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Spider-Man 2 Review
Written by Modojo Staff on Monday, January 31, 2005
Follows the movie's storyline.
Has some of the worst 3-D stages EVER.
I've seen a lot of very ugly movie-based game ports in my time. Acclaim's Cutthroat Island? Ugh, shoot me. Last Action Hero by Sony Imagesoft? The movie was more appealing, and it sucked. And don't even get me started on EA's downfall with the recent release of Catwoman. I swear, that's the kind of game that I don't just drop off at Blockbuster, I run for the drop slot in fear of actually losing any more moments of my life with that game. Sometimes, let's face it, you just run into a licensed production of a game that doesn't really do the license justice. This is the case with Spider-Man 2 for the N-Gage, one of the worst Spider-Man games yet.
It's not that I disliked Spider-Man 2. That's hardly the case. The movie itself was a bonafide blast, a return to old-school comic thrills that never let up. And Treyarch delivered on a hell of a gaming experience on the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube with their adaptation, complete with a Grand Theft Auto-like experience; where you interacted with all sorts of people and environments as you worked your way to the lair of Dr. Octopus. But this crappy N-Gage port... UGH. It reminded me of a time when Acclaim had the Spider-Man license, and put it to no good.
The game follows the movie storyline pretty closely. You're Peter Parker, an average citizen with a unique secret thanks to a radioactive spider bite. Along with trying to deal with the love of your life, the unknowing Mary Jane, you've also got to deal with the maniacal Dr. Octopus and his army, hellbent on creating a new energy that could possibly destroy the city. So you set out to take on this army, armed with what has to be the most ridiculous gameplay element in a Spider-Man game.
The problem here is how limited the gameplay is. The game relies on you to use typical punch and kick attacks, while only utilizing a particular web attack (one at a time) as your special feature. That's it. You can alter between attacks, depending on what you pick up, but you're still just stuck with a solitary special attack when battling bad guys of all different sorts. That's a big no-no in my book, as Spider-Man should be the kind of hero that has all sorts of moves in his arsenal. Was Tobey Maguire just limited to limp punches? Nope, he had full swing power, baby. And that's what makes the 2D gameplay hurt. Also, crouching and jumping are a bit more difficult than they need to be. It seems that Backbone Entertainment didn't take the crucial lessons that Treyarch should have taught them.
