Spider-Man
Who's that masked crusader I see swinging through the night's sky of New York City in a red and blue costume? From building to building with such ease and grace, who else could it be, but the one and only Spider-Man! That's right all you comic fans, the spider is in town to regulate all evil doing, coming in full 3D environments for your viewing pleasure. Come on and jump in this game, where you punch, crawl, kick, and web-sling all in the name of justice! This game is sure to win all gamers over, with the fast action pace, smooth controls, and a plethora of bad guys asses for you to kick.
I was fairly skeptical about this title when I first popped it in, but oh boy, was I wrong to have any doubts about it. This game is exactly like a comic, literally, but you are playing it. Spider-Man is spilt up into chapters, or different books, where you encounter different situations and baddies. There is such a variety of action, and puzzle in this game, one cannot help but to love playing it. This game uses voice acting, to further the interaction with the player, instead of text like the comic. None other than the great Stan Lee, the creator of not only Spider-Man, but also numerous other famous comics in the marvel universe does main narration. Just as in the comic book, this game has, main story narration, thoughts of our super hero, and spoken dialogue. Every time one occurs, we get a small cut scene to watch. Even though to voice acting is corny, and has been scorned by other reviewers, I feel that they have missed the point. Spider-Man does, and has always said fairly corny things to evildoers, so it fits exactly how it should. The voice of spidery is taken on by the actor who has does the animated series on fox, and he does a great job, as the lines, in my opinion work perfectly for the game, and its atmosphere. These are not the only voices that will be heard from in this game. Special appearances of other super hero's will drop in to pay spider a visit (such as Black Cat, Dare Devil, and the Human Torch just to name a few). Not to mention, the huge boss's you will fight in this one, you will see all your favorite baddies, scorpion, rhino, venom, etc. I can guarantee you will love it just as much as me!
The voices aren't the only things in this game that fits successfully, the music Spider-Man is rock and roll oriented, and kicks in every time there is a fight about to occur. This technique works perfectly, because it pumps you up, just at the right time just to kick some henchmen butt! The basic plot of the game is that Dr.Octagon, main baddy in the Spider-Man series, is trying to steal lots of new technology in addition to framing Spider-Man for the job, for what reason we do not yet know. This is what you, Spider-Man, are here to find out, and stop his evil plans! For anyone who has ever said that it would be cool to have a video game like a comic book, here is your chance!
With that said, I can now move on to what is really the most fun part of this experience, the controls. From the same people that brought us Tony Hawk, Neversoft did a great job there; as well did they do an equally good job here! With these set of controls, it feels as if this is what Spider-man was meant to be. Here you get a range of options in which to successfully defeat your opponents. Of course, what every fan is looking for is his web-slinging abilities. Our Spider-Man can swing through the sky with ease! These controls are every bit as fluent as those seen in THPS. Spider-Man, coming equipped with, a web ball, making it easy to trash certain enemies at a long distance in no time, a web dome, which can protect our hero from harm when being attacked by to many villains at once, which then explodes and kills them all, his ability to tie baddies up with his webs (depending on how long you hold the button, the more they will get tied up), and last but not least, a pair of sharp web fists, that do more damage to opponents. Each of these choices is activated by simultaneously pressing a direction on the D-Pad while, pressing spidey's web sling button. Also to further his abilities he has small 3 hit combos for both his punch and kick buttons, and of course being able to jump, higher than any normal human, also carries its own button as well. These controls make you use almost every bit of the controller to survive the game. The innovation is endless, the people at Neversoft have also provided us with a aim sight, for those more accurate needed web shots, a center camera button, which puts you in charge of your view, and a quick action web sling, that allows you to go from the floor to the ceiling, or wall to wall in no time. These controls are magnificent, and nothing but a blast to play with! They nailed these controls on the first try, I don't think Spider-Man has ever felt more real, and accurate than now!
Not only are the controls in this game top notch, the animations that come with them are fit just as well. Everything from Spider-Mans crawl, to his building surfing, to his normal walking strut, screams perfection! They even got his normal poses done exactly how they would look in real life. I cannot stress enough how exact this game is to comic book heritage. The graphics in this game are brilliant as well, I am amazed by the fact that better and better graphics keep being produced on our PS, as every time they say it cant get better well here it has. Spider-Man is beautifully rendered, and even his evil companions look very good, this game has surprised me from all angles, and it is sure to do the same to others. The environments seem a little sparse at first but once you get into the game, you won't notice. Game Play wise I was even surprised, you will have to take on numerous amounts of new tactics to successfully defeat this game. Most will like this game because it carries something with it that most games these days seem to be missing, difficulty. This game has 4 different modes of play, Kid Mode, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Spider-Man is even a challenging game on hard, gamers will have to master the controls of this before it can be beaten on the highest difficulty level!
In a break away from the normal game, this Spider-man comes with numerous extras that make this game all too worthwhile. There are a variety of training mission, it has everything to time attacks, to web-slinging building tasks, to survival battles, to target practice! When the normal game stages get a little tedious, these extras are here to rejuvenate its play. In addition to these, spider-man, has a few extra things that spice it up. In this game, defeating certain parts of it allows you to acquire new costumes (such as the Spider-Man 2099, and black suit spidey costumes). You can then select this costume to play, and it will be rendered as is during play. Once you have gone through the game, you can watch all your movies over again with a movie viewer, look at the game covers and story boards for the game, and a level select to play your favorites over again, there so many extras to play with, you have got to love it. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, there is a character viewer can bring you up to speed.
Spider-Man takes on a whole new level of innovation, proving that a good game could come from a comic book series. Everything about this game is great, controls, graphics, difficulty, this one is sure to be one of those "oh so many" classic Playstation games! The only gripe I have about Spider-Man is the voice acting, however fitting, when losing on the same level numerous times, however fitting the first couple times through, you go hear the same phrases from enemies over and over until the level is defeated. This gets fairly annoying, seeing how losing each time only adds to the frustration! Other than this fact however, spider-man is a terrific game that comic loving fan, or game loving fan for that matter!