Review #411: Spider-man 2(GBA)

 Not Spider-man's finest.

 Spider-man got another movie, and thus a new onslaught of tie-in videogames was unleashed upon the gaming world. While the home console iteration was a franchise-defining entry that set the bar for future games to come, the second entry on the Gameboy Advance is... troubling.

 It's not worth discussing the game's premise because it does a very poor job of translating the story of the game based on the plot of the movie, which means it's all kinds of terrible. What you need to know is that you'll be facing many foes that didn't make it into the movie while Doc Ock is left as the big cheese. There're about 21 different levels, but the game is fairly short overall, clocking it little over two hours.

 As far as basic gameplay goes, the game plays pretty much like the previous one: Spidey can jump, swing on web, punch and kick. Instead of having to find power ups to use special web shots, you now earn experience points after each mission which you can then use to power up Spider-man, making him tougher or learning new moves. It's a fantastic addition, but some of the new moves can mess a bit with the player, for instance, tapping forwards twice, even if by accident, will have Spider-man perform a sliding kick which may throw you off. There're new mechanics, like picking up stuff by pressing down and HOLDING punch which doesn't work very well, and is needed for a boss fight, and you'll need to get used to swinging since you must also hold Jump if you don't want to perform one of the useless new acrobatics.

 Level design is still kinda lame, featuring maze-like levels and scavenger-hunt type levels, at least most levels don't run on a timer now and most levels feature a compass to guide you, but not every level, which is a bit baffling. Every now and then you'll enter a '3-D hub level' in which you can either partake in one or two side missions or advance to the next story level. It's a neat idea, but the 3-D hub runs very poorly, it's nigh unplayable, and they had the gall to have a story mission taking place in said buggy hub. What were they thinking?

 They redesigned a few of Spider-man's animations. A few, which means that Spider-man's proportions will switch between the old ones and the new ones depending on what action you perform, which is all kinds of silly. There're other design flaws, like moving platforms that instead of moving in smooth cycles kinda stutter their way through it, and it's very easy to just go through them when you try to land on them. All in all, some levels are worse than the worst Spider-man had to offer, but a few are better than its best, make of that what you will.

 Spider-man 2 makes a bunch of small tweaks that really work in the game's favor, but they also kept most of what was bad about the previous game and added worse things on top. The end result is yet another mixed bag of elements that don't really work well together. It's hard to say which game is better, because while this game was more fun than the previous game at times, it was also more annoying than the previous game ever was, and that's saying something. So, pick your poison, me? I'd stick with Mysterio's Menace.

 4.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man 2(GBA)

 More of the same?

 I start the first stage, first thing I see? A time. And it's yet another maze-like level. BOY AM I GONNA HAVE FUN. But then I notice it... a compass! Telling me where stuff is, THANK YOU, it looks like they figured out the previous game's shortcomin.... Wait, it only tells you where the pizza place is, the customers? Find them yourself. OH BOY.

 Luckily, this time around not all stages are timed, which is a plus. The 3D bonus segments are the absolute pits though, they lag SO badly, they'd be unplayable if only they weren't just means to an end. Controls have been tweaked a bit, for the better I think, but it's hard to get rid of my muscle memory from the previous game.

 Spider-man 2 on the GBA seems to be just more of the same, but maybe, just maybe it'll prove itself to be a tiny bit better. Maybe, I'm not that hopeful.

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

Now Playing: Spider-man(GBA)

 Itsy Bitsy Spider...

 I remember how I always adored this game's artstyle and how much I liked it over Mysterio's Menace... I remembered wrong.

 I mean, so far it's not too bad, but the mission structure is a bit... annoying? Each level seems like a scavenger hunt of sorts while under a timer inside a labyrinthine stage, it's not much fun. The game is pretty neat to look at though!

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

Review #408: Spider-man - Mysterio's Menace

 Not too shabby!

 Spider-man's handheld adventures hadn't fared so well, the Gameboy titles were questionable to say the least, but with the advent of the Gameboy Advance came more bits, more colors, more power and more Spider-man.

 Mysterio's Menace premise concerns a bunch of bad guys causing chaos at the exact same time albeit on different locales, so Spider-man must traverse 7 different stages. Hilariously enough, the game's title kinda gives away who is behind everything, even though Spider-man barely figures it out after clearing the sixth stage. At the start of the game you can only pick from one of three stages, and clearing each of these unlocks another one, for a total of six, once all six are clear you're free to go to the seventh, and final, after Mysterio. You can, if you are so inclined, explore every nook and cranny of every stage, and you should, as each stage houses at least one permanent upgrade to our hero. The game's progress is saved with a password system, archaic, yes, but passwords are pretty short, so it's not too bad.

 A jumps and can be pressed twice to swing with your web, B attacks, R shoots a web that wraps around enemies leaving them defenseless and L shoot webbing that causes damage on impact. The controls work pretty well, but Spider-man's range on his punches is pretty pathetic, so approaching enemies can be hazardous, so you'll learn to love the R button's web. Enemies have pretty cheap attacks that cover wide areas, which makes it even harder to approach them, and makes tangling with enemies a bit annoying at times. On the flipside, bosses are surprisingly easy to take out.

 As a whole, it's a rather simple game, but it's pretty fun to play. There're a couple of annoying stages, but most of them are relatively well designed and will have you crawling around floor, ceilings and walls, and even swinging to avoid spikes or broken circuits. The 2-D cut-outs used for cut-scenes are nothing short of amazing, feeling as if they came straight out of a comic book.

 This isn't the best Gameboy Advance game you can get, nor is it the best Spider-man game out there, but for what it is, it's pretty good. It probably won't last you more than a single car-trip, but there's fun to be had during the short rump through the crime-infested city of 2-D New York.
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man - Mysterio's Menace

 A two-fer-one

 Mysterio's Menace was a game I used to play back when the GBA was all the rage. I distinctly remember this game because I'd play it a lot after returning home from highschool.

 I've played a level, Pier 54, and it was alright. Spider-man's punch range is pathetic, enemies are very cheap and can easily score hits on the wall-crawler, which is kind of annoying. I love the fact that you can upgrade Spider-man by finding object throughout the game. It seems like a mixed bag of good and bad things.