Review #418: Spider-man - Battle for New York(GBA)

 They did it. They actually messed it up.

 Ultimate Spider-man on the Gameboy Advance had single-handedly redeemed the handheld Spider-man games, and ushered into a brave new world of decent handheld Spider-man games. And, y'know, when you hit it out of the park, you get lazy, so you recycle the last game's engine an build upon it. They did, and they messed it up.

 Battle for New York is a very loose, VERY loose retelling of Ultimate Spider-man's first issues, but swapping Electro with Silver Sable, since they had a Silver Sable sprite they could re-use... and, somehow, she has the power of flight now. It's a decent story, and told via beautiful, original, hand-drawn stills that look as if they were ripped straight out of the comic. Like before, two characters are the focus of the game: You'll be doin' some rescuing as Ultimate Spider-man and doing some smashing as Hulk's look-alike, Ultimate Green Goblin.

 The web-head plays almost exactly like he did in Ultimate Spider-man, he can punch, kick, throw webbing, stick to walls and ceilings as well as web-swing. He lost the unlockable Uppercut and High kick, both being replaced by a web-hammer, done by tapping up and punch, it deals a ton of damage but consumes a bit of web fluid. It's an OK change, I love having a high-hitting move and having a penalty(web fluid) to it, I certainly used it more than I ever uppercutted in Spider-man.

 Ultimate Green Goblin takes Ultimate Venom's role of villain powerhouse, and unlike Ultimate Venom, Ultimate Green Goblin isn't constantly losing health. He has three different types of Fireballs, but why would you use any other besides the giant, bouncy fireball is beyond me, as well as a pathetic little punch with little to no range. He can't crawl on walls, but will cling to surfaces. Ultimate Green Goblin's are horrid, enemies come out of nowhere and have huge range on their attacks, eventually I figured out that the best tactic was blindly spamming the fireball whenever I had to run through a hallway. The punch is pretty pathetic, but the collision detection can sometimes be off, so lest you want your fireball to go through the enemy, you might have to do a bit of punching if enemies get too close to Gobbie.

 Finding upgrades is a thing of the past, this time around every few couple of levels you'll be allowed to put 2 upgrade points on four different stats: Health, Melee strength, Fluid amount/Fireball recharg rate and web binding time/Fireball strength. I kinda liked how the upgrades worked in the first game, but this system is not too bad, although to be honest I didn't really feel like my attacks were getting stronger, but the extra health was nice.

 Level design can be hit or miss. As before, most of the time you're given a compass to aid you in your tasks, and when you're not the mazes are usually simple enough. That said, as previously mentioned, Goblin's levels are pretty bad thanks to how enemies and obstacles remain hidden from view until it's too late. As for Spider-man, a few of his last levels are kinda tedious, forcing you to defeat X amount of easily defeated, but time consuming damage sponge baddies.

 I've stopped talking about graphics and sound in my blog since those are very subjective, so besides a passing mention I won't dwell on those, but my god, the music in this game deserves a special mention: Most Spider-man stages feature a horrid music that sounds like an alarm. And a few of Gobbie's levels feature the exact same tune. It's grating to the ears, and I can't fathom anyone agreeing to it being on the game. There's a white enemy that has the wrong standing animation, so he'll magically turn from blue to white when he moves. Hilarious.

 I had fun with Battle for New York, I mean, it IS a good engine. But it's not quite as good as Ultimate Spider-man on the GBA was. Green Goblin's sections are more annoying than anything, and the music really got on my nerves. But, even though I can say that I had fun with it, I can also say that I didn't like it all that much. Bummer.
 5.5 out of 10

Review #417: Ultimate Spider-man(Playstation 2)

The King of Swing. Web swing.

 Free from the constraints of movie tie-in-nes, Treyarch were free to use their creative muscle and thus decided to bring the then popular Ultimate Spider-man comic to the world of videogames. Featuring a teenager Peter Parker, the Ultimate universe offered new takes on popular and not-so-popular characters, and this game was set to involve a new and canon plot featuring Venom... but eventually the Ultimate Comics dealt with it in another, more half-assed way.

 The story focuses on Ultimate Peter and Ultimate Eddie Brock, tied together by the experimental organism their fathers left behind after their death. Said organism turns Ultimate Eddie into Ultimate Venom, who is hell-bent on killing Ultimate Peter, but it won't be that easy since other parties want Ultimate Venom for themselves. The story is pretty good all things considered, and is told through beautiful cutscenes that do a fantastic job of emulating a comic book, truly a thing of beauty. The entire game is under a slick coat of cell-shaded paint, aiding further in selling you this out-of-the-comic world.

 While it follows in the footsteps of Spider-man 2 in offering an open world New York for Spidey to swing-in, a lot has been reworked in the game's favor. Swinging feels better than ever thanks to the tweaks the system has received. Holding R2 makes Spider-man stick his web on a building, and will continue to hold on to it until you let go, you can then press Square, to boost, X to jump and gain altitude or triangle to climb your web. It works really well and you'll be swinging through the buildings in no time. Combat has seen the most changes, there's no more evade button, and the Web-head gets back his Kick button, so now you can punch and kick. L2 is used to throw web at enemies, although your options are now more limited as to what you can do to a webbed enemy and no longer can you use his body to hit other baddies. And now you must web fallen enemies unless you want them to get back up again.

 Upgrades now work a little differently too. Spidey's repertoire of moves has been dialed back, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter, I mean, did you ever go for the fancy stuff in Spider-man 2? No, you didn't. So now there're three types of upgrades: Health, Swinging speed and number of attacks. The first is increased by doing Combat Tours, side-missions in which you must defeat various foes. Swinging speed is increased by defeating the Human Torch in a race, which is done by clearing race side-missions and the latter is enhanced by progressing through the story. I kinda miss getting to buy the upgrades, and finishing all combat tours for your health upgrades can be rather tedious.

 Something that may irk some players is that they gated story progression behind busywork yet again. Every story missions requires a certain amount of races and combat tours to be cleared, a certain amount of Tokens(Collectibles hidden throughout the city) and 'City Events'(Random 'quests' that pop up every now and then in which you must defeat enemies, save citizens, etc). I knew that there were unlockable costumes and that they pretty much required you to do a ton of those, so I had all the requirements for every story mission cleared before I decided to begin playing the first story missions, but I can't help but notice how irritating these chores are. And let's be honest, without all that fat the game could pretty much be over in 3 hours. All in all, while I can't say that this bothered me, I know that it's bound to an

 Know what? Every now and then you'll get to play as Ultimate Venom too! He can't swing with his webs, but he can pull off massive jumps, or use his tentacles for a boost of speed. Venom is constantly losing health, but he can feast off enemies... or civilians. Ultimate Venom sections are very short, but they're relatively decent and offer a nice break from the main meat(and fat) of the game. Clearing the game allows you to switch to Venom at any point.

 While the combat may not be as good as it was before, and while I still find a few design choices questionable, the swinging is all kinds of amazing. You can lose yourself just traversing through the city, just for fun! The story and presentation are both fantastic, it's an interesting tale and it feels very in-tune with the source material. Regardless, I still believe that this is a better game than Spider-man 2. It's not perfect, it doesn't do everything better than Spider-man 2, heck, some things are worse, but as a whole, it's a better game.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man - Battle for New York

 A trip to the bathroom turned into another step forward with the Spider-manathon.

 The Ultimate Spider-man were pretty good overall, so naturally when the time came for another Spider-man game, a follow-up was the natural course to take. Surprisingly it didn't see a home console release, but both the DS and the GBA saw their own versions of the game, and since this one uses the same engine from Ultimate Spider-man(GBA) I'm guessing it's gonna be th same for the DS iteration.

 Instead of Ultimate Venom, we now get Ultimate Green Goblin taking the place of the hulking mass of muscle, and hulk indeed, if you squint your eyes you might think it's actually the Hulk, purple pants 'n all. I only got to play two levels, and both had me playing as Ultimate Green Goblin. It's pretty easy to see that it's basically a reskin of the previous game, albeit with a different playable villain.

 Basically, I'm guessing it's gonna be pretty good, worst case scenario, an unremarkable sequel.

Now Playing: Ultimate Spider-man(Playstation 2)

 I might've oversold this game.

 On every chance I could, I wrote about how I remembered Ultimate Spider-man to be this Ultimate game that trumped above Spider-man 2. I might've remembered wrong.

 For starters, the swinging has changed, it's slightly, sliiiiiiiiightly simpler, but I think that as a whole, it's much better. Combat wasn't Spider-man 2's greatest asset, but it worked for the game and the character, the new combat feels more stiff, Spidey's moves just don't flow as well and smacking enemies around doesn't feel as good, and a lot of the fun physics-based-web-slinging-enemies moves you could do are gone.

 Progressing through the game is, once again, locked behind busywork, but I've a feeling that it might be less tedious here. Maybe. Since it requires a number of activities instead of points. Also, costumes are back, thank god, no Spider-man game should be lacking in alternate costumes! Although finding the tokens required is kinda challenging, since they seem to be very well hidden.

 For what it's worth, numerous times throughout this early session I thought to myself 'Alright, gonna quit now and do what I haveta do'... yet I couldn't stop playing through the city. The swinging is so much more fun now!

Review #416: Ultimate Spider-man(DS)

 It's certainly makes a killer first impression.

 Just when things were looking up for the handheld adventures of the creepy crawler comes Ultimate Spider-man on the DS to remind us not to have our hopes held too high.

 Featuring a retelling of the console game of the same name, Ultimate Spider-man follows the story of both Peter Parker and Eddie Brock, Spider-man and Venom respectively, as the sins of their fathers comes to haunt them in the present day. It's easy to tell that you're not getting the entire picture but rather bits and pieces from the home console game's plot, but the presentation is top-notch, featuring great voice-overs and a very stylish cut-scene style, using various stills from the main game's cut-scenes to create facsimiles of comic-book panels. That's called making the most out of your designated console's limitations!

 You'll get to play as both Spider-man and Venom in this 2-D sidescrolling game, and both offer vastly different styles. Spidey can dodge attacks with the L button, punch, kick and use his unlimited webbings to traverse the stage or bind enemies. Landing hits will fill an energy gauge that can be used for a few special moves. His stages are focused on saving civilians, and it kinda sucks. Y'see, you'll be lifting cars or accessing terminals over and over again while having to deal with forced tacked-on touch-screen minigames. Sometimes you have to rescue civilians under arbitrary time limits, I mean, every single rescue is under a time limit, but the timer decreases even once you've picked them up! THEY ARE NOT IN ANY DANGER, THEY CAN'T DIE ANYMORE, SO WHY THE HELL IS THE TIMER STILL GOING ON?? Trust me, the first few times you have to rescue people, it's kinda fun, but these get old pretty soon.

 Then we have Venom, who is constantly losing health, but can feast on any enemy to recover health. Venom's supposed to be played with the touchscreen, but luckily, you can perform most tasks and puzzles with the buttons. That said, holding stuff with tentacles, by tapping the touchscreen, is kinda fun. Kinda.

 There's about 20 stages in all, although in a few instances you'll be allowed to pick between two different stages, and while you can replay previously cleared stages, you cannot pick the levels that you didn't choose, dooming them to remain unplayed unless you start a new file. There's also a multiplayer mode, which I'm guessing is a versus mode, and you can pick between different versions of Peter Parker or Venom, but I didn't have anyone to try it with.

 Ultimate Spider-man on the Nintendo DS can be fun, when it's not being repetitive or forcing me to alternate between touchscreen minigames and buttons at a moment's notice. It's also a bit glitchy, there's a particular roof during the second stage that always catapulted me outside the stage's bounds. It's a definite step forward from Spider-man 2(DS), but if pressed to pick between the handeld iterations of Ultimate Spider-man, the Gameboy Advance one is the clear winner.
 5.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Ultimate Spider-man(DS)

 Now we're finally getting somewhere.

 After the horrible Spider-man 2 DS game I was sure that the handheld games where gonna be garbage, but lo and behold, Ultimate Spider-man Advance was great, and Ultimate Spider-man on the DS is no slouch either!

 While I'd hesitate to call it better than the Gameboy Advance version, this game is pretty fun. It looks beautiful, the production values are high, controls are smooth and the gameplay is pretty decent. It seems Spidey's levels are tied around helping people in need in the allotted time, but you're given hints as to where they lie, so it's all OK. Venom levels are bit duller though, although I'm only judging from the only Venom stage I got to play.

 Well, boys and girls, I think we have a good one here.

Review #415: Ultimate Spider-man(GBA)

 They were bound to get one of them right, right?

 Handheld Spider-man games have been pretty much terrible, but here comes Ultimate Spider-man, ready to right those wrongs. This time around you won't be play as just Spider-man, Venom joins the prey and he is angry.

 The game follows a shortened version from the console game's plot, basically, it deals with Ultimate Peter Parker and Ultimate Eddie Brock's parents, and how their past experiments led to the creation of Venom, a bio-organism that finds itself tied to Ultimate Eddie Brock, turning them into Ultimate Venom. It's a rather interesting story, albeit you only get half the picture playing the handheld iteration of the game. It's seven chapters, and 23 stages long, which is more than fair for a handheld game.

 The game, as with previous handheld Spider-man games, is yet another 2-D scavenger hunt... but done right. Firstly, everything in the levels is very well defined, so it's hard to get lost, and when you have particular objectives, like rescuing hostages, you get a compass. About damn time! It's a very enjoyable romp, and every non-boss stage features an upgrade for either Venom or Spider-man for you to find, going from extra web-cartridges for Spidey, extra moves for either or faster feasting for Venom. It's a blast, and both character offer a very different experience.

 You see, Spider-man is weak, but fast, and is limited by his web-cartridges. And you will need web, as binding enemies with web is one of the safest ways to go around as Spider-man. Venom, however, is a power house. His health is constantly dropping, but unlike Spider-man who must pray for an enemy to drop a health pick up or find one, can feast from any and every enemy, which means every enemy is a health pick up! It helps that Venom can take twice as much punishment and deal even more damage with his basic attacks, although he loses the ability to wrap enemies in webs or swing from webs, he has unlimited tentacle zip-lines for exploration.

 Ultimate Spider-man on the GBA does the impossible and redeems every handheld Spider-man game that came before it. It's a great little game that makes the most out of what you can get out of a handheld 2-D Spider-man game, although there's still room for improvement, things like polishing up the combat, or adding more meat into the experience. Regardless, for what it is, it succeeds.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #414: Shadow Hearts - From the New World

 It's a new Shadow Hearts and a brave new world.

 The Shadow Hearts franchise had proven itself to be a top-notch series of JRPGs for the Playstation brand, and what started as a spin-off turned into the final installment in the series: From the New World. It's... it's a mixture of familiar and new things, of which your mileage may vary depending on what you liked about the series.

 Eurasia was an interesting setting, but now we turned our eyes to North America and South America. You play as Johnny Garland, the game's protagonist... although he only becomes the protagonist on the game's final stretch. After a run-in with the occult, he joins Shania, a Harmonixer that strips down in order to fuse, something that Yuri didn't need to do, because Japan and her bodyguard, a gun-tooting native american named Natan. The cast only gets crazier from there, Mao, a female giant cat that knows drunken kung fu, works for Al Capone and trained Frank, our resident American trained in Brazilian ninjutsu, and then we've got Hilda, the game's resident Vampire who has a slim form, curvy form and a third peach pink bat forms depending on how many calories she sucks from her enemies, and lastly, Ricardo, a Mariachi that plays serenatas for the entire party in order to buff them.

 The game almost never takes itself too seriously, and even when it does, the game relishes in its ridiculousness. Which is a bit disappointing, I loved Shadow Hearts horror elements, and they are almost gone from the game, it seems only bosses show vestiges of its horror roots. The game also tried to make you feel sympathetic towards Lady and Killer, the latter being named simply 'Killer' because he is a Serial Killer... yeah, it didn't really work. It also went full Japan on the fanservice, of which I'm not a fan. The game is almost unrecognizable as a Shadow Hearts game, and the characters weren't very compelling, although the game's final hours are a bit interesting. It's a bit short too, I clocked little under 30 hours, and I did everything in the game except Mao's subquest and even spent some time grinding.

 If you've ever played a Shadow Hearts game you know the deal: Explore towns and dungeons, random encounters, turn-based battles, the Judgement Ring to perform attacks, spells or use items. The Judgement ring is a timing-based mechanics of sorts in which you must press the X button when a marker passes over a highlight area of the ring, if you wish to deal extra damage or even pull off your action entirely. Why change what isn't broken? It works well, it's fun and not even half as tedious as it sounds. It also brings back the customization aspects from Covenant, so each character can have different types of Judgement Rings, enlarge the highlighted areas or add secondary effects to your attacks.

 Spells work a bit differently, now you must find 'Stellar Charts', of which each character can equip one of them, this being charts with different slots in which you can put spells into. Slots have different levels and affinities, so you can't just put spells willy nilly, although you can tweak this slots, for a fee, at the store. It's alright I guess, I think I preferred the crest system, but I've not complaints with the charts. The Sanity system returns: Characters have three gauges, Health, Mana and Sanity, and every turn a point of sanity is lost. Lose all your sanity and your character goes berserk. To be honest, this is the Shadow Hearts in which Sanity mattered the least, I had Johnny, and only Johnny, go berserk once, and only once in the entire game.

 What changed, for the better, was combos. Now characters can store 'Stocks', up to two of them, by attacking or receiving damage. Stocks can be used to pull off combos, so characters no longer need waste a turn, and with it sanity, or stay close together. You just use a stock and boom, combo. Stocks can also be used to perform a double attack, or even a double attack combo. If you play your cards right you can even defeat bosses before they even get a change to do anything! The system is beautiful, but be careful: Enemies run under the stock system too! There're special forms of attacks(Heavy Attacks) that consume stock in order to take away stock from the enemies(Or from you, if an enemy does it!) and even a few spells that steal stocks. You must also think out your combos, since different attacks and spells will change the altitude of your enemy: Air spells won't work on a grounded enemy and ground spells or attacks will miss on a floating enemy. The combat system is easily the best it's ever been thanks to all the different, and fun, mechanics and depth.

 Sidequests are numerous and varied, and every character has his and her own handful to complete. And you should, at least for the characters you use, since it's the only way for them to earn new special moves and their ultimate equipment. That said, a ton of these have been made rather inconvenient. Take the Ring Spirit, the NPC that grants you modifications to add more attacks on the Judgement Ring, now you must bring every Ring Fragment that you find back to New York, whereas in Covenant you just had to find the Ring Spirit and be instantly rewarded. Or Natan's subquests, it's not enough to talk to the NPC once, then you must hunt the UMA, then you must return once again to the NPC for your reward, then you must progress through the story some more and go back to the NPC's location, rinse and repeat. There were a few too many 'Go to A then B then A then C' subquests too. I mean, some of Covenant's quests could be a bit tedious, like the one involving ghosts, but it seems that most From the New World's sidequests are as tedious as those few boring quests from Covenant.

 From the New World was a bit hard for me to fully digest. It's got the best combat system in the franchise, and making combos is a blast, but the story was so forgettable and as amusing and unique as the characters were, I still didn't feel engaged with them, I had a hard time being invested in their plights or shenanigans. Losing almost every horror element was also a tough pill to shallow, everything is so cheery and happy now, even more than Covenant. So many sidequests were annoying too, and as much time as they make you waste the game still ends up being rather short for a JRPG. Still, this is a quality JRPG, it simply falls short of the bar that Shadow Hearts 1 and Covenant set.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Ultimate Spider-man(GBA)

 Could it be?! Could it actually be... a good game!?

 Spider-man 2 on the PSP was next on the queue, but since I can't be bothered to wait any longer, let's jump right into the Ultimate Spider-man games. Well, so far the handheld Spider-man games have been unimpressive. Myterio's Menace was really good, but they dropped the ball afterwards. Ultimate Spider-man uses the same ugly 3-Dish graphics oh so many games of the era used, like Mysterio's Menace, yet as ugly as it is... it just might be the best handheld Spider-man yet.

 I just finished the first issue, or 'episode', and it was pretty good. Levels are kinda mazeish, but everything is very well defined so it's hard to get lost, and the addition of a compass is everything these games needed. The combat is decent even if enemies are a bit cheap, and I like having upgrades to find in every level. So far it's looking impressive.

Review #413: Spider-man 2(Playstation 2)

 A fistful o' web.

 Treyarch's Spider-man 1 was a very poor attempt at emulating the great Playstation 1 games. Poor controls, poor camera and a few really poorly thought out stages. With another movie comes another tie-in game and Treyarch once again helmed the project, but this time they created a thing of beauty, but every rose has its thorns.

 As is to be expected the game follows the story from the second movie: Scientist Otto Octavius is a tragic victim of an accident that binds a 4-tentacled machine to his spine and loses his wife, and now he is angry and will stop at nothing to finish his experiment. They also added a few new plot threads following the exploits of Spidey's rogues such as Quentin Blake and Rhino. Divided into 16 chapters, albeit on the open-world city of New York, the game is somewhat short... but there's a lot of busywork involved if you wanna make it all the way to the end. That said, I think I prefer this world to the movie's, since we get to interact with more character from the world of Spider-man while still being a somewhat faithful retelling of the movie's plot.

 The game works entirely different from previous Spider-man games, not only thanks to the new open world structure! Combat has been redesigned: Square punches, triangle shoots web and circle is used to evade whenever you see the 'Spider-sense' signals over Spidey's head. Truth be told, the game is pretty much a button masher, and by today's standards, the combat looks a bit sloppy... but it works fine for the game that it is. Pressing triangle midway through your punches will create combos, like hammering to the ground an enemy with web. You can use your web to pull your enemies in any direction, and with upgrades, you can web more than one enemy at a time. Not to mention that there's a fair amount of air combos and it's very easy to pop enemies into the air by using web or combos, both which can be done while you yourself are in the air! It's a lot of freedom, and while you're mostly mashing, it's fun and fits the character. L1 can be tapped to enter Spider-Sense mode, in which your attacks do more damage and it's easier to do land hit as enemies are slow down. That said, later in the game enemies will start dodging your webs and punches, so you will have to rely on dodging and punching, so every single encounter turned into waiting for the enemy to attack, dodge then use the spinning bird kick(Thank's Chun Li!) on them, since it's unblockable and cover a wide-area. It's the best way to deal with baddies, sadly, since a lot of the almost free-form combat quickly turns obsolete.

 But where the game really shines is how they overhauled the Web-head's means of transportation. R2 will shoot web towards the nearest building(No buildings means no web, and short buildings mean short lines of web!) and allow Spidey to swing, and won't let go until you jump, press Jump or press circle near a building to stick onto it. You can even tap R2 quickly again to stick to two different buildings and use the web as a Spider-man slingshot! While Spider-man no longer sticks to surfaces automatically, the circle button allows for more comfortable swinging and can even be used in conjunction with the dash button to run alongside a building's wall! Traversing New York is a blast, and it only gets better as you get the hang of dashing, using charged jumps after a swing, learning to stick to a wall after running on it and buying swinging speed upgrades. There're a few kinks, like Spidey's dashes being somewhat uncontrollable, a camera that sometimes requires manual correction and how stick onto ceilings now shifts the camera with Spider-man, instead of allowing you to look down below as you moved around, but they are mostly nitpicks as movement works, mostly, like a well-oiled machine, and you can learn to get over its shortcomings.

 So, as far as gameplay goes, it sounds like a bonafide title, don't it? I mean, mini-missions like saving cops, rescuing balloons for helpless children, stopping joyrides and what not will give you something to do at any time you play the game, there're plenty of upgrades to buy, races around the city to challenge and even hidden tokens to find! Well, turns out that in order to make any progress in the story you have to forcefully partake in these activities and grind points. It gets very repetitive very fast. I will grant it that, even as repetitive as these random activities got, I still played four hours straight on my playthrough... but by the end of the game it gets downright ridiculous, requiring 50000 points to access the second to last level and another 50000 to access the final level. At least those are the bonus chapters. It's recommended that you save off finding tokens, challenging races and the Mary Jane missions for these final two chapters, as those are the activities that give the most points. Regardless, they turned such a fine, fun game into a chore. Padding at its finest, it seems that they were scared that the base game wouldn't have been enough... and how mistaken they were. It's sad, because I was having fun repeating these identical side-activities in order to buy every new upgrade, but once they force you to do it, it starts getting annoying.

 Spider-man 2 on home consoles is a classic, it redesigned Spider-man games for years to come, it turned into the gold standard upon which other Spider-man games would be judged and turned open-world roaming into a feature that would be sorely missed if not used. That said, I can't forgive how repetitive tasks get when you are forced to grind in order to progress. How repetitive the once fun combat gets when enemies start dodging everything you throw at them and must rely on the same repetitive strategies to defeat them. Regardless, it was a bold move for the franchise that paved the way for a brave new world of Spider-man games.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man 2(Playstation 2)

 I tip my hat off to you, Treyarch.

 I remembered Spider-man 2 pretty fondly, although not as fondly as Ultimate Spider-man, and it's pretty good, but...

 But first things first, well friggin' done, Treyarch. Spider-man 1 was a mess that was trying to follow in PS1's Spider-man's footprints, but they did away with that and made an entirely different game... and it was a stellar success. All the things Spider-man could do with his web worked well on the cartoony PS1 games, but it makes sense to remove them since this is going after the more realistic movies. The combat's the best it has ever been, while there's only one attack button, the web button can be used for some pretty spiffy combos.

 But the star of the show is easily the web-swinging. It's so much fun to zip around New York, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna get even better once I unlock the rest of the speed boosts.

 What I'm not sold on, and something I didn't remember, is having to farm Hero Points to progress. These might, MIGHT become a chore, but let's see...

 PS: I'm almost done with Shadow Hearts 3. Almost.

Month Overview: June 2017

Tally:
Shadow Hearts - Covenant 9.0
Suikoden II 9.0
Gungrave 6.5
Tony Hawk's Underground 7.5
Midway Arcade Treasures 3 7.5
Jersey Devil 6.0
Hidden Invasion 2.0
Spider-man(PS1) 7.5
Spider-man 2 - Enter Electro 7.5
Spider-man - Mysterio's Menace 7.0
Spider-man(PS2) 3.0
Spider-man(GBA) 4.5
Spider-man 2(GBA) 4.5
Spider-man 2(DS) 4.0


 Spider-manathon began this Month! And we're off to a rather mediocre start. The PS1 games were pretty good, but as soon as we jumped ship to the PS2, it sunk, it sunk deeeeeep. The first gameboy advance was pretty good for what it was, it's funny because it's pseudo 3-D sprites are downright hideous, but it is a good game! And then came both movie games, which look league and bounds better... but made levels even more mazelike, added time constraints and turned the gameplay into a scavenger hunt rather than a traditional side-scroller, much to the games' detriment. Spider-man 2 on the DS is particularly bad about it, but it felt even more tedious that time around, tacked-on touchscreen controls didn't help its case. The good news is that now we've got Spider-man 2 and Ultimate Spider-man, both on the PS2, which I remember being particularly good, Ultimate being the last Spider-man game I had played, and my favorite.


Game of June 2017:

 A game deserving of every bit of praise it gets, Suikoden 2 features a rather deep storyline, with interesting characters and twists. So much so that Suikoden V, which borrows from almost every game in the franchise, borrowed the most from Suikoden II and, in my opinion, pulled it off even better. That said, Suikoden II did it first, and what a treat it was.

Runner-up:

 Shadow Hearts Covenant is easily one of the PS2's finest JRPGs ever made. The story is interesting, characters are endearing and the combat is a blast. I feel about this game kinda like how I feel about No More Heroes. No More Heroes/Shadow Hearts had made up in personality and style what No More Heroes 2/Shadow Hearts Covenant polished up in the gameplay department. So while the gameplay is much better, it's also missing a bit of the personality that made the first entry so fantastic. So long horror elements, you'll be missed.

Review #412: Spider-man 2(DS)

 Yet another subpar entry in the ever growing library of handheld Spider-man games....

 We've danced this dance before, Spider-man 2 on the DS is everything that has come before on the Gameboy Advance but under a new coat of paint. A pretty coat of paint, but it's the same ol', same ol'.

 Once again, this is a very loose retelling of the second game based on the second movie, it even uses still of the game instead of the movie itself. Which means that the game isn't very faithful at all, and you'll see a few faces that didn't make it into the movie. The game should take you about an hour and a half to finish, more if you want to torture yourself and unlock everything.

 The worst part about previous games was the fact that they were 2-D scavenger hunts on mazelike level while under time constraints, well, hope you like'em because this game is exactly the same. I mean, only a few levels have a 'real' time limit, but if you want to get an A rank you will need to be fast. And believe you me, there's no chance in hell you'll get an A on your first time through, and probably, not even on your second run. And you'll want an A rank if you want to unlock special moves, but frankly, 7 of them are useless, the only one worth using is the impact web, and you start the game with it. Alternatively, you can put a Mysterio's Menace cartridge on the GBA slot of the Nintendo DS and gain access to all eight moves, that's what I did.

 Spidey can punch and kick with the A and Y buttons, X slings web towards whichever direction you are holding, which will propel you towards whichever object it hit, if it hit any. L is used to engage in 'Spider-Sense', when an enemy is about to hit you markers will pop up on Spidey's head, pressing L at that moment will slow down time, which is pretty neat and useful. This being an early Nintendo DS game means that there're forced touch-screen minigames. Every single boss has an attack which will have you pop that stylus out of its socket in order to hit objects, and then clumsily put it back before the boss sucker punches you. Fun.

 Every single issue this game has comes together in the last level. It's long, filled to the brim with bottomless pits and obstacles and enemies which will throw you helplessly into the pits. You have to web-swing through gaps in the floor, but be careful not to get hit by a flying enemy that there was no way you knew was coming. Oh, and you have to find 12 computers to deactivate. And if you die you have to start from scratch. And each computer involves a touchscreen mini-game. Which you must repeat if you die. Because it's very easy to die in this level. But there're no checkpoints. And you have to find everything in the friggin' maze again. Because the game sucks.

 Yeah... Spider-man's debut on the DS is pretty sad. It's sad, because controlling Spider-man is pretty smooth, and if the game design was any fun, it could've been a really good game. It also looks very pretty, so it's a shame to see it flop so hard.
 4.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man 2(DS)

 What's with Spider-man and mazes?

 Why? Why can't I have a single portable Spider-man game that isn't designed around finding needles in haystacks? It isn't much fun having to go round and round and round again searching for the single thug that's outta my sight. Worse, if I want to unlock the special moves I have to finish the stage as quickly as possible. Poor game design is poor.

 At least the game is rather pretty, swinging around is fun and the combat is serviceable. But I've had my feel of half-assed scavenger hunts on mazes while under time constraints. It's not fun, it wasn't fun then and it won't be fun ever. Ever.

 At least it's better than both movie Spider-man games on the GBA.

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