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