(Written April 2007) While Spider-Man for the N64 and Playstation and Spider-Man for the GameCube, PS2, and XBox (ahem, the one not based off the movie and the one that is respectively) were an enjoyable Spidey experience allowing you to scale walls, websling, and web up baddies, but your ability to explore was pretty limited. Spider-Man 2 fixes these problems with two words: go anywhere. You can explore the entire city of New York from street level to skyscrapers just by running, crawling, and swinging. It's likely that the only invisible wall you'll hit is on the Queensboro Bridge. Other than that, there's no limit to where you can go. As you run through the city, you have to go to various locations to advance through the chapters and get to that final showdown with Doctor Octopus, which are usually denoted by a white or blue marker which shows up on your map. Making your way to these locations is the crucial bit of advancing through the chapters. But besides wrangling Super Villains, there are tons of crimes you can stop along the way to gain Hero Points which you can use to buy upgrades with. You'll also usually need to get so many before you can advance to the next chapter, so don't be too quick to ignore a cry for help. The crimes in the city come in two kinds. Petty crimes (denoted by a purple marker), which you just come across, and citizens with something to report, (denoted by a green marker) whom you will tell you about various nefarious acts, which you will then have to stop, or else face a small penalty of losing a few hero points. Once you come in range of one of these, it'll show up on your map so you can find it. A little more variety in the different types of crimes would be nice, but there's enough that it doesn't get repetitive right away. There are also other little challenges you can complete to gain more hero points. You can activate hint markers (which give you a little bit of advice from Bruce Campbell, known to many as Ash from the Evil Dead films, which were also directed by Sam Raimi) or complete challenges by finding challenge markers around the city. Both of these kinds of markers are shown on your zoom map which you can access and pretty much any time by holding Z and pressing Start/Pause. The challenges are usually little races. You have to get from point to point to point and if you beat a certain time, you get a few hero points for your trouble. Sometimes the challenges involve doing a little trick, but you can always check the bottom of the screen for the next trick you have to do so it's no secret. The challenges all have two different times to beat. The regular record, which is pretty simple, and the far more difficult Mega Time. You may need a few speed upgrades before you're ready to tackle some of those Mega Times. Aside from the hint and challenge markers, you can also find various token sets throughout the city. There are four different sets to find; buoy tokens, skyscraper tokens, hideout tokens, and secret tokens. Now these aren't marked on your map so you'll have a bit more difficulty finding them all, but it shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out where to look. And finally, you can even do various missions to get hero points. There are three locations you can go to and get different missions. You can go to the Pizza Place and make some deliveries, head to the Daily Bugle and get a job from Robbie, or go to Mary Jane's and start a little race to meet up with her on time. So there's tons of different ways to get points and tons of stuff to do. Doing these various tasks enough will reward you with a few awards. Getting these awards is the line between just finishing the game and getting everything in it. This offers some nice replayability for those of us who have to see that 100%. Now for the bosses. This next paragraph will discuss who you fight in this game so skip over it if you don't want to know, but you'll find out anyway if you look at the awards you can win so I guess there's no secrets here. You have Rhino, first of all, which is a good rendition of him. A few too many horns, perhaps, but the design for him is alright overall. Then you have Mysterio. Whoo, golly. The transition from comic to movie to game, while cutting out the middle man, was not kind to poor Mystyerio. They literally made him as lame as possible by making him think he's an alien. But he does have his fishbowl head, which I was sorta afraid he'd be lacking when you first come across Quentin Beck. In fact, if you took the outfit Beck had, swap the backpack for a cape, throw the fishbowl on his head, give him some smoke effects and whatnot, and you've got your Mysterio. Ah well, what could have been. Next up is Shocker. You fought him in the first game so nothing new here. Decent translation. And of course, Doc Ock. If you've seen the movie, you know what you're getting here. The graphics range from good to okay. Spider-Man himself and the various super villains all look great, but there isn't much variety among regular citizens, and some of the characters like J. Jonah Jameson and Mary Jane don't look as good as they could, particularly in little "cutscenes" that just use the in-game models. There are a few very nice looking cutscenes, but they are few and far between. The sound is pretty good. I've never been a big fan of Tobey MacGuire as Spider-Man, particularly his voice, but he actually delivers a solid performance here. And of course, we get magnificent voice work by Alfred Molina (Doc Ock) and Bruce Campbell (Tour Guide). However, the voice acting you hear from most citizens sounds less than spectacular. Much less. There isn't even much diversity in what they're saying. Every citizen says the exact same things, just in a different voice. The extras, err, extra is just sad. The only thing you really get as an extra is a movie viewer. Now does that mean you get to see the beautifully animated cutscenes again? Nope. All you get for your trouble and hero points here is the logos that you see when the game loads up and the credits. Hooray for another rendition of the 60s Spidey theme? Overall, this game is great for any Spider-Man fan who just wants to swing around the city, fight crime, and BE Spider-Man. This game is the definitive experience that let's you know what it's like to be Spider-Man. Right down to the annoying children screaming for their balloons.