Every time a new Spider-Man game either comes out or is announced, people still refer to Spider-Man 2 for the swinging no developer wants to repeat, and a number of fans still praise to this day, and it gets me to think of Treyarch's work on movie tie-ins.
The first one is still mediocre, it had potential to be one of the best linear games, but thugs are faster than the fast and agile superhero, something the two games before it didn't have, smaller limit to webbing, and some levels are a bit too difficult.
The second one is a good one, it's definitely a good game, and one of the best Spider-Man games so far, buuuut it is an overrated one, and overrated means it gets higher score than it deserves as quality, I see people still call it a 9/10 quality, but it's more like a 7-7.5/10 on that front. People praising Spider-Man 2 neglect mentioning some of the glaring flaws in it (and I won't talk much about voice acting, the main cast did a good job), like:
- How compulsory it is to perform a number of tasks before going through with story missions, sure Ultimate Spider-Man kept that problem, but there is a way in that game to turn around that issue and allow the flow of the story to go uninterrupted, tedious work sometimes, but the result is good, Spider-Man 2 has a strict by the number pattern you can't break.
- In the normal swing (at least in the copy I played, some of you probably haven't faced it) you can't steer without changing weblines, it always goes forward or backwards like a pendulum.
- "Attack -> web attack -> jump" pattern to suspend a thug on a street light.
- "Web attack -> dodge" to pull a thug.
- Some street tasks require you to talk to citizens to perform, and in many cases talking to citizens is needless, like a person telling you about a guy who is about to fall right up ahead, on the height you were swinging in before dropping to take the informants word to go back up to the same height to see what you should've seen without the need for a pedestrian to tell you about it. Another thing USM dropped favorably.
- You're in a store being shoplifted, you stop all the thugs, and still there is a chase to perform to get the escaping thief(ves). WHY? I knocked them all unconscious.
- Press the dodge button to dodge an attack, that is how you charge up your reflexes bar. Why?
- Even when you slow time, you still need to press the dodge button to dodge attacks. That doesn't add to the challenge in a good way, it's a chore to perform, time slowing reflexes is almost unnecessary in this case.
As for Spider-Man 3, most of you know already what I think of it, I probably don't need to repeat myself on how it downgraded certain aspects, but improved others, and how it is an overall good game and lots of fun. The hate the game receives in many regards is unwarranted, I know it's disappointing, certain things are disappointing for a good reason, but the combat should not be one of them, it's the same system as Spider-Man 2, with more variety to regular attacks and web attacks.
There are plenty of improvements done for this game, one of them is the addition of a New Game+, something I'm not sure why is never mentioned when I see reviews for the game. Another is finally dropping the "You must perform certain number of races/attack certain number of gangs to progress in the story".
Is it good? Certainly, it's another 7-7.5/10
I understand a certain amount of disappointment (QTE, can't carry a thug for a stroll around town, lack of street mission variety, swinging from helicopters, normal swing, standard webline length, etc...), but a lot of things are pretty much hyperbole, especially when USM is a very simple game that came between the two, and dropped plenty of big things SM2 introduced, without anyone complaining.