Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage

"Spiderman is killing the homeless bums and clones of Gambit!"

Spiderman has always seemed cool to me. Heck, he was the reason I first got interested in superhero comics. Watching Spidey every Saturday was a high point of life. Yeah, I really had a thrilling life if that's a high point of the week... So, I've been getting all these Marvel comic games on Genesis just to see what I missed out on when I didn't have a system. This was the second game I got on Genesis. Carnage has always been my favorite Spiderman enemy. So of course, I got a Spiderman game with him as a major part of the game pretty fast. I thought this was a really pretty enjoyable game. Except for a few things...

The game itself is well designed, the level backgrounds look pretty good, the superhero icons are sometimes extremely well hidden (Which is a good thing), and overall it's really fun to play. But the major nag I have is that there's no codes for the game. I've never been that big on cheating, unless it's a rental and I just want to beat it and see how it ends, or sometimes after I've beaten the game, if it's something kind of odd and strange. And then there are those games with level passwords. Apparently the staff had never seen those. The game is an incredibly hard one, and it's about 20 levels. And there's no way to skip levels. You've got to be kidding me. No codes for anything. You're on your own, kid. Good luck. The game is very hard to beat, and will take you a long time to finish. So those of you who like those hard, long games can run out and buy this now...

The graphics are okay, nothing special. Better than the cheap follow up to this game ''Separation Anxiety'' by far. That had awful graphics...but that's off topic. This game has rather good. Nice animations of the characters, it looks pretty good overall. One other thing that gets me (And this is where the weird synopsis comes from) is the weird enemies that you see the whole time. In the first level, the main baddies are homeless people. And some of them look like miscolored clones of Gambit. If you don't know, Gambit it one of the X-Men. (My fav X-Men too...=D) So what's up with this? Spiderman is killing homeless people? Sure, I bet it is hard to come up with normal enemies for a comic in which he only had a few bad guys, not like X-Men in which many humans hate them too. No, Spidey is loved by all. Except for in certain parts of the comic. But for the most part, he IS your ''Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman''. So what's up with the homeless people, Gambit clones, cute girls, and other random people attacking him? This does not make any sense whatsoever...

The music is really cool. It's by a group I've never heard of before called Green Jelly. I don't have a clue as to if the songs in the game are songs they've done before but just no wording, or if this is something totally just for this. Whatever the answer to that is, this is a really pretty cool soundtrack. The title intro is very good sounding. Overall it's great. Although later on in the game it does get tiring after hearing one again and again and again. There aren't many songs, but the few there are are good. (Bleah...me and my weird sounding sentences...)

Scoring:
Graphics: 7
Music: 9
Fun:9
Replay: 4

It's a cool game, and doesn't cost that much at a used game store. Just get it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/00, Updated 10/28/01