tommy_lop's Full Review: SpiderMan for PlayStation 1
A couple of months ago I review one of the worst NES games I have ever played Spider man and the sinister six, just fell into the usual super hero crap licensing formula. Well a couple of months ago I spied this game at my local video store marked down to 5 dollars. I decided to take a chance and buy it. This is one of the best super hero games I have ever played.
Story.
The now reformed Dr.Otto Octavious has build a new machine for the good of humanity. However it is stolen in the middle of the convention by Spiderman, or at least someone that looked like Spider-man. Peter Parker who was in the crowd didn’t have enough time to get into his spider-man costume. To make matters worse Eddie Brock has just gone mental due to the attack and transformed into Venom. With Scorpion on the lose, the bank being robbed, and the police going after the real Spidey it's going to be a long day for the wall crawler. it looks like Spidey should have taken MJ advice and stayed home today.
Graphics.
The graphics are pretty good for PSone. Spidey looks like he should with his usual Blue and Red costume. The only thing missing from it is the black web design but it's a small compliant. There are a few sharp edges and distorted faces on a few of the characters but nothing really to complain about.
The animation is pretty smooth with a nice frame rate. The only complaint is the fog that is in some of the city scenes (which they put in has one of the super villains master plans).
Sound.
The music here isn’t much to put your toes tapping, the music and the sound are good enough to put you into the game but nothing to really brag about. The voices though are great they all sound like the characters. They nailed Spider man's personality in a lot of the voice clips to he does the wise cracks and wines when things aren't going his way just like Spiderman is supposed to do. There is one exception and that is of MJ high shriek voice, luckily she's only in one scene where Venom is holding her above a large vat of water. (come on Venom drop her and shut her up permanently).
Gameplay.
The game is separated into two types of stages. The city scenes and which you have to swing Spidey around to reach is destination and battle roof top bad guys. These scenes go pretty good the excellent control and the simple act of pressing R1 (or the X button) to swing is great. The game gives you a compass to follow so you can never really get lost while swinging around the city.
The next type of stage is the action stage where you guide Spidey around kicking bad guy keister and solve simple puzzles.
Spidey comes with all his super powers including wall crawling and web swinging. His webbing allows him more then just to swing or shoot bad guys though. He can give him self some spiked boxing glove or create shields using it. He also has some pretty good fighting moves to that he can use.
The only bad thing about the gameplay engine is the passive lock system. There is no big lock on button to automatically point Spiderman to an enemy so he can beat them up. Rather the camera usually just points the way to the enemy. While this works 90% of the time, whenever you have to hit targets from afar with your web it gets to be a major pain. Case in point Mystero in which you have to hit him with impact webs, while dodging his attacks and make sure your line up well enough to fire your webbing in the first place. It's a small complaint but it defiantly made me toss the controller a few times when I fought against Mysterio.
Another bad thing is the game is incredibly short to help this they made 4 play modes. Easy, Normal, and hard. Each mode differs in the strength of bad guys, and the amount of health and webbing Spiderman can utilize. Then there is kid mode which basically makes it really easy by giving Spiderman virtually unlimited amount of webbing and health, while he still does use webbing and still can get damaged enemy attacks are so puny that it doesn’t hurt him much. While the kid mode is mainly for beginners it does help to play to unlock costumes and collect comic books.
The comic books are hidden through out certain stages for Spidey to collect. There not necessary to beat the game but there something to collect if Spidey wants to go out of his way and to get something special. The costumes are unlocked usually when something is accomplished (like beating the game without running out of webbing). While some of them are just there to give Spidey a different look some can give him more powers in the game. The symbiote costume (looks like Spiderman in Venoms suit) can give him unlimited webbing.
Final recommendation.
Despite being short and a bit on the easy side Spiderman is still one of the best super hero games out there.
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