Activision has captured the spirit perfectly! (SpiderMan (PS))

Member Name: Cuchulain

Product:	SpiderMan (PS)
Date:	16/02/01 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You'll be playing as Spider-Man!

Disadvantages: All over the place, difficulty wise.

For years I wished I could do whatever a spider can. And now that's all possible with this excellent game from the very nice people at Activision.

They have captured the essence of Spidey better than I would have though, and some of the in-game modes they have implemented to overcome problems were genius. Spiderman can stick to absolutley anything in the game, just as he was designed, and as he can crawl on the roof, how do they implement that? By making the roof see-through once he gets his sticky mits on it, so that you can still see what's going on underneath Spidey. Cool!

The levels are well designed, and although you don't have the freedom to go absolutely everywhere you may like you can still deviate your route to go and look for the hidden comic book covers, of which there is one in each level. The story starts with a poisonous fog or something filling the lower streets meaning that if you fall off a building and are out of range of other buildings you lose a life.

Lose a life. See, no one dies in the game at Spidey's hand. The bad guys may end up blowing up police helicopters and incinerating all the occupants, but even if Spidey kicks an enemy henchman off the side of a building he doesn't fall to his death. Instead a ledge magically appears on the side of the building that the hench-man will fall on to and be saved from a deadly drop into that gas stuff. Apparently Stan Lee made them put that in, so that Spidey isn't seen as a baddie.

Lots of the characters of the Spidey comics and cartoons make camoe appearances, with Black cat being the person to explain all the different check points and stuff, Captain American shows up as does Dare Devil, Iron Man and that flaming lad from the Fantastic Four. None of them are playable, unfortunately, and just turn up to chat with Spidey, giving him encouragement and advice.

And then there are the things Spidey can do with his web. As well as the usua
l webbing someone up to incapacitate them and swinging about all over the plave he can make web-balls to fling at people, web-gloves to double the strength of his punches, and make an igloo shield kinda thing that you can blast out and hurt enemies with the debris.

As well as the friendly characters there are also the well known baddies to pit your wits againt, including Venom, Doc Octapus, the Rhino and a few others. Each has their own methods of attacking and Spidey has to change his tactics with every level. The game's only down fall is that because the tactics have to change between levels then the difficulty changes about. One level may be easy and include lots of gentle swinging about and taking out a few henchmen, where the next will be a mental climb up the side of a building with a police chopper throwing missiles at you the whole way up. The next level after that may revert back to the gentle swinging and this happens a lot, so there is no real progression where the player is concerned. If I recall correctly, the chopper/building level is about a third of the way through the game and is probably the hardest of the lot, and there are a lot of levels mking this a massive game.

To keep the life of the game going there are loads of secrets dotted about and lots of extras. I already mentioned the comic book covers, but then there are the different costumes to collect. They range from a peter Parker costume that only carries 2 spare web cartridges to a Captain Marvel (or is it Captain Universe) suit that makes you invincible and you never run out of web. Then in between these there are an assortion of suits from throughout the range used in the comics and cartoons and in all Spiderman guises.

And if that weren't enough there is a section called "What if..." which stems from comics that though things like "What if Peter Parker didn't know Mary Jane..." and "What if Spider Man was Venom's Gay love
r..." and things like that.Once you access this certain things pop up in the background during levels and other rooms open up, like enemies hide-outs with pictures of girls on the walls. Cool!

All in all this game is a treat for everyone. Fans of Spider-Man can 'marvel' (eheh) at all the hidden secrets and characters and suits, and gamers can enjoy a superb game.

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