Spider-Man 2: Hands-on

We leap from the highest building in Manhattan and swing away with a smile.

Last Thursday night IGN snatched its brief chance to play the ever-elusive final version of Spider-Man 2 during a demo and hands-on affair at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, Ca. Activision and Treyarch's second current-generation title bears little resemblance to the previous Spider-Man title, as the development team has taken great pains to bring the game more in line with the movie. Mind you, in this case, that's a good thing. "What we wanted to do was to re-create that same sense of web-slinging, that amazing feeling of flinging through the air that was so well captured in the early parts of the Spider-Man movie," said Treyarch's Executive Producer Gregory Johns. And that, in a nutshell, is what Spider-Man 2 is all about.

Ditching the previous engine used for Spider-Man, which, as you may remember, was a solid game that also happened to come with some nasty camera issues, Treyarch programmed a massive cityscape that resembles Manhattan post September 11. (Ground Zero of the World Trade Center is carefully re-created as two beaming lights shooting from the ground into the sky.) The result is the Grand Theft Auto-ization of the Spider-Man universe. The city is open and free to move about, thus altering everything about its structure, from the mission design, the way you move about town, the types of missions, the introduction of NPCs, and even the manner by which Spider-Man upgrades his move set.

The most impressive thing about this sequel is its technical prowess. At any time during the game, you can press a button to get to the mission map. It shows a top down look at the city and then, in realtime, by selecting a section, it zooms the camera straight down from what looks like a mile above the city to the street level in about 0.5 seconds. All of sudden you are there. If you want to go to the Brooklyn Bridge you can web sling there no problem. Central Park? Easy. The top of the highest building in the city? Easy peasy. As you may have heard by now, Spidey can sling his web onto helicopters that randomly fly by, and by doing so he can actually reach the Statue of Liberty or other water-bound land masses. If he falls into water, a cutscene brings him back to land.

Treyarch has admittedly done a superb job of re-creating the sense of airborne slingyness from the movie, and as we played it, the experience felt engaging in an all new way. It's similar to learning how to fly. Or at least what I envision leaning how to fly to be like (if I could, you know, fly). There is a certain rush, a sense of freedom, and the quick ability to change directions.

But to be honest, the controls took some time to get accustomed to, partially because they work differently than in the previous games, and what's more a new jumping mechanic has been added. By pressing a single button Spider-Man can jump, only the longer you hold it, the higher he goes. The HUD in the upper left-hand corner shows off the jump meter, and to master the swinging mechanic players must use the jump button in coordination with the swings. In this manner Spider-Man can ascend to the upper echelons of the city. Another cool mechanic that works into Spider-Man's overall speed and acrobatic abilities is his ability to run off and up walls. And he can actually jump straight up walls using the same jumping mechanic as aforementioned.

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