TVG realises a childhood dream and becomes Spider-Man...

As a kid there was always one superhero that I fancied myself being, donning the red suit and party-string web-emitters, it came as quite a surprise to learn in my maturity that I wouldn’t live up to my lifelong ambition of becoming Spider-Man.

So you can understand my appreciation (and why this review has taken so long to write) when Spider-Man 2 arrived into the office; granting gamers the chance to actually be Spidey for the first time and arguably creating the greatest super-hero videogame adaptation of all-time.

As fans will no doubt know, Spider-Man 2 takes the recently released blockbuster movie as its main inspiration, however this time around the game doesn’t just follow the events from the movie in a linear fashion, but in a nod to the “genre of the day” places gamers in a living, breathing adaptation of New York City – certainly the success of the GTA series has a lot to answer for.

Whilst the inspiration draws from RockStar’s GTA series, the result is closer to Activision’s True Crime, in the sense that the city of New York is rife with random crimes that Spidey is free to answer to or leave alone if he’s just having too much fun in the air, whilst a constant set of objectives are always present to push the main storyline forward if you wish to.

Although not strictly sticking to the codes of Super-Hero conduct, we say this because actually swinging around the cityscape of New York provides more enjoyment then actual progress through the main story. Quite simply Treyarch have refined the actual web-slinging dynamic to the point of perfection – this is as close as you’ll get to actually being Spidey.

Beginning with a few basic manoeuvres players can unlock a wide selection of new tricks by purchasing them from the featured stores throughout New York, whilst stopping criminals, progressing through the main mode and carrying out a huge selection of Challenges grants you the Hero Points to purchase these.

Certainly their previous work on the Tony Hawk’s series has enabled TreyArch to create a robust and highly enjoyable main game dynamic in web-slinging, it’s quite surprising just how close Spider-Man feels to Tony Hawk’s; quite honestly we spent the first few days just swinging around New York with constant smiles on our faces. Every aspect from the control to the camera work has been refined to near perfection, it is an absolute joy to play and will have Spider-Man fans falling over themselves to grab hold of the joypad and have a swing.

As we’ve said previously it’s more fun to go and do your thing then play the actual game; our particular favourite aspect of Spider-Man 2 is finding the “perfect jump” which involves locating the tallest possible tower, tall enough so that the cars underneath resemble nothing more then a few pixels, leaping off it and hearing the wind rush through the speakers and leaving it late enough to sling your web and run along the street below in between the cars! Spider-Man 2 is without doubt the first game to induce vertigo, and boy is there one hell of a sense of exhilaration when you’re rushing to the ground – some of the death-defying leaps you can perform are just simply obscene.

We’ve always seen fancy tricks and manoeuvres in game cinematics, but for the first time TreyArch have created a title which lets you do all the cool things – pretty much everything you see Spidey doing in the films and makes you go “wow” can be done in the game if you’ve got the skill and timing.

A lot of the excitement stems from the fact that TreyArch have built a strong engine that handles the scope of New York admirably and grants players lots of places to have fun; using the traits of Spider-Man players can get to pretty much any point in the environment – whether it be leaping off the Empire States Building or just checking out the flashy neon signs in Times Square. Thankfully the game does a lot to reward player’s exploration with a huge number of varying tokens to collect throughout the city and use to unlock a selection of goodies.

Although it’s all about the web-slinging, Spider-Man also has access to a number of combat techniques when it comes to going up against the scum of New York. Despite the simplistic two-button layout, there’s a sufficient level of depth, variation and enjoyment to ensure that the combat system doesn’t suffer too heavily from repetition. Players can punch and whack their way through the opponents, but also make use of Spidey’s web to carry out a range of tricks such as disarming a foe, tying him up in web or throwing them up in the air or around in circles. As you earn Hero Points you can unlock new combat techniques, granting players more elaborate counter techniques and a few aerial manoeuvres so that you can take combat into the air. In addition Spidey’s “Spider-Sense” makes an appearance and allows players to dodge attacks by pressing a button when a flash appears over his head, setting up the scope for some effective counter-attacks. The game also features a “Spider Reflex” mode, which provides the customary bullet-time effect; granting players with more power and naturally a greater time to see where attacks are coming from. Although this isn’t crucial to the game and feels slightly detached, you’ll be thankful of its inclusion when you find yourself trapped by a group of thugs.

Eventually you will find yourself slanting towards what the actual game has to offer, although the novelty value of swinging around New York City takes a long, long time to ware off. The main game involves a number of different challenges set over a series of Chapters, although most of the missions require you to meet up with somebody to progress the storyline, take photos for Jameson and almost always earn a certain amount of Hero Points by taking on the random crimes within the city.

The random crimes offer some variation, with such tasks as breaking up an armed robbery to saving civilians that like nothing better to do then hang off the top of buildings – all in the day and life of a Super-Hero I guess. Away from the random crimes you can also earn Hero Points by taking on the various Race Challenges scattered through the city, get a job such as delivering pizzas or collect the various tokens that we mentioned previously. Sadly there’s not much variation to this side of Spider-Man 2 and you’ll quickly find yourself doing the same things, however because the main web-slinging dynamic is just so much fun it’s quite easy to overlook the lack of variation.

Visually the game is a mixed bag, with emphasis on the scope of the game instead of massive amounts of visual detail. Certainly the way in which they’ve managed to build the city up so that you can literally find yourself over a thousand foot into the air without any signs of pop-up or fogging is mightily impressive, however this comes at the cost of relatively little detail in the textures and models. Thankfully the game moves at a lightning quick pace, so to be fair you don’t really take in the small details but the overall picture at large.

Despite featuring the voices of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, the overall presentation side of things is largely disappointing with sub-standard cut-scenes and an unfinished feel. Spider-Man fans will no doubt appreciate the return of Bruce Cambell, whose witty one-liners do much to lighten up the overall experience and bring a chuckle every now and then.