Spider-man 2 cover by Boomer B. Omb: Spider-sense tingle when you play this game...

When I first bought the Spider-man video game for the Playstation (that I already reviewed) at a thrift store, I quickly rushed home to play it (remembering how good it was from playing it at a friend’s place) for all of two hours before I beat it. After having out run the terrifyingly awesome final boss, I sat and sighed wishing that it was longer and yearning for more. Well, a week later, I visited the same thrift store wanting another PlayStation video game (yes, I’m addicted, and I had few for the PS at the time) and found Spider-man 2: Enter Electro; a direct sequel to the game I had enjoyed so much in so little time. This was exactly what I wanted: more Spidey-action! However, this seemed a little too good to be true, so I was wondering if my prayers were answered by god or if it was one of those ironic gifts from the devil. Still, quite excited of getting what I wanted, I started to play.

The first thing I did (as I normally do each time I play a new game) was watch the intro video, which was a recap of what had happened in the last game. I noticed, during this video, that the graphics improved (which is easy to see when you remake scenes from the last game). I mean, it wasn’t a giant difference, like the one between system generations, but it’s defiantly noticeable. One thing that I really liked with the new graphics was the fact that Spider-man’s web pattern was added onto his costume, since I wondered where it was during the last game. But like I said, it isn’t a giant leap: things are still blocky, people’s lips still don’t move and they still resort to body talking. At first, I thought the improved graphics were a good sign: it might mean that the game makers decided to make everything a bit better. Then I was quickly hit in the back of the head with a hard clump of realisation: normally people obsess too much with the graphics and everything else suffers. I crossed my fingers, hoping this wasn’t the case, and started to play.

I was happy to learn, through the mandatory “pointless training stage” that these games always have, that the controls haven’t changed much: you still just punch, jump, web and all that stuff the same way you did in the last game. The one thing they changed was that L2 now does something: it changes your target. Though it may not be quick, it’s defiantly quicker then L1 targeting mode and a beats having to move around until you get the target you want. Speaking of L1 targeting mode, I still had to rely on it to change the camera angle, which if you remember, was my biggest complaint of the first game’s controls. I find it odd that they decided to make an improvement on the controls, but not where it was needed the most. Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate it, but I don’t quite know how I feel about being heard and ignored at the same time.

Upon getting into the real levels, I saw that they were trying to make this game a continuation of the first, despite this being a fully stand alone game. What I mean is the first level of this game (not counting the training stage I already mentioned) is just a little bit shorter then the last few level of the last game and the difficulty of the first level is equivalent to the middle of the first game. There’s just one thing I really didn’t like about the levels: you walk around WAY too much. I can only remember few levels where you swing around roof tops (which were my favourites). Since Spider-man doesn’t really run in these games (it looks more like a jog) they can be really annoying.

The missions are also less enjoyable in this game. I mean, sure, there are the regular “get to the end” and “destroy x number of blanks”, but the first mission is to walk around town and find a bunch of bad guys. The one mission I really didn’t like is the bomb one, which is a level with roof tops, city streets and a few different heights in between. You need to find 4 keys held by 4 bad guys to deactivate the bomb, so you need to search everywhere to find them. Looking on a bunch of different heights for bad guys dressed in black hidden in shadows, unable to swing since you’ll just hit a wall and stick to it AND with a time limit is just simply frustration. Plus, it’s only like the 3rd mission in the game.

There are still a lot of Spider-man villains in this game (5, just one less then the first) and there are two other “bosses”. In the review for the first game, I mentioned that beating the bosses could be fun, but frustrating. In this game, they are just frustrating. First off, in this game, you can pretty much beat every one of them with brute force (if they are actual people, that is), it’s just A LOT easier to use a specific technique. However, even doing that technique can be a huge pain in the ass. To use the first one, Shocker, as an example, you can pull boxes on him, but it’s so hard since as soon as he gets in place and you target the right box, he knocks you down (a lot of the bosses have a habit of knocking you down by the way). Oh yeah, you have a time limit for him too… Another weird “boss” is actually an airplane you have to prevent from blowing up. It has two propellers which you have to stop with your web. If it hits into a wall or an equivalent, you lose. If it gets too much damage, you lose. If you get too much damage, naturally, you lose. It also starts off ahead of you, which means you’ve got to get ahead of it right away to remove obstacles then turn around to web the propellers. Oh yeah, it also knocks you down if it hits into you, so if you don’t get ahead of it enough, you’ll get knocked down, then you’ll be behind it by a lot. And once again, those are just the first two bosses.

The plot, however, is where the game seriously differentiates itself from the last one. The last game played itself light, up front and had a bunch of things happening at once. This game is a little dark, with most events happening at night instead of the day, mysterious and things happen one at a time. The basic plot is that, after Spider-man saves the day in the last game, Electro busts into a lab and steals a device which is supposed to harness the “bio-electricity” of the human body. Apparently, if attached to a regular human, it could power a city block for a year (if my memory of the dialog is correct) but on someone as electrically charged as Electro, it will make him a GOD. After it’s stolen, Spider-man has to figure out how to get to Electro and fight his way there. Does any of this seem familiar to you guys too? Mostly night time, mystery, fight his way to who he wants? Another big hint is when Spidey actually says “I don’t need pointy ears and a cape to figure this one out.” However, to be honest, I can’t really say the plot is bad, and it does play out well, but it’s just different, and doesn’t capture Spider-man as I remember him.

As weird as the plot seems, there’s one thing that makes the story just simply badly written: plot holes. First off, remember when I said there were only 5 villains in the game? Well there are actually 6, but there’s one they seem to have put in and forgot they did right after: the Beetle. He appears after you hop on a train and is immediately identified by Spider-man, but then he escapes and flies away. After that, he’s never seen again, he’s never talked about again, Spider-man doesn’t fight him or anything like that. It’s like they animated the cut scene, but then the makers thought it might be too weird to have a flying enemy, but were too lazy to go back and change the video. He’s not even seen in the character list, so they were really trying to deny that he was even in the game at all. The other plot hole directly relates to the last game, and once again, has to do with a villain: The Lizard. In the last game, he was seen captured by Venom, was able to talk to Spider-man and even tell him where to go in the maze. He was able to reason and was very human like. In this game, he’s jumping around a lab, smashing everything and out of control, acting only on instinct. To be fair, this is what he should be like, but I just can’t get over the inconsistency. How come he suddenly can’t reason? How come he can’t even talk? How did he escape Venom anyways, Spider-man never set him free? These things are never talked about. Once again, it’s like the makers of the game made a mistake, but didn’t want to correct or admit it. There was also the fact that Thor got mentioned in the final cut scene but wasn’t seen, but while doing research for this game, I learned that he was originally in the game but got taken out after 9/11 since the final battle had originally taken place on the twin towers. Still, I don’t think they handled it all that well; they could have still had Thor in the game and just changed the location! Another mistake made in the final video is that Hammer Head says he has a full house of aces over kings, but if you look at his hand he has aces and TENS. I know that’s not a plot hole, but it still shows the carelessness of the game makers.

The fact that this game is a sequel is the source of its downfall, but it’s also the source of all its good points. It still uses the same game engine as the last game, has most of the same extra features, has the same in game features and the same voice actors, but I can’t really talk about those or I’d just be repeating myself from my last review. They changed a few things for the better but more things for the worse. I think the real problem is that this game didn’t capture the full fun of Spider-man for me like the last one did. I always pictured him as someone to swing in the middle of the day in a dashing public display of heroism, not sneaking around in darkness solving mysteries. I can’t really say that Spider-man 2: Enter Electro is a bad game, but when I look at it next to the first Spider-man, I just find myself going “It’s just not the same!” When I look at it on its own, I see frustrating bosses, annoying mission levels and in game errors. But most of all, I still see a good Spider-man game. In my “Top 10 Video Games I Own” list, I said that this was a much more average game, so I honestly can’t give it anything other then a 6.5/10 and recommend that, if you played the first one and still want more, get this game if you can find it cheap. Just be warned, there might be a reason why the first one was ported onto N64 and Dreamcast, and this one remained a PlayStation exclusive.