Recently, I went to see Spider Man at the movies, and I have to say that it definitely ranked up in the top 5 of excellent films I have seen in the past few months. My 8 year old loved it as well, since the end result of him seeing it was attempting to climb the outside of the house as well as aggravating my wife by telling her that his “spider sense” was tingling over her cooking. Of course, when there is a great movie, a video game company always comes along and makes a game title out of it. Well, history has shown that it has been impossible to make a decent video game based on a movie, or vice versa. Anyone who has seen “Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within” or played “Street Fighter: The Movie” in  the arcade, or even “The Mummy Returns” on PS2 as just a couple of examples will agree with me on this statement.  So … out comes “Spider Man the Movie” for GameCube, and needless to say I was a little pessimistic about this from the get go just because of past experiences. After playing it, I will definitely say that it not only broke the past string of bad games based on movies, but hopefully it will set a new standard for other “movie to game” titles in the future.

OK … unless you have been living in a cave for the past 30 years, you obviously know what the plot of Spider Man is. For those of you “outdoorsy” folks though, I’ll sum it up in short version for you. Peter Parker is the typical school nerd. He is a small guy who gets picked on by the school bully, and is in love with the beautiful girl he will never have. One day, he gets bitten by a radioactive spider and wakes up to find that he has the same abilities as his arachnid cousins such as the ability to crawl up walls, jump greater distances, and of course fire his trademark webbing to catch the bad guys. The opening of the game follows the movie, which puts you in pursuit of a criminal who killed your uncle in a carjacking. Spider Man’s ultimate arch enemy, the Green Goblin, also makes his appearance in the beginning of the game and everything follows the big screen story to a point. Soon, it deviates from the film and adds in some other classic comic book villains like Shocker and Vulture to add some variance and keep things interesting.

The game consists of varying missions which have you swinging hand over hand through the city in pursuit of criminals (a new style for Spidey from past titles he has been in) or on the ground tying up and smacking bad guys around. Every button on the control pad is used, but to really make it smooth and easy to learn, there is a tutorial mode which walks you through all of the abilities and various button functions that the web slinger can utilize. Activision also gets some serious bonus points from me since the voice in the tutorial is none other than one of my personal heroes … the wise cracking, shotgun and chainsaw toting Bruce Campbell from the Evil Dead series. This of course adds an element of sarcasm and humor to the whole learning process and got me laughing out loud a couple of times. Once you get the tutorial down, it’s time to hit the streets and start cleaning up the city. Spider Man can swing, climb, crawl, and use his webbing for various different things. For example, you can swing in between two buildings, stick to the side of one of the buildings, then use the webbing to propel you at high speeds to the top. Once you’re up there, fire a web to catch one of the bad guys and beat the you know what out of him, or sling him through the air into the side of something to knock him out. There is a nifty little compass at the lower right hand side of the screen to tell you where to go and even what height your objective can be found so that you won’t get lost even in the big city. Another nice gameplay element that has been added in is similar to Metal Gear Solid 2. Spidey can crawl into shadowed areas which gives him the ability to remain unseen, and then you can do things like lowering yourself on a web directly behind an opponent to get the drop on him without his cohort who might be near knowing what’s going on. Everything put together with varying types of missions makes it easy to get into, non repetitive, and really exciting to play.

Another neat thing about Spider Man is the battle system. Now, while it does consist of punches and kicks like any other 3D fighter, let me explain where the differences come into play. Starting off, you have a basic “hit punch three times” kind of situation, which is repetitive. However, as you progress, the game will start giving you new hit combos to add variance to your attacks, like roundhouse or back flipping kicks. Also, like I stated before, the webbing can be used to tie up your opponents, fling them around, and can even be used as shielding if you get into a particularly “sticky” (no pun intended) situation with numerous enemies and such. Boss battles are no exception, and can range from running around a rooftop avoiding projectile weapons or even sailing through the air on the back of Green Goblin’s hoversled trading blows while you dive towards the ground and around buildings. Activision really put a lot of time into mixing various gameplay elements together to make one heck of a well rounded ride, and they definitely pulled it off with success.

Graphically, I have one word for Spider Man … excellent. While there are periodic moments of pixeled or 2D textured areas (especially outdoors) if you get too close to a steam pipe or something, overall the game looks clean and very realistic. Building windows and Spidey’s eyes have an awesome reflective shine to them, the characters move very smoothly, and there is no collision detection that I saw. As a matter of fact, I laughed at one point when I swung too close to a building, clipped it with my shoulder, and began spinning wildly through the air and crashed into another building which caused me to plummet towards the ground. One quick web shot, and I was back up and swinging though, so mistakes can be corrected with little problem for the most part. I will have to say that it is funny to go swinging around between buildings on a web which isn’t really attached to anything since they shoot straight up into the air, but while that may sound bad … it makes the gameplay fluid and easy to play. Soundwise, the music consists of orchestrated tracks from the movie which are set on a repeating loop. Exciting at first, but tends to get a little repetitive at times if you are in a long mission since it will restart over and over again and then becomes more like background noise at that point. The webbing shots have that “silly string” sound that we have grown to love from the cartoon, the villains will do their evil cackling, and bad guys will mouth off at you when spotted. Toby Maguire and friends also do their own voiceovers which adds to the movie feel of the whole experience. 

Overall, this game definitely steps up movie games to a whole new level. Not only is it a good translation from the film, but it’s better than past Spider Man titles to hit PSX and Dreamcast. With it’s varying levels, varying gameplay, good solid sound, great graphics, and of course … Bruce Campbell (that one’s for me.) it definitely stands out as a winner and a good addition to the GameCube library. So Spider fans … quit trying to climb the walls and shoot webbing at your little sister. Go buy this game and live out the movie that way. It’s not only safer, but it’s a heck of a lot more fun. My hats off to Activision for making me a believer that someone can successfully make a movie to game translation … and make it good at that.

Gameplay: 9.1
With a great story that follows both the movie as well as past comic book scenarios, this game will definitely keep you entertained. Add in the smooth, easy to learn controls, great gameplay, and non repetitive level design … and you’ve got one heck of a fun title. The camera can be a little mean at times, but nothing which caused any headaches or overall feeling of aggravation. Adults and kids both will enjoy it as well.  

Graphics: 9
Very rare occurrences of 2D pixels, but that’s really about it. The building windows look awesome and have a great mirrored and reflective shine to them, as does Spidey’s eyes. The character models are smooth and the game runs at a consistent framerate. This is definitely a great looking and colorful title. 

Sound: 8.5
The music consists of orchestrated tracks from the film itself, which are set to play on a repeating loop over and over again. It’s not terrible, but it does get a little repetitive during long missions. Toby Maguire and … say it with me … Bruce Campbell loan their voice talents to this title just to name a couple. The game action sounds like it does in the cartoon, so it has that nifty campy kind of feel to it.

Difficulty: Easy
Although the missions can be challenging, the gameplay is not. Plus it has a tutorial to walk you through each button and what it does, so it’s easy to pick up and learn. It also has three different difficulty settings of easy, normal, and hard to increase or decrease the difficulty.  

Concept: 8.9
Not only is it neat to play as a character who has the abilities of a spider, but Activision did a great job of making this game different from the past Spider Man game. Since it’s the same super hero, I wasn’t sure if they could pull off a title with the same character but make it different … and they definitely proved me wrong.

Overall: 9.2
Wow. That’s all I can say about this game. Not only did they make a great game to go with a great movie, but they pulled it off with awesome graphics and fun gameplay. It is also boasts non repetitive mission based levels and pick up and play controls, so it definitely is a lot of fun and challenging enough to be interesting … but not frustrating. I would recommend this title to anyone who is a big Marvel Comics fan or even a big action buff as well.