I recently rented this game for the PlayStation 2, because it was around $70 and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to buy it. At first, it seemed a little dull and boring, but as the game progressed I got more interested in the game and so I kept playing. It took me about 5 hours to complete the story, and the overall the game is quite good, but after Spider-Man 2 (and, in particular, Ultimate Spider-Man) I was hoping for better.
New York City is my first major complaint; the city is supposed to be bigger, but it felt small and unwelcoming. It was not very busy, and there were near to no noises in the background. Also, if you climb a tall skyscraper, the materials on the buildings further away disappeared, unlike Spider-Man 2. And it's not as accurate as the New York in Spider-Man 2, which wasn't entirely accurate, although this one is still a major disappointment compared to the SM2 one.
Swinging around New York is as fun as ever, and the Web Zip is more powerful in this game than in the last game. This means that if you are in a hurry for a mission, it will be helpful to zip around instead of swinging, because the swinging is slow and even the booster (which arrives at the end of your swing as you launch through the air) doesn't help much. This aside, the swinging looks very cool, and is in the same sort of style as Ultimate Spider-Man, where he moves with the web.
The story is roughly the same as the film's; Peter Parker/Spider-Man gets a black costume that makes him more powerful and aggressive. He tries to use his new powers the way he used to, but they take him over and so he must fight to control himself. Meanwhile, a new super villain, Sandman, is on the loose and it is up to Spider-Man to stop him. However, when the Black Suit gets to be too much power for Peter, he takes it off and it bonds with Eddie Brock, creating Venom.
This story is changed before the fights with Sandman, and so the main movie fights are not until the very end and don't take very long to complete. This is disappointing, as Sandman and Venom were two of the super villains I was most looking forward to fighting, and yet the only fights with them are exactly the same as in the movie - and less! The other super villains are the Lizard (which is fun as long as you don't keep dying, because then it gets rather boring) and Morbius/Shriek. Morbius and Shriek take up most of the story and make you wonder if you're ever going to get to Sandman and Venom, and I got a little confused when I read on the box "CHOOSE between 5 different story lines". In the end, this was a false statement; you can only follow the game, not choose any story lines, and I was a bit worried at first that I had accidentally chosen the wrong one! Basically, the Morbius/Shriek part of the game is not very fun, and takes up a lot of time. The only reason you'll want to play it is to get to Venom and Sandman, although those fights aren't everything you'd hope them to be either. Venom looks incredibly fat and isn't appealing to the eye at all (despite the fact that he's not SUPPOSED to - see the movie to see what the game creators were trying to make). The fights with him are long and difficult, and his taunts get very annoying after the hundredth time (and he repeats them about 50 times in one fight, so you end up playing the level, dying, and then repeating the level, which equals more annoying taunts).
The best parts of the game are the three Sandman fights, although even these are not all they're cracked up to be. Mostly you just repeat the same thing over and over again, and it doesn't seem very action-y.
I did enjoy this game mildly, though; the graphics were okay, and the boss fights weren't all too bad. I haven't yet played Spider-Man 3 for PC (which is a port of the Xbox 360 and PS3 version) but I am sure it is better than the PS2 version. I can, in a way, recommend this game, but only for the Sandman battles.
4/10.
