Spider-Man 2; Greatest swing simulator or… Oh, it is.
Witchsight
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, last night I had a craving for Spiderman 2, and fired up the PS2. As usual, after about a minute of swinging airborne bliss I felt the need to express my overflowing love for this game to anyone nearby. Ill give my roommates’ ears a rest and bother everyone here instead.
This is my favorite superhero game, I have come to realize. It strikes a fine balance between having superhuman abilities and needing to use them efficiently to avoid getting yourself killed.
Soon after you begin the game, and after some much needed swing lessons delivered by a perfectly snide and sarcastic Bruce Campbell, the player is given the freedom to crawl and web about New York. This sounds like standard sandbox fare, and it is… But add exceptional swing mechanics that at once are orgasmic, and have a simple beauty, then my friend, you have a fucking awesome product.
Spider-Man 2 progresses as you amass enough Hero Points to move onto the next chapter. They can be nabbed by helping out random citizens, taking on the challenge markers spread around the city, or catching thieves just like flies, Look Out! The challenges are my favorite aspect, and really force you to step up your thwipping fluidity.
Just… just let me talk about swinging for a minute.
I've played it on Xbox and PS2, but I find it much more natural on the latter. The shoulder buttons all do the following; shoot out a web to the closest building within range, fire a second web for slingshotting purposes, speed up, and enter spidey sense mode (slow time).
Effective and graceful swinging is what you strive for in this game. Arcing yourself unhindered around city blocks and over buildings saves time and looks cool as shit. But its easier said than done as beginners may find. It would be nice to travel from point A to point B, like SOME superheroes… But Spidey has to work for his locomotion. As soon as you let go of your last web you are in peril, you are freefalling, and you will probably die. So you need to be alert for buildings that will keep you on course, and save you from plummeting to death. This constant awareness makes me a happy camper.
This, Mecenaries, and Battlefront 2 are three games i still swoon over and need to play randomly.
Who didn’t swan dive off the Empire State building as soon as they were able? Sigh, oh Spiderman.
This is my favorite superhero game, I have come to realize. It strikes a fine balance between having superhuman abilities and needing to use them efficiently to avoid getting yourself killed.
Soon after you begin the game, and after some much needed swing lessons delivered by a perfectly snide and sarcastic Bruce Campbell, the player is given the freedom to crawl and web about New York. This sounds like standard sandbox fare, and it is… But add exceptional swing mechanics that at once are orgasmic, and have a simple beauty, then my friend, you have a fucking awesome product.
Spider-Man 2 progresses as you amass enough Hero Points to move onto the next chapter. They can be nabbed by helping out random citizens, taking on the challenge markers spread around the city, or catching thieves just like flies, Look Out! The challenges are my favorite aspect, and really force you to step up your thwipping fluidity.
Just… just let me talk about swinging for a minute.
I've played it on Xbox and PS2, but I find it much more natural on the latter. The shoulder buttons all do the following; shoot out a web to the closest building within range, fire a second web for slingshotting purposes, speed up, and enter spidey sense mode (slow time).
Effective and graceful swinging is what you strive for in this game. Arcing yourself unhindered around city blocks and over buildings saves time and looks cool as shit. But its easier said than done as beginners may find. It would be nice to travel from point A to point B, like SOME superheroes… But Spidey has to work for his locomotion. As soon as you let go of your last web you are in peril, you are freefalling, and you will probably die. So you need to be alert for buildings that will keep you on course, and save you from plummeting to death. This constant awareness makes me a happy camper.
This, Mecenaries, and Battlefront 2 are three games i still swoon over and need to play randomly.
Who didn’t swan dive off the Empire State building as soon as they were able? Sigh, oh Spiderman.
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My devout feelings towards SM2 is what scared me away from the newer games. If they screwed it up, i would just be upset. Even between this and SM3 they managed to drop the ball?
I assumed it was at least more of the same.
Things to do after you beat the game;
Check out all the challenge markers. They are really fun, and the retry / quit options are quick to navigate
Get all upgrades
See how far you can get without using any webs... (it will end in death, but still)
Try to break your top speed record. I think mine is 270
It might be. It's the one where you've got to jump around in the partially-destroyed building deactivating all the different terminals or something, while the glowing death-sun in the middle keeps pulsing and trying to destroy you. There's just some parts that are so frustratingly cheap that I gave up. DON'T TOUCH THE FLOOR NOW!
:x
Spider-Man 3 didn't have BAD swinging mechanics, they just weren't as solid as 2's.
with Ultimate they didn't even try.
Wrong. Spider-Man 3s mechanics just weren't fun and what was worse was that they took away the power to unlock the upgrades from you. You just swing and swing waiting for it to upgrate itself. Fuck that noise.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I haven't played any of the subsequent games, but I'd be willing to give them a shot some time. But hearing that the swinging is gimped in everything after 2 is a downer.
Gamer Tag: LeeWay0
PSN: Leeway0
Johnny Storm is fucking cheap, and he brags about it too.
Of course you beat me, you can fly asshole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0geP7Vx_hHY
despite the above comment there's nothing really wrong with Spider-Man 3 except that it's a small step down in quality from 2
the swinging felt fine to me at any rate
Cool, thanks :^:
oh I suppose I should mention there are QTEs, and some of them are frustrating as hell.
but that's true of any game that has those things.
Anticipated Spidey 3, drove all over to get it, got it, played it to completion for the sake of it and traded it in. My first ever trade. PoS.
Dammit DW, you're scaring me now! I know our tastes in games are pretty much on the same level too.
IMO Spider-Man 3 was worse than 2. The boss battles are tedious and overlong and frustrating, the combat in general feel even more haphazard, the swinging isn't as good (though still alright), and it's just not as interesting.
It isn't totally awful (at least the next-gen versions), but 2 remains a high point.
Holy shit imagine a Spectacular Spider-Man game with the controls from SM2. And the city will be HUGE because hey it's next-gen.
If you like Spidey 2, its more of the same but with no charm and boss battles generally relegated to quick combos and huge amounts of QTEs. They're not particularly hard but boring gameplay to pull off a set piece plus the hero missions are a pile of nonsense about 3 city gangs. I don't think they added more than 4 new crimes to the game from the 2nd and they're bad. Plus they took out the good ones.
Very few Spider rogues in there, a made up bomber boss villain, no side characters like Black Cat in 2 which in itself was a great side plot and just ...well, it sucked for me. Really, biggest disappointment of last year.
And being Symbiote SPider-Man isn't very fun.
Plus again, a game made over 10 years ago had tonnes of alternate costumes.
And aerial fighting just isn't an option, its atrocious. I had GG basically skating along the ground as I tried to not have him hit me repeatedly and playing AS him in the final boss battle? Most tedious annoyance in gaming.
Treyarch. They're now making the inferior, alternating Call of Duty games, that aren't as good as the Infinity Ward ones.
That's basically what everyone hoped SM3 would be. It was developed by the same team too, least same company.
Man, SM3 had some of the cheapest, most frustrating fights ever. I'm usually not one to want to smash my controller, but the lizard fight almost did that.
Apart from there, there isn't that much wrong with the game, it just felt pretty half-assed.
Never played 2, honestly. I was looking through Goozex and saw 3 up on the 360 list, so I went for it. I've been matched with someone 3 times and each time it's timed out.
I'll keep that in mind DW, thanks sir.
Funny too, because over the weekend I was getting an itch to pop this game in swing around but opted out to play Hulk Ultimate Destruction because I haven't beaten that game yet. Gonna play this later tho. The swing engine really should be put into another game intact or improved.
The problem I had with 3 (besides the awful QTEs, and this is coming from someone who normally loves QTEs) was that he does web-zip automatically, instead of it being a two-button press like in 2. So now a lot of the time he isn't even swinging around; he's just pulling himself around. Not to mention it somehow runs at a choppier framerate and the game is generally glitchy as hell. The combat sucks compared to SM2 and USM.
And the fucking QTEs, man. Some of the bomb missions have to be impossible.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
Since I've not played Ultimate Destruction, I'm going to have to guess that you are wrong. Is it truly better than Spider-Man 2, City of Heroes, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Freedom Force, Marvel vs Capcom, and the arcade X-Men game?
I could talk about this game for forever and ever. There is no game in the world that I have clocked as many hours into. And I mean this literally, counting in all the childhood games of tag or tetris or minesweeper.
I could write an essay about the awesome spider-sense mechanics.
I could make poems about the beauty of the swinging.
I could tell you about how many times I have gone through the story missions, and you would be awestruck.
I could sing about the acrobatics.
This game is great. Spider-Man 3 was crapshit compared to this. SM2 was just perfect, and I just don't know what happened to the development team between the two games. Brain virus, maybe?
nothing in this universe is better than Marvel Vs. Capcom.
Spidey 3 would of been a great game if they did this. They would of had so much time to flesh everything out with the core game done. But no instead they said "duuuuuuur lets remake everything and make it different... ALSO WE NEED QTE!!!"
I never asked for this!
and I thought the combat at least was pretty improved
This. So much.
I liked Friend Or Foe, for god's sake