"In the end, Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is a solid follow-up to the first Spider-Man game."

Platform: Playstation

Genre: Action

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Neversoft

ESRB: E (Everyone)

Released: Q4 2001

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Spiderman 2: Enter Electro

Last November Neversoft Entertainment released Spider-Man and the game was well praised across the board. Fans finally had a respectable, entertaining game that captured the excitement and action of the web crawling superhero. The game had its faults, but the groundwork was laid for a sequel.

One year later Neversoft comes back for its second helping of Spider-Man on the Playstation. Enter Spiderman 2: Enter Electro.

For fans of the first game, you probably won’t notice many changes. The graphics, gameplay, and audio all pretty much remain the same. Whether that is good or bad is for you to determine.

Moving Spider-Man around is fairly simple. To travel from building to building you simply have to press R2 and you will web swing to your destination. Once you are on the building or on the ground, you will find that Spider-Man can pretty much go anywhere. To quote the cartoon’s theme song, “He can do everything that a spider can.” The comic book hero is very fluid in jumping around onto buildings, crawling up and down them, and using his web abilities to get from Point A to Point B. Activision did a great job in providing gameplay that captures the vast freedom that Spider-Man has portrayed in the comic books and television shows.

However, not everything is peaches and cream. You do have unlimited reign on your territory and maneuvering is quite elementary, but it does become quite frustrating for one reason: the camera angle. This was a major problem with the first Spider-Man and gamers expected this mistake to be fixed. Unfortunately it did not happen. The game mainly uses the third-person omniscient, over-the-shoulder camera view, but for some reason when Spider-Man attaches himself to a building or a ceiling, the camera view tends to jump around. The frequency of the camera changes skews up the controls. Up, down, left, and right are quickly inversed and you are stuck wondering what direction is what. Very Un-Spider-Man-like.

The gripe may be subtle, but when you are attempting to sneak around from the bad guys and all of a sudden the controls are switched you are left feeling powerless. The camera angle also sometimes alters when you are on the ground, looking for enemies. At one moment you have your enemy in sight and another he is gone because your camera angle has been switched. The latter example doesn’t happen that often, but it presents itself to be a complaint.

The graphics are a carbon copy of its previous title. I would normally gripe about the lack of graphical improvement, but since the game plays at such a smooth framerate I cannot complain. With all the new consoles out, if a determining factor for buying a PSOne game is graphics, you need your head examined. What I’m trying to say is that although Spider-Man and his ensemble of friends and foes aren’t of the Final Fantasy quality, they won’t damage your eyes due to graphical ugliness.

Whatever is lacking in the graphical and gameplay department is made up in the audio department. Spider-Man and his friends will bust out an ensemble of one-liners that will have you laughing out loud. The voice acting is humorous and of high quality. When the characters talk, it just doesn’t look like their mouth is moving monotonously as words are jumbled out.

Stan Lee gives comments before each level and sets the tone. The in-game audio mainly consists of your normal Double Dragon thwacks and pows.

Spider-Man boasts an immense number of moves in the game and it can be overwhelming at first. To help ease the transition and to hone your skills you can take advantage of the game’s Training Mode. The set-up is similar to the Turok Training Modes on the Nintendo 64. You are given one of Spider-Man’s abilities to master and as you successfully complete each ability, you unlock the training mode to another. If you decide to skip the training mode, you are also given a shorter walk-through when you begin the game’s first level. At the very least, you can read the instruction manual and memorize all of Spider-Man’s moves.

Spider-Man implemented a little bit of Tony Hawk Pro Skater, another Activision title, in the game. As you proceed in the more than 20 game levels, you will unlock a number of goodies. You can unlock photos of you beating a stage boss (which are not game shots, but rather gorgeous looking cell from a cartoon), new costumes for Spider-Man, portfolios of characters, and even a character viewer of every character you see in the game. You can also create your own Spider-Man.

There are four difficulty levels in the game: Kid, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Each difficulty level ranges enough to appeal to all sorts of gamers. I had no problem breezing through Kid and Easy mode, but had to be more cerebral in Normal and Hard mode.

In the end, Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is a solid follow-up to the first Spider-Man game. The game lacks any graphical or gameplay improvement or alteration from the first game, but the storyline is new and refreshing. I can’t give the game a, “must buy” for all gamers, but if you are a Spider-Man or action-genre fan think this game could be an enjoyable title for you.

- Tim Martin