SpiderMan 1 will let you play hero for a day, but be ready to fight with the game's weaknesses as well as its villains.
Once bitten, twice the
guy. Thanks to the bite of an irradiated spider, budding boy genius Peter
Parker suddenly finds himself turned into a superhuman with the powers of a
spider. The rest is comic book history. As the Marvel Comics superhero
Spider-Man, Parker has been entertaining legions of fans for 40 years through a
string of comic book titles and animated series. If the Spider-Man game is any
indication, the general love affair with all things Spidey burns as brightly as
ever. Originally developed by Neversoft, the developer behind the hit Tony
Hawk's Pro Skater series, Spider-Man first swung its way onto the PlayStation,
and soon leapt to the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, and Dreamcast. Now the
third-person action-adventure game has come to the PC to make true believers
out of computer gamers. Along the way, though, it's run into a few snags that
often dampen the game's more entertaining aspects.
He story, told through
cutscenes, voice-overs, and in-game dialogue, opens at a conference held by the
renowned Dr. Otto Octavius, who's preparing to demonstrate his latest
invention. While the good doctor pontificates about the virtues of progress
through technology, Spider-Man suddenly leaps onto the stage and makes off with
Octavius' device before the assembled crowd. Since the real Spider-Man, Peter
Parker, stands among the members of the press taking photos for the Daily Bugle
newspaper, it can only mean an imposter is at large and ruining Spidey's
already tenuous reputation. Parker's jealous journalistic competition at the
Bugle, Eddie Brock, also witnesses the shocking event. The fact that Octavius
is really the supervillain Dr. Octopus and Brock plays host to an evil alien
symbiote named Venom can only mean more outlandish trouble for our
wall-crawling hero. This game takes classic superhero melodrama and unashamedly
runs with it.
After the game's
mysterious opening sequence, you begin your heroic adventures in New York City.
You start by foiling a bank heist and then move up to greater challenges like
evading a missile-firing police helicopter that chases after our framed hero.
Later, you'll fight swarming lizardmen on top of a rushing subway train and
battle alien symbiotes in the Daily Bugle. All told, there are eight main
locations, like Manhattan's rooftops, a high-rise bank, and the New York City
sewer system, making for around 30 3D levels in all. Gameplay primarily
revolves around platform jumping, a little stealth, and beating up lots and
lots of bad guys. During your adventures, you'll meet fellow heroes like Daredevil,
Black Cat, and the Human Torch who'll offer tips and villains like Scorpion,
Rhino, and Venom who'll beat you to a pulp if you're not quick with your
webshooters.
No matter how smartly
you play, be ready for some hassles--the game uses a save point system instead
of letting you save when you choose. Game designers seem to ignore the fact
that in the real world, not all gamers have the luxury of playing for long, uninterrupted
stretches until they can reach a save point or the end of a level. At least you
can tackle the game on four different difficulty levels, including a "kid
mode" that simplifies the controls and gameplay for the younger set.
To foil villains and save
the day, you'll employ around 18 moves. For simple problems, a number of simple
solutions are on hand (or foot): You can jump, grab, punch, and kick your way
out of the game's lesser binds. Thanks to that fateful spider bite, Spidey can
perform all these moves with extraordinary strength and agility. These core
moves can be linked into combos, like jumping punches or the "grab and
kick," where you sneak up behind a villain, grab him, and then
unceremoniously give him the boot. Of course, Spider-Man's chief claims
to fame, other than running around New York City in bright tights, are his
masterful web slinging talents. Here's where the game's combat gets
interesting, thanks to Spider-Man's arsenal of clever web weapons. You can
sling webs that temporarily enmesh enemies or flick distant switches. If
standard punches aren't working for you, you can create spiked gloves out of
your webbing for added damage. You can borrow a page from Captain America's
(comic) book and create your own web shield for defense. For pummeling villains
from a distance, you can launch balls of webbing at them. If that doesn't get
their attention, you can shoot a web line at them and yank them in the
direction of your choosing. No matter what approach you use, you'll find that
enemies aren't overly bright; bad guys rely more on brute force than anything
else. "Mindless thugs” indeed.
As clever and
entertaining as these diverse abilities often are, they don't get their full
due because of the game's awkward controls. Like many console ports, Spider-Man
does little to take its new PC audience fully into account. You can control
Spidey with the keyboard, a joystick, or a gamepad, though your controller of
choice should preferably have at least six buttons. You'll need a spider's
agility to master the keyboard approach, though it grows a bit easier with
time, and a joystick can feel clunky and unresponsive. A gamepad is your best
bet since that's what the original PlayStation game was designed to use. It's
no secret, though, that many PC gamers don't own a gamepad for their computer
since so few PC games require anything more than a mouse and keyboard. If you
decide to use the keyboard, you won't be able to use mouse-look, which is shame
since that would dramatically improve gameplay. As it stands, to aim accurately
at distant targets you need to activate a special targeting cursor that you can
only move with your chosen controller. Ideally, a small cursor should have been
present all the time to help orient your character and aim. No matter which
controller you use, Spidey only turns in set increments instead of using a
smooth range of motion, which feels unnatural and makes viewing specific areas
or moving to them harder than it should be. It can be quite the challenge to
make Spider-Man do anything a spider can.
Like the controls, the
camera needs more work. Overall, it does a fairly good job of following our
hero, especially considering that he can run on floors, clamber up walls, and
zip up to ceilings on a whim. Still, walls and objects will often block your
view, sometimes making spotting enemies too difficult and falling off of
skyscrapers too easy. Also, when you move Spidey onto a ceiling, the camera
sometimes reorients itself so that you view him from directly above instead of
slightly behind, thanks to a temporarily translucent ceiling. The effect can be
a bit disorienting when Spidey repeatedly switches from floors to walls to
ceilings.
Spider-Man's simply
textured, blocky graphics and muddy cutscenes are distinctly underwhelming, if
not outright poor. Some of the settings are bland and boring too--the dark,
drab sewers in particular are overused. Still, the graphics do at least evoke
the look and feel of the classic Spider-Man comics and cartoons. The same holds
true for the game's audio. The familiar opening theme song, updated from the
'60s cartoon series and featuring an incredibly catchy bass riff, sets the
right mood from the very start. Spider-Man cocreator Stan Lee narrates the game
in his authoritative style. Lee always sounds like he's having fun with his
creation and doesn't take it dreadfully seriously. When he describes Peter
Parker as a "sometimes neurotic" hero, you know that the writers
aren't afraid to gently laugh along with you at the essential silliness of the
game's story and superhero conventions. It's all good-natured fun, though.
It's a shame that more
time and effort couldn't have been put into making this Spider-Man port better
suited to the PC and the PC gaming audience, as well as improving some problems
that hurt the original game. The awkward controls and camera in particular
often take the wind out of the game's sails. At its best, Spider-Man immerses
you in the colorful, enjoyably implausible Marvel Comics universe, and swinging
between skyscrapers and firing off webs offer up plenty of adventurous, if
shallow, thrills. If you've ever wanted to play hero for a day, Spider Man will
let you, but be ready to fight with the game's weaknesses as well as its
villains.
Processor=
733 MHz
RAM=
128 MB
Graphics
Card= 32MB
