Spider-Man 2 - PS2

Spider-Man 2 - PS2
Activision

Movie games are always a hit or miss affair. They either break all expectations and silence the critics or fail miserably. When you have to create a game for the year’s summer blockbuster, you’re always going to have people worrying a little bit. But like the film, the game has had a bucket of money thrown at it and publishers Activision have spared no expense here, making for possibly the best movie game ever made.

What the first Spider-Man game lacked was what we enjoyed from the film: a huge urban playground, the ability to swing around at your leisure and doing as you please. So the writers have taken note that Grand Theft Auto is the biggest selling game of all time mainly because you can do whatever you feel like and created Spider-Man 2 in that very same style. The possibilities are limitless and the first time you enter the massive virtual New York you really don’t know where to begin. You can swing around all day and explore the rooftops, the Statue Of Liberty, the Empire State Building and even Chinatown. What you do and when you do it is entirely up to the player.

The game follows the film really well and tells the story of Peter Parker struggling to get by with his job, his love life and the responsibility of being the protector of the Big Apple. The main villain is the infamous Doctor Octopus but there are a few other Marvel characters thrown in there - good and bad - to give the game a much wider appeal. The voices are performed by the actors from the film, and the game also features the official soundtrack making you feel although you are a part of the movie itself.

There’s hundreds of missions, varying from delivering pizzas, busting crooks, taking injured road workers to the hospital and even helping little girls get their balloons back - awww.
Even after the main story is over you can keep on doing these missions thanks to the random mission generator that basically creates endless tasks for you, and it never gets boring.

Visually it’s a stunner as you stand on top of the tallest skyscrapers looking down at a sun-soaked city in all it’s living, breathing glory. The camera can be a bit shaky, some of the rooftop sections are a bit bare and Mary Jane’s character looks a tad weird but these are all minor niggles that if ignored leaves you with the most involving and breathtaking movie tie-in ever created. Roll on Spider-Man 3!

[wingwalker]

I remember playing this at 6 in the morning with my friend Victor, smoking HUGE cigars and listening to Prince in honour of his birthday and thinking it was the greatest game EVER created. Thanks for reminding me of that.

[RoAcHiesaurus]

has any1 played the pc version? i found it just a little bit poo, admittedly the ps2 version rocked, but the pc version just didnt cut it tbh, it was on rails and there was a strange 'swing from floaty web thing' going down, no idea what happened there...