Review #150: Spawn Armageddon

 This gets to be my review 150? I'm disappointed.

 Spawn hasn't had a good game. The SNES game was ambitious, but ultimately not very good, the GBC game wasn't very good either, and the PS1 game... the least we say about that one the better. There was also a Dreamcast game that looks really good, but sadly I don't own one, so I can't speak about that one. The one I can speak about is Spawn Armageddon, a third-person action game/shooter from Namco that while being on the right track, ultimately falls short of its goal.

 Notice the title? Armageddon. The game takes place sometime after Al Simmons gets betrayed and killed by a former associate, then resurrected as the Spawn by Malebolgia, the ruler of hell. All of this is told in a beautiful FMV cut-scene at the start of the game, one of two(The other one being the ending). After Spawn finishes narrating his origin, a green light engulfs the city, signaling the beginning of the Armageddon. The rest of the story is told via text-cut outs before each stage, or mission as the game calls them, pretty lame. They did borrow this from Devil May Cry 1, but at DMC complimented the text with a ton of in-game cutscenes, and while this game has a very few of those, most of the stages feel very disjointed. I am supposed to believe that "fallen" angels, which never appeared in game min you, led Spawn to another place in the world? I'm not such an easy sell!

  Spawn has plenty of tools to deal with his enemies. Firstly, he gets his axe, but you can't do much with it. You have a basic three hit combo, an airdrop slash and an upwards slash that allows you flip a certain enemy type, and just this one and only enemy type, which makes you wonder why even bother with it, this little nuance does little to alleviate the repetitive nature of the combat. Spawn, having being a former soldier and a contract killer, knows his way around fire-arms, of which he'll get plenty. Sadly, long-range shooting isn't very fun, if you want your shots to hit their mark, you gonna be using the sloppy targeting system that never manages to target the enemy you want to hit, but at least you can cycle through enemies. Targeting also slows down Spawn to a walk, for some reason he can't run and gun while targeting. This needs to be said, the game really needed a block function, Spawn's mobility really isn't up to par with his enemies who will assault him relentlessly. You do get side jumps, but they are very slow and barely move him to the side, it's only useful on certain situations. The last tools on Spawn's arsenal are his Necroplasmic powers, he has five of them, and they are pretty useful most of the time. They run on Necroplasm, which you restore by collecting green orbs. All in all, the action has a very DMC vibe, without the combo system and without everything that made the combat so good in that game.

 The game also borrows the upgrading system from DMC, defeating enemies will provide blue orbs which you can then use to upgrade fire arms, your health bar or your Necroplasm bar before each missions. And that's about all that the game has going for it, the rest isn't any good. Firstly, the camera is atrocious, many a times it feels as if you are fighting with the camera just to get it to look where you want. Once, I moved inside a tunnel before I was supposed to(Not that there's any indication of that, as you are given enough time to enter it when it starts spinning), and the camera got locked in its place, forcing me to restart the mission. Fun. Oh, glitches. At least twice Spawn got locked in the moving animation... without moving an inch from his spot, the first time an enemy was nice enough to knock me out of it, but the second one I was forced to restart the mission. Fun times. Rounding up the flaws, we have the targeting reticule that sometimes likes to glitch out and target thin air, and the terrible, terrible platforming sections that the game forces upon you. The camera wasn't built for platforming and neither was Spawn's movement.

 The game has 23 stages, but they aren't very fun to explore. Most of them are pretty plain, and nothing really stands out. The game isn't very hard if you spam your chains, the only ranged weapon that doesn't use ammo, in order to save up ammo for the bosses. There's a couple of levels that are a bit harder than the rest, one which is incredibly cheap that has lasers falling on you, as claw demons tackle you while you try to kill the lamenting demons which make projectiles spawn over you, and another one that is a very long section of terrible platforming.

 The graphics aren't very good, Spawn himself could've used more detail, and while the game is based on spawn, it seems as if you are getting attacked by generic enemies that could've come out of Quake. Animation is passable, but Spawn's three-hit combo looks so off for some reason, must be the way he has to throw his body forward for every motion. On the other hand, the soundtrack is really good, seems it was composed by Marylin Manson? Regardless, it's very fitting and very good. Surprisingly, voice acting is really good... most of the time, Spawn's reaction in the ending wasn't convincing, I almost laughed at how much it made me cringe.

 While it doesn't do anything particularly well, it isn't a terrible game. At times, it can be fun, but for the most part, it feels like it lacks a soul.
 4.5 out of 10.