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Best Superhero Game Ever.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: July 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A little while back the greatest superheo game that has ever been made came out. That title was, for a time, attributed to the much-hyped flop "Superman: Man of Steel" (see review). However, I can say with the greatest confidence that Spider Man 2 is doubtlessly the head-and-tails best superhero game ever made. It's visually solid, playable, relaxing, challenging, and overall, totally solid entertainment.

How can a game be both relaxing and challenging at the same time? Why, open-ended gameplay, of course! This innovation that Grand Theft Auto pioneered FINALLY finds its way into the superhero realm with spectaular results. Spidey can really take on whatever he wants to. On the one hand, he can complete the storyline challenges, which interwine the events of the movie with characters from the Spidey mythology. On the other, it seems that there are plenty of petty crime and hidden hideouts to keep Spidey busy outside of the main story.

Of course, there's always the fun of just swinging around New York City. Spider Man 2 boasts an impressive and convincing map of Manhattan. When introducing the game, climbing to the top of the Empire State and looking around (before the jump, of course) never fails to impress. As the media has told you, if you can see it, you can go there.

On top of the great sandbox, Spider Man's physics are convincing and the control scheme is tight. Once learned, this combination makes for an extremely playable game. Learning to web-swing takes a little investment, but pays off as the game plays. There's also a pretty cool fighting system that's always available. Spidey-sense give you hints when to dodge, and spidey reflexes give you the bullet-time style upper hand in a tight spot. Upgradable attacks and combos make for constant button-mashing fun.

Some X-Box owners will doubtlessly whine about boxy ported cutscenes, the occasional bug, and eventually the repetitive nature of the on-the-street missions. However, I will gladly trade fully articulated New Yorkers for miles and miles of fluid Manhattan to convincingly swing in. The Atari 2600 proved that playability is more importnat than eye candy any day of the week.

The Lowdown: After a long evolution that dates back to PS1, Spider-Man 2 gets the title: Best Superhero Game Ever. Well done.

Better than the first!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: July 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Title: Spider-man 2

Description: Spidey takes to the New York skies once again in this very loose psuedo-adaption of the movie. Become a hero, assist citizens, and fight super villians. In this free dwelling New York landscape that is anything but linear. You could explore the city for hours and still find new things. Descend skyscapers and take pictures, bust up car jackers, visit the statue of liberty, and even rescue the occasional child's balloon. There is so much to do.

Platform: Xbox (reviewed), PS2, and GC

Learning Curve: 8- Expect to invest alot of time learning how to manuver Spidey. About everything on this game is timed and as such you need to move FAST and you have to keep up with your wall crawler. You almost have to get Spidey to be an extension of yourself. Expect to spend about 5 hours (unless your quicker to catch on than me) to get the mid-grade understanding on getting the most out of Spidey's locomotion. Once you get this stage of learning through. Spidey is easy to control and he is VERY versatile. I think players will enjoy all the possibilities with this kind of control.

Replay Value: 9- There is sooo much to do in this game it would literally take months to do it all. The city is HUGE!!! There are also a ton of rewards you can work for and lots to time trails scattered throughout the city. You gotta be really fast and have spider reflexes to do some of these fun challenges. Excellant indeed.

Difficulty: 7- I am only guess on this one as I'm about about half way through the game, but so far this seems a fair assumption. The game does seem "hard," but I think it will be defeatable to most decently experienced players. The bosses can be hard, but I think once you've gotten Spidey's higher locomotion functions down they should prove to be no problem. The key here is finger dexterity and patience. Realize you will have to do some things multiple times to get it down just right. To "master" this game and get "everything" I'd knock this difficulty rating up to about a 9!!! I can be an enjoyable frustration for hardcore fans though.

(...) It is also not really necessary, but the city maps helps me the most. I don't really suggest a guide unless you are planning to do everything.

Pros: Huge city map for exploration, Character movement versatility, Improved physics for added realism, Classic villians, and Bruce Campbell returns to help narrate the story along with Toby McGuire and Alfred Molina.

Cons: Some times the controls get "choppy," I gotta problem with Spidey wanting to spring off of buildings instead of latching and the wall sprint could have been easier if it didn't share the "grab" button. I understand they had to blur building detailing to speed the graphic engine for swinging and web zipping, but it creates a "generic" feeling to buildings in the distance. Saving people on sinking ships and getting buoy tokens ( I added this just because I hate doing this. Spidey always seems to overstep and land in the water.)

Time Expected to Invest: A month to beat the game with the majority of neat stuff accomplished (75%.) I expect it will take 2 months to get everything.

(...)

Suggested Purchase Price: This guy is worth the full purchase price to fans, but curious gamers will prolly want to mid- 30 dollar cost frame.

Overall: 8- Unlike most movie games this one is good. This is far better than the first Spidey and I enjoyed it. I recommend this one for purchase. I think after you get the hang of it you'll enjoy this title is much as I am.
_________________

Something to think about

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: April 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is great! It's awesome! Best game ever! Go buy it NOW! Oh wait, it's not out for another 2 MONTHS! I'm just saying that I think amazon is run by a bunch of morons by letting incompetent reviewers review products that haven't even been released to the public. Think about it.

Not as bad as they say

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I didn't check out many reviews before buying this game. I was such a big fan of Spider-Man I just picked it up to try it out. After playing it constantly, im glad I didn't read the reviews. This game is absolutely amazing. I don't understand some of the bad reviews, but I agree with some of the comments. It is true that the pedestrians mouths don't move. Not a big deal to me as I deal with them very rarely...I mean, it is just a little cut scene to explain the basic mission. I also agree that there are only about 8 types of missions. I think the amount is fair, but could be better. More missions would be excellent, but at the same time, with the huge combo system, and various ways to take out the bad guy, it makes those 8 missions pretty fun to play over and over. I dont know about you, but swinging to a tall building, jumping off and piledriving a thug into the street below is pretty great. The story missions are fun, but I find myself swinging around and stopping random crimes more than I play the story. This game gives you so much to do, and the swinging is so excellent, I cant imagine giving this game anything less than 5 stars. This game plays completely different than the first title, and although there are some improvements to be made, I think this was an excellent release. The open areas, huge maps, tall buildings, and various missions are much better than pedestrians moving their mouths for 2 seconds...definitely not a problem in my opinion.

Could have been great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: July 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Let's get this straight: as movie adaptations go, this is no Riddick. It has been a long time since Activision made quality games. They tend to rely on a license to sell the game, and save money on production. In many respects, Spiderman: The Movie 2 is typical. Most of the game is incredibly shoddy. Even on the XBox, the graphics are terrible. Clearly, Activision doesn't want to spend the money on anybody with real artistic talent; character models are barely more than PS1 quality, textures are ugly, cut scenes are incredibly bad. Writing, except where taken directly from the movie, is stupid. Many of the missions are also poorly thought out, and there are occasional bugs cropping up. In one scene, where Spidey is supposed to chase the Black Cat. I had the Cat get stuck against a building, running in place, but Spidey still couldn't catch her (because she wasn't in the "right" place to be caught) until eventually she managed to run through the solid "brick" wall. On another occasion the game hung and had to be reset (save often).

All that being said, they got the two most important things right: It is a free-roaming game, and they have managed to come up with a bland but recognizable model of Manhattan for Spidey to roam in. And they have finally gotten the web swinging right. Weblines now have to have actual attachment points; if you leap off the Empire State Building (and you can), you won't find any other web attachment points until you fall to the level of the surrounding buildings. You don't actually have to target specific buldings; just point the joystick in the direction you'll want, and Spidey will try to find something to web. Web swinging is in realistic arcs. Fortunately, it doesn't hurt Spidey to slam full-tilt into a building, because you'll be doing that a lot at first. I can't convey how much these two factors redeem the game. As bad as everything else about the game is, swinging around Manhattan is an incredible blast, tricky but exhilarating (there is an easy web swinging mode for the kids; I didn't try it).

The basic game play is cribbed directly from titles like Grand Theft Auto or some of the recent Tony Hawks games (which is good; if you are going to steal, steal from the best)--you swing (or walk, if you prefer), until one of the generic pedestrians flags you down with a mission (with incredibly poor animation--Activision is too cheap to spring for facial animation, so they stand there bland-faced and wave their arms about). Unfortunately, there are only a dozen or so basic missions, so you'll basically be doing the same thing over and over. There are also "race" tokens scattered around the city, where (if you accept the optional challenge) you have to hit certain tokens with a time limit. But the web swinging is so much fun that you probably won't mind. Combat is OK, basically cribbed from the Capcom Marvel fighting titles (which is a good thing), with lots of air combos. Fancier web swinging and fighting techniques have to be purchased with hero points you earn from missions, which provides a slight RPG element. Every once in awhile, you'll get a scripted challenge, some of which are "boss" fights, generally with a higher difficulty level. Unfortunately, these mostly tend to be more annoying than entertaining.

The frustrating thing about the game is that the web-swinging dynamic is so great that you tend to resent Activation for not building a decent game around it. Don't get me wrong; if you like Spiderman even a little bit, you will enjoy this game. But with a little more work and investment, it could have been one of the greatest games of all time.

The game supports 480p on the XBox. Unfortunately, it does not support 16:9 format, nor does it have the ability to add sidebars. So if you have a widescreen TV that insists on filling the screen with a 480p signal (as many do), the game will be stretched horizontally, and you'll probably end up having to go into the XBox control panel and turn off 480p just to be able to play the game without distortion.

Excellent

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

Played it last night before it came out! AMAZING! The game is simply a dream come true, the first was great this one is TOPS! you can do so many things in this game its unreal! You can grab the baddies and flip them over poles with your web! You now have a power jump also. The momentum of your body makes you swing as fast as you possibly can imagine. You can't just shoot web anywhere but it makes the game more fun and challenging to actually have to look where you shoot your web. Haven't gotten to any bosses yet but being able to move around the giant city is basically spiderman+Grand Theft Auto....its great, its fun and caters to both new gamers and experienced ones! Its gonna be one of the BIG games of the summer right behind Halo 2!

What Is Everyone Talkin About.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Spider-man 2 Is the Best game i have ever played. People need to get over the web slinging. Its trying to be like The movie. So everyone needs to get over it. Like o man if spider-man gets shot he dies. Of course if he got shot in the movie he would die to, I am tired of people complaining about this game. Trust Me go out and buy this game its good for the family.

-The Movie Guy

You CAN Do WHATEVER A Spider Can!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm sorry, but i don't know what the hell most of you are talking about. This game RULES!!! I'm a HUGE spider man fan (i'm also almost 21 years old.. got a problem? :P) and this game just falt out makes me HAPPY!! I've spent hours on end just swinging around the city, jumping off buildings, saving people, stoping peddy crimes, and learning teh controls. You can go anywhere in the friggin city. You can even latch a web on the a helicopter and fly out to the statue of liberty. The moves are just flat out amazing and the swing system is like no other. this is more of a spider-man simulator then anything. This had to be the polar opisite of the first game!!

Definitely a Rental

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

For any fan of the comic book or the movies this is a great experience on the Xbox. There are a good amount of positives about the game that make you want to play it but there are too many negatives about the game that don't make you want to buy it. One of the bright aspects of this game is how it molds the story into the movie and throws some comic book story in the middle of it. For some missions you are teamed up with Black Cat. You take on Doc Ock, Shocker, and Mysterio and for the most part the boss battles are the best parts about the game. Another positive thing about the game is your web slinging is more than just pressing a button and you stick to the sky and swing forward. You have to attach to buildings and things like height and the angle you fling your web at reflect how you swing. At first this is extremely frustrated for even the biggest gamer but by the end the control you have makes you just want to swing a jump through New York forever. Now comes the negatives and what makes this a lackluster title. I never felt challenged at all in this game. There was one part where you have to swing out to the statue of liberty to fight mysterio and that was the toughest part of the game. If I wasn't a Spiderman fan I probably wouldn't have liked this game very much but being Spiderman makes it fun. I finished the game in about 5-6 hours of playing time. If you are a decent gamer you could finish this in a Saturday of playing the game. This is the one reason that this game is a solid rental. Whenever you are not fighting the marquee villians you beat up thugs along the way by talking to people and they give you missions. There are really only 5 missions but they just keep happening in different places you'll see what I mean when you play the game. I actually liked this game but it needed to be a little harder and a little longer and the side missions needed a little more variety.

Spidey's back!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is an awesome game. First off, your web lines attach to buildings and not clouds and air (finally). Also, you will earn more moves which you get by spending hero points. You get them by helping citizens of NYC, whatever the problem. You can also walk on the streets of the NYC and talk to people. There's more enemies. It's so cool I could go on forever. So far I don't see any cons. Seriously, preorder Spider-Man 2 now!!!

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