Spiderman 2 PC Review

Spiderman 2 hit the cinemas recently and, naturally, it successfully captured the interest of millions of viewers worldwide. Like a lot of action movies these days, including the original Spiderman movie, a videogame has been produced for Spiderman 2 for all major platforms, dubbed 'Spiderman2 The Game', and today we are checking out the PC version. Unlike the original game, Spiderman 2 PC is not the same as the console versions, it is designed for a younger audience and the gameplay, in a less than fortunate manner, reflects this.

Upon starting Spiderman 2, it is pretty obvious that this game has a very basic and simple style of play. Most of the game is played in a third person perspective, with the expected keyboard/mouse setup for controlling Spiderman. Most of the action is done by your left and right mouse buttons, including attacks and object interaction, which makes Spiderman 2's learning curve almost non existent. On one hand, Spiderman 2 can be given credit for its sheer simplicity because it is very much a "pick up and play" sort of game, so it is indeed very suitable for younger gamers to enjoy without any hassles, however it doesn't take long before the simplicity of the game becomes painfully repetitive. With the total amount of available attacks and functions countable on most people's fingers, unfortunately the first impression of action packed addictive gameplay is soon replaced with boring repetitive gameplay with very little variation at all. One clear example of this is when Spiderman has to do the one level 3 times in a row, each differing slightly and, apparently, getting harder. When coupled with the same attacks and the same predictable enemies, this only adds salt to an already tortured wound.

The only part that seems to authentically capture the essence of the movie to which it is based on are the voices of the characters, done by the real world actors, including Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. The voice acting is pretty good, it isn't like the game spits out random lines every so often, they seem to make comments on the actual situation at hand suggesting atleast some detail went into this aspect of the game, although this is hardly a saving factor for the gameplay.

The visuals in Spiderman 2 are nothing special, the developers have obviously gone for comic book style visuals rather than the somewhat realistic visuals seen on the console versions, although this isn't overly obvious, there aren't any action speech bubbles or anything, it is just rather cartoonish. For the game Spiderman 2 PC tries to be, this is fitting, I don't see the need for any sort of high end visuals here, it is more than satisfactory as it is, and hey, the system requirements are easily low enough to work on most common systems you'd expect a child would have

The problem with Spiderman 2 is its lack of depth. Whilst I haven't personally played the console versions, it is intentional that the PC version is completely different, as it is apparently targeted at a younger audience, yet for some weird reason it is rated Mature (15 years and over) in the Australian market as stated on the box, despite the fact there is no blood or gore, just minimal comicbook like violence; heck, the guns aren't even real for a start. Spiderman 2 manages to keep you occupied for a small amount of time but it doesn't take very long before the boredom and repetition kicks in, after you've killed enough of the same enemies (well, made them disappear in thin air anyway) with the same basic moves in the same environments very little else is on offer. For the younger audience, say 8-12, whilst technically you are not even legally allowed to buy this game, it may prove to be more playable, I just simply do not understand how something obviously targeted at younger gamers can't even legally be sold to them. This, to me, is not a good recipe for success at all, because as far as the 15+ aged gaming market is concerned, you'd have to be a really, really big fan of Spiderman to enjoy Spiderman 2 PC. Don't be fooled by the identical covers, the PC and console versions are very different, any serious gamer should certainly direct their interest to the console and not the PC when it comes to Spiderman 2.