Spider-Man

This game plays like that game as far as the combat and swinging is concerned, however the story is lifted from the first Spider-man movie. Well a lot of it is anyways as there are a lot more enemies to face than just the Green Goblin here. Well not to many more, mainly you get to fight The Shocker who seems to be the old standby in these games, Scorpian, and the Vulture. I think in the Xbox version you get to fight a couple of other bad guys one of which is Kraven the Hunter and the second of which I do not know. Tobey and William lend their voices to this game, however Bruce Campbell as the tour guide steals the show as he had me cracking up. The game is good for the most part, I just thought it followed the movie a bit to much and like in the Spider-man game for the playstation one Spider-man seems to be swinging on a web that is attached to absolutely nothing. The fights with the characters are fun as I enjoyed fighting the Shocker and Green Goblin the most. The fights in this game with the Green Goblin top the fights with Doc Ock in the next game. Still the levels on the roofs are a bit of a pain at times, you get stuck in that stupid costume longer than I care for, if they were going to follow the movie so closely why did they not incorporate the fight with Bonesaw in the main storyline of the game, and there are various other little annoyances in the game to be found as some of the fights and stealth stuff gets on one's nerves. Still, at least this game did not ignore Spidey's strength like part II and III did. Though both those games are the superior web swinging games.

It's an rollercoaster ride for my nervous system. Because this game is extremely hard to play. Controls are horrible on Xbox, you basically need to push the buttons with all of your force to turn the camera left and right. But my worst enemy was that you can't tilt the camera up or down. Only left and right works. As soon as I realized this, I knew I was in for some serious brain damage...

Honestly I probably haven't recovered fully but It was for sure an experience. The graphics of the game hold up to this day, but the reason for that is that this retro style nowadays seems stylistic. It doesn't feels like the developers attempted to make the best possible photo realistic game there could be, because for sure there were more realistic games to that time. The short animated sequence cut-scenes were amazingly good and fun to watch, great animation, always felt rewarding to watch them after completing the mission. I could watch a whole season of animated clips like that.

But what I love most about this game Is how much It adds to the Film even If it's not being canon. This game comes from a time where the next two movies weren't even in development, I feel like some of this was actually meant to interfere within the second film. Scorpion especially. Greatest villain in the whole game for me.

The mechanics of the whole control-system and the whole construction of the bot-system make it almost impossible to get through the missions in the first playthrough. And surprisingly, that Is a good thing. I was searching for an challenge game, and by today's whole Fair-for-Everyone-Gaming-Industry, I found this gem. Spider-Man reminded me of times where you hung on missions for days before you finally were able to complete them. Games were made to be challenging, nowadays they more likely tend to tell a story, which I also prefer, but the challenge is almost non-existing. A boss-fight like the Kraven or the Scorpion fight in a new Spider-Man game nowadays, Is impossible. And I played on the easiest difficulty...

Another reason why I love this game, the whole story Is hilarious and a whole bunch of non-sense. It is so laughable that It is fun again. That final scene where Osborn dies and Peter just decides to make out with MJ a few seconds after It happened... Absolute Cinema.

I have to say I enjoyed the game very much, and would have given it an 8 were it not for two very annoying flaws. The first is that the positions taken by the "camera" were often appalling. Sure you can manually move the view point around, but in the heat of the moment when surrounded by baddies, you simply don't have the time. I found some parts of the game extremely frustrating because of this. The second is that the loading times are excessive, and in my view occasionally unnecessary. Ok, you expect to have to wait for a new level to load, but when you die you have to wait for the current level to re-load.

I think both these flaws are a result of sloppy programming, or maybe the game just needed to spend more time in development instead of rushing a release to coincide with the film. It's a shame, because I very much enjoyed the variety in the gameplay, and the degree of control that, with practise, you can exercise over Spidey. Overall, then, I give it a 6.

A lot of movie tie-in games ain't too successful but this is OK cause you're Spider-man.

The plot's pretty much the same as the movie except there's other baddies to fave other than the Green Goblin.

As cool as it is to swing around New York city like Spider-man, the floor combat ain't that good. All you have to do is punch and kick. You can get combos but they're pretty pointless. Another problem is the camera, it keeps moving and going the wrong places!

Some cool features is that Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe reprise their roles. Unlike the movie, Spider-man says more jokes, making you think Tobey is Spider-man. Bruce Campbell does some very funny voice-over work, watch out for one of the training sessions where he talks about his grandfather, it's very funny.

There are some cool secrets to get so that's pretty worth it.

In the end, it's an OK game but doesn't offer anything challenging.

Spider-Man the video game is one of my favorite games when I was a child. Playing it non stop. I revised the game this year and it was as enjoyable as it was years ago. The only thing I have a little problem with while revisiting the game is that the game play feels short. It's a game for a fan of the Raimi trilogy or a Spider-Man fan in general.