know the arcade helped to train until after I beat the game. In fact, you'll be wondering where the arcade is. The map isn't very helpful for finding everything. It is helpful finding hint markers and challenges. Speaking of challenges, you can find a challenge just about anywhere. They are pretty tough, and maybe they should have made some of them a bit easier. Overall the controls are good. The menus are pretty fast to work with, although pressing Z and Start for the map is ridiculous. This is also the only game I know of that doesn't have a main menu. This is actually good, because you can just jump into the game. This game is also easy enough to negotiate a fun time without much frustration. |
| Graphics The graphics engine is quite basic. The resolution is average, and the animations are sometimes choppy. The framerate also suffers from time to time, but it won't happen too often to annoy you. The character models are also basic, not bad, but not excellent. The characters just don't look enough like their movie counterparts. The scope of the city is amazing, though. You can see pretty far ahead of you, and the game is very detailed. I can give them credit for detail, but there's nothing amazing about the graphics. The only amazing part are the CG sequences, which are great to see. There's only like 3 or 4 of those, though. There are also some glitches in the graphics, sometimes. Overall, it's good, but much improvement could have been made. |
| Replay The game lasts a good 5 hours to beat the main adventure. You will have completed about 50% of the collectibles. Since getting the rest of the stuff in the game takes longer than the first half of the game, the game overall lasts about 12 hours. This isn't so bad, but the last 7 hours are slow. It is simply filled with finding 213 hint markers, or completing 150 challenges. Then completing those challenges on a mega time is much harder, and takes a very long, tedious amount of time. There are also a bunch of tokens that are strewn about in the game. These include hidden places, and skyscrapers. These are not located on the map, so it gives you a bit more reward for swinging around all day. But when it comes to rewards, this game isn't very good at it. Unless you own the game, you won't want to complete all the other objectives. This game is also plagued by crime fighting, or citizen saving repetition. There's a lot of crime and distress calls in this game, way too much. You go a minute without hearing a call for help. It definitely makes this feel like a superhero game, but it gets old fast. It seems like a weird attempt to add to the replay, when in fact this game is short. Overall, there's plenty to keep you playing, but many won't want to after the main game. Playing the main game again can be fun, though. |
| Design This game is very huge. We're talking the entire city of New York. Any and all areas you could think of is here. I don't live in the city, or even in the state, so I don't know how accurate it is, but all the landmarks I am familiar with seem to be there. A lot of effort was placed into the design, and it really is hard to feel like you're in the same place twice. They really wanted travel to be a big part of the game. It also can get annoying at times to travel big distances. The freedom is nice, and not available in many other games on the market. The tasks you have to complete almost always lead back to combat, which isn't perfect. It feels like you're just picking on different enemies, and the AI isn't very smart. It's easy to use a sprint uppercut and beat the crap out of an enemy in the air, while the guys on the ground make little attempt to defend their comrades. If they have guns, they tend to always shoot at you. You could grab a guy and hold him in front of you and let that guy take all the bullets from his 'friend'. Basically, they never seem to fight back very well. And then they try to escape in cars. It's so easy to catch up and get them. It justs seems like they shouldn't even bother. That turns into reverse psychology, and you'll soon be the one who doesn't bother. People in need starts to get so annoying, that you'll tend to just want to pass it up after a while. You get enough of it in the main game, anyway. I just felt that the main game should have been developed on, instead of the city. Some of the boss battles are unique, and fun, but this game is pretty easy, and it's over before you know it. Swinging around all day is fun, but the game just falls apart with redundancy. It's not the worst case of redundancy, because this game has its moments. The storyline isn't very accurate with the movie, but it is decent. The game is action-packed, and there are some suspenseful moments. Throw in a drop of humor and the franchise, and you've got a solid, fun and free action-adventure game. |
| Scores |
| Sound 7.3 |
| Control 8.4 |
| Graphics 7.8 |
| Replay 7.9 |
| Design 8.2 |
| 7.9 |
| Final Words This is a pretty good third-party title, and it is a lot of fun. I don't think the freedom aspect that many other reviewers liked so much is something that I like. It doesn't quite make the game as good as it could be. This game tries to be Grand Theft Auto, but it ultimately fails by repetition. There's also many aspects that needed to be improved for a better game. This is a still a great rental, and if you like the freedom aspect, doing all the challenges and collecting a lot of stuff, then this is worth a purchase. |
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