Spider-Man

While Spider-Man's story line (told via a slide show of comic book panels) is linear, there's great freedom of movement within the game's 3-D indoor and outdoor environments. True to comic book form, you can climb walls and travel about webswinging, although the former can be disorientating in terms of point-of-view, and the latter is often a leap of faith, as the game's shoddy graphics (even with the optional Expansion Pak) create a restricted field of vision. In addition to being able to do all sorts of nifty things with your webspinners, Spidey's superstrength, superagility, and spider-sense (for which you'll want a Rumble Pak to feel the patented tingle) are also accounted for. As for his superhuman reflexes, well, that one's really up to you. --Joe Hon

Pros:

• Gameplay that actually does Spider-Man justice
• Simple in-game display; solid controls
• Lots of secrets unlock in records and gallery modes
• Kid mode simplifies controls and gameplay for younger players

• Shoddy graphics can cause Spidey to go splat
• Point-of-view can be disorienting at times
• PlayStation version features much-improved graphics and sound

What I next noticed was just how of an all-around solid game it was. I was completely enamored for the first three or four levels before I began to notice the occasional flaws and inconsistencies. The first level, just a really simple swing from building to building, is a testament to not only the beauty of the graphics, but how smooth the game runs, and just how fun it is. Even the voices of the characters were done beautifully, and original Spider Man creator Stan Lee's commentaries at the beginning of each level ('Looks like everyone's favourite wallcrawler is in a bit of trouble') was just a real cool touch.

From there though, I began to discover little things about the game that just bothered me a bit. First was the occasional glitch in the game. Although their occurences were few and far between, they did ruin the mood of the game. Most of these glitches occured while using the dome of webbing to protect Spidey. Oftentimes the webbing would just randomly float in mid-air, just sitting there. But, no biggie, no games are perfect.

Second was the weak storyline. I found it a little hard to understand what was going on throughout the game. The story just seemed to jump at random from being attacked by Rhino to fighting off symbiotes with the help of Venom. I was pretty confused at a couple points in the game, even after playing through a second and third time.

Thirdly is how easy the game was. I had the game set on easy, so I can't make any conjectures on how the medium and hard settings are, but I was finished with the game in less then a day. I rented it Wednesday morning at noon, and had it beat after only about 5 or 6 hours of playing. However, even though it was pretty easy to beat, some replay value is given in attempting to go back through the levels and collecting classic issues of 'Spider Man' comic books in hidden spots.

And finally, my last and biggest complaint is the cut scenes. Since I had seen the ending for the PSX version of the game while hanging around in 'Electronic Boutique' (some guy had no life and just had to go through and beat it all - surprisingly it only took him a half hour, because other people had already reached the point he started at), I was expecting the same thing from the Nintendo version. What was a brilliantly funny cut scene from PSX suddenly became a poorly directed slide show of the same scene with captions below the photos. And it wasn't just the ending either, every scene between levels was in the same form of a slide show with captions below the photos.

Despite my complaints, I thought that this game was actually extremely fun to play and I'd still mantain that it's a solid game - if only somewhat more solid for PSX. I still do recommend Spider Man, because if nothing else, it's just a fun game that doesn't have too hard of a learning curve, and will pass the time exceptionally well.


Spidey kicks butt!!   July 5, 2002
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

We rented the N64 version for my 5 year old before we bought it and he absoluley loved it. I liked that it had a kid mode, although my son is so adept he didn't play kid mode and still [did well]. The spidey sense was cool as well. The characters were awesome and we really liked reading the comic strips. All in all, I would definatly recommend this game for anyone, it really is a lot of fun, even for younger players.