How true those words are. And Activision/Treyarch has a great power with the SpiderMan movie license. And they have the great responsibility to create a great game for us Spidey nerds worldwide. Spider-Man is a thing of comic book legend. The superhero, armed with his spider-like abilities, has done battle with villains in Marvel books for decades and, along with Superman and X-Men garnered a level of popularity relatively unequaled in the industry. He's appeared in videogames on major platforms for a long time. Most recently on PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube adaptation of the box office smash hit SpiderMan movie. Now, inevitably, the webbed one about made his second debut on the big screen in the Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man 2, which premiered June 30 in movie theaters across America and the world. And same as the first movie, the videogame adaptation of the film is already in stores. Just in time for us to watch the movie and head home and become Spider-Man ourselves.

To start off design of the Spider-Man videogame sequel, Treyarch had two main objectives to accomplish, capture the Spider-Man web swinging feel, and design an open-ended gameplay system ala GTA. And as a first swinging above New York is safer, there’s no tragic death from below by dropping halfway down the skyscrapers. Spidey’s version of Manhattan’s landscape has opened up. Players can jump from the top of a building in a swan dive toward the streets and literally hurl themselves down to the last few stories without breaking a sweat, the last minute you can shoot a web, and, using the new rubber-band physics, swing into a perfect arch away from the street using the speed and changed momentum to continue your airborne assault. Or you can just land safely on the streets, to kick some street punks’ teeth in.

While playing Spider-Man 2 it is extremely exciting to watch and control Spidey whip through the city streets, swinging from building to building, and vaulting off poles. But now in Spider-Man 2 his web now only attaches to real-world geometry, like the sides of buildings or street lamps, and his momentum is based on real-world physics. They’ll be no more zipping down the middle of a city street with a web attached to thin air, and the sensation of speed has been increased tenfold. The web-swing is performed by pulling the right trigger and then continuing with another web each time you’re at the height of the swing. Using this in conjunction with the jump button (A button) and the turbo button (left trigger) will increase the effectiveness and momentum. Treyarch is using physics to complete the feeling and it looks and plays extremely well. There is a definite learning curve to become really proficient at navigating the city, especially since you can also shoot dual webs, but the early training missions lend a hand. Plus you have and “easy” web-swinging mode at your disposal. To keep on the realism tip, after you let go of webs they will remain attached to objects. Basically anything is fair game for the web swing: buildings, street lights, trees, even helicopters!




The game is mission based and has objectives for every stage. And the fun factor goes from terrible to awesome at any point in the game. Besides your primary missions you also have to solve street crimes around the city. There are also challenge missions that break up the normal superhero fare by giving you objectives like racing through a series of hoops in a specific time or doing a series of flips off of flag poles. The story specific missions only take up about 50% of the game with the rest being distributed among the random and challenge missions. You even take time out to deliver pizza. Aside from his web swinging powers; Spidey has evolved in just about every other category as well. Wall crawling is much faster due to the turbo button (L), plus he can scale buildings buy using his charged jump while climbing. And many of the skyscrapers like the Empire State Building takes forever to reach the top. A meter shows the level of the charge and when released will catapult Spidey high into the air.