Nintendo DS - Spider-Man 2 Review
2025-07-05 • reviewing-all-nintendo-ds-games

This is something I've been wanting to do for a while: to finish and review all Nintendo DS games. Nintendo DS is a console very close to my heart, I got it early 2005 when I was 10 years old, and I had the opportunity to play lots of games during its plentiful and very productive console lifetime. I'll do this review series for fun and to have one more reason to blog, and also because I want to scratch an itch I have since I was a kid: I always wanted to write review for games (I had a big collection of EGM Brazil magazines and I read and re-read them every opportunity I got).

I'll be finishing them in order of release date according to the MobyGames website. For each game, I'll try finishing them on the default difficulty in around a week, and review the game after that using the 2000's EGM Graphics/Sound/Gameplay/Replay/Total score system. I will add a Retro score too, because some games just have a retro-feeling appeal some good 20 years later. I'll review the games taking into consideration when they were launched, but not ignoring the new baggage of experiences of 20 more years of gaming. I'll be playing all games on my Nintendo 3DS.

This is the first review and it is subjected to change. I'm still figuring out the best way to write about the games I play, but I wanted to post something so I could get a feel fro it.

• The game was finished in 16/05/2025.

This is one of the games launched with Nintendo DS in late 2004, made by Vicarious Visions. In 2025, I can say with most confidence that whoever wished for an open-world Spider-Man game with amazing 3D navigation and great combat already had their wishes coming true in the last Spider-Man installments on Playstation 4/5, specially those who start playing Spider-Man games in the Playstation 1 era. But Spider Man 2 for Nintendo DS still fits an interesting category of Spider Man games: it's a 2D action game with some platforming, with 14 total missions on different levels each.

First, the most important part of a Spider-Man game: navigation is really good. Surprisingly good, in fact. You can swing accross the level after jumping (and you're able to control during the swing how fast and how high you want to go), and you can zip across different surfaces with a web shot. Those two movements are quite straightforward but are really fun in most moments of gameplay, specially because most levels take into consideration those two kinds of movements, with a lot of space to swing around but also lots of corners to crawl onto. You'll be doing a lot of those two movements, but they work quite well.

Background graphics are also quite nice, adding a 3D element to the scene. The platforming always happen in a 2D plane, and the level often make curves in the 3D space (but still keeping the 2D nature of the level, like if you were slighly bending a paper surface). This adds a very nice feeling to the overall level, a bit open-world-ish without actually allowing exploration in the 3D space.

But the presentation only go so far, because gameplay-wise the game is very very bland. Most of the level design consists of "Find and defeat all 20 enemies", and the enemies are NOT easy to find. In fact, there is no minimap or ways to track enemies at all - the bottom part of the DS is just a way to select which special move Spider-Man will use. And since every level has a tight time limit to defeat enemies, finding them is not even an exercise of level exploration - you have to play the level multiple times and memorize enemy locations so you can have a run that manages to defeat every enemy in time. This feels like a very artificial way to increase the overall gameplay time without adding quality-of-life mechanics or mission variety.

Bad level design would be less impactful if combat wasn't ass, but alas, it is ass. Enemies have very easy to understand attack patterns, but Spider-Man has no dodge mechanics besides running away (grantly, an effective dodge mechanic), so it's very hard to actually avoid enemy attacks and getting repeatedly knocked down, unable to strike back because the invulnerability time after taking damage is so short. Spider-Man does have a "parry" mechanic: When an enemy attacks Spider-Man, there is a short time indicated by the spider-sense at the top of Spider-Man head in which you can press the L button. If you manage to do so, time will move much slower, which gives you plenty of time to admire the enemy attack you are not able to avoid, because Spider-Man will ALSO move slower. So it's a nifty way to torture yourself for being a bad player.

I am being very mean to the combat gameplay, but the problem is that when it does not work, it's very bad. When it does work, it is simply not that fun. The best way to actually kill enemies (and the most fun I had in combat) is to use the ability to "pull" enemies to you using your spidey web, which often throw them off the ledges if you are positioned right, making enemies scream a very Wilhelmy scream and scoring you a kill. So the most fun I had with the game combat was when I managed to avoid the game combat altogether. So you can imagine how fun I had with the game bosses, stages with one tanky Spider-Man villain that you had to constantly go back and forth attacking, slowly recharging your energy to use your special abilities from a safe distance.

Sound design of the game is also very bland. There is no memorable music or soundtrack, just generic electronic beep-boops every stage. Sound effects tend to be a bit better, but the only real highlight for me is the Wilhelmish scream enemies do when they fall off the edges. One thing to note is that sound effects are really useful to find enemies (and hostages on "rescue" missions) - when Spider-Man is close to an enemy (even if they are not on-screen), they will make a sound. This is specially helpful on the more maze-like stages, where enemies can be behind a wall, so you'll have to find a different path to destroy them. This would be a nice touch if it wasn't something that felt almost necessary, given the nature of the missions and the lack of quality-of-life mechanics.

Taking everything into consideration, the game is OK, which in retrospect is kind of impressive given how much I said about gameplay and combat. The key thing for me is that the game didn't feel unnecessarily long, and the 2D navigation is honestly very fun. Otherwise, I could only describe the game as "bland".

Graphics: 7.5

I actually enjoyed a lot the 3D-but-no-actually-is-just-2D-with-fancy-background graphics. It was fun, and made the level traversal more engaging when Spider-Man made curves in the 2D plane. But character models were really forgetable.

Sound: 4.0

I guess it's very obvious by now that the only thing I can remember about the sound is the Wilheilmish scream enemies do. Other than that, 100% forgetable.

Gameplay: 4.5

What sustains the gameplay is the level traversal. Honestly, if the game was only only ABOUT level traversal, this would be a solid 7.0, maybe an 8.0. But the combat and lack of mission variety lowers the score a lot.

Replay: 5.0

I can't say there is no replay value whatsoever, since most missions have secondary (and much harder) objectives that might give you permanent bonuses or even other special powers. But even the secondary missions have no variety whatsoever (most of the time is just finishing the level on a much shorter time).

Retro: 7.0

The retro feeling is particularly strong because the game CGI during its static cutscenes are so incredibly funny and very early 2000-ish. The game does have a bit of that arcade charm of that era, but it's just too punitive to make it worth for the retro feeling alone.

Total: 5.5

It's an okay game, tending a bit for the worse rather than good. I wouldn't be able to recommend it, but I'm also able to say some memorable things about it (level traversal, incredibly ugly and funny CGI Pater Parker).

This is the first game of my personal challenge of finishing and reviewing every Nintendo DS game, and it was already more of a challenge than I thought - both game difficulty and how painful it was to play the game sometimes. I feel this is a very good sign, even if the game itself wasn't good: it means I still have plenty of games to be surprised by 20 years later.

Next game is The Urbz: Sims in the City, a game I actually finished 100% when I was a kid. I'm not planning to finish it 100% this time, but I'm sure this one is gonna be a huge nostalgia hit.

Until next time!