Spider-Man

The Good
Most of the time film to game conversions have come out about as well as games translate to film. IE not too well but Spiderman manages to follow the films premise and still hold its own as a fairly decent action game. The graphics look fantastic and the levels vary greatly in appearance but seem to switch between either indoor or outdoor/rooftop type levels. Animation is also great and the cutscenes look wicked. Soundwise the music is awesome orchestral type stuff which fits perfectly with the action and the effects are meaty enough but the real show stealer is the voice acting. Tobey Maguire who played Peter Parker in the film has done all of spideys voice work for the game to great effect and William Dafoe also voices the Green Goblin (his big-screen counterpart) very well. The icing on the cake however, comes in the form of Bruce Campbell providing all the voice over speech. As usual Bruce is in top form and does a sensational job. There are loads of moves to learn and discover which will please fighting fans and if you're prepared to put in the time then the web moves combined with the fighting aspect can really pay off.

The Bad
Unfortunately Spiderman forces you to spend quite a bit too much time getting used to the controls and if you're not prepared to put all this time into learning how to play a game then it's far too hard from very early on. There are too many keys and so many functions that you easily end up pushing the wrong one in the middle of about ten baddies with guns, hence you die and have to try again. This is also a direct port of the X-Box version and not a lot of effort has been put in to accommidate different system setups. On my system the cutscenes stuttered unbarably and my system isn't exactly mediocre which was purely unacceptable. The camera is really bad too. Most games with awkward camera angles I can stomach but in Spiderman they are so awful that it becomes an exercise in pure frustration. This coupled with the steep learning curve and the fact that you can only save at the end of a level (more proof of a cheap port) means that you can easily end up giving up on this game before you get very far.

The Bottom Line
A slick and well made game but the controls and gameplay mechanics can be so hard to get used to that it makes the game unplayably hard at times. Try before you buy.