For some reason, Spider-Man’s videogame escapades have always situated themselves firmly on the pile marked “average”. A major break came earlier this year with the launch of the rather pleasing Spider-Man 2 on all three home console formats. In an attempt to push out the boat Activision had created a free-roaming experience that was good, but ultimately flawed.

            So the mantle has been handed to Vicarious Visions to develop a new Spider-Man experience for Nintendo’s beautiful new baby, the NintendoDS. The development team have earned themselves a good reputation within my games collection, and with an extremely tight schedule, Spider-Man 2 seemed to be their greatest challenge yet. Stating that they wanted to create an original title, whilst having Activision and Universal Studios looking over their shoulders, I’m sure there was a feeling of “make or break” as far as their reputation within the industry goes.

            So the first level plummets you straight into the action. A brief cut-scene followed by text-lead images tells the story and you’re confronted with a rescue mission. The game plays very similarly to Capcom’s recent flagship of originality, Viewtiful Joe, with its 2D/3D scrolling platform levels. The level structure is reliable, offering a nice amount of variation and exploration, but the difficulty of each is incredibly unforgiving. The level missions consist of rescuing hostages, cracking computers and diffusing bombs, amongst others, and occasionally will call upon you to use the touch screen in a variety of ways. Dragging a pin to the end of a circuit without touching the sides will diffuse a bomb whilst moving a LED to the off position, avoiding the electric current will shutdown a computer system. There are plenty of boss encounters and often these too will use the touch screen. Although, predictably, quite a bit shorter then the main bulk of the levels, these boss fights are the more interesting of the Chapters on offer and will have you replaying before the game is complete.

            During normal play, the touch screen use is limited to selecting your desired attack. Completing both a missions Primary and Secondary objectives will unlock a new move selectable from the touch screen, which can then be executed using the R button. This is very much a missed opportunity in my opinion as is seems a much simpler, and more effective idea to have all combat selectable from the touch screen; pressing the screen would execute the selected move, allowing quick-easy combos.             The controls in general feel a little clumsy. B performs jumps and web-swinging and the diagonally opposite X controls web-shooting, whilst diagonally-opposed Y and A control kicks and punches respectively. Why it didn’t occur to the developers to align the attacking buttons is beyond me, as mixed combos quickly become a forgotten ability.

            The title’s graphics are very, umm… sweet. Lying somewhere between high-end PlayStation and low-end Nintendo64 the 3D visuals are slick and tidy. The touch screen Doc Ock fights are nicely drawn and the backgrounds are never lacking in detail. The sounds are crisp and fall far from the usual irritating superhero-platformer “plinky-plunky” nonsense.

            Vicarious Vision’s immense Game Boy Advance experience has obviously benefited the development of this title no-end as, for all its flaws; the title is a solidly playable experience. The Viewtiful Joe influence and the benefit of the high-powered super-number-crunching ARM7 NintendoDS processor have put this game in a league that should secure another high-chart position for the web-slinger. Original yet inspired at once and desperately difficult at times, the game follows the “true philosophy” of the NintendoDS to the bone – this is one for the hardcore.

Kev J.                                                                                                                  Reviews Score Table Interpretation.

01/01/05

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