365//365: Day 071 – Spider-Man 2 (PSX) [Quickie]

Spider Man on the Sony PlayStation was proof that an amazing Spider Man game did exist. Neversoft built the game off their Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 engine, added the authentic feel of the mid 90′s cartoon series, and built a game that was not only good, but a new watermark for future Spider Man titles. A year later, Vicarious Visions took over and developed Spider Man 2: Enter Electro. Seriously, Electro? What, was Tombstone too busy working on his tan to star as the main villain? Was Hammerhead getting fitted for a new fedora and unable to make an appearance?

OH COME ON!

As you can tell, with the plethora of Spidey villains that one could choose to star as the main antagonist, they chose one that really isn’t a huge focal point in Spider Man’s career. Although he’s an old school villain, and even a member of the original Sinister Six, not many comic faithful would peg him as a deep enough character to be a main focus in a game. Thus, begins a number of glaring faults to thus sequel.

Fault #1: Any level taking place on the streets

The first Spider Man omitted these levels due to a gas unleashed through the streets of New York City. With the change of story-lines, these areas become playable at certain point sof the game. The problem? They are utterly bland, with very little in the way of anything on the streets. Maybe there’s one or two cars through the four square blocks or so, and probably four trash cans. Other than that, the streets and buildings look poorly detailed and felt too similar to the next building.

Similar to Black Cat from the first title, Beast serves as your mentor through your controls. Why Beast? Because it makes as much sense as the rest of this game!

Fault #2: The levels are all tedious and no fun to play

A big hook with the original Spider Man game was how diverse the pacing was, and how it never felt like I was doing the same thing over and over. While things are still broken down somewhat, they just aren’t any fun. Hunting down four key pieces on stock enemies through rooftops and street level areas isn’t all that entertaining. Even boss battles, which were fun and creative in the first title, fall flat, and come off as uninspired. It doesn’t help that many of the villains you see in Enter Electro are mostly the “B rate” enemies that rarely ever push a Spider Man comic to a part two in the story (Shocker, Hammerhead).

Fault #3: The controls, visuals and HUD are exactly the same

Literally. Take a gander at the option screens of both games and you’ll notice that absolutely nothing changed. Each of the costumes you could unlock in the first game, are in the second as well, with no changes made. Not even a tiny tweak to the colors. Your HUD remains untouched. The controls were unaltered. Your attacks all look the way they did in the first game. Other than the story, and the ugly ground level portions of the game, nothing has changed. Sure, nearly everything about the first game worked so well, but there were no strides taken to make the sequel better than the first. All of the faults from the first game are still in the sequel, with more shortcomings added in.

Character designs is still impressive, especially the attention to detail.

To be perfectly honest, Spider Man 2: Enter Electro still has some fun moments, and the voice acting and the whole audio package was well done, but it’s a noticeable downgrade from the first Spider Man title. It’s a short, lazily made game that relies too heavily on imitating the first games successes, to a fault. Not a bad game but not a great one.

Rating: 6.4