My spider senses aren’t tingling too… Spiderman 3 on PS2: The Ed verdict
July 4th 2007 15:56
Excuse the fact that a review of this game is old news. But for everyone who is still contemplating of even borrowing the game, here’s an honest review that will help you decide!
I've read the reviews and I refused to believe it, after playing the awesome spider-man 2, how could the sequel wreck it? I also agree with Dani's review as well, and now here is my take on Spider-man 3 for PS2.
This game is slow and rushed, a shadow of the efforts found in Spider-man 2. I could give the game the benefit that it was made from the ground up by Vicarious Visions instead of the original creators; Treyarch. This doesn't dismiss the fact that the game is too slow and unresponsive for its own good.
The first, most obvious difference with the new sequel is the hand-to-hand fights; they are much slower and feel shallow, since 2 different combo's are basically all you need to get through to the finish. Also the spidey senses, as the title suggest, aren't tingling as much as it should since it doesn't activate before getting punched, but can detect projectiles just fine.
The next is the difficulty of climbing up a building, spidey no longer feels like he can stick to walls as easily, or climbs up as fast, infact, climb mode is unresponsive when you just want to instantly stick to the wall instead of running up it.... VERY slowly (spider-man 2 doesn't have this problem!). Gravity also seems to have gotten heavier since the second outing, not only is it making him slow going up buildings, but also swinging around. You never feel like you can reach the highest points of buildings, and just feel lucky you actually made on top of a building, but not without patience and effort, something you need not worry in Spidey 2. Jumping off buildings to another is no longer possible at the beginning.
The way you swing is different this time around too, instead of just tapping R2, you have to hold the R2 and letting go of the button to let go of the web. It feels more natural and better than the previous swinging mechanics, but mixed with the slow swinging and bland-looking New York, it is not enough to make spidey any more fun to use.
Missions no longer stream from start to finish, its now start-stopping gameplay, if you fail even in a attack, you would be shown a huge Fail screen and have to wait for it to load again. I know the loadings where much longer in the first Playstation 2 Spider-man, but its surprising to see this after a seemly load-free sequel.
A KEY ABSENSE of the ever reliable sprint button makes getting to places EXTRA slower than it should.
Spidey acquiring new abilities has also changed; instead of spidey upgrading from a comic store, he can upgrade right at the main menu... As long as you got hero points. Instead of just buying whatever ability off the bat, you have to purchase one ability at a time in a Final Fantasy X-like grid. Not fun at all.
This game is has so many bugs that I’m surprised this got by the testers (if any). First the camera is unrefined and feels it had went on a weekend trip to Lazyville, at times deciding not to report to spider-man's back and leave you wall crawling and fighting villians blind. And sometimes it won't move at all and you would be swinging as the camera looks at you side ways. AHHHH!
A major glitch that happened to me when one of the civilians end up sounding like your music when your computer freezes. Then the GAME CRASHES! And i didn't save because i don't expect a game THIS BUGGY to crash on a console! The disk is in good condition and now I have to slave through 2 hours of monotonous web slinging across this monotonous city beating up boring thugs in boring quests AGAIN. Not happy Jan!
The main missions are short; only lasting around 4-5 hours of gameplay. However the mission side quests is interesting in a GTA San Andreas kind-of-way. Where you go to an informant and complete three missions to stop one of the four gangs to take over the area, rinse and repeat until you completed all of New York.
I’m a self-confessed comic book geek and the bad-guy line up is not too bad: including Kraven the hunter, Lizard man, Shriek and her vampire husband: Morbiusm and, of course, Venom and Sandman. But all the battles can be won by using ‘rinse-and-repeat’ tactics: once you know the steps to damage the boss, just repeat them until they are defeated. It kills the feeling that these bad guys are more like drones than complete bad-ass’s.
The music is standard superhero music, but the pedestrians you save repeat many cliche's like 'can I say up, up and away?' They are annoying and I won’t waste any more typing space about them.
The graphics seem to improve only to the extent of character designs, with spidey carrying more shadow in his form, meanwhile the city is stripped off its detail from the second game and looks a lot more artificial in detail.
The graphics of the cut scenes look as bad as before, but it seems to be much worse in this version than spider-man 2 (wow!).
I expected Spider-man to be fast, like in the movies, but he is slow because the developers added some gravity device to push you down as fast as you jump. Gravity won this round! Play spider-man 2 instead, its faster and more fun, like the movies. Believe the critics! Save yourself the rental fee if it isn't too late!
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Comment by charles
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Charles.