The Great Frame Job (Again)

The key to a good SpidermanSure, DC Comics has Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but among the most popular superheroes stands a guy from Marvel Comics, a younger hero dressed in red and blue who shoots webs and sticks to walls. Introduced in the 1960s, Spider-Man has been a constant presence in comics and more, featured in movies regularly since his big screen debut in 2002. game is to let the players feel like they’re actually properly controlling the hero. This seems like a simple thing to say, and realistically it applies to every superhero game in general (you want to feel like you’re putting on the tights of your favorite caped crusader), but in the case of Spider-man, you can’t just throw the players into the red-and-blue and send them after waves of enemies. Spider-man has a specific set of powers, and a clearly defined personality, that needs to make the translation into video games. If a game doesn’t take these factors into account, it fails at actually capturing the essence of Spider-man.

The web-head has seen a few solid games over the years, and the best of them found that right balance. Most of his games, though, either didn’t factor in the hero’s personality (dumping him into generic beat-em-up adventures) or didn’t manage to give the player Spidey’s full sense of powers. It’s a hard balance to maintain, especially on older hardware that really wasn’t up to the task. And despite its (now seemingly) ancient hardware on top of a transition into 3D gaming, Activision’s Spider-man from 2000 actually does a pretty competent job of translating the hero for video gaming. It’s not perfect, by any means, but so far, going over the chronology of Spider-man games, this might just be the best translation of the hero to hardware up to this point.

The game quickly gets into the action, with Peter Parker at a science expo, watching a demonstration from a (seemingly) reformed Doc Oc. The demo is interrupted, though, when Spider-man (of all people) breaks in and steals the doc’s equipment. Surprising when Peter is right there, watching it happen, and he’d know if Spider-man were up to anything (since, you know, he’s Spider-man). Peter goes on the chase, trying to find this illicit duplicate, but this puts him at odds with a number of other foes, from VenomSpun out from a "What If?" story in Marvel Comics, this black suit variant of Spider-man became his own character, and eventually became almost as popular as the web-head himself. to Mysterio, and even the police who want to take Spider-man down now that he’s “gone rogue”. Peter is going to have to fight his way through the city to find the mastermind behind the plan and clear his own name.

Without actually saying it, Spider-man for the PlayStation (and then later ported to Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, PC, and Mac, and a GBC version as well) is essentially a Sinister Six game, with Spidey taking on all his classic foes while they try to frame him for a crime and take over the city. We’ve actually seen this plot a few times before, in various other Spider-man games, to the point where this is starting to feel old hat. Among the various flaws of this game, I really do wish they could have come up with a better storyline for the title instead of reusing these tired tropes all over again.

With that said, I did find myself getting into the game because, for the most part, it’s a light and breezy time. Spidey is dropped into various missions – swinging across the city to reach some goal, or exploring a hideout, or fighting a boss – and you’re given free-roam power to handle the mission as you see fit. The stages aren’t generally very big, but there’s enough to do, and enough places to go, that the game lets you get a feel for Spidey’s powers and abilities. It’s fun to run and jump, swinging through the air as you work towards your next target. This is a game of simple plotting, and simple pleasures, and it works on that front.

It also lets you have fun with the powers. There’s the swinging, yes, plus most of the levels are designed in a way to allow you to wall-crawl to your heart’s content. If you’re struggling with a platforming area, you can always crawl around it, or find some other means of traversal. The stages are built to let you be a good spider, as only Spider-man could. Plus you have Spider-man’s array of web shooters, from basic shots, to entangling webs, a shield you can throw up, and some boosts you can collect for temporary powers. It all works really well as a showcase of Spidey’s abilities.

This is aided by solid voice acting that does let you feel like you’re hanging around with these characters. Too many of the Spider-man titles so far have featured bland voice acting, or no voice acting at all. Actually having good performances from real voice talent helps with the immersion factor. This, coupled with graphics that are, at times, pretty decent (at least, for the era) makes for a game with decent gameplay and solid presentation. Considering the consoles it arrived on, I actually think this is a handsome enough title (just don’t look at anyone’s faces as, well, those are simply awful).

With that said, the game does have some serious issues, especially when you try to play it now, with modern game design sensibilities in mind. For starters, the combat controls are awful. The game uses a limited lock-on feature, letting you know where your foes are and helping you to aim at them. This is nice when the camera is focused on the enemy and you’re close to them. However, often the enemy will be just far enough out of range that despite the aiming triangle being over them, and your character facing the right way, you’ll launch attacks that miss over and over. Considering the CPU doesn’t miss, and can hit you from far away with projectile attacks, this does feel pretty shitty while you’re playing it.

Hit boxes also feel pretty weird. You can be nowhere near an enemy attack and they’ll swing and hit you even when it looks like they shouldn’t be able to. You can swing at them and somehow, despite being on top of them, completely miss all your attacks. Something feels distinctly off even at the best of times, often leaving you in a position where you’d be better off avoiding combat altogether instead of taking on foes. This is fine when you have specific goals to handle, like flipping switches or exploring a maze. When you actually are forced into combat encounters with a bunch of goons, and you have to take them all out to continue the mission, it can get pretty annoying.

That is until the bosses which are, frankly, laughably easy. Most of the bosses have simple patterns which involve waiting for the boss to open up their weak point while you dodge their pathetic attacks. Then you hit their damage spot a few times, watch them close back up, and repeat the process all over again. These encounters are slow, but not difficult, feeling less like dangerous situations and more like padding to help the game get over a specific length. Better boss fights would have been nice since these should be climactic moments and not, as they are in the game, the most tedious parts of the game.

And speaking of tedium, the entire middle section of the game feels tacked on. Eddie Brock was at the science expo, alongside Peter, and when the fake Spider-man breaks his camera, Eddie becomes Venom and swears revenge on Spider-man despite him knowing Peter is Spider-man and seeing Peter also at the expo. The middle 30 minutes is taken up with Venom playing a long, slow game of cat-and-mouse with Spidey before, after a terrible boss fight, Venom goes, “oh, right, you were there, too. Our bad.” None of this was fun, or essential, and all of it could have been excised to keep the speed and flow of the game up. It feels like this entire middle section was included simply to have Venom in the game, but it adds absolutely nothing to the experience.

I’d actually say all the cameos in this game are pretty awful. DaredevilThe Man without Fear, Matt Murdock, was a lawyer by day but a superhero by night, made all the more impressive as he was legally blind. The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as a relaunch of a much older character of the same name, creating a lasting piece of the Marvel universe. makes an appearance to do… basically nothing. The same goes for Captain AmericaCreated by Simon and Kirby in 1941, Captain America was a super soldier created to fight Germany and the evil HYDRA. Then he was lost in the ice, only to be found and reborn decades later as the great symbol of the USA. at the end. And then The PunisherAn anti-hero who was never meant to be a hero in the same way as the Avengers, the Punisher has taken on his own life in pop-culture, but that doesn't change the troubling qualities to his characterization. arrives at one point to do little, including not chasing Spidey despite the hero, at this point, being a wanted criminal. He doesn't act like Punisher, he doesn't serve a purpose, and then he shows up for a game of Crazy Eights at the end because… yeah, that’s something he’d do. I get wanting to include other heroes as a selling point, but they need to add something to the game, not just hang around being colorful bodies simply for the sake of.

To be clear, the 2000 Spider-man game is uneven. There are a number of moments that feel off, and there are times where I was actively fighting the controls (especially in combat) as I tried to work through the game. I’m forgiving, for the most part, because these are issues most 3D games of this era struggled with and, considering that, this game actually does play fairly well. I don’t expect anyone new to games would enjoy this title because of these issues, but if you grew up through this era this title does play better than most games from the time.

And with that in mind, this Spider-man title is decent. Maybe even good. You have to rate it based on the era it came out in and, from that perspective, this is one of the better Spider-man games to date. It’s not overly hard, even at the times when you have to battle the controls. It makes good use of his powers and lets you feel the joy of being Spider-man. It’s not even, and it struggles in places, but for the most part this is a fun Spidey adventure. I’ll take that over another grinding, generic beat-em-up any day.