Spider-Man

The Good
Spider-Man is one of the best games based off of Marvel Comics' legendary web-slinger. It stays true to the original comics with a surprisingly decent storyline and great gameplay. Although the port to PC is fairly infamous for featuring a few almost game-breaking bugs, it remains an excellent game.

The plot begins with Peter Parker attending a science expo given by the "reformed" Otto Octavius (Dr. Octopus), when an impostor Spider-Man takes out the security guards and steals Octavius' new piece of technology. Parker also bumps into Eddie Brock (Venom), making things even more chaotic. Parker, the real Spider-Man, exits and puts on his costume to search for the perpetrator, but gets an unexpected report from Black Cat that a nearby bank is being robbed and the criminals are taking those inside hostage. From here, things get start to get interesting. The story is told with surprisingly well-acted cutscenes, most of which are entertaining to watch. Spidey creator Stan Lee also narrates, and does a decent job.

Before getting to the gameplay, it should be mentioned that the developers added a lot of nice extras to the game. You can unlock costumes for Spider-Man, such as the famous Symbiote suit, each of which has special features making gameplay under those costumes a bit different. Also included is a character viewer (allowing you to view and read about characters featured in the game) and the "Comic Collection", where you can view the covers and info for influential Spider-Man comics (unlocked by finding them in the game's levels). You can also view the cutscenes and storyboards for each one, but not before you complete the level before each scene.

Aside from the campaign, which I'll get to next, there is a training mode with five different scenarios to refine your gameplay skill: "Time Attack", where you attempt to kill as many enemies as you can within 60 or 120 seconds, "Survival Mode", where you try to survive as long as possible with an endless wave of foes approaching, "Speed Training", where you try to web-swing to the end of the area as quickly as possible, "Target Practice", where you shoot your web at famous villains while trying to avoid shooting your friends, and "Item Collection" featuring two gameplay modes with the goal of collecting as many medallions as possible within a set amount of time. These objectives may work to hone your playing skills, but probably won't keep your interest for very long.

Finally, there is the main campaign. It stays very true to the comics, with a fairly accurate recreation of Spidey's New York. The villains also replicate those seen in the comics - the generic thugs aren't far from something that would be seen in the Spider-Man universe, and main foes such as Venom and Scorpion are replicated well. Other Marvel characters such as Daredevil make cameo appearances, and the Fantastic Four's headquarters even makes a showing.

The gameplay is enjoyable and, in typical Spider-Man fashion, features a lot of web-slinging and wall-crawling, as well as punching, kicking, and jumping. Spider-Man can use his web to do different things to attack: he can shoot a web, hurl a ball of webbing, or make a dome of webbing around himself for protection and then break out of it to attack nearby enemies. You can also cover your hands in the white stuff, doing extra damage with punches. Webbing can also be used from swinging to another location (obviously) and to zip-line to whatever is above, such as the ceiling on the inside of a building. You also must collect health to survive and web cartridges to keep a steady amount of webbing along the way. Another item is the rarely seen Spider-Armor, special armor that turns Spidey black and white and adds an extra layer of health.

Graphics and sound are solid. The visuals are pretty well done for 2001, but could have been better. The audio consists of some pretty good music and sound effects which aren't outstanding but get the job done. As I said earlier, the voice acting is well done and the characters sound as they should, with Stan Lee doing some respectable narration.

The Bad
Now, here's what you've all been waiting for: the "almost game-breaking bugs" I noted earlier. There are two: when you reach the Daily Bugle building to fight Scorpion, there is an in-game cutscene where Spider-Man breaks through the window to enter. However, he will fall below and the game returns to the cutscene before. After another in-game cutscene in the game in the level "Catch Venom" where you have to chase Venom to his hideout, Spider-Man falls to his death. Unfortunately, using a level skip code is the easiest way to combat these bugs. Thankfully, these should be the only two levels you might have to skip.

The default controls are awful. However, you can change them, so it isn't much of a problem. Also, the camera only updates its movement after Spidey stops moving. This could create issues for some, but it never really affected the game for me to be honest.

The Bottom Line
Overall, Spider-Man is an entertaining diversion for fans of the web-slinger. It proves worthy of bearing Spidey's name, and despite the bugs in the PC version, it remains a great game.

The Good
I think all of us would be hard-pressed to find a good Spider-Man game prior to this release, with only vaguely entertaining games like Maximum Carnage or Capcom's fighting games. And that's due to the simple fact that no game bothered to really exploit the most interesting aspects of the web-slinger, by that I mean not beating up criminals while dressed up in red/blue tights, but actually being some sort of urban ninja that gracefully leaps and swings around buildings thanks to his superpowers.

Gray Matter's/Activision's Spider-Man game stands in my mind as the first game that actually bothered to address this and modelled the game around Spidey's superhuman acrobatics and crawling feats. It's also no surprise that this is the character's first polygonal game (which surely made it all possible). Anyway.

Spider-Man is a 3D action adventure title (genre which needs no introduction) in which you throttle around a set of stages following your spider-sense (represented via an onscreen compass) towards a certain objective which usually includes beating up one of Spidey's many foes or solving a light puzzle or another miscellaneous objective (such as tailing an enemy or escaping the law). Along the way you get to fight with several henchmen/thugs with a collection of punch/kick combos and your good ol' webbing which following arcade rules has a set of special moves which allow you to shape it as Scarlet Spider's Impact Webbing, or other useful modes. You also can collect special power-ups and bonus secrets to help you along the way.

Navigating the gameworld is pretty easy thanks to a full-fledged control scheme and interface that allows you to zip-line into any wall or ceiling or instantly start swinging around, with the wall crawling (which you get to use indoors as you work your way through vents and sneak around) turning the ceilings translucent and keeping the perspective. Camera control is automatic, and the controls neglect the mouse (a legacy of it's console origins) but a handy manual camera/target mode allows you to quickly position yourself and carefully explore your surroundings.

While the graphics are a mixed bag I'll at least say that they are extremely well animated, with Spidey specially leaping and moving in very life-like ways (a must since shoddy animation would have really hurt the game), the level design is simple yet attractive, with the most exciting levels by far being the ones that take place around the NY skyscrappers in which the camera zooms out significantly and proceeds to give you a birds-eye view of Spidey swinging around as he chases a foe or escapes the police. It may not sound like much but it would be the most majestic Spider-Man has ever looked since Alex Ross's "Webs" or until the Spider-Man movie.

Last but not least, this game started a trend by being loaded with extras, which include everything from challenge gameplay modes, extra costumes (with different attributes) character databases, and other additions that considerably extend the value of the title.

The Bad
As I mentioned, the graphics are a mixed bag, with cartoony and rather embarrasing models (just look at the broadshouldered thugs), shoddy low-resolution textures and really limited draw distance which causes New York to be eternally trapped in fog as the game's engine can't display too many buildings (another console legacy problem). Sound-wise the game is no winner either, seeing as how it conforms to an aspect of the game that really ticked me off and which is that it's a very kid-oriented product. Apparently there are some marketing people that still think that comics are only for kids, so they sugar-coated the whole game with such elements as cartoony criminals that use laser weapons (Remember G.I.Joe?? It's okay for people to be shot just as long as it's not by a firearm and there's no visible wounds involved), a straightforward and simple story, saturday morning cartoon-like music and just plain infuriating voice acting with every character voiced by cleancut cartoony stereotyped voices. The worst one by far however is the inclusion of Stan Lee as a narrator of sorts who treats the player as if he were a two year old retarded kid by going: "...Oy Kiddos!! How are you today? Well if it isn't our jolly friendly neighbor Spidey-man! Let's see in what exciting super-adventures he gets today! Watch out evil-doers! There goes our hero looking for adventure!!..."

Good god... I swear I was never more embarrased from playing a game (well maybe except when playing Tron 2.0 but from entirely different reasons).

The Bottom Line
Despite some irritating flaws, the worst use ever of Stan "The Man" Lee and generally making you feel like an inbred gradeschooler, "Spider-Man" is the worthiest title to date to bear the name of the legendary webslinger.

Just make sure nobody you want to respect you is around when you want to play it....

The Good
The graphics are great and the movie viewers are excellent. The gameplay is so simple, that you don't need to read the manual. The AI is good and sounds are incredible. With over 4 diffrent uses for web, diffrent kinds of web, over 5 diffrent enemies, a slew of super villians like venom and carnage, you can't go wrong.

The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
Buy it. I don't care if you hate Spider-man. Buy it. You will be hard pressed to find a better action\adventure game for the playstation.