Last week I made a reference to Vicarious Visions as “new developers”, not meaning that they were new in general, just that they were new to the Spider-man 3D project. As a matter of fact they had even previously worked on a Spider-man game: while the PlayStation games were coming out, Activision also published Spider-man games on the Game Boy, the first one developed by Vicarious Visions. This is what possibly inspired Activision to let them handle the 3D sequel (maybe while Neversoft handled other projects?), but since they were now moved up to home console, someone else needed to handle the handheld, and so it was given to Torus Games. And now we move onto a third developer with Spider-man 2: The Sinister Six on the Game Boy Color.
The story is the most focus and the most logical so far this month, but for these reasons, I find it’s also the most boring. Basically, it goes that the leader of the Sinister Six (a group of 6 villains) realize that one person has been taking every one of the wall crawlers printed pictures: Peter Parker of the Daily Bugle. (Why don’t more people catch onto this fact?) They decide that to get to Spider-man, they need to get to Peter Parker. But, Peter Parker is conveniently not home when the baddies drop by (cause that would make for a boring game since he IS Spider-man), so instead they take his Aunt May Parker. This adds a personal link to Spider-man having to defeat the villains at the cost of losing that “The world is going to end” immediacy from the last two games I reviewed in Spider-month. This wouldn’t be so bad, but we never experience it ourselves. It’s more like we’re just following Spider-man than feeling his pain.
The gameplay is about what you’d expect from a 2-D Spider-man title: you walk, jump and web swing around levels, beating on enemies until you get to a boss and beat him. Do that for all members of the Sinister Six (guess how many that is) and you’ve beaten the game. If you think I over simplified it, I really didn’t. The levels were also badly designed for Spider-man’s skills: you can beat some levels by climbing up to the tallest point and web swinging until you get to the end. There are levels that limit this, but with only 6 levels, NONE should allow it. Another reason this game is too basic is because of the controls. I don’t blame any of the people who worked on this game for this, but you only have the one button to hurt enemies. Some common enemies take a lot of hits, so you’ll just be mashing that button a LOT. But, I did have fun playing this game especially for the system it was on. Unlike the last game there are no real frustrating moments (except maybe some of the bosses). I could easily see past the tedium and just enjoy it.
So far this month, this would be the best looking Spider-man game for its console. The sprite work is actually really good, especially considering how hard it can be to make Spider-man look agile, tough and like a good video game character. Though some enemies look pretty flat and basic, and the main Spidey villains range from right on the money to really bland, the backgrounds and sound effect balloons make this over all one great looking Spider-man game.
This is good, because being on the Game Boy Color, there’s no voice acting to save it this time. The music is a little repetitive and bit too “techno” for my taste, but when I take the time to listen, I think it’s pretty good. As for the sound effects, they’re more or less stock. Nothing too impressive, but nothing poorly chosen. Overall, I think this game’s audio/visuals are of really high-quality for an 8-bit system.
Spider-man 2: The Sinister Six presents an interesting case, as it is almost the inverse of its console counterpart. While Enter Electro had frustrating moments, but was good as a whole, this game is fun in the short term, but is really monotonous and forgettable afterwards. It’s a really well made game, but with nothing else to offer. I still suggest it for Spider-man fans, or if you find it cheap and want something good to quickly pass the time, but there are other games you might want to play before this one. I give Spider-man 2: The Sinister Six for the Game Boy Color 6 levels out of 10.
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