THE SHORT: Go anywhere anytime in a full version of Manhattan. Crawl buildings or swing all day, stop random crimes or take on the story. Similar not to GTA but True Crime, but too unique for direct comparison. Not as horribly difficult or badly acted as I've read, but it could use more variety in some areas.
THE LONG: When I was first debating buying this game, I kept seeing comparisons to Grand Theft Auto. I will immediately tell you this is misleading. You don't steal cars, you can't beat up civilians, and there's no big series of missions to take from different people. It has a couple similar elements to GTA, but in fact the game plays more like True Crime. Like in that game, you can co anywhere at any time, your missions revolve around random street crimes, and aside from a main storyline the bulk of the game's fun is coming from exploring and building up your records. This isn't to say Spider Man 2 isn't fun on its own, because it is. And it's different enough from most other games to really stand out.
The game starts you off as Spidey and guides you through a brief but helpful and humorous tutorial delivered by none other than the man, Bruce Campbell himself. After that, it's up to you. Swing from the rooftops, stop random crime, help citizens in distress, or take on the main storyline. It's all fun, thanks to the great graphics and controls. The game's gravity and speed system gives you a very proper sense of weight and control over Spiderman, and it's a definite blast to just zip around through the rather large city.
Fight controls are, in my opinion, good as well. Like a true comic book hero, Spidey does all kinds of goofy leaps and flips mixed in with the fisticuffs. You can literally run and knock an opponent fifteen feet into the air, jump up and kick him down, then throw a web to catch him before you land and throw him against the side of the building. It's wild, and although you can simply beat guys up with one button, the joy is in all the different flourishes and moves you can execute. And after seeing the films again last week, I was surprised by just how many specific moves they took from the movie for inclusion into the game.
The random and distress crimes are fun enough as well, but their downside is that, like True Crime, they boil down to the same core missions when it's all stripped down. It doesn't matter if the enemies are robbing a bank or stealing a purse, it'll still come down to you chasing down the baddies and kicking ass. There's some variation that involves Spidey's particular skills like rescuing hanging construction workers and people from sinking boats, but after a while the crime stuff does get repetitive. In all honesty I didn't have a problem with it until a good week after playing (and finishing) the game, but some will tire more quickly of the lack of variety in the actual objectives.
Which leaves the storyline, which can pretty much be followed at your own pace (although most of Spidey's coolest moves will be unlocked this way). The actual story mode follows the general course of the movie but throws in much substance and characters for filler, and can probably be beaten in about a dozen hours for a casual player. Some, like EGM magazine, have made the boss battles seem ridiculously impossible, but I hardly had a problem with any of it. The toughest spot for me was a sort of obstacle course I was forced to participate in pretty early on, but this type of story mission occurred only once, and the rest to me was just fine. The voice acting was perfectly adequate as well, with no one sounding particularly worse or better than they sounded in the films (again, EGM's review notwithstanding). The same can't be said for the citizens though, who sound quite dumb, but in a fun, somehwat conscious way.
But if all the rest of this stuff doesn't grab you, there's still loads of optional goals to complete. There are literally hundreds of icons to collect in the city, as well as races to try to win and small secrets to uncover (minor spoiler: don't expect too much other than pride if you expect to collect all the green info tokens. This is one of the more smartass jokes I've seen in a game, and you'll either laugh or cry after all that work. So heads up).
In my honest opinion, Spider Man 2 is a hell of a game. It's just plain fun to rush around the city while web slinging, crawl to the tops of skyscrapers and swan dive off, and beat up countless thugs with crazy moves. I put in about 50 hours, and a lot of that has been spent just exploring and collecting. It's good enough in the substance that it borrows from True Crime, and it's unique and well made enough on its own to really stand out. I really enjoyed it.
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