Review #410: Spider-man(GBA)

 At least it's better than it's home console counterpart, right?

 I miss the days of olde, when handheld consoles would get vastly different games, albeit under the same title, as home console games. In this case, Spider-man on the GBA is a 2-D platform game that could've been as great as it looked.

 As is to be expected, the game follows the plot from the movie, however, as is to be expected, it's a very, very loose retelling of said story, omitting even more plot points than the console counterpart and adding even more minor plots, such as Norman Osborn hiring Kraven the Hunter to take down Spider-man. There're about 11 levels total, and about 8 bosses, and the game should last you a while. for all the wrong reasons.

 A can be used to jump, and you can press it twice two web-swing, B performs your punches and kicks(With a quarter-circle forward special attack!), the R button is used to throw a web line in order to stick to surfaces and L button uses your special web types. Web types are swapped by grabbing the power ups peppered throughout stages, which is interesting to say the least. Spider-man can cling to almost any surface, and is, in fact, too clingy. It's easy to get Spider-man haunch into a crawl accidentally, and getting him out of it can be a hassle, particularly if there're any openings nearby, wherein pressing up or down(Depending on where you're crawling!) will make Spider-man crawl towards said opening instead of getting out of the crawl! This will get pretty annoying eventually.

 Stage design was particularly lackluster, stages are very maze-like in nature, which was probably a good idea in order to get the most out of the web-slinger's abilities, but every single mission in the game is time, which is always fun, and too add salt to injury, about 60% of the stages are of the 'Find X amount of Y' variety, which are EVEN more fun. I lost a couple of lives due to the stupid timer and because I couldn't find the 18th friggin' bomb, or maybe because I hadn't found the blue key I needed to open a door, etc. Not only are scavenger hunts on 2-D action games not fun, adding a timer on top of it isn't doing it any favors, just ask Superman 64 or Hidden Invasion about it.

 Levels have a fair amount of collectibles, be it pictures that Peter can take to unlock movie stills, golden spiders that unlock other bonuses if you collect them all and secrets that usually house life ups or extra health. There's the occasional bonus stage in which you must swing throughout buildings and find all the balloon bombs before the time is up, which are alright albeit nothing special.

 The best thing you can say about Spider-man on the GBA is that it's better than it's console counterpart... but that's not saying much, now is it? For what it's worth, the game basics work well, playing as Spider-man is fun, the moveset was well thought out, which shows on the simpler levels(The ones that don't have you finding a ridiculous amount of bombs!), but sadly means that at its worst it's not much fun to play.
 4.5 out of 10