30 Days of writing: Day 8
OK, my sister-in law just returned my copy of Spiderman 2 for the X-Box.
Well, actually, Jen went stealth and recovered it from Sarah’s room. I imagine it was a very Raiders of the Lost Ark-type affair, with booby traps and a bag of sand, running from giant boulders and one nearly-lost hat. But she got the game back to me. And that is good, because this game belongs in a museum.
And when I say it belongs in a museum, I mean that it is a game that will remain with me for a long time. I think it is a fantastic game. It definitely has its faults, but overall a game that was done right.
So, why?
The number one reason this game is so good is that it makes you feel like you are spiderman: effortlessly swinging through the city, knocking bad guys senseless, and never quite feeling like you are in complete control of your powers.
Wait a second…not being in control, isn’t that a bad thing?
In any other game, yes, here however it makes the game feel so much more alive; swinging on instinct, nearly slamming into a wall but then turning that fumble into a skillful wall-run. Being caught in an ambush, but ending with six rough youths dangling from a lamp-post, before finishing the day sitting atop the Empire State Building and just watching the sunset… then launching into space and gracefully diving fifteen-hundred-odd feet, just barely catching yourself before tasting the ashphalt.
I have never played any game just to run around the environment before. However I now find myself starting the game and just spending hours swinging aimlessly through Manhattan. The movement in this game is fantastic, and if there were no story missions, no races, no items to collect, and no Bruce Campbell, this game would still have enthralled me for weeks. As it is, I’ve been playing it frequently over the last year.
There are a few downsides to the game, the all-too-frequent Fission Mailed notices, the insta-death water, the annoying camera when working in 3-D (trying to catch those balloons is almost impossible without locking on to them, and the wall-running seems to change directions depending where the camera is situated – the next game needs to automatically swing the camera behind you when clicking down on the right control stick), and worst of all, the ridiculous load/save times and the completely arbitrary three-game save limit. I have a ten Gigabyte hard drive – why can I only have three save games?
This is definitely the game I’ve played most of on my X-Box, far more than Halo/Halo 2, and I think it comes completely down to the feel of swinging through New York city, I love playing this game, and am looking forward to Ultimate Spiderman (Although I might wait for the X-Box 360 version if it is significantly better than the standard X-Box version).
Oh, and one last thing – make sure you listen to all the hint markers, because once you’ve found all (213?) of them, the Bruce Campbell voice-overs on each change to say something different.
I didn’t catch that gag coming at all. It’s terrible. And fantastic. To Jamie Fristrom – make sure you get Bruce Campbell back again for the next game, please!
-RodeoClown