I know we’re past the point of talking about the Spider-Men from the MCU phases and how it was special to have Takuya Yamashiro show up for that scene at the end of No Way Home. Nonetheless, I think it is worth going back to 2004 and enjoying a little bit of that Tobey goodness that was Maguire’s dry voice-acting performance for the tie-in game to one of the greatest movies of all time. Anyone that wants to fight me on that claim can find me in Chicago riding the L while I pretend it is New York.

Joking aside about the details of this world and one of the best scenes ever made in cinema, 2004’s Spider-Man 2 came at either the height or the dying days of tie-in movie games, depending on your perspective. With such competition as Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Rockstar’s The Warriors, and Enter The Matrix all releasing in a three-year period, there was a lot for Treyarch to fight against. Maguire’s stunted performance is one of the issues, the other being Spider-Man’s main abilities.

I’ve done a lot of swinging in my life though mostly with a bag full of battered-up pizzas on my back as a monkey plays accordion. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the Marvel’s Spider-Man review, while I enjoy the 2018 game and its mechanics, the studio that is now working on yet another Call of Duty game perfected something that could dangle on a thin wire beautifully.

There was a point when I’d have said that EA, Activision, and Ubisoft were making some of the best (at least fun) games ever made. Though they’ve fallen so much I have to highlight when money wasn’t the focus. Have a discussion on whether games are art if you like, but that web-swinging is art.

Combat, on the other hand, is your typical slap fight we’d see in Batman’s fists of fury later on. Here it is in its very formative days. This is the inherent trouble with Spider-Man or any non-aggressive character and games. The language we have in mainstream gaming is aggression. Anything that isn’t ostensibly hostile to its environment is labeled for kids, young women, or for grandparents.

I’m not going to start banging on like Clinton and Thompson around the time of Spider-Man 2‘s release. That’s not my point. The character is generally supposed to focus on dodges and using his white wrist liquid-turn-solid to trap foes. Here, not so much.

Graphically it is difficult to go back without those rose-tinted goggles you’re wearing suddenly shattering. You’ll find this a lot with PS2 games as we push for more pixels in our bigger and bigger TVs, the pixel-perfect peril you thought Peter Parker was in is now a jagged and blocky cardboard city, excessively bright during the day and dark at night. It isn’t unplayable, but if you want to preserve some of those memories, I’d suggest using the smallest (reasonably) sized screen you can find to negate the lack of anti-aliasing.

There are two points in history where I (and basically everyone) get PTSD and Vietnam-like flashbacks from games. That monkey playing the accordion as I make a pizza shaken not stirred, and “I lost my balloon!” One is a test of your ability to stay calm as your complete lack of skill is on show. The other is a test of your will to live as you climb up a building diving for a red balloon or the pavement, whichever comes first.

Both are ingrained into my head the same way that woman from Theme Hospital burrowed her way in by saying “Slack tong clinic.” Regularly I’ll hum the pizza music to myself when there is a time limit, that or Sonic’s drowning effect.

Ultimately, Spider-Man 2 from the PS2 is a fantastic bout of memories leaping through the city of New York/Chicago. However, like all good memories, there is something hidden. For the life of me, it is difficult to go back and say it still looks good or even good enough to play.

With a lack of anti-aliasing or HDTV support (as IGN noted in 2004) the PS2 port might be where many had their memories, but it has not aged well graphically as we’ve pushed for bigger and bigger TVs. Despite the downsides (no anti-aliasing, children, and monkeys with accordions) I’ll continue to swing for many years to come.

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Spider-Man 2

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• I love my wrist liquid!
• Tobey's awful voice acting fits so well.

Cons

• Children with their balloons!
• Graphically aged like milk.
• Needless focus on the combat.