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SPIDERMAN 2 (PSX) By MARTIN KINGSLEY The best example of this is "Tomb Raider". After making a bad movie, someone went off and produced a line of action figures, cereal-box stickers and God only knows what else. So it was with caution that I approached Spiderman 2. After creating a winning combination of adventure, action and humour with the original, Activision decided to produce a sequel. Firstly, lets examine the plot: Electro, an extremely old foe of Spiderman (he dates back to some of the first Spidey comic-books), steals a special technology which grants the user amazing power and (of course) it's up to Spiderman to stop him. From that point onwards, you have to fight your way through legions of bad guys and face some of your oldest foes, including Sandman, Shocker and many others. For some reason, lots of the villains are from the original comics and are not known to many people except true Spidey fanatics. They are truly ancient! My only other grumble with the plot is that some of the mission objectives are a tad on the silly side, e.g. having to put out a car fire. Apparently, Manhattan doesn't have a fire department.
Graphics are slightly improved, with smoother character movements and larger levels, although sometimes the frame-rate can get slightly bogged down, usually in large skyscraper levels. The audio is superb, with the same level of excellent voice acting and music that characterised Spiderman's first outing. One-liners and in-jokes abound throughout the game and are genuinely funny, which is a rare thing in gaming these days. One of the things which increased the original Spiderman's replayability was the fact that, by careful searching, you could collect new skins, play modes and even comic books. This feature has been carried forward into Spiderman 2, with a small twist: Create-a-Spider mode. What this means is that once you've collected various skins and other assorted goodies, you can create a customized Spiderman, complete with different powers and skins! What does all this mean? It's not as good as the original, but it's still a decent game which is fun and will be easy to get into for any type of gamer. If you have the original and liked it, then you'll like this as well.
ORIGINALITY 75%
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