Everyone has probably at least heard of a Spider-Man game, whether that’s from playing them, knowing someone who did or just finding the concept ridiculous the existence of them is still known. For decades people have been getting excited to control the red and blue gymnast swing through New York City on varying sizes of screens and resolutions. The one most fans will always fall back on is the nostalgic classic Spider-Man 2 for the PlayStation 2, back in 2004. I am one of these fans, spending the following 14 years reminiscing of the blocky New York skyline that sat above the empty streets.
The newest Spidey obsession for us nerds is arriving in a few months time and already with the pre-orders underway the internet and video game magazines have been bringing back the nostalgic torch of Spider-Man 2. Lets be honest though, it hasn’t aged well, the world is quiet and empty, swinging is fun until Spidey face plants a wall mid-swing but it still holds the title for the best swinging in a Spider-Man game to date. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the game still and even when I picked up the controller again this week I was transported back to my 12 year old self, surrounded by food wrappers and spending hours a day going through this pixilated reimagining of the iconic cityscape.
My main point today is that even though we look back on the 2004 creation as the best of the bunch but when placed alongside titles such as Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Web of Shadows then maybe our nostalgic eyes should share the light with more than just the PS2 winner. Ultimate Spider-Man was cell-shaded and released 2005, just over a year after Sam Raimi’s tie-in and yet graphically holds up better than the more realistic approach that had been taken before. But not only that, the City felt more alive, there were still too few people to recreate a believable New York but enough to keep the views joyful in a comic coloured way.
Web of Shadows was created for what I felt was an angst filled teenage stage of my life while in fact it just was released when I found out that there are music channels that exist and my sisters didn’t listen to. But where the Ultimate brought in a colourful world for the players to explore, Web took a darker approach, becoming what could only be referred to as the closest thing to a Spider-Man based zombie game. Bringing in a very low-level version of morality choices for the friendly neighbourhood clump of pixels.
But what Web had over the nostalgic king of the hill was its combat, taking Spidey’s random swings in the air to the precision of web attacks, pulling himself towards enemies, including a whole fight with Vulture spent almost exclusively above the skyscrapers. Graphically it looked better but that was because it had an upgrade from the PS2 software to the next generations of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The point to this seemingly long and very nerdy display of specific video game knowledge was simply to put that when looking back over the franchise of Spider-Man games then why do we only wish for the newest inclusion to have the swinging from Spider-Man 2? Why not the colourful world of Ultimate, the choice and combat from Web, the web-rush from Amazing, the sneaking from Shattered’s Noir levels and with the probably nothing from Spider-Man 3.
The Nerdy Bartender 