Saturday, October 15, 2011

Spider-Man Games Retrospective pt 2

I skipped Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro because it looks like much of the same as the previously reviewed game, and it's a bit difficult to find since retail stores no longer carry Playstation one games.
Spider-Man (2002)
This Spider-man game has the look and [general] story of the first movie which came out the same year. I played this game when I was in high school at the peak of being a Spider-Fan. At the time, this was the best Spider-Man game available. The game mechanics are much the same as the previous game with improvements going along with the next generation (for the time) of consoles. This includes controlling the camera and air combat. The camera controls were much needed but not entirely polished, but I think many of the games at the time were struggling with this same thing. Web swinging and air combat are much more fun as you can go faster and spend whole levels without ever touching the ground. Horizontal zip lines are also new and add more speed to web-traveling. When it comes to webbing around it seems that more speed equals more fun. Graphics are improved and faces animate when talking. Also new to the series in this game is attack combos, which are neat but I didn't end up using them very much.
 The main menu makes me dizzy. The music is fast and all the words pulse strongly. It makes me antsy to chose an option just to get out of the menu. The harsh reds and blacks are also not very welcoming.
Learning how to play the games is a lot of fun for me personally because Bruce Campbell narrates and I'm a big fan of the Evil Dead series (which the director of Spider-Man also made). The secret unlocks are plenty, but not as good as the previous game. I think that's because it was geared toward the movie stuff, and that doesn't stand the test of time as well as the content geared toward the comics.
I mentioned in my last review how I enjoyed the explanation for killing the player if he descends too low while web-swinging in the open city. In this game there is no explanation, so my inner nerd is asking why Spidey can't go down to street level.
The music is sometimes too epic and it loops the same song (a personal pet peeve). In the beginning of the game I turned it down because I was just walking around, not really deserving of epic music.
AI, as usual, is a bit dumb. In the sewer level the thugs chasing me ran right into the death water like lemmings.
I think it's funny when I find empty rooms with no purpose or if it just houses a single switch. Ahh, environment art and deadlines, what terrible foes you are.
One thing I've always wondered about the physics of Spider-Man: how does he zipline? His web shooters would have to suck the webbing back at super speeds. And In the movie he has organic webshooters ...that seems like it would hurt.
Another thing that I wonder about, the player can press a button to shoot web and it drains the web bar, but if it's drained you can still shoot webbing.
One level had a "super mech" in Oscorp, which struck me very similar to Rex in Metal Gear Solid. This isn't a bad thing for me personally because I love that game series.

1 comment:

Danyol Murphy said...

It's been so long since I've played this but I still got my copy sitting on the shelf ready to go! This was a wonderful Spider-Man game, it was so solid and lots of fun to replay. Pretty much the perfect Spider-Man game at the time. All the cheat codes and costume selects added even more replayability and made for some really humorous cutscenes lol! Couldn't you even play as the green goblin with the glider and all? Yeah I do remember that!

It was also so rewarding when you finally got it down how to web-swing and fall onto the goblins glider during one of the various boss fights with the Green Goblin, lining it up and timing it just right so you could deliver a few punches to ol' Gobby's face! I am reminded of that with the screen shot you chose.

Having Bruce Campbell for the tutorial/hint narration was simply genius! It makes the game worth playing just to hear his sarcastic wit!

Oh man there's so many great memories I can comment about with this game! I'll probably keep coming back as things come to me!