Spawn

Review by CXKid

"Fighting the devil hasn't been this fun since Chuck Norris did it"

If you're not familiar with the Spawn franchise, I don't blame you. All I know is that it was a comic and it was popular enough to spawn a movie and several games as well. One of those games is Spawn for the GameBoy Colour. It's not a bad game by any means, especially considering the curse of movie/comic/book/TV show-based games, but it does leave much to be desired.

Story 6/10
The story is the same as the comic books, but if you're unfamiliar with the comics like me pray to god your copy of the game comes with an instruction booklet like mine did. Basically Spawn used to be a secret agent or a cop or something when all of a sudden all his buddies burn him alive or somesuch. So he strikes a deal with Maelbolga (read: the devil) to be brought back to life to see his wife one last time so long as he agrees to lead Maelbolga's armies of darkness. Well Spawn decides to rebel against Maelbolga and go on a long arduous journey to get his soul back. It's basically just an excuse to have a guy in tights beat the crap out of Satan.

Graphics 7/10
The graphics range from mediocre to pretty damn good. Spawn himself looks like, well Spawn, and he looks extra cool after you get his spiffy cape. The enemies look how they're supposed to but many have the air of the clone brush about them; however they die rather quickly so you'll only see them for about five seconds before they fade out of existence anyway. The bosses are as large and detailed as Spawn, of course that isn't saying much considering many sprites from Mario 2 are more detailed than Spawn. Everything is nicely animated and some of the bosses' attacks look pretty cool. The backgrounds are large and detailed but again, could be much better. Of course the highlight of this game's graphics are in the short cutscenes before each boss battle, which feature large detailed images of both Spawn and whatever boss he's talking to.

Music/Sound 8/10
I honestly can't remember any music in this game whatsoever, and I'm pretty sure the sound was on. The only music I can remember is just a low ambient hum in the opening cutscene.

The sound effects are what you'd expect from a beat ‘em up title, your basic punch sound effects that sound like punches but are so overused they've become mediocre beyond all belief. There's a sound effect for charging your chain but it's your basic vweeeeeeeeeeeeee and a sound effect for gun fire but, it's mediocre at best. Once again the highlight of this part of the game comes from the short cutscenes before boss battles. These scenes feature fantastic digitized voice clips of Spawn talking to the boss. This is impressive considering most DS games don't have voice actors and voice clips.

Gameplay 6/10
You wouldn't think going to hell to fight the devil would involve a lot of platforming, but then, you'd be wrong. There are two entire levels devoted almost entirely to platforming. But this is a beat ‘em up so there are a lot of guys for you to beat up and most of them don't even have guns. So Spawn has three basic attacks a standing punch, which is pretty useless due to a lack of range, a lunging punch, which you'll use most of the time, partially by accident and partially because it's really useful, and a jumping kick, which does more damage than his two punches but is really hard to hit anything with. He also has his chain, which homes in on any enemy in range but drains your life when you use it. The levels rarely pose a challenge except maybe on Hard but the bosses can seem nigh-impossible sometimes. You do have the choice between Easy, Normal and Hard difficulties but it's in the options menu you'll never visit, not to mention the last two levels are only accessible on Normal and Hard.

Control 10/10
The controls are responsive and so basic a monkey could play this game (it wouldn't be any good at it though). A to jump, B to attack and Select to change weapons, yes, this game actually utilizes the select button.

Replayability 6/10
The final boss is, like many other things in this game, nigh-impossible so you'll probably want some revenge on him every now and again and with difficulty settings it is worth a second and maybe even a third playthrough.

Frustration Factor 3/10
I've done homework more frustrating than this game. Of course you only get one life but you also get a life bar of 9999.

Fun Factor 5/10
This game is surprisingly less fun than you'd expect considering you almost can't die except by falling or getting hit by a boss a lot and if you can't die there's no challenge and if there's no challenge there's no sense of accomplishment when you finish a level and if there's no sense of accomplishment it's not fun.

Verdict 65.5% rounded to 7/10 for GameFAQs scoring
I sentence this game to become death DESTROYER OF WORLDS!