Game: Spiderman 2
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions

Wireless Multiplayer: No
Game Sharing: No
Wireless LAN: No
Requires Memory Stick: Yes

Games based off big budget movies rarely deliver the goods on any platform. Sure there have been a few hits but you could arguably count the successes using fingers and toes. The Spiderman 2 UMD was great, so how does this conversion fare on PSP? Does great power mean great portability?

The graphics are good. The in-game models are fluid, Spiderman himself looks great - running, swinging, crawling and diving about the place. A lot of the other models are standard fare, sometimes a little below that, ie: I thought the helicopter in one of the first levels was pretty blocky.

The FMV looks slick, sometimes a bit waxy and stiff (definately no comparisson to the UMD movie :-)) but it does its job in linking the levels together.

The user interface in some areas is a little cluttered. Sometimes I found the level completion screen a bit confusing.

The music score in Spiderman 2 pumps out a variety of tunes. Some nice earthy guitar tracks are present, well suited dramatic scores and I personally thought the creepy Mysterio level's music was kind of cool too.

The sound effects are pretty stock standard, nothing remarkable here.

One plus is that the game has a swag of voice bytes featuring four of the original movie actors including Spiderman, MJ, Doc Oc and JJ Jameson. Some of the common thug voices are cliche groan material - at least you get to beat the crap out of them. You can expect Spiderman's usual corny jokes (see my 'portability' joke above *shudder*) spouted out by Tobey Maguire but its in-line with the spirit of Spiderman so its all good.

The novelty of playing Spiderman himself is probably the high point of the game. You are able to swing around town, crawl over walls, tie up enemies with your web; although if you've played "Spiderman 1: The Movie" this may be old news to you.

The game follows the underlying plot of the Spiderman 2 movie but spices things up by including levels featuring some of the classic villians such as Mysterio and Vulture.

The level design covers off a variety of tasks. Saving people and bashing bad guys seem to be the main theme though. The fighting pretty much equates to button mashing, switching between punching and kicking with the occasional use of the web.

After completing levels you are allocated a series of points depending on how well you completed the level - secrets and so forth. You can then use these points to upgrade Spidey's attributes and gain new killer combo moves. I often found the levels to be a bit short, but I guess thats not a bad thing if you want to knock a few over before the train pulls into your station.

Occassionally I got frustrated with the controls of Spiderman and the cramped camera angles in enclosed levels. Often you start crawling up walls when you really only wanted to go through a door or get stuck on a wall while trying to beat someone up. It's tough being Spiderman some days.

The end of level bosses take a bit of work to figure out, but its the standard task of finding the hidden weakness in order to beat them. Often you'll have to make use of most of Spiderman's abilities in doing so.

Loading times appeared ok. Not great but better than some other titles.

The training missions that are provided should pretty much set you up in terms of controls and getting the feel for swinging 'round town beating up the bad guys. Although I took a fair pummelling before I could dodge some of those damn barrels. Later on you may get a tad frustrated with end-of-level bosses and working out their subtle weak points. Aside from this you should be able to start playing the game after about 15 minutes of tinkering around. In fact once you get the hang of it you should breeze through most of the standard levels until you hit an end-of-level boss.

Although Spiderman 2 has some interesting levels covering a variety of different tasks, once you've done it once I doubt whether you'd ever visit it again. Also as I mentioned above, once you get the hang of things you will probably finish this game fairly easily. Combine these two points and the value isn't really stacking up...

As you probably guessed there is no multiplayer aspects to the game. It would have been a nice addition for a bit more replay value. Perhaps a 1 on 1 beat 'em up? Maybe I'm just hanging out to try fighting with other X-Men. :-)

Overall this is an 'OK' game that is worth a look-see, especially if you're a fan of the web-slinger. The plot and missions are interesting and varied. The storyline translates well from the movie, although its great to see some deviations with appearances from some classic Marvel villains. There are a decent collection of cutscenes and even some unlockable artwork. Problem is that you will probably breeze through the game in a couple of weekends or less and after that the UMD will probably gather dust while you save up for something else.

Personally I reckon this is a borrow or rental title (see www.infinitegameplay.com.au or you do know that EB Games offer 7 day trial on PSP games? - you could probably finish it in that time!) or a good gift from Nanna (this would be a damn sight better than a triple pack of Spiderman undies eh?).

Graphics: 7
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 6
Difficulty: 6
Value: 5

Score: 6.5