As all PSP owners know, Spider-Man 2 was the first UMD movie for the system. In fact it’s the only movie for the system at the time of this review. Apparently, the feeling was if you love watching the movie over and over again on your new console, you’ll really love playing the game. Unfortunately the game on the PSP is nowhere near as good as the movie.
In this action game, the main objective is to defeat Doc Ock, just like in the movie. Of course, there are additional baddies in order to add to the fun. The plot line doesn’t follow the movie and goes follows it’s own path in seemingly a very random fashion. Basically it goes cutscene, action, cutscene, action, cutscene, action. Notice a pattern here?
The cutscenes feature the voices of Tobey Maguire (Peter/Spiderman), Alfred Molina (Doc Ock), and Kirsten Dunst (MJ). Unfortunately, the cutscenes themselves aren’t very good and again, after seeing the movie on the same unit, really look awful.
You’ll start of the game in the training mode, which does give you a good idea of how to play the game. Right off the bat, you’ll notice that the control is not very good. As you swing on your web, you’ll keep going up, up and away, which makes it extremely difficult to stay lower. On one level you have to put away a helicopter with your web. It is an exercise in frustration to get to the same altitude as the copter while trying to sling your web to get around and also as a weapon. Oh yeah, did I mention the camera is on the d-pad? How do you use the d-pad and the analog stick at the same time? Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?
Anyway, back to the game..after training, you then encounter….more cutscenes, followed by an action scene where you have to rescue/save/destroy something with your web. The graphics in the game are….well, “meh”. When you’re scaling walls or outside, things aren’t bad….just not an eye popping experience you would expect with a new unit. Inside or up close, the game just doesn’t look that detailed. Having played seven PSP launch titles, this one just didn’t measure up to the other ones graphically. It’s not horrendous, but it just doesn’t look clean to me. In game music is a saving grace of the game however…not a lot of voice overs during the action sequences, but the music sounds like it’s right off the movie soundtrack, and that’s a good thing.
After each level, you’ll have a score summary. You earn “hero points” for completing the level, your combat style (when you fight a bad guy, you hit the buttons and earn extra points for combos), a time bonus and health bonus as well (doesn’t it sound old school?). You can then use those ‘hero points’ at the local spidey store (I didn’t know there was one either) to purchase “Health I”, “Web Net” or “Health 2” and more! The store is a nice idea, but the thought of “purchasing” a four punch combo seems silly to me.
Some of the gameplay action is enjoyable. Using the web to remove a bad guy’s weapon is always exciting. Everytime you go into an action sequence, there is usually a resulting ‘cutscene’ sequence even though you haven’t finished the level. This really breaks the momentum of the action of the game. Even though it tells a story, I found that it broke up the game too much.
I can absolutely see this game being a fun platform game on a PSX. Problem is, it’s not 1997 and you are very limited by the controls thanks to the annoying d-pad camera issue. Idiosyncrasies such as picking up hostages and moving them to a special area and only in the magic “circle of life” are annoying even if the level itself is easy and in the early stages of the game. The way some of these hostages talk, you’d think they came out of House of the Dead and hand you a life present. Please be safe, G.
There is no multiplayer to speak of in this game and the options menu is sparse. The manual does a good job of explaining the basic controls but also takes up a page to tell you that there are level tips displayed when loading the level. Good thing they told me that, otherwise I wouldn’t look at the screen when it is loading.
Unlike other games brought over from the PlayStation 2 (hello Tony Hawk), this is not a port of the PS2 game..thankfully it’s not a port of the PC game either. With a fix of the d-pad camera or maybe another analog stick, this game might be enjoyable albeit quick.
As a quickie bargain bin platformer it’s not horrible, but as a full price launch title, I have serious reservations. You do not get a whole lot of replay value from it however….if you took this game to work with you and you work a 9 to 5 shift…you could be done before the day is over…you might even be done before lunch. The store aside, there aren’t many unlockables and ‘gallery’ isn’t something I’m going to fire up to show off the capabilities of the PSP. If you are going to spend $49.99 on a game you want to feel as though you got some value out of it, and I definitely don’t feel like this is the case with this one. Enjoy the movie UMD and skip this one until it hits the bargain, and only then if you’re a die hard Spidey fan.
