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
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