Spider-Man 2
It's not a pixel-perfect console port, but it's sure as hell the most impressive handheld version to date.
Published: March 15, 2005
I know it's stupid of me to want a portable version of Spider-Man 2 that takes all the free-roaming New York elements from the console versions, improves the character models and adds more stuff to do in general, but I can't help it. Such a thing almost certainly won't be possible, of course, since doing so would require the PSP to constantly stream content off the UMD, which would mean a whole 15 minutes of gameplay unless you strapped a battery the size of a cinder block to the back of your PSP.
What we have, then, is a pretty awesome compromise. The best way to digest the PSP version of Spider-Man is to just pretend you never played the console versions of the second game and just finished fresh off the first. While it would have been nice to have the "holy crap, I'm controlling the movie" physics and swinging from the second game, it wouldn't really work with the PSP control scheme and doesn't really fit with the game's fixed levels (sorry, no street-level free-roaming here).
Developer Vicarious Visions (who has handled most of the handheld versions of Spidey) took the control scheme from the first game and added in a bit of the air juggles from the second, plus a few unique movies like the ability to fire off a web shot while in the air to blind ground-based enemies or damage flying ones, and finished the whole mess off with a branching upgrade system where you can improve Spidey's jump, attack power, combos, webbing recovery and capacity and so on.
The result is something that has the nuances of the second game with the basic setup of the first, and actually ends up becoming very much its own beast. It's also incredibly short. I managed to blow through the entire game on normal difficulty -- unlocking all the upgrades in the Spidey Store along the way for good measure -- and was done in about five hours or so. While it's certainly an enjoyable experience, even with all the added villains, it still feels like rather thin.
Those villains would be classic Spider-Man baddies The Vulture, Shocker, Rhino and Mysterio, and all of them are tossed into the mix more or less in the middle of the movie-themed storyline's progress, offering a little side action to break up what would normally be shrunk-down versions of the second game's levels (in fact, the only one that survives with any sort of similarity is the final dockside battle with Doc Ock).
They're certainly decent boss battles in their own right, and require far more technique than just running up to enemies and kicking the snot out of them. Besting Rhino actually involves jumping on his shoulders and running him into a wall, while tackling the Rhino/Shocker tag team requires that you bait one of them into hitting the other. The others are slightly more pedestrian affairs, but at least it's not constant button mashing.
Vicarious Visions ported over the Spidey engine from Treyarch, which means ball-fisted low-poly characters, but nice, roomy vistas of New York. You can't swing around in them except to chase down and web up a helicopter or The Vulture. But there are some nice reflection details in the skyscraper windows and the Spidey model looks great (well, except during the last level where Peter takes off his mask and instantly becomes another random low-texture, low-poly thug from the neck up), and the framerate stays quite solid save for a few instances where there are screen-filling effects, and it never seemed to hamper the game too much.
The 12 minutes of pre-rendered sequences that were created to tie the PSP-exclusive levels and villains in with the movie's plot fit incredibly well with the work that blur Studio did for the console. In fact, some of the lip synching and expressions during the short CG snippets were better than blur's stuff. Needless to say, actually unlocking the movies and then watching them on the PSP screen is nearly enough of a reward in and of itself; the resolution and detail gives the near-lifelike CG an even closer nudge in that direction. Some scenes at a glance could fool almost anyone.
Activision brought in Tobey Maguire and Alfred Moline to record a few extra lines of voice over to help tie things together, but by and large it's not even all that noticeable. There are few Spidey lines that are memorable (such as when he's wondering out loud what the plural of sarcophagus is), but otherwise the trademark banter is kept to a minimum, which is fine because it means when Tobey does pipe up, it's usually to deliver a hint on what to do next.
The music is borrowed mostly from the console versions of Spider-Man 2, though there is an instance of my biggest audio pet peeve: canned royalty-free music. The same tune heard in everything from TV episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Final Fantasy X-2 to the installer music for late ninties PC spook-fest Nocturne. It annoys me when an entire slab of music is re-used without any sort of re-mixing, but the rest of the audio feels solid.
The effects like web swinging and shooting are crisp and clean, but some of the punches and kicks can sound a little muddled, though it's really only noticeable with headphones on, and certainly doesn't detract from the game too much.
Vicarious Visions has pulled of some pretty impressive console-to-handheld ports in the past, usually managing to surpass most expectations, but with the PSP version of Spider-Man 2, they've really outdone themselves. I'm sure this is something I'll be repeating for the next couple of years with PSP releases, but it's still amazing to see a city with full geometry that you can swing around running at such a smooth framerate.
No, you can't explore all of New York from the tops of skyscrapers all the way down the streets, but if you're going to make a 3D Spidey game, this is about as good as it gets. My only real gripe is just that the game is so short, and doesn't really offer too much in the way of replay value; finding secrets in every level is fun, but it's no incentive to play through things all over again. Regardless, this is still an action game that should satisfy that web swinging jones when you're on the road, and certainly does a great job of showing off the PSP's screen with the pre-rendered bits.
If your local or online game store offers PSP rentals, this is probably a wise choice after the launch has settled and you've gorged yourself on WipEout Pure. It's not quite the must-have title I was hoping for with the PSP launch, but it's absolutely worth playing, and deserves to get a full run-through, it's just that you can do that quite easily in the span of a rental, and after that, there's not too much reason to hang onto the game.
Perhaps the sequel will have some form of wireless multiplayer or more of a city to explore, but for now, this is certainly a step in the right direction.
What we have, then, is a pretty awesome compromise. The best way to digest the PSP version of Spider-Man is to just pretend you never played the console versions of the second game and just finished fresh off the first. While it would have been nice to have the "holy crap, I'm controlling the movie" physics and swinging from the second game, it wouldn't really work with the PSP control scheme and doesn't really fit with the game's fixed levels (sorry, no street-level free-roaming here).
Developer Vicarious Visions (who has handled most of the handheld versions of Spidey) took the control scheme from the first game and added in a bit of the air juggles from the second, plus a few unique movies like the ability to fire off a web shot while in the air to blind ground-based enemies or damage flying ones, and finished the whole mess off with a branching upgrade system where you can improve Spidey's jump, attack power, combos, webbing recovery and capacity and so on.
The result is something that has the nuances of the second game with the basic setup of the first, and actually ends up becoming very much its own beast. It's also incredibly short. I managed to blow through the entire game on normal difficulty -- unlocking all the upgrades in the Spidey Store along the way for good measure -- and was done in about five hours or so. While it's certainly an enjoyable experience, even with all the added villains, it still feels like rather thin.
Those villains would be classic Spider-Man baddies The Vulture, Shocker, Rhino and Mysterio, and all of them are tossed into the mix more or less in the middle of the movie-themed storyline's progress, offering a little side action to break up what would normally be shrunk-down versions of the second game's levels (in fact, the only one that survives with any sort of similarity is the final dockside battle with Doc Ock).
They're certainly decent boss battles in their own right, and require far more technique than just running up to enemies and kicking the snot out of them. Besting Rhino actually involves jumping on his shoulders and running him into a wall, while tackling the Rhino/Shocker tag team requires that you bait one of them into hitting the other. The others are slightly more pedestrian affairs, but at least it's not constant button mashing.
Vicarious Visions ported over the Spidey engine from Treyarch, which means ball-fisted low-poly characters, but nice, roomy vistas of New York. You can't swing around in them except to chase down and web up a helicopter or The Vulture. But there are some nice reflection details in the skyscraper windows and the Spidey model looks great (well, except during the last level where Peter takes off his mask and instantly becomes another random low-texture, low-poly thug from the neck up), and the framerate stays quite solid save for a few instances where there are screen-filling effects, and it never seemed to hamper the game too much.
The 12 minutes of pre-rendered sequences that were created to tie the PSP-exclusive levels and villains in with the movie's plot fit incredibly well with the work that blur Studio did for the console. In fact, some of the lip synching and expressions during the short CG snippets were better than blur's stuff. Needless to say, actually unlocking the movies and then watching them on the PSP screen is nearly enough of a reward in and of itself; the resolution and detail gives the near-lifelike CG an even closer nudge in that direction. Some scenes at a glance could fool almost anyone.
Activision brought in Tobey Maguire and Alfred Moline to record a few extra lines of voice over to help tie things together, but by and large it's not even all that noticeable. There are few Spidey lines that are memorable (such as when he's wondering out loud what the plural of sarcophagus is), but otherwise the trademark banter is kept to a minimum, which is fine because it means when Tobey does pipe up, it's usually to deliver a hint on what to do next.
The music is borrowed mostly from the console versions of Spider-Man 2, though there is an instance of my biggest audio pet peeve: canned royalty-free music. The same tune heard in everything from TV episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Final Fantasy X-2 to the installer music for late ninties PC spook-fest Nocturne. It annoys me when an entire slab of music is re-used without any sort of re-mixing, but the rest of the audio feels solid.
The effects like web swinging and shooting are crisp and clean, but some of the punches and kicks can sound a little muddled, though it's really only noticeable with headphones on, and certainly doesn't detract from the game too much.
Vicarious Visions has pulled of some pretty impressive console-to-handheld ports in the past, usually managing to surpass most expectations, but with the PSP version of Spider-Man 2, they've really outdone themselves. I'm sure this is something I'll be repeating for the next couple of years with PSP releases, but it's still amazing to see a city with full geometry that you can swing around running at such a smooth framerate.
No, you can't explore all of New York from the tops of skyscrapers all the way down the streets, but if you're going to make a 3D Spidey game, this is about as good as it gets. My only real gripe is just that the game is so short, and doesn't really offer too much in the way of replay value; finding secrets in every level is fun, but it's no incentive to play through things all over again. Regardless, this is still an action game that should satisfy that web swinging jones when you're on the road, and certainly does a great job of showing off the PSP's screen with the pre-rendered bits.
If your local or online game store offers PSP rentals, this is probably a wise choice after the launch has settled and you've gorged yourself on WipEout Pure. It's not quite the must-have title I was hoping for with the PSP launch, but it's absolutely worth playing, and deserves to get a full run-through, it's just that you can do that quite easily in the span of a rental, and after that, there's not too much reason to hang onto the game.
Perhaps the sequel will have some form of wireless multiplayer or more of a city to explore, but for now, this is certainly a step in the right direction.
