Review #409: Spider-man(PS2)

  Down came the rain and washed the spider down.

 Both Playstation 1 games were pretty good if flawed, so when it came to bringing Spider-man to the then-current gen Treyarch opted to emulate those games, I mean, they had their job cut out for them, what could go wrong?

 While promotional materials would have you believe that this game follows the plot from the movie, the reality is that this is a pretty mangled version of said movie. They added Vulture, Shocker and Scorpion into the mix, and they turned the movie's simple plot into a garbled, senseless story thread that's best if you don't think too hard about it. At least they got Toby McGuire to do Spidey's lines, right? If only he'd have done a better job at it! As for the game's structure, it works like the Playstation 1 games, stages are prefaced by numerous cutscenes detailing what's happening, and the levels themselves are pretty linear affairs, although there're a few collectibles and upgrades to be found.

 Remember all the fancy stuff Spidey could pull off in the PS1 games? He can do that and more! A ton of new attack combos were added, and there's a few new maneuvers to perform while swinging... if only it worked well! The controls are sloppy and unresponsive, the camera has always been a point of contention with these games, but this is the worse its ever been and you can't snap it behind Spider-man's back, what's more, turning the camera while moving will lock the direction of the analog stick until you let go... which means that movement ends up working very clunkily. It's a mess. The game's stages are larger than ever before, so when it works, swinging around feels the best it's ever felt, but it's hard to get a hang of how to raise or lower yourself while swinging, it's VERY weird since it seems like the web-sling can go upwards and upwards and upwards while sticking his web into thin air.

 While the game sometimes runs at a smoother framerate than ever before... it also dips into slowdown pretty frequently. They manage to shoehorn in a couple of stealth sections that are simply horrid and boring, the game could've easily done without them, and it would've made for a better game! You can unlock three extra costumes, a silly bowling mini-game and the ability to play as the Green Goblin, featuring tweaked stages and a very, very different moveset. On a different, better game, that last addition alone would've been fantastic, but as it stands, it's really not worth the hassle of playing this entire mess again.

 Treyarch's first forray with the arachnid hero is a sloppy mess of a game. They took the easy, but safe, route of trying to emulate the great PS1 entries, but the result is a sloppy, clumsy shadow of said games. The good news is that Treyarch would eventually hit gold once they tackled the next game in the franchise, but I'm getting ahead of myself...
 3.0 out of 10

Review #408: Spider-man - Mysterio's Menace

 Not too shabby!

 Spider-man's handheld adventures hadn't fared so well, the Gameboy titles were questionable to say the least, but with the advent of the Gameboy Advance came more bits, more colors, more power and more Spider-man.

 Mysterio's Menace premise concerns a bunch of bad guys causing chaos at the exact same time albeit on different locales, so Spider-man must traverse 7 different stages. Hilariously enough, the game's title kinda gives away who is behind everything, even though Spider-man barely figures it out after clearing the sixth stage. At the start of the game you can only pick from one of three stages, and clearing each of these unlocks another one, for a total of six, once all six are clear you're free to go to the seventh, and final, after Mysterio. You can, if you are so inclined, explore every nook and cranny of every stage, and you should, as each stage houses at least one permanent upgrade to our hero. The game's progress is saved with a password system, archaic, yes, but passwords are pretty short, so it's not too bad.

 A jumps and can be pressed twice to swing with your web, B attacks, R shoots a web that wraps around enemies leaving them defenseless and L shoot webbing that causes damage on impact. The controls work pretty well, but Spider-man's range on his punches is pretty pathetic, so approaching enemies can be hazardous, so you'll learn to love the R button's web. Enemies have pretty cheap attacks that cover wide areas, which makes it even harder to approach them, and makes tangling with enemies a bit annoying at times. On the flipside, bosses are surprisingly easy to take out.

 As a whole, it's a rather simple game, but it's pretty fun to play. There're a couple of annoying stages, but most of them are relatively well designed and will have you crawling around floor, ceilings and walls, and even swinging to avoid spikes or broken circuits. The 2-D cut-outs used for cut-scenes are nothing short of amazing, feeling as if they came straight out of a comic book.

 This isn't the best Gameboy Advance game you can get, nor is it the best Spider-man game out there, but for what it is, it's pretty good. It probably won't last you more than a single car-trip, but there's fun to be had during the short rump through the crime-infested city of 2-D New York.
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man - Mysterio's Menace

 A two-fer-one

 Mysterio's Menace was a game I used to play back when the GBA was all the rage. I distinctly remember this game because I'd play it a lot after returning home from highschool.

 I've played a level, Pier 54, and it was alright. Spider-man's punch range is pathetic, enemies are very cheap and can easily score hits on the wall-crawler, which is kind of annoying. I love the fact that you can upgrade Spider-man by finding object throughout the game. It seems like a mixed bag of good and bad things.

Now Playing: Spider-man(PS2)

??????????????

 Seriously, what the hell? The smooth framerate is nice and dandy, but why the hell are the controls so... unresponsive and the movement so... wonky? I finally have control over the camera, but it's pretty slow and I can't snap it behind my back with L1, which was a terrible design choice.

 And don't even let me get started on the swinging, why is Peter constantly rising over the sky? It looks silly and dumb. I don't know if you can tell, but it's not shaping up to be a good one...

Review #407: Spider-man 2 - Enter Electro

 Does it weave a sturdier web?

 Spider-man on the PS1 was pretty good, regardless, Activision handed the rights and the engine to Vicarious Visions and had them churn away a sequel. Surprisingly, it doesn't falter at the hands of another developer, yet made up of both enhancements and detriments when compared to the previous game.

 The big bad this time around is Electro, joined together by Hammerhead, Shocker and Sandman, with the appearance of The Lizard for good measure. It does have a better, more in-character story than the previous game, hosting Electro and his quest for power, but it's still not a selling point when it comes to this game, you're in it for the fantastic depiction of Spider-man in 32-bits.

 Running on the same engine, the game plays pretty much the same way as the previous game, granting the player a very functional Spider-man that can stick to walls and ceilings, swing with his web, punch, kick and throw his enemies as well as certain objects, and use his web to tie his enemies, hit them with impact web, throw them around, enhance his punches or create a protective shield over himself. Spider-man can do a lot of stuff and it's fun to pull off, it's a great engine for the character and it works well. The camera seems to track Spider-man better than the previous game, but my gripes with reversing controls when wallcrawling remain in this game.

 The game looks better, character models are more detailed(Spidey's suit has its black webbing now!) and animations are better, just look at Spidey's crawling animation or his kicks. Levels are bigger, which usually means more fun, but there're no checkpoints and dying means having to redo an even larger level which might be a bit annoying depending on the level. I glitched through the floor as well once, fun times.

 There's a lot of level variety, and they did away with the previous game's chase sequences, which is a bonus on my book. That said, there're a few clunkers, like the level in which you have to stop the play, since until you understand how to do it, it'll leave to a lot of quick-losses and long loading times in-between retries. The 'The Gauntlet' level is particularly boring, consisting of a tower that must be climbed as you go through repeated obstacles. Basically, it has a few better levels than the best from Spider-man 1, but it also has a few worse levels than its worst.

 The game features about twice the amount of costumes, and they can be customized to add perks or handicaps which I felt was a fantastic idea. There's a new 'Training Mode' which... is kinda superfluous to be honest, but at least it's there, right?

 When it comes down to it, the good overweights the bad as far as comparing it to the previous game goes, but only by a tiny margin. Both games are very good Spider-man games that do the character and the license justice.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man 2 - Enter Electro

 Shocking.

 I hadn't played Spider-man 1, but it wound up being pretty dope. Now, Enter Electro I'm familiar with, I had played this game quite a handful of times way back when, and I had a blast with it.

 First thing I did: Costumes cheat. I like playing with different costumes, particularly with Ben's Scarlet Spider costume, and this time around you can take away the perks or handicaps, so I can finally use the Spider-man 2099 costume(Since I mean to play as legit as possible). Also, I liked how they redid a few scenes from the first game but with newer and better character models.

 The first level was a retread from Spider-man 1's albeit during the afternoon, and it felt... tighter? It's hard to explain why, but I think they were more mindful of how Spidey moved and his jumping worked when designing distances and what not between buildings. Suffice to say, it felt better.

 As for the second level, at first I thought it was kinda crappy how much it had you going around in circles trying to trigger the next 'event', but... I think it was done on purpose. There were few, if any, stages as open as this one in the first game, and it let you play around with Spider-man's movement. You are free to go around, getting used to swinging and swing-cancelling at your leisure, so even if it wasn't made on purpose... it works great.

 It's too early for a better assessment, but the game's shaping up to be either more of the same or more but a little better, and I'm leaning towards the latter.

Review #406: Spider-man(PS1)

 Here comes the Spider-man!

 As I've said in my first impressions entry, I'm pretty sure that this was the first game to be both a great game and a game that made the most out of the Spider-man license. This is a stage-based linear action game that puts you in the boots of Spider-man, web-slinging in-and-out of trouble, fighting popular villains and doing everything a spider can.

 The game offers a healthy selection of baddies: Doc Ock, Rhino, Mysterio and even Venom, alongside cameos of super heroes like Black Cat, Captain America, Punisher and Daredevil. Just don't think too hard about how they behave in the game, as there's a few out-of-character moments, particularly Venom who's been dumbed down, literally. The story is pretty focus on the symbiotes, but it does a good job of shoe-horning in every baddie for you to fight them, which in a licensed game and of its era, it's pretty neat. Regardless, you won't be playing this game for its story, that's for sure, but rather for the fanservice.

 And the fanservice isn't just cosmetics, Spider-man can stick to almost every surface and crawl around, he can web-sling through the air, web his enemies, create a dome of web, add webbing to his fists in order to increase damage as well as lift some objects and throw them around, in case you don't want to just grab your enemies and throw'em or punch'em. There's a very wide slew of actions that Spider-man can perform, which is nothing short of fantastic, and the game does a fantastic job of making you feel like the wall-crawler. There's this section in the beginning in which you must infiltrate a building and save the hostages, and it felt so good to crawl through the roof, webbing enemies from above before they knew what struck them!

 While it works fine for the most part, there were a few chinks in the design. Sometimes when zipping straight to a roof can invert your controls, which isn't too much of an issue 'till you find yourself in timed stages, like stalking Venom or the end-game's chase sequence. It can really throw you off and force you to restart the entire stage. The camera is a bit lackluster as well, while you can tap L1 to shift it behind you, it doesn't do a good job of following behind Spider-man by itself. The controls also show a few problems when trying to get specific type of web attacks to come out or to aim, like the Mysterio fight which had me throwing Impact webbing at thin air. Luckily, none of these issue ruin the game.

 The game offers a hearty challenge on its default difficulty, you will probably have to retry a few stages until you figure out how to deal with obstacles or enemies. There're aren't many puzzles, besides figuring out how to defeat a few bosses, but what few puzzles there were were pretty neat. Fulfilling certain conditions, or using cheats, lets you unlock costumes, of which there're plenty and they are pretty cool, I just wish they didn't come with secondary bonuses(Or handicaps!) since I really wanted to use the Spider-man 2099 costume but I didn't want extra strength!

 Spider-man on the PS1 is pretty darn great, while it's no longer 'the best super-hero game' out there, it's still got it. This game is easy to recommend even if you don't like Spider-man. And if you do like it, don't expect too much out of its story besides excuses to have you fight all the various villains. I mean, J. J. Jameson calls Peter and tells him to call 911, like, what the hell??
 7.5 out of 10