My friend just bought this for GCN, and I have the first one for PS2. Lemme just say this...people have given this game glowing reviews, and after playing with it, some features are cool and others are downright annoying.

Graphics: Wow, you can go all around NYC without load times. Pretty cool. Too bad the rendering is kinda poor imho, GTA puts this to shame...which is sad. Player models are also poor, and the FMV are also terrible as far as lip synching goes.

Gameplay: Didn't like the control. The webswinging is fun at times and then absolutely frustrating at the next. Not as "tight" as I would like. The idea of free roaming like GTA is very cool, with random events and battles and such. Fighting engine, what little I've seen of it, is kinda downgraded from last year. You can still get/buy combos and upgrades, but they aren't worth it because you spend most of your time smashing buttons. "Bullet time" is automatic, though you can slow stuff down even further with "spidey-time" or something which makes everything SUPER-slo-mo, kinda neat.

Sound: Not terrible, but it's a tad corny..."Spider-Man...there's a robbery! Where? Over there! It's a robbery!" Well duh asshole, you are staring right at it. Do they need to draw you a picture? :p


---

I haven't spent enough time with it, but for the 30-45 minutes I saw, I really am glad I didn't sell my first one and buy the new one.

I enjoyed this more than the first simply because of the free-roam feature. I enjoy being able to play and just going around and taking care of smaller crimes like car jackers and pick-pocketers. If I'm stuck on a mission then I just go around patrolling the streets taking care of such matters, until I want to go try the mission again.

I do admit the graphics (and etc.) are a little bad but with all these new features I can just go around playing this longer. The only things I can think that would make it even better (game play wise, not graphically) would be the ability to Web zip up to a ceiling, and if there were secret characters you could play as, with their powers, like in the first one. I always enjoyed the first one when I was playing as the Green Goblin more then I did spidey. I just thought it was fun to toy with his gadgets and the glider was always fun to take out for a spin, not to mention the super-sprint feature, where you could run at a speed high enough to inflict damage onto an enemy when chargin into them. It'd be interesting to play as Doc Ock or Vulture.