Spider-Man: The Movie

"Impressive- The worst camera control system yet"

You may not think that one line synopsis is in any way relevent to giving a reader some idea as to the content of a review, but well, you're wrong.

A disclaimer- This is a review for the PC version, and only the PC version. I have no idea how the 3 console versions differ, especially in regards to ease of control/play.

In my usual manner, first comes The Bad:

The Camera system (well duh)
The camera control system cannot be described as anything but awful. Ok, that's not entirely true, it could also be described as aggravating, senseless, illogical, useless, and evil, among other things.

If you've played the PSX Spiderman games, the camera system is very similiar to that, except worse. Basically, there are two modes you can set the camera to: Active and Passive. In Passive, the game doesn't do anything and you move the camera around yourself. In Active mode, as you run Spidey around, the game automatically changes the camera angle based on... something to do with how you're moving. It's something like if you're running forward, then all you can see is stuff behind you. You can still move the camera around like you can in Passive mode, but most of the time once you start moving again the game'll just move it back to the old position. Quiet funny, these programmers. There are also places where there is a set camera angle, and you can't move it yourself whether you're in active or passive mode. One more thing- you can only move the camera left or right, you can't point it more upwards or more downwards. About the only good thing that can be said about this camera system is that you can switch between active and passive mode while running around.

Lazy-port-itis
Yet another multi platform game where the PC version is just lacking in PC type features. But nooo it's too much work, and we want the abstract goodness of a simultaneous release for all 4 platforms. :rolleyes:

Symptoms:

Control/Camera system could have been a standard WASD (or ESDF, since that's what I use) type First person/third person action game control scheme. For you extremely extremely non-gamers, that means- the WASD keys for Forward, strafe left, backwards, and strafe right, respectively. The mouse would be used for turning, as well as aiming (web shots, zip lines, where you're looking).

Menus cannot be navigated by mouse. Yeah, let's make a pc game and not use one of the biggest PC control advantages.

Key assignments are extremely rigid, can't assign more than one key to an action, and the keypad ''0'' key is actually treated as insert (a toggle thing), so if you set it to punch, the game thinks you always have the punch button held down. Really stupid bug.

Load times aren't that bad, but, the frequency of times when you have to wait for it to load something is ridiculous. Why is there a load time when you're restarting a lvl? It's already loaded!! There's even a load time for going into the save game menu.

Toby Maguire sounds just awful as Spidey. Voice is totally flat, 1 liner taunts ''ok'' at best. Who the hell casted him for the movie role anyway? One more faceless guy to hate in the world.

Ok, nowwwww, The Good:

Graphics
Very nicely done, almost all textures everywhere are nice and sharp, Spidey himself having the sharpest textures of all of course. The models are all nicely done, as are animations, Spidey having the best of those too of course. Well, hard to compare models, but he does have a lot of attack animations.

Sound
Nothing special, but pretty good. Toby Mcguire's voice acting however...ok, I'll shut up about that.

Gameplay
Web swinging is just damn cool. It's almost entirely different from the web swinging of the PSX games. Spidey still shoots webbing and swings from thin air (of course :) ), but you can actually swing higher and higher or lower and lower now. You can also turn, speed swing, do a few attacks in the air, shoot webbing attacks in air, somersault, etc. Very nicely done.

Zip lining is also improved, though not as drastically. Basically you can now zip in diagonal upwards directions, and in the direction you're running/jumping.

Combat is still basically your classic beatem style thing, in 3d, but Spidey has many many more moves/combos now, all performed as a sequence of 3 punches/kicks/jumps in some order and combination. As I said before, all of them are nicely animated, and all leave ''action-trails''.

Aerial Combat- Well, just put together the parts about Web swinging and combat together, take out the combos, and add in enemies that are annoying as hell, but stilll damn fun to fight...because...it's just...fun.

Lastly, The Ugly:
Not gonna say much, just that there's a kiss scene in the game. Geez, how many times has it been shown that kiss cutscenes done using the ingame engine look like ass? If you want to do it right, use CG.

Not much more to say- Basically, if you can get around the camera system, I do believe you'll enjoy the game. That and- Do your part to eliminate lazy-port-itis! Bully some game company upper management today!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/02, Updated 04/28/02