If you want to be introduced into the Spider-Man world of video games with nothing too dark or serious; try this one.
Basically Peter Parker sees an imposter of his alter ego steal Dr. Otto Octavious' new device at the Science Expo. We later discover that it was all planned with fellow enemies of Spider-Man to frame him so that there would be no hero in the picture to stop them. However, Black Cat and a few other heroes pop in, but annoyingly not in gameplay.
Spider-Man faces such enemies as Venom, Carnage, Rhino, Scorpion, Mysterio and of course Doctor Octopus. Later you discover, which in my opinion was quite a good idea, that Carnage, once being defeated, left Casady to find Doc Ock, hence bringing to life the 'Monster Ock' or as Stan Lee calls it in the Character Guide- "Symbiote Doc Ock".
Here are the main good points of the game.
- The easy Level Select option can get you where you want. I find it interesting that you can use Level Select before finishing the game on all the levels you have completed.
- Something I like to rant about is when games do not have a Movie or Cut-scene Select. In these older Spider-Man games (not including the third installment in this series on Game-Boy) they have a whole section for that.
- The episode guides are amazing. I always liked how you could get a closer look at every single character in the game, with an additional biography by Stan Lee and almost all the characters make an action or say something (or both) depending on what buttons you press.
- The cheats are fun when you replay the game with them; invisibility, super strength, super jump, invincibility, infinite webs, etc. Some cheats only applied to certain costumes you could take via unlocking or using a cheat code. The choice of costumes varied from all over the Spider-Man universe; featuring such costumes as the Symbiote, Captain Universe, Scarlet Spider, 'Unlimited Spider-Man' and many more. Stan Lee also describes these costumes as well as a small box that does the same, also noting the costume's abilities. The 'Alex Ross' costume is said on the game to be the design for the planned movie Spider-Man, which is definitely the case if you look at the costume. Clearly the movie was just starting to be planned as the game was released.
- Depending on different platforms or difficulties you use, different events can occur within the game, sometimes known as Easter Eggs. One of them being that you can meet Lizard in the sewers to ask for the whereabouts of Venom if you use Hard Mode. On PC, two of the early missions see Ghost Rider rocketing down a building, with Spider-Man replying something along the lines of "What the...!?"
- The storyboards gave me a good understanding of how the game had been planned and I actually liked the art used for the game as it varied from the cut-scenes themselves.
- The dialogue was clean and sometimes useful, as were the objects around you because they may end up helping you against a boss.
Now, the bad points.
- Of course the graphics could be better but it wasn't exactly 2010, was it?
- I found it down right annoying that you could not play any of the superheroes we see in the game, not even as a costume but only to see on the Character Guide. If they could do it on the X-Men: Mutant Academy series, why not on this game?
- Some silly glitches got in the way. When I had to chase Venom through the city (who I found was really easy to get close to) he would stop for a moment before jumping off a building to the next one. I was quick enough that I got right to his back but he was so close to the edge that hitting his back pushed me off the edge and for some idiotic reason I couldn't swing a web, a problem that randomly popped up and then sometimes never happened, making certain levels difficult for me.
On the whole I loved this game as a kid and still admire it now. There's nothing better than the classics after all.