Spider-Man: The Movie Review

By Martin Taylor Published 6 July, 2002

Review - digitised FMV and slick animation, but how does the game play?

Version tested: GameBoy Advance

Insert theme tune quote here

Ah yes, big budget movie tie-in platformers. I'll spare you a line from my collection of cash cow metaphors, but it's safe to say I popped the Spider-Man: The Movie cartridge into my GBA with a distinct, brooding cynicism about me. My reasoning? The GameBoy Advance hardware is and has been proven to be the perfect excuse for developers to revisit the 16-bit era's penchant for dodgy platformers and movie cash-ins, and having seen the other console versions of Spider-Man I harboured few illusions about this handheld iteration.

At first glance, Spider-Man on the GBA appears to be a perfect case study of the above. Sideways scrolling paint-by-numbers environments? Check. Chunky adversary sprites meandering aimlessly back and forth? Check. Insipid boss battles that fail to extract any skill from the player? Check. All the signs of a pathetically translated license are there, so why is Spider-Man as charming as it manages to be?

There's just something about the game that removes the cynical sneer from my face and replaces it with a relaxed smile. Much of the game is standard platform fare and rarely deviates from being completely ordinary, but in general Digital Eclipse have made a really very decent stab at it. The handheld version of Spider-Man: The Movie takes a somewhat different approach to the other console versions; in that it's more of a nod in the direction of Spidey's comic book exploits than anything else, and in that the developer has thrown the elaborate storyline out of the window.

Cartoon moments are scattered throughout the game as Spider-Man uncovers a conspiracy against him conceived by the Green Goblin. "With great power comes great responsibility," our hero chirps, employing enormous speech bubbles to relay his thoughts before diving off the screen and into the action as his masked, webslinging alter-ego. Another cute touch is the Batman-style effects bubble that pop up when tackling adversaries - it's always more fun to "Pow!" and "Thwack!" your foes than to just smack them in the mouth and walk on by.

Animated

The most striking thing about Spider-Man is the quality of the hero's animation, as he swings gracefully through the air, latching onto any surface he can reach and swooping about on his miraculous silk line, and as he crawls along walls, and fights off the attentions of thugs en masse. Unfortunately, the animation seems to be the star of the show and can really get in the way at inopportune moments. It takes too long to move from one animation to the next, a process which can't be interrupted and leaves Spidey hopelessly exposed to the legions of henchmen and their wimpy pistols.

The controls are at times unresponsive and finicky, and sometimes just plain odd. For example, every so often Spidey has to sling a web against a lamp post and then move round it like a ball on a string collecting bonuses, but this is more of a fight against the twitchy directional pad than an easy score. It's also irritating to have Spidey stick onto every single surface, when often all you really want to do is stand up straight and run along on-foot, particularly during the second level set in the confines of a derelict building. Level design is another cause for concern, with foreground and background graphics blending into one another here and there, confusing the hell out of the player - a real problem during levels where time is more of a factor.

Digital Eclipse has made an effort to provide the player with regular incentive, but their attempts have generally come up short. You can use the Select button to snap pictures of Spider-Man's antics as you play, but the so-called reward is a handful of digitised shots from the movie. You can swing around the streets in pseudo-3D between levels, but these sections are too chuggy and short-lived to be any fun. In effect, the developer has run up against the limits of the hardware, not to mention the limits of their own imaginations.

To be fair, this is a heck of a lot better than its predecessor, Mysterio's Menace, but it's still not quite there. As Digital Eclipse will now have learnt, there's only so much fun you can inject into an ageing formula, and apparently the GBA isn't powerful enough to produce a proper 3D platformer. The bonus sections here offer a little variety (even if they are a mite lacklustre in practice), and the presentation is of a high standard, in particular the short portion of digitised FMV at the start of the game and the slick sprite animation throughout. 9/10 for effort then, but overall the game comes up short.

6 / 10

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About Martin Taylor

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Comments (25) Latest comment 10 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • martynmac #1 10 years ago

    It is completely unbelievable that Nintendo are *still* charging ridiculous prices for GBA games. Especially for rubbish like this. Do they not think that if they charge around £20 for games more people will actually buy them.
    The GBA hasn't exactly been a prominent console in the all-formats chart lately has it?

  • Ciaran #2 10 years ago

    I concur. They're much too expensive. I think €30-35 would be an excellent price point for GBA games. Right now they're up there with PC and GC games, which I feel is just.. wrong somehow. There's a couple of GBA games I'd probably buy in a second if they ever got down to a more reasonable price. (Bomberman, Klonoa and Chuchu Rocket, to be precise.)

  • hulahoops #3 10 years ago

    It's wrong because we're basically paying around a fiver less than a GC game for something which costs, what, an eighth to develop?

  • Viktor #4 10 years ago

    It's not about development costs. It's about manufacturing costs, which in disc games are and in cartridges $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

  • hulahoops #5 10 years ago

    But surely the difference can't be more than two or three euros?

  • hulahoops #6 10 years ago

    Hey, just thought, there isn't a slang term for Euros yet (right?)! Perhaps we should take on the honour of making one up.

  • otto #7 10 years ago

    BoB!, that thought had also occurred to me. Couldn't think of anything appropriate though... Any ideas?

  • rauper Verified Managing Director, Eurogamer Network #8 10 years ago

    E's?

  • Max Diablos #9 10 years ago

    Hey, just thought, there isn't a slang term for Euros yet (right?)!

    Ummm, if the Dollar sinks any lower, torpedo?

  • reto #10 10 years ago

    Bomberman - 19.99
    Klonoa - 24.99
    Chuchu Rocket - 19.99
    edit: better say where - amazon.co.uk and game.uk.com


    But new games are to expensive 30/35 quid a game is just way to much. To nick someones saying, the cows udders must be sore.
    Edited by 1 at 06/07/02 @ 23:31

  • Ciaran #11 10 years ago

    Bomberman - 19.99
    Klonoa - 24.99
    Chuchu Rocket - 19.99

    Are they now? Hm. Thanks reto!
    Wahey!
    Edited by 1 at 07/07/02 @ 04:30

  • Max Diablos #12 10 years ago

    Thank God the Euro was never named the ECU (European Currency Unit). It would've sounded like a set of bed springs in motion.

    Eee Kew, Eee Kew, Eee Kew,...

  • otto #13 10 years ago

    It was very nearly going to be called the florin, which personally I preferred, but euro was 'safer'... o_O

    It won't take long before some slang term becomes established. Then we'll have fifteen different names for it again. :)

  • Max Diablos #14 10 years ago

    It won't take long before some slang term becomes established. Then we'll have fifteen different names for it again. :)

    Pound, Lira, Franc, Reichmark...

  • otto #15 10 years ago

    Reichmark??

    You've not been in Germany then for a while? ;)

  • Max Diablos #16 10 years ago

    You've not been in Germany then for a while? ;)

    No. Just trying to put the wind up a few Eurosceptics.

  • Aka #17 10 years ago

    Why do games have to have ": the Movie" extension, is the new Resident Evil film going to be called "Resident Evil: The Game"?

  • otto #18 10 years ago

    Just trying to put the wind up a few Eurosceptics

    Right, gotcha. I heard about Rik Mayall's anti-euro Hitler 'advert'. Pretty sick-making imho. I'm having to revise daily my list of celebs/comedians that I *used* to find funny.

    As usual, they trundled out the traditional British riposte to anyone who finds this kind of 'humour' offensive: "oh you need to get a life, you just don't understand our sophisticated and superior sense of humour." I really, REALLY hate this lazy way of shutting down an argument. :p

  • hulahoops #19 10 years ago

    It's even worse when it's just a thinly veiled attempt to inspire xenophobia.

    By all accounts the advert's persuaded more people to welcome the Euro than the other way around, simply out of disgust.

    It's not funny it's just destructive.

  • otto #20 10 years ago

    By all accounts the advert's persuaded more people to welcome the Euro than the other way around, simply out of disgust.

    BoB!, that's encouraging to hear, I hope you're right. One of the reasons I left the UK was that I was so sick of the xenophobic attitude taken by the English towards their fellow Europeans. These days (thank God!) it's unacceptable to poke fun at Africans or Asians because of their race, but somehow people think that jokes about Germans referring to the war or to Hitler are somehow OK. This disgusts me. And yet you see it all the time, from this anti-euro advert right the way through to ads about beach towels and dambusters. And every time the German embassy pops its head up to complain about offensive stereotyping, the newspapers come back with "typical Germans, no sense of humour", compounding yet another negative stereotype...

  • Super Stu #21 10 years ago

    Ah Otto, you just don't understand our sophisticated sense of... actually, I've no idea what any of you are talking about.

    Er.

  • Max Diablos #22 10 years ago

    otto,

    I'm glad to hear that the anti-euro advert is turning people towards the yes vote. I'd rather hoped it would. The European Union is too good an idea and has produced too much benefit economically, socially, and politically, to throw away or weaken by not joining the Euro.

    I too am sick of Britain, and am quietly planning on moving at some point. Spain, Portugal, or France look like contenders. To quote one of the characters from "Spooks" it's become a valueless credit card fueled shopping nirvana. This isn't the Britain I wanted to live in when I grew up.

    The postwar vision of a fair, equal, and forward looking Britain, is indistinguishable from the European vision. I'm sick of, and more than a little hostile towards, the foreign owners of the press who keep undermining Britians ability to have a fair, informed, and useful, debate on the Euro and Britians part in the European project.

    Sorry. I tend to explode on this issue...

  • Nemesis #23 10 years ago

    Maybe time to move to a *different* part of Britain. Personally I've had enough of being ripped off. Try running your own company in the UK and you start to see why things are going to the wall.

  • otto #24 10 years ago

    Sorry. I tend to explode on this issue...

    Max, you & me both. At least, I used to before I left the country. Now it's "more in sorrow than in anger" if you know what I mean. Most people I know on the continent just want the UK to make up its bloody mind and either became the 51st state of the US or join in properly with the rest of us, either way just GET A MOVE ON AND DECIDE ffs.

    As for leaving the country, everyone suffers from 'grass is greener' syndrome and I'm not immune, God knows Belgium is not the perfect place to live, I don't think anywhere is, but one thing's for sure: I'm not moving back to Blighty, oh no, not me. Nope. At least here my world is not governed by the Daily Mail.

  • Nemesis #25 10 years ago

    . Nope. At least here my world is not governed by the Daily Mail.

    Just walk away Nem.

    /quiet whistle/

    Daily Mail FFS. Have a word.