Review: Spider-Man 2 (Playstation 2)

Spider-Man 2 is of course based on the second part of the Sam Raimi trilogy about my favorite super hero. Since it is a video game it does not have to be exactly like the movie which it is not - they have sprinkled a few extra things on it such as the appearance of Black Cat and other things not shown in the feature film. But most of the story cutscenes are indeed from the movie and they are motivating the player to progress.

The single most important aspect of any Spider-Man game is the web swinging. How is the web swinging in Spider-Man 2? It is very fun and exciting with a bit of timing and planning involved to get the most speed. With a lot of mini missions scattered around the city there is many hours to be spent just swinging around having an absolute blast with daring diving, speedy swinging and furious fighting. Although the fighting system is a bit dumbed down, to say the least, I liked it. It is nice to be able to beat some bad guys up without having to train for ages. The missions range from defeating random enemies to rescuing a few innocents from accidents and robberies, which can be a bit tedious at times since it is rather repetetive. But on the other hand these missions are almost completely optional and can be done if the player desires to do so.

"The voice acting. It is absolutely horrible."

The graphics are the realistic type, with no "cartoonish" look, and they hold up for the most part. I would not say it looks great during in-game cutscenes but it does not look bad, the city looks alive and does not suffer from any major graphical problems. There is, however, a problem with this game. A huge problem...

Let us just get it out there. The voice acting. It is absolutely horrible. I never saw myself as someone who cares all that much about voice acting in a game if it is fun to play, but this is just insanely bad. They got Tobey Maguire to read the lines for Spider-Man which is cool but he obviously was under heavy influence of prozac or some other sedative. He barely cares and read the lines so uninspired I sometimes felt like muting the sound to be able to enjoy my experience and not have some boring downer sigh words like they meant nothing. Add to this that the sound for the voices is very quiet and the sound effects are really loud - with no subtitles option - and you have a game where the player has to turn up the volume during every cutscene.

Apart from the terrible voice acting and the somewhat repetetive mission dynamics it is a great Spider-Man game which is a great buy concidering it goes for about £0.01 on Amazon.