Spider-Man Review

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Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swung onto the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Sega Dreamcast in 2000. Developed by Neversoft and published by Activision, Spider-Man was a huge leap or swing forward in the superhero genre for video games. Spider-Man features a great cast of villains, super moves, and tons of content that any fan of the webhead would love. Let’s get swinging in this Spider-Man review!

Spider-Man Plot:

Spider-Man is already well-established as a superhero in this game. He’s married to Mary-Jane and is a seasoned veteran fighting crime. While at a tech conference, Peter Parker is photographing the event that is being hosted by a reformed Dr. Oct when a Spider-Man lookalike breaks into the event and robs the conference of the tech.

Confused by what he just witnessed, Peter runs away and changes into his Spider-Man outfit to seek out the truth. He swings his way through New York as he discovers a massive bomb in a company building. He frees the hostages and saves the building from exploding but is no closer to figuring out who the imposter Spider-Man is. He meets up with Black Cat and Dare Devil who question what is going on. Spider-Man then gets an alert that Jonah Jameson is under attack from the Scorpion and needs to be rescued. Spider-Man saves Jameson only to be accused of the robbery of the tech conference as Jameson sets the police on him.

After evading the police, Black Cat meets up with Spider-Man and informs him that Rhino is destroying the city and needs to be stopped. I forgot to mention in this Spider-Man review that the bottom of the city has been compromised by a deadly green gas so you don’t actually see the streets. It’s another problem that needs to be solved!

Anyway, Spider-Man fights Rhino and defeats him but the trouble doesn’t stop as Black Cat was injured in the fight and abducted by men in an ambulance. It’s revealed that Venom has kidnapped Mary-Jane and taken her into the sewers. Spider-Man chases down Venom and rushes through the sewers finding Mary-Jane dangling from a chain. He fights Venom and convinces Vemon that he isn’t the bad Spider-Man who stole the tech from the conference. Venom believes him and teams up with Spider-Man to find the real villain.

They head to the Daily Bugle to search for info when Venom feels the presence of Carnage and leaves Spider-Man to fight him. Spider-Man makes his way through numerous fights with slime monsters before finding the liar of Mysterio who was the imposter Spider-Man. Defeating Mysterio leads to Spider-Man to break the case open with the plan of poisoning the city with gas as Mysterio tells him where he can find his boss.

Spider-Man enters a warehouse that leads to a huge underwater lair where he discovers the real culprit behind the chaos. Dr. Oct was the real mastermind and had teamed up with Carnage. Venom jumps in as he and Carnage fight offscreen as Spider-Man defeats Dr. Oct. Venom isn’t able to defeat Carnage so of course, Spider-Man finishes the job. The fun isn’t over yet as Carnage combines with Dr. Oct to form a super freak villain and chases Spider-Man through an exploding lair only to be blown away in the end.

The final credits show Spider-Man and friends playing cards as Rhino, Scorpion, Mysterio, Dr. Oct, and a thug sitting in a jail cell together.

Spider-Man Gameplay:

You have this Spider-Man to thank if you loved Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PS4. These were the building blocks on how to properly make a Spider-Man game with the swinging through the city, combat powers, and extra content. Swinging feels great and is easy to control although sometimes the camera is your worst enemy. Spider-Man has four unique attacks that can help defeat enemies. My favorite during my Spider-Man review was shooting the web balls, but you can also create a web dome to protect yourself or spike your hands with webbing for extra attacks.

The game has tons of fanservice for Spider-Man fans. There’s a great theme song that plays during the menu and you even have a character database where Stan Lee voices the bios. There are also training games, comic book collectibles to find throughout levels, and my favorite thing to unlock, costumes! Some costumes come with extra bonuses like unlimited web or being invisible.

Boss fights and the majority of the game are on the easier side. I played on the “normal” setting for my Spider-Man review but if I died it was because I missed a jump or fell, not because of the combat. There’s a handful of enemies you’ll fight like cops, thugs, lizard-men, pink slimes, and others that make up the common enemies. Boss fights were my favorite and each one was unique. The first level didn’t have a boss but required you to use your brain. The bomb was going off in two minutes and you needed to figure out how to save the building. You can open up a giant safe and throw the bomb in there and shut the door to rescue the building. Scorpion’s fight is in close quarters and you need to throw furniture at him to deal massive damage. Rhino is a charger so you need to set yourself up in front of dangerous things like electric generators and explosive barrels to beat him. Venom, you fight hand-to-hand but he presses levers that fill up the chamber where Mary-Jane is in. Mysterio is a huge boss that uses illusions to kill you, it was very well done and fun to face. The last two bosses of Dr. Oct and Carnage require Spider-Man to hit switches to power down Dr. Oct and shove Carnage into a sonic wave to damage him. Each fight during my Spider-Man review was fun and each one came with different strategies even though they were fairly easy. The final sequence is escaping the exploding lair, it’s about a three-minute sequence and I remember it kicking my ass as a kid but I beat it my first try. Don’t get me wrong, this part is a little difficult.

Levels are split into little sections that require one to five minutes of gameplay before you get a checkpoint. There are no lives, but you can continue the game as much as you want. If you die, don’t worry the most you’ll be set back is two or three minutes. The gameplay difficulty kicked up around the fourth level (there are six total) and I found myself running around enemies during my Spider-Man review instead of fighting them head-on. You don’t earn any bonuses from beating them so if I could avoid them, I did. There was an electric tunnel that kicked my ass for about twenty minutes as I kept dying but eventually I found out how to navigate through it properly.

Memories:
I first played this game on a demo disc when I was a kid and eventually my dad bought it for me. I loved this game and thought it was great with all the collectibles and extras in the game. I couldn’t remember if I beat it or not as a kid but after seeing the ending, I definitely beat it. I wasn’t aware though of how short the game is clocking in around five hours. This game will always hold a special place in my heart as it takes me back to my time as a child. I vividly remember bringing it to my mom’s apartment on the weekends and playing it there too.