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Why did Windows users get such a poor game?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 19
Date: July 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm trying to imagine the meeting at Activision where they discussed the video game for "Spider Man 2":

Marketing guy: "Okay, so the console version is going to be like 'Spider Man' meets 'Grand Theft Auto.' You can zip around all of New York..."

Other marketing guy: "All of it?"

Marketing guy: "Yes! You can even go to the Statue of Liberty!"

Other marketing guy: "Wow!"

Marketing guy: "There will be missions and a story and then all of the side-missions Spidey can take."

Other marketing guy: "Wow!"

Marketing guy: "It'll be a great game for the Playstation 2, Game Cube, and X-Box."

Other marketing guy: "What about Bruce Campbell as the sarcastic tutorial guy?"

Marketing guy: "Yes! Bruce will be there to help Spidey!"

Other marketing guy: "Wow! This game is going to be great! Are we forgetting something?"

Marketing guy: "Uh...no. I don't think so."

Other marketing guy: "Oh! I know. What about the PC version?"

Marketing guy: "The what?"

Other marketing guy: "The PC version. You know, it'll be the same game as the consoles, but since it's on a PC, it'll look fantastic!"

Marketing guy: "Er, we didn't develop a game for the PC."

Other marketing guy: "What??"

Marketing guy: "Yeah, uh, wow, that's a pretty big thing to mess up. Hmm. Say, you know what? One of the developers had created his own Spider Man 2 game. It's a tech demo. It's not complete. It's not even the same game."

Other marketing guy: "That doesn't sound very good."

Marketing guy: "Don't worry about it. We'll give it some polish and sell it for $20 less."

Other marketing guy: "Wow, okay, if you say so."

Yes, the PC version of "Spider Man 2" is a horrible game. Remember the first PC "Spider Man" game? It was a port of a Playstation game, and you couldn't see any of New York because it was covered in fog? That game is better than this.

What happened? Who knows? PC users are left with a game that looks worse than the Playstation 2 version. Despite using the usually reliable Unreal engine, the game looks bad, the textures look bad, and for some reason, control has been simplified to use the mouse and keyboard, without all of the web-slinging freedom found in the console version. What a disappointment. Save your money and, for $10 in most cases, you can get the PC version of "Spider Man, The Movie" which plays the same as the console versions but also benefits from the higher-resolution capabilities of the PC.

This is where the term "false advertising" came from

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After witnessing the deluge of advertising (including the "Making the Game" special on MTV) and seemingly universal critical praise for the console version of the game, I purchased the PC version expecting to play the same thing.

It's not.

The graphics are horrible (the Unreal engine is capable of ten times more; yet half the cutscenes are prerendered anyway by what seems to be an old, half-broken Nintendo 64), the same five enemy characters are re-used ad nauseam (and use the same taunt dialogue again and again), and the controls are non-standard and generally annoyingly difficult to use.

Most of all, the free-roaming environments and non-linear gaming so touted in the promotional materials ARE NOT PART OF THIS GAME. Even though the structure of the PC version seems designed for a console ("save points" instead of save-anywhere design; only one game can be saved at a time) it lacks any of the special features advertised for the console versions.

The Unreal engine can blow away even the Xbox's best efforts, and it's a shame that its power wasn't harnessed. The biggest shame, however, is that Activision has duped gamers into purchasing a totally linear, almost thoroughly unenjoyable product that is wholly different from the one that has been advertised excessively in the past weeks. I feel disappointed and cheated, and I hope I can get my money back. :-P

Does NOT do whatever a spider can.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm just a simple gamer who enjoys a few video games in his spare time. I don't need a big machine for my gaming; a simple PC, or in my case, laptop, will do. But is that any reason to punish me? Spider-Man II is probably the worst PC game in my very small stack. I had heard rumors that programmers were making changes to the minor complaints like A) it was dumb to make Spidey unable to walk on the street, and B) it seemed a little odd that Spidey was swinging on webs attached to thin air. But the improvements cost too much in the overall quality -- I'll take my inaccessible streets and nonexistent web attachments.

First, it's obvious programmers concentrated too much on the environments. Yes, you CAN walk on the street. You can even bump into people who will get mad at you. The people also try to walk around you otherwise, and occasionally get stuck. Also, you can block cars, making them stop and blow their horns. Otherwise, you can hop on and ride them.

Good: The environments ARE better. The few video clips, including the introduction, are quite lifelike, even though they are animated. Spider-Man has a shadow, too. The sound effects, if you stop and pay attention, are really well-placed, although it was disappointing that they didn't use the unique web-squirting sound effect that the first game (and movies) use. One of the big selling points is that they used Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Alfred Molina (Spidey, MJ, and Ock from the movies), but there's not quite as much interaction which would make this a huge bonus. The climbing action is better developed and used more, since you can hop onto the sides of buildings and scale them to the top.

Bad: Spidey has absolutely NO fighting combos, no web combos, few choices of any kind. It's also a REAL bummer that you can't use a game pad for this game. I'm more dextrous with a keyboard when playing games, believe it or not, but playing Spider-Man (especially playing as Green Goblin!!) called for a game pad. This game incorporates the keyboard and the mouse, which is stupid. Yeah, it's great that now Spidey can only swing on certain web icons attached to buildings, but this leaves me, right-handed, piloting his direction with my right hand, and navigating his movements and ducking with my left hand.
There's also not as many wisecracks as there were in the first game. And for whatever reason, the developers saw fit to give the bad guys bright pink ray guns. Perhaps to make it more kid-friendly, but I don't see the point since you run up to the bad guys and beat them up anyway. The violence, since I mentioned it, isn't much of a concern if you are wondering if your kids can play. The bad guys get knocked back once defeated, and then disappear. There's a couple of monster-mutants that Spidey has to battle which might be a tad frightening, but that's about it.

I DID have advance warning about how bad it might be, though. First, I filled out the box top on the Cheez-its promotion, to get the demo. (A drastic move since I don't even like Cheez-its) Then I found out that the exact same demo came with the Spider-Man 1 special DVD release. Either way, I found the demo a little lame, but I figured it was a demo, you know?

First, you start with training. The same sarcastic guy helps you train, but the training is very short. After that, you have to chase a van to a prison, where you help stop a jailbreak. After defeating the villains, Rhino breaks out, and you must battle him. Then you have to foil a bank robbery. The bank level is probably the most enjoyable, if you can keep your head amidst dozens of rooms and hallways that all look alike. Your objective is to defeat the bad guys and protect Aunt May, then find a way into the basement to stop Ock. In trying to reach him, you have to complete this odd tune-recognition sequence to open the vault he locked himself in. Then you have to fight him, dodging his tentacles and turning off the electricity when he turns it on. Once you beat him up a little, he runs off and you have to rescue Aunt May from being taken hostage by the remaining robbers. Then you have to make your way downtown. Apparently a while later, time-wise, Peter is walking with MJ when her car is stolen. He runs to "call the police", and then Spider-Man chases after the car. It turns out to be a trap by some bad guy named Puma, whom you take a few levels to defeat. After that, you have to catch up with Ock, who oddly enough has escaped to Oscorp. You chase him from there to a lab, defeating bombs he's placed in the building. You have to defeat Rhino again, then go through a bizarre bout with Mysterio, which is just more showing off of environment creations. Then catch up with Ock after he kidnapped MJ. The end of the video game spoils the end of the movie, so make sure you see the movie first.

There are absolutely no peripherals like the training levels of the first game, but along the way you can look for and stop escapee prisoners, and radioactive/genetically altered spiders for bonus points. It's not a big challenge, and there are more stop-and-save progress points so that, if you die, you won't be in anguish over the huge amounts of progress you already got through. Overall, it would seem that less realism, more video game has gone into this, exemplified in jumping from platform to platform and tune recognition.

Cheap graphics, and boring fights make me agree with most of the other negative reviews: do NOT waste your money on this.

Shocking to say the least.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game should never have been given to a mickey mouse organisation to design. Treyarch (the people who made the first one and the console version) should have made the PC version. This thing doesn't take full advantage of the power a PC has (far more than any of the consoles). It took me 4 hours with only minor setbacks to finish. If I hadn't had to redo some parts it would probably have only taken 2-3 hours. Terrible. The boss fights suck. The game tells you what you have to do to beat them. Kinda takes the fun out. Why? What have we (the PC Gamers) done to deserve this. And to say it was designed for the kids is not right. Kids could whup this thing. Also, if it was designed with younger players in mind, don't they realise most children out there are console children. Some probably don't know PC's can play games. Because that's all consoles do. Activision hang your heads in shame!

Spiderman 2 PC a scam!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

More like (-5) stars. Frankly Activision conned me with this game. Firstly you can't configure a joypad with this game and no where on the box does it say that. I assumed you could because on the first one you could conigure a joy pad. Secondly on the advert for the game it says "This time he can go anywhere" actually NOT! There is no freedom at all, you can't even swing where you want. Then the controls are pathetic, one button to do everything except jump or dodge/crawl which are two other buttons. Activision should be sued for misinformation. After playing this game I will not buy anymore Activision products.

What a disappointment!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In one word . . . "LAME!" The absolute worst spiderman game ever made for PC, what a horrendous embarrassment for Activision. Thankfully I bought it used for cheap, otherwise I would have had to sue Activision for false advertising. I am surprised somebody has not sued them already. I won't be looking forward to any spiderman games made by Activision in the future. In fact after this I avoid Activision games altogether. "This time there's nowhere you can't go." NOT TRUE on the PC... The truth is this time there's nowhere you can go and nothing you can do... Customer Support is non-existent... LAME!!!

Horrific

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Get it away from me!! That's all I can say about this horrible, cheap and stripped down version of Spider-man 2: The Game. After all the wonderful reviews I've read about the console versions (Playstation 2, Gamecube, and XBox), I had to get it on PC, after all, it was only $20. It was very strange that when I opened it, it was only one CD-ROM. 'How could all of virtual New York fit on one CD-ROM?' The answer is very disappointing, it can't.

I was shocked to find that this version was LINEAR in gameplay, and you can't free roam around NY helping out civilians, like in the console versions. You can't even shoot your web and swing where you want, only in specific places. How awful huh? And the attacks are only on one button, which makes for very boring and easy battles. The game itself is very boring and simple, and one of the worst features is the awful camera. It will make you SO dizzy, you'll have to stop and turn away just to rest your eyes.

The point is, just don't get this game on PC! Like other's have said, and I agree, this must be one of the worst games I've ever played. Yes, even playing Spider-man himself! I recommend the first Spider-man game on PC instead of this one. That one was very much fun for adults and children alike. (I'm afraid that game, though, is out of print.) Even though it's priced cheaply, this game is not worth it. It should be worth about $10 less. With all it's flaws, this game might be enjoyable for children 10 and younger, and I think that's who it's made for, young children. Any older than that, and you'll be wishing you hadn't had opened the packaging.

THIS GAME F@#*ING SUCKS

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The only reason I gave this one star is because the web site made me! I got spiderman2 for pc for my birthday last year and almost smashed the computer because I was so pissed! Everything is controlled by the mouse. The colors look like something from telletubbies and the graphics just suck. There is no "free roam" only "go this way because we are to f@$&ing lazy to make this game for anyone but 3-year-olds roam." If you bought this game take it back. If you are about to DON'T!!!!!! SAVE YOURSELF THE HORRIBLE PAIN THIS GAME CAUSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shame on you Activision!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I took it back the next day. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!! If you have a console, buy that game. The PC version is a watered down, horrible attempt to replicate the awesome console version. I'm not exactly sure why Activision did this, but I knew something was up when I saw this game sitting on the shelves before the release date. Again... DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! You will be terribly disapointed. This is a horrible deception and the gaming community should strike back at Activision. Shame...

(the 1 star is only because I had to put a rating, and there was no "0" option)

Activision should be ashamed.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've had an account with Amazon.com for at least 4 years. This is the only review I have ever written here. I am doing so because I felt aboslutely cheated by Activision with this game. They are marketing it as the same game as that on the consoles; they do not make any attempt at all to tell you that this is not the same game. I've played the game on a PS2, and it is brilliant. The version for the PC, however, is quite possibly the worst big-title game I have ever played. It is definately the worst Spider-Man game I have ever played, and I have played a lot of them (going as far back as the Sega Genesis version, which is still better than this garbage). This PC game is obviously marketed towards young children. The control scheme is VERY elementary; you use ONE button for punching, kicking, swinging, and webbing, depending on the situation. Unfortunately, this can quickly become frustrating if you are not oriented exactly correct for each move. I.E. you will zip to a wall when you meant to punch somebody. The audio is subpar, the graphics are cartoony and dated, the cutscenes play HORRIBLY out of sync and CHOPPY, even on the beefiest PCs. But by far the worst "feature" of this game is that there is no freedom. You can swing ONLY from special web icons located strategically throughout the city. You can zip anywhere on buildings, but you have to be close enough. This is a giant step back from the first game (which was GREAT, even on the PC). I'm not really disappointed at how much this game sucks. However, I'm furious that Activision would try to market it as the same game as the console version. That is just not a classy thing to do. They should make it painfully obvious that the PC version of Spider-Man 2 is an entirely different, kid-oriented game. This might be an OK game for a young kid (under 12). But if you are a serious gamer, you are going to have to play the console version. This is unfortunate, becase these days I am exclusively a PC gamer and will miss out on this great (console) game. It boggles my mind that Activision is pushing such a great game on the consoles, but a kid's toy on the PC. It's too bad the lowest rating is 1 star. Activision should be paying ME to play this game!

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