Spider-Man 2
Spidey does PSP in a big way. Hands-on impressions inside.
Published: March 7, 2005
You would think after seeing as many PSP games as we've seen, our ability to be blown away would have decreased just a hair. Every time we think we know what the system's capable and what developers are willing to do with the hardware, we're surprised by the stretches both can make.
After seeing a few movies and screenshots of the PSP version of Spider-Man 2, it was hard not to get a little worked up as the opportunity to play a near-final version of the game weeks before the official launch. We zipped down to Activision's headquarters and settled in for a few choice minutes with 16:9 Spidey, walking away with our first real impression of the game based on hands-on experience.
The verdict? Yeah, you could say we're impressed, but not without some apprehension. See, for those expecting a full-on free-roamable New York just like the console versions of the game, think again. To actually have all that content streaming off a UMD, you'd need to swap out the battery about every 10 minutes. Instead, developer Vicarious Visions (who's worked on more handheld versions of the series for more platforms than we can count) decided to pair up the control scheme and feel of the first movie-based game with the events and moves from the second. The result is a game that's not quite as exhilarating as the last Spidey outing, but still offers plenty to get excited about.
For starters, the controls have been stripped down a bit. Ol' web head no longer attaches directly to real architecture, he simply fires out a web to swing from the same thing he swings from in the comics (read: something off camera that may or may not actually be there), and swings in a straight line. Holding down the right shoulder button (which also fires off the webs in the first place) will speed up the swings, and gives a nice sense of speed in the smaller, more cramped levels.
Actual hand-to-hand combat has come back to the fore, with an emphasis on punch-kick combos that will boost hero points during the end-level total, which can then be used to buy new combos and upgrade abilities like jump height and health though a nicely tiered extras system (even storyboards, artwork and movies can be unlocked if you have enough points).
Mixing up attacks will keep the points high, but using Spidey's webbing for effect is more important. Vicarious Visions added air combat back into the mix, so firing off webbing with the triangle button while swinging results in a projectile that can either blind ground-based foes for a few seconds or do damage to airborne enemies. When you're on the ground, you can cocoon enemies in webbing and then toss them at their friends, toss out a blast of webbing to hit multiple targets and clear crowds, yank weapons out of enemy hands, pull them towards you if they're unarmed and of course the web lasso from the last console outing returns, so you can swing bad guys around your head should you need some breathing room.
To help thicken up the experience, almost 20 minutes of new CG was created to spin a story linking four classic villains to the PSP outing. Shocker, Rhino, Mysterio and the first villain ever to grace the pages of the Spider-Man comics, Vulture, all have side stories to complement the main game's tweaked formula. All four boss fights use the environment and the various villains' powers to a nice effect, whether it's doing some in-air dueling with Vulture or numbly avoiding attacks to play baddies against each other in a two-boss tag team, so having Rhino chase you around to absorb Shocker's incoming blasts, and then letting the pissed off horned brute take a huge pipe to a cement platform is all part of the strategy.
With the scale of the city brought down quite a bit, it's a little hard to describe what the game plays like, but it harkens back to the style and speed of the first movie-based game, and even channels a bit of what Neversoft did with the first PlayStation game. Spidey still sticks to walls, still ziplines up the side of buildings (he even has a new attack that punches while zipping at a wall), still has pithy comebacks (Activision managed to get Toby Maguire and Alfred Molina to re-record a little additional voice over work to help shore up the new cutscenes) and still feels incredibly agile, though there isn't quite the feeling of freedom that made the last PS2 version so fun.
Spider-Man 2 is one of those games where a good deal of play time will tell exactly how well the slurry of disparate Spidey game bits will actually mix together. Our initial impressions were a little rough, mainly because we'd grown so attached to the huge leap in control the last console game had become, but after a while it wasn't hard to appreciate what the series' roots had established, and for a first-time PSP effort, there's certainly a lot here to enjoy.
The branching upgrade system and hero points system allows for a hell of a lot of replay, the open-ended structure to solving missions (rescue the hostages first or just go in, web shooters blazing?) and the resurrection of some great Spider-Man villains means that this is more than a complete game. Even the side-scrolling bits based on the movie's climactic speeding train were a treat, and so long as you're not expecting a THUG 2 Remix-level of translation, this is easily the most impressive and ambitious handheld port of the series we've seen yet.
After seeing a few movies and screenshots of the PSP version of Spider-Man 2, it was hard not to get a little worked up as the opportunity to play a near-final version of the game weeks before the official launch. We zipped down to Activision's headquarters and settled in for a few choice minutes with 16:9 Spidey, walking away with our first real impression of the game based on hands-on experience.
The verdict? Yeah, you could say we're impressed, but not without some apprehension. See, for those expecting a full-on free-roamable New York just like the console versions of the game, think again. To actually have all that content streaming off a UMD, you'd need to swap out the battery about every 10 minutes. Instead, developer Vicarious Visions (who's worked on more handheld versions of the series for more platforms than we can count) decided to pair up the control scheme and feel of the first movie-based game with the events and moves from the second. The result is a game that's not quite as exhilarating as the last Spidey outing, but still offers plenty to get excited about.
For starters, the controls have been stripped down a bit. Ol' web head no longer attaches directly to real architecture, he simply fires out a web to swing from the same thing he swings from in the comics (read: something off camera that may or may not actually be there), and swings in a straight line. Holding down the right shoulder button (which also fires off the webs in the first place) will speed up the swings, and gives a nice sense of speed in the smaller, more cramped levels.
Actual hand-to-hand combat has come back to the fore, with an emphasis on punch-kick combos that will boost hero points during the end-level total, which can then be used to buy new combos and upgrade abilities like jump height and health though a nicely tiered extras system (even storyboards, artwork and movies can be unlocked if you have enough points).
Mixing up attacks will keep the points high, but using Spidey's webbing for effect is more important. Vicarious Visions added air combat back into the mix, so firing off webbing with the triangle button while swinging results in a projectile that can either blind ground-based foes for a few seconds or do damage to airborne enemies. When you're on the ground, you can cocoon enemies in webbing and then toss them at their friends, toss out a blast of webbing to hit multiple targets and clear crowds, yank weapons out of enemy hands, pull them towards you if they're unarmed and of course the web lasso from the last console outing returns, so you can swing bad guys around your head should you need some breathing room.
To help thicken up the experience, almost 20 minutes of new CG was created to spin a story linking four classic villains to the PSP outing. Shocker, Rhino, Mysterio and the first villain ever to grace the pages of the Spider-Man comics, Vulture, all have side stories to complement the main game's tweaked formula. All four boss fights use the environment and the various villains' powers to a nice effect, whether it's doing some in-air dueling with Vulture or numbly avoiding attacks to play baddies against each other in a two-boss tag team, so having Rhino chase you around to absorb Shocker's incoming blasts, and then letting the pissed off horned brute take a huge pipe to a cement platform is all part of the strategy.
With the scale of the city brought down quite a bit, it's a little hard to describe what the game plays like, but it harkens back to the style and speed of the first movie-based game, and even channels a bit of what Neversoft did with the first PlayStation game. Spidey still sticks to walls, still ziplines up the side of buildings (he even has a new attack that punches while zipping at a wall), still has pithy comebacks (Activision managed to get Toby Maguire and Alfred Molina to re-record a little additional voice over work to help shore up the new cutscenes) and still feels incredibly agile, though there isn't quite the feeling of freedom that made the last PS2 version so fun.
Spider-Man 2 is one of those games where a good deal of play time will tell exactly how well the slurry of disparate Spidey game bits will actually mix together. Our initial impressions were a little rough, mainly because we'd grown so attached to the huge leap in control the last console game had become, but after a while it wasn't hard to appreciate what the series' roots had established, and for a first-time PSP effort, there's certainly a lot here to enjoy.
The branching upgrade system and hero points system allows for a hell of a lot of replay, the open-ended structure to solving missions (rescue the hostages first or just go in, web shooters blazing?) and the resurrection of some great Spider-Man villains means that this is more than a complete game. Even the side-scrolling bits based on the movie's climactic speeding train were a treat, and so long as you're not expecting a THUG 2 Remix-level of translation, this is easily the most impressive and ambitious handheld port of the series we've seen yet.