Most people will argue that the best part of the console games were the swinging elements. With the game, the developers were able to give players a realistic sense of what it would really feel like to swing around the skyscrapers of New York City. It felt like a natural extension of your body and quickly became one of the best elements to ever appear in a console game. Since the DS game takes place in a quasi-2D world it was impossible to recreate the free-flowing atmosphere of the console games. So it seems that the designers conceded to this fact and decided to focus more on the combat system itself. There are two primary attack buttons, the A button which controls the punches and the Y button that handles the kicks. To add some depth to the game, players can utilize different combinations of the two attacks to lead to some devastating combos. Furthermore, players can execute one of eight special moves by hitting the R button. To select your special move you physically touch the one you’d like on the DS’s touchscreen. It’s a very unique system that makes it simple to use and execute on the fly. Just simply touch the manuever you’d like to use and you now have it mapped out to the R button. Additionally, the X button allows you to use the web zip while L activates a bullet time-like feature that slows things down, increasing your reaction time.
I haven’t seen much of what the DS offers in terms of graphics, but Spider-Man 2 is the best looking portable game I’ve seen to-date. It’s difficult to deduce from the screenshots, it’s truly one of those games that has to be seen to be experienced. This is no fluke either considering that Vicarious Visions also revolutionized the portable industry when it developed
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on the GameBoy Advance. If you thought that was amazing you’re in for a real treat. Spidey looks great and animates with the kind of fluidity reserved for Saturday morning cartoons. It’s nice to see that the quality extends to the rest of the visuals as well; the levels look great and the special effects are top notch for a portable system. Spider-Man 2 is really a 3D game masquerading as a 2D side-scroller. At first the game looks like a 2D brawler but as you progress you’ll realize that the entire world is rendered in full 3D, including the buildings that make up the background. As you go around corners you’ll see the camera pan around, giving you a better view on the action. This doesn’t sound interesting on paper but it’s really amazing to see it unfold all before your eyes. It’s not that garbled quasi-3D you get on the N-Gage either, it’s smooth, clean and crisp, almost like what you would expect from today’s console games.
When we first heard that the DS would be a dual-screen product we were a bit skeptical. At the time Nintendo was touting the features; explaining that a soccer product might have show the pitch in one screen while the other tracks a key player on the field. It had “gimmick” written all over it, until the developers showcased the technology with
Metroid Prime: Hunters at E3. Apparently Activision was inspired too because it utilizes the dual screens in a way that’s practical and not altogether flashy. The top screen showcases the main action while the second screen offers up information to the player. All of the dialogue in the game is relegated to the bottom screen which frees up the top screen and rids it all of all the unnecessary clutter. Perhaps the biggest advantage of the dual screen support is that it allows the entire screen to be used to showcase the action; leading to a better visual experience. The only things you see on the main screen are information sliders that are pertinent to the action; things like your energy bar and special meter.Additionally, the game employs the touch screen for a number of puzzles that are relative to the action. In a boss fight with Doc Ock you’ll have to run around the room and hit six switches in order to disable his shield mechanism. Normal games would invite you to run around the room and hit them, asserting that the true challenge is to dodge the boss’s attacks as you hit the switches. Spidey changes this up and requires you to solve a small puzzle in order to shut off the switches. Upon reaching the switches, you’ll need to use the touch screen to drag a switch from the on point to the off point. It’s not that easy though, you’ll have a time limit to deal with and hitting an electrical current will send a jolt through Spider Man. Oh, and did we mention that you have to finish the whole sequence in less than a minute? Calling it intense would be a gross understatement; it’s an amazing rush of exhilaration that you’re not used to getting from portable games.
I’m not familiar with the audio capabilities with the DS but it doesn’t seem to be that far of a step up from the GBA. All of the audio samples in Spider-Man 2 are clean but the music still retains that grainy quality that we’ve been hearing for the past three years. On occasion you’ll hear some digitized speech but it’s nothing to really be amazed by. The only real discernable difference is the fact that you can get stereo sound from the unit as opposed to mono output. What you find here is pretty much by-the-numbers when it comes to portable gaming audio. You won’t want to crank it up but you won’t necessarily be embarrassed by it either.
I won’t mince words here; I’m really impressed by the Nintendo DS. It sounded like a cheap gimmick at first and I had been burned by one of Nintendo’s gimmicks in the past. Trust me though, this is no Virtual Boy, this is a gaming thoroughbred that will demand you feed it over the holiday season. If your first priority this week is the DS, make your second one a copy of Spider-Man 2. It’s the game that will show your friends what the hardware truly can do.
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Activision's web slinging adventure is an excellent way to kick start things on Nintendo's new platform. Usually the movie-to-video game adaptations are awful, especially on the handhelds, but this is the rare exception. Just make sure that you have a lot of patience because the insane difficulty will test it to the limit.
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