Spider-Man 2 (GameCube) Review

Peter Parker was a young high school student, but when an irradiated spider bites Peter, he develops amazing arachnid abilities and became the superhero Spider-Man.

The main story for the second film is Dr Octavius undergoes a major transformation into the psychotic multi-tentacled Doc Ock. He then starts wreaking havoc across New York in a attempt to bring chaos to the city.

There are two different kinds of 'swinging' modes for choice in Spider-Man 2. These are Normal Swinging and Easy Swinging. Easy Swinging is just one-button swing and once you release the button Spidey will automatically jump. But choosing this you will be losing out on the feel of being Spider-Man when you choosing this option. We recommend the Normal Swinging because it's really the best part about the entire game. You get to feel the rhythm of swinging and really get to experience a unique type of gameplay that you don't get anywhere else.

Once choosing how you want to 'swing' you are whisked straight into an in-game move. Swooping around the city, cars whizzing by and people strolling on the sidewalk. Though buildings look bad from far away, up close they turn into quite beautiful things with a lot of detail. The entire game is perfect digital copy of New York City, so if you know the city well you will have a great time looking about. The lack of graphical flair in places can't really be criticised because of the massive size of the playing area; this game is huge.

As the swooping camera comes to a halt, we see him; his tight red and blue suit makes (Oooher – Ed) him stand out for two blocks away. As soon as you get in control, you are put into a basic tutorial, you can skip it, but if this is your first try at the game, then we recommend you do.... if you have played it, then listen to it again, as it the tutorial has a welcome return of Bruce Campbell and his amazing talent of insulting you with his sarcastic jibes! While in the past game Mr Campbell was only as the voice of the tutorial, in this game he's the tour guide as he's around as the 200+ hint markers dotted around the city to find.

The tutorial is about five minutes long teaching you the basics such as climbing on walls by pressing the X Button, jumping by pressing the A Button (holding it powers your jump thus making you jump higher) Then after explaining the map and how the height meter works, off you go swinging from building to building with a easy push of the right-trigger. The swinging feels great and going about shooting out webs to continue your swinging down the streets of New York is undoubtedly one of the best feelings in gaming today.

The weather options are pretty basic being just morning and night, but its still impressive watching the sunrise, the ocean beginning to glow and the many millions of windows in the city reflect it, clouds move. Shadows are cast on the opposite sides of buildings as the sun moves through out the day, and that’s just daytime! At night its a bit simpler, but seeing the lights in all the buildings is still impressive to look in a city of this size.

Graphically, the city is the real star of the game's visuals, though. The city itself looks great, and the game maintains a solid frame rate as you move through it, even when you're swinging around at high speeds, there are no hiccups at all. Okay, there are some pop ups here and there, but the doubts we had from looking at early screens are no more. You can climb to the top of the largest skyscraper and fall all the way to the 1,400 foot down to your death with no stutters, or loading times at all! You can travel the length of the city and no loading times in sight, it really is something special. Another good thing is that it is based so closely on New York it's unbelievable! You can take a stroll in Central Park, swing across Brooklyn Bridge, and visit Times Square.

Web swinging can be very frustrating at first, but it opens up with practice and upgrades. To start off with it will feel awkward, but with practice (About two hours) you will be a master at the new method. Say you jump off a building; you hit the right trigger and a direction of where you want the web to go, now if there is a building there Spider-Man will shoot some web. You will then swing like you would in a arc, once near the top of the arc, pressing the A button lets Spider-Man let go off his web, then you press the right-trigger again, and repeat the process. By the end of the story mode (about 8-10 hours long) you should of had enough practice to allow Spider-Man to speed up in swing (left-trigger) and holding A, allows him to fly right into the air and really it looks fantastic. His flexible animations make him move so smoothly, it is jaw dropping to watch.

So the game is broken down into chapters. To progress to the next chapter you will have to complete certain objectives, ranging from going here, speaking to this person, or earning a certain amount of 'Hero Points'. Hero Points are like money.... just not. It wouldn't be so bad really, but after a while some of the smaller street missions can get really repetitive, and after a while you will just ignore these missions and continue with the story.

To earn Hero points you must either complete the task on hand in the to do list, or help out civilians in distress. To help these civilians, whilst you are swinging about doing the Spider-Man thang, a green bob will appear on the radar, all you have to do then is swing on over to them and with a tap of the B button they will tell you what they have witnessed nearby.

These are normally just set ups for small little missions (seven of these) which are either beating up a group of thugs, saving a person who has slipped off a building, rescue the police in a shootout, chase some bad guys in a stolen car, stop a van being robbed, save some people from a boat (Really annoying considering Mr Parker is unable to swim) or carrying a injured person to the nearest (miles away) hospital. Later as the story progresses there are more, such as Doctor Ock's goons making trouble, catching runaway balloons for children, delivering pizzas (very amusing), or Mysterio's alien bots attacking people.

When a task is completed it, you are awarded some Hero Points. These can then be used in special Spidey Shops dotted around the city and buy upgrades for making Spidey's jump height bigger, his swinging faster or just moves in the air to show off. Also you'll be able to add moves to Spidey's list, and these give those small street crimes a new meaning to try again. By using these moves you can then link up all these moves to create masses of combos and take down 10 thugs in 5 seconds...hopefully

With the movie to game transformation, come actor tie ins. Tobey Maguire voices Spider-Man and Peter Parker, which is great, until you start to realise that the dialogue is slightly limited and hence will become annoying with time. Whilst some of the character models look great, other enemies and people in the game look awful. The citizens of NYC look like they have had a severe case of low polygon count disease. Their heads are all blocky and none of there mouths open as they scream at Spidey. Also you will find that three of the same models will be standing in the same place at one time, and we found that this lets down the beautifully created city.

The soundtrack mostly sticks to Danny Elfman's movie score, which range from quiet music as you swoop through the city, to the classic high pitch over the top dramatic battle music you hear in every action film.