Spider-Man 2

I don't care what anyone says, this is and will always be to me the best Spider-Man game to exist. I remember after getting back in touch with an old friend when I was in Summer break before 7th grade and my friend got this on his birthday at the store when I slept over at his house. We literally played the game from about 6 or 7 PM, basically when we got back to his apartment until around 7 in the morning when we beat the game. It was just so good, everything from the swinging mechanics, the villains, the combos, the big open World New York City, the fact that it mirrored the story of the movie pretty close, plus it had Mysterio who was one of my favorite Spider-Man villains. I remember having a blast playing this through the late hours of the night with my friend. Not long after, maybe 2 or 3 months later I ended up renting this game and beating it again on PS2 and enjoying it just as much. Then months later when it came around Christmas my grandparents came to my house and asked me to write down what I wanted for Christmas and I told them this game since I just couldn't get it out of my head and I was a huge Spider-Man fan at the times, hell I owned a ton of comics and had the first 100 or so Amazing Spider Man books in big volumes. So I beat the game again, did almost all the side content, got all the collectibles, and played the hell out of it for about a good 2 or 3 months. It was just a satisfying game, I just was in love with the web swinging mechanics and the way the game handled Mysterio aside from the horrid one hit boss fight was done well.

And that's just what this game is, its a fun Spider-Man game with a really fun web swinging mechanic that feels incredibly rewarding and satisfying, I could pick up a controller and just spend an hour or 2 swinging around in this game, and it would be so satisfying and calm me, they should really give this game to people dealing with stress and just tell them to swing around. The combat is also pretty solid, you get combos and can chain them together although I did find a few to be pretty overpowered and does make the game a bit easy. The game loosely follows the movie plot where Doctor Octopus is the main villain and you have to stop him at various point but then you have side villains like Rhino, Mysterio, and Shocker. Plus you have Black Cat in this who is a staple in the Spider-Man franchise and she looks good in this game unlike the original Spider-Man game on PS1. The game offers a good amount of collectibles once you beat the game and the story length doesn't drag out too long, although there are moments where the game basically forces you to do menial tasks and collect points to progress the story.

Now there are negative things about the game too. The main one being the lack of variety and the voice acting can also be pretty awkward, even if they got original voice actors from the movie. I felt like the game did get a bit repetitive, and most of the game was just beating up generic henchmen which I guess is what Spider-Man did a lot of in the comics, but it would have been cool if the villains had more time to shine rather than only appearing in a couple missions. The other issue is there really are only 3 main bosses in this, 4 I guess but 1 is a one shot kill, I wish there would have been more villains in this, hell they could have incorporated Electro, Hobgoblin, or even brought back Vulture from the first movie game. The boss fights in this are decent, but nothing great either, mostly just uppercutting spamming and then running away until you get an opening. The combat in this game is solid, but it does get a bit repetitive and when you find a combo you like you can just spam that over and over and kill everything with that, but there are some amusing things you can do like throwing enemies off buildings to their death. The other thing is the side missions in this game are super boring and tedious, like bringing a guy to the hospital, rescuing workers from falling off buildings, stopping road ragers, getting a lost balloon for a kid. I mean the side content in this game is just boring and tedious time wasting crap, collecting all the skyscraper tokens in this is far more interesting and rewarding than these dull side missions.

And once you're done with the main game, there is hardly anything to do outside of collectibles and last minute side content. So yeah the game really only is worth playing to get through the main story. But it is a solid enough campaign that lasts long enough and has some cool moments and bosses, plus as a Mysterio fan I can't stop thinking how cool it was they incorporated him in this. I mean this game gave me so much nostalgia and still remains one of the best Spider-Man games. I wouldn't put this up as high as say Arkham City or Asylum for PS3, but it still is up there as one of the greatest super hero games.

So, so close to being brilliant. The swinging mechanics are still so good to this day, and the combat has all the pieces, relying more on timing and ingenuity than button mashing and technically giving you a lot of tools, but failing to incentivise half of your move list to make it truly special. An absolute glut of boring side missions that lock off main story chapters also hurt the experience a lot, but the base mechanics carry it through its patchy points, including that damn alien chapter.