The new millennium would be a great time for everyone’s favorite wall crawler. Not only would he get a successful movie franchise, but also two new TV shows (“Spider-man: The New Animated Series” and “The Spectacular Spider-man”). I don’t know about the comics though, so it might be a hyperbole (one more day was in 2007), but I think in the eyes of the mainstream, it was a good decade for the superhero. Of course, I’m also saying that because it started off with the first of the Activision published Spider-man games. Activision did Spidey so well they’re still working with him, and it all started with a game on the PlayStation simply called Spider-man.
The game starts off with Peter Parker (Spider-man’s secret identity) attending a science expo with guest speaker Doctor Otto Octavius (A.K.A. Doctor Octopus). Suddenly, an imposter Spider-man bursts onto the stage and steals the device Octavius was presenting. Obviously, this is a frame-up, but Eddy Brock (taking pictures for the Daily Bugle) doesn’t know that, and when Spider-man smashes his camera, it’s enough to unleash Venom. Things get even worse as a mysterious gas fills most of New York City. And to top it all off, it seems every bad guy decided this is the time to strike, meaning Spider-man also has to deal with a bank robbery, Scorpion seeking revenge and Rhino’s mayhem.
I immediately love the story; it captures pretty much everything I like about Spider-man. First off Spider-man is framed (something I enjoyed, since it makes more sense than him simply not asking for police assistance). Next, multiple villains; Spider-man has always had a great rogue’s gallery and I always liked seeing which villain would show up, what he’d have planned and how Spider-man would handle it. I also like how Venom is added in, but still given his time and is well done (unlike in a certain movie…). Next, the city is in peril. It’s not just Mary-Jane here, it’s not just general mayhem; Spider-man has to save everyone from whatever’s causing the fog. Finally, it keeps things simple; stuff is happening, Spider-man wants to stop it. Sure other stuff comes along, but its dealt with one at a time and it’s all easy to follow. I don’t know what else to ask from a Spider-man story.
The game play is pretty much your regular 3D Beat-em-up/Platforming type stuff with that Spider-man twist, meaning most of the levels will be based around swinging and/or climbing. But Spider-man has web-catridges in this game, so he can run out of web fluid (shouldn’t happen if you just keep an eye open though). As for the controls most of them are responsive and well placed, but I find moving a little stiff. This could be partially because Neversoft, the developers, also used the same engine as the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games. If you’ve played those, than you know that being in the air (and on your board) is awesome, but walking on the ground sucks. Same here… which is why there is the fog, so there’s higher concentration on swinging. See how that works out?
I won’t lie when I say the graphics aren’t great; this is on the first PlayStation. A lot of things look flat and most people’s mouths don’t move, so there’s a fair bit of “body talking” going on (see my Spyro 2 review to know what I mean by that). But at the time it wasn’t that bad and does stay true to the Spider-man character models. But it definitely hasn’t aged well and you might just see bad polygons.
However, the audio is what’s great for one reason: the voice actors. The main man himself is voiced by Rino Romano, who also voiced Spider-man in Spider-man Unlimited. Doc Oct’s voice actor from the 90’s Animated series, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, also reprises that role. Jennifer Hale, who does Black Cat and Mary-Jane in this game, had previously done their voices in the 90’s Animated and Spider-man Unlimited respectively. But I think my favorite voice to hear is probably the creator of Spider-man Stan Lee himself narrating this game. All this pretty much guarantees the game to be enjoyable for any fan of the Spider-man cartoons as is all gives it that same amount of personality.
So that’s Spider-man’s first 3D game and his first game with Activision in a nutshell; it’s really just everything you could have expected from it. Despite its short length, some minor control issues and bad graphics, it’s a pretty solid game, with a classic story and awesome voice work to boot. It’s been ported to the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and Windows PC, so you can probably experience it one way or another. I give Spider-man for the Playstation 9 levels out of 10.
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