There should have been Carnage when no Multiplayer mode was suggested
Written: Sep 13 '04 (Updated Mar 30 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good Gameplay,Graphics,Music,Story
Cons: No 2 Player? thug enemies boring
The Bottom Line: Those who like Spiderman and the particular story, and those who like Retro games, should love MC, it isn't perfect, but it is entertaining
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: Maximum Carnage for Sega Genesis |
Maximum Carnage will always be a Spiderman story I will remember for a while. I first got into comics as the story was starting, and to be honest, it was probably always my favourite story, and much of the comics I read after it were disappointing in comparison, something that lead to me giving up the hobby for something even more geeky - games! and retro ones at that!
Granted, at the time this game, and the comics came out, I was incredibly young, so both were perfectly acceptable things to do. And apparently I ended up making a wise choice, given that games have become more accepted a passtime for people my age. Not that I'm overly bothered anyway, geek + proud.
But enough rubbish, Maximum Carnage was the closest thing in comics I ever saw to an 'epic'. The story spanned accross several different comics, including all of the Spiderman titles (of which there were about 300 at the time), as well as venturing into a few other character's titles, given that lots of heroes from the Marvel Universe played a part in it. The story really wasn't anything overly complex. Apart from it's background.
At one point in the 80s, Spiderman discovered a mysterious, and cool, Black costume which he wore for a time instead of his traditional red and blue attire. It turned out this 'costume' was actually a symbiotic alien creature, and when Spidey found out, he rid himself of it. But it found a home in Spiderman's alter ego's rival, Eddie Brock, sensing a kindred spirit, the alien fused with Brock, creating Venom. Venom was a villain for a while, but he turned anti-hero, fighting crime, but still having an intense hatred for Spiderman, and often disposing of criminals in less than heroic ways. But he landed himself in the Marvel Universe's high security prison, the Vault, where he was stripped of the symbiote, and became cell mates with a serial killer named Kletus Cassidy.
While Brock was just pretty misguided, Cassidly was plain crazy. The two often clashed, but when the symbiote found a way of breaking Brock out, part of it was left behind. This part got into Cassidy via a cut on his arm, meaning that whenever a drop of his blood is spilt, he transforms into Carnage. Cassidy was crazy to begin with, so this naturally made him even worse. Somehow the authorities managed to lock him away in the Vault, but he has now escaped again, and has gathered up a group of like minded murderers to help in his quest to 'paint the town red'. He finds a soulmate in the equally deranged laser blasting femme fatale Shriek, her pet, a 6-armed monstrosity of a clone of Spiderman from another dimension, named the Doppleganger, the undead monstor Carrion and the hell-spawned Demogoblin all joined the ranks of his evil army. Putting their differences aside to try and stop the chaos, Spiderman and Venom team up to take down Carnage and co., but they won't be alone in their quest, help will be provided from other heroes such as Captain America,Cloak,Starfire and the Black Cat,Morbius,Deathlok and Iron Fist.
The game takes its shape as a Beat 'em Up along the lines of Streets of Rage or Final Fight, where the idea is to fight through a level of thugs, before taking on a much tougher boss character, or two. To help you, you can pick up various pieces of scenery to bash enemies, from dumpsters to stacks of newspapers, and collect icons with the face of other Marvel Heroes to call them in for backup, a feature pretty similar to the one used in Sega's X-Men game.
The game will occasionally let you choose if you want to play as Spidey or Venom, with each of them having exclusive stages, but some stages just offering you the choice of which character you want to play. For some god unknown, but very sad reason, Acclaim decided not to include a 2-Player Co-Op function, which just plain sucks. Part of the game's appeal was that it was Spiderman and Venom in Maximum Carnage, and Beat 'em Ups were made for co-op play, not being able to have 1 person playing as Venom and one as Spidey is just poor. They could even have made more playable characters instead of having so many heroes as back-up.
But as it is, the gameplay of the game is very solid, with good collision detection, and a very high difficulty. The difficulty works both ways, because while it makes it a more rewarding experience to beat the game, it is also very frustrating a lot of the time.
The enemies in the game, are pretty poor it has to be said. The supervillain characters are awesome, but the basic thugs are just rubbish. There are only about 5 designs, that the game rapidly throws at you in different colours. The fact that the bosses of the first two proper stages (not the rooftop rumble) are spirtes of enemies that later turn up as thugs is pretty insulting.
The design of some of them is also questionable. While you have your usual 'Punk','Trenchcoat','girl' and 'Fat Bloke', there is a very 'unique' enemy who looks like the policemen from Tin Tin, and attacks you with an umbrella.
But I suppose this once again makes you appreciate your battles with proper villains more, so works both ways.
One thing that the game does that really stands out for a Beat 'em Up, is that is keeps the story going inbetween each level, via showing you pages from the comics that tell the story. I really liked this feature, and it difinitely helped me to enjoy the game more, because it showed that what was happening in the game actually followed the story pretty well, although I definitely don't recall Spidey and Venom fighting so many thugs. Who are the thugs anyway? I always theorised they were looters or anarchists or something, out to make the most of everyone chasing Carnage.
Graphically, the game is really quite good in some ways, and pretty disapointing in others. The sprites of Spiderman,Venom and all the other Marvel Characters are superb and well animated, my only complaint being that I never really liked Spiderman's default stance, but it wasn't like I ever stood still for long.
But the thug sprites were incredibly lacking in detail in comparison, and often looked very primitive.
The stages are very nice and pretty detailed, they range from the Streets of New York to Central Park to the Fantastic Four HQ to the Statue of Liberty and back, and I can't complain about any of them.
The music in the game is all pretty cool, rock-sounding tracks that are perfect to smack up some street-scum to. It is all apparently down to some band named Green Jelly, whom I can't say I have ever heard of, but they do a good job here. The sound effects are also pretty good, especially the 'Thwip' sound of Spiderman's webbing.
Controls in the game look like this:
A:Punch
B:Jump
C:Web(different things happen depending on how long it is held or if a direction is pressed)
These controls apply to the game regardless of which type of controller you are using, however, the following controls vary if you are using the 6-Button or the 3, so I will use (3) and (6) to indicate which is which.
Web Swing:Y(6)Up+C(3)
Call in Helper:X(6)A+B+C(3)
With the 6 Button pad, Z also lets you cycle through available helpers, which is accomplished on the 3 button by lightly tapping start.
Needless to say, especially for the last command, a 6-Button is recommended, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it was required. I don't have any control issues in the way of response or layout, with the only possible trouble coming from the cycling through heroes on a 3 Button.
On the whole, I would say I found Maximum Carnage to be above average in terms of enjoyment, but the lack of a 2 Player mode and the rather generic nature of most of the thug enemies really saw to it that the game wasn't as good as being a great game.
I would go as far as recommending it to fans of Spiderman, and those looking for a good Beat 'em Up though, it has good graphics, solid controls and a good engine behind it, features a good story realised in a nice way, and is just generally so much better than your averaged Movie/Comic/Cartoon licence for a 16-Bit console.
It may not be anywhere near perfect, or anywhere near the level of Streets of Rage 2, the console's best game in the genre, but it is certainly a highly enjoyable way to spend time for fans of Spiderman, retro games and the particular story arc in the character's history.
As a little side note, the Sega version of the game came on a 'Limited Edition Bloodred Cartridge', which makes it stand out quite a bit from other carts.
Related Reviews
Captain America and the Avengers for Sega Genesis
Spiderman for XBox
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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