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

Now Playing: Spider-man

 Neversoft struck gold. Again.

 Neversoft once again prove their worth, not only did they create the ultimate Skating game for its time, they also made the ultimate Spider-man game. Y'see, before Neversoft arrived, Spider-man games came in two flavors, either they:

A) Were good games, like Separation Anxiety or the Arcade game, but at the cost of being a bit more... 'generic' when it came to mechanics, only using the most basic of Spider-man's abilities.

or

B) Were Spider-man games, like Spider-man and X-men or Spider-man VS the Sinister 6, which were built around Spider-man's unique abilities... but weren't good games.

 Spider-man on the Playstation manages to be both a fantastic game and an Spider-man game. Like, Spider-man's got so many abilities, and they are simple to get the hang of. I've gotten up to the helicopter raid escape and I've been having a blast. I have very fond memories of Spider-man 2 - Enter Electro, so it'll be interesting to see which game has aged better.

 As to why I started Spider-man? I'm 10 hours into Shadow Hearts 3 so I decided to take a little break from all the turn based battles, plus, I'm running out of space on my Spider-manathon shelf, so might as well start now!

Now Playing: Shadow Hearts - From the New World

 It's... it certainly is different.

 Koudelka was pretty good. Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 were pretty darn amazing. From the New World is... different. Just the opening scenes lets you know that this is gonna be a very different game, in tone. The first part of the game takes place during the day, there's no threat of war or what have you, and the protagonist is very happy go lucky. And the very first opening moments have a sexy woman getting naked just because Japan is Japan and go forbid a woman doesn't show her assets.

 I got through the first dungeon, and it's alright. I find it interesting how Johnny is kind of a weakling, I got so used to Yuri and his 3-attack judgement ring, how he'd have SP for days and what not, but Johnny feels like a glorified Anastasia, with his silly 'Snap' ability, 1-hit judgement ring and low SP threshold. It's an interesting change!

 So far, I'm not very hopeful. I think the most probable scenario is me liking the game because it's fun, but not being able to enjoy it as much as previous Shadow Hearts since every single horror element, sans demons, is gone.

Review #405: Hidden Invasion

 The hidden invasion of bad games.

 Welcome to 'How not to make a beat'em up 101'. That's the fastest and easiest way to describe this travesty.

 You pick your character, generic dude bro cop or generic sexy woman cop and must battle the aliens that managed to invade earth and take control of most of the population. Both characters play more or less the same, but at least their cutscenes get different voice overs and both characters change clothes three times throughout the entire, and mercifully short, adventure. There's a two player mode, in case you're a dick and want to sucker someone into enduring this with you.

 Both characters can punch, kick, grab, shoot and grenade their way through endless waves of enemies, but you'll quickly find out that the best ways to deal with enemies is using their own guns or exploiting the overpowered grabs and throws. And why wouldn't you? Enemies respawn constantly, gang up on you constantly and love to get in some cheap hits when you're busy. Bosses can be particularly annoying when playing by yourself, since enemies may respawn infinitely even during boss fights.

 You'll be permanently under a timer for no reason whatsoever besides pissing off the players, and while I never ran out of time, it's a needless annoyance. Usually you'll be given a compass to guide you on where to go next, but it's absolutely useless and changes direction more often than the camera. Oh, the camera is absolutely nuts, it changes angles ever 2-3 steps which messes with the controls and how you're moving, so you might get stuck between angles until you figure out how to deal with the controls.

 That's got nothing on the numerous bugs and glitches though! Certain enemies have the ability to 'lock' your progression until you kill them, kinda like older beat'em ups in which the scrolling would freeze until you defeated every enemy. Well, turns out that some of these enemies can move you by moving away from you and thus moving the 'invisible wall'. It's particularly prevalent during stage 2, in which enemies would move by position as they fell down when I shot at them! And this one time, one of these 'screen lock' enemies decided to escape away from me, moving me around until it finally got me stuck on a crate, leaving me unable to progress. Fun.

 Avoid Hidden Invasion. I know, it's very tempting since the game is dirt cheap, I got my copy for 2 bucks. 2 bucks! But not even the multiplayer mode is worth it. Not only is the game not fun to play, it's also filled with bugs, glitches and inconsistencies, it's not even 'so bad it's good' bad. This game is better left off hidden in the annals of history... for our own sake.
 2.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Hidden Invasion

 This game is a joke.

 I hope you don't have motion sickness, because boy oh boy is this game a trip! The camera is absolutely insane, bonkers! You can't walk half a mile without the camera shifting and screwing up your movement. I also LOVE how enemies respawn constantly, and they love to throw stuff at you, knives, batons, bullets, you name it!

 It's horrible, horrible! What a bad, bad game.