Spiderman & Spiderman 2: Enter Electro (PS1) Review

Yet another double review and you might be thinking, why am I reviewing two completely different games here? Well you see there isn’t really all that much that differentiates the two save for a few nuances. Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is like a standalone expansion in a way, it adds the ability to shoot web balls in mid air, as well as an alternative kick animation but besides that it’s moreorless the same as the first game so I’m going to be reviewing both of them together for this reason. Spiderman 2: Enter Electro is a childhood game of mine that my mum game away to some other kid, eventually I picked up both the first and the second game to relive those memories and experience the first game for the very first time.

First of all I have to address the biggest issue with both of these games and that is the fact that they both fail on the basic fundamentals of action games. First of all, the melee combat has two main buttons, square to punch and circle to kick. The problem with this is that they both kind of do the same thing really, though I find punching to be far more reliable personally so I mainly use square. This means that circle is completely useless in this game as it does the same thing square does but with a different animation, sure there are a few differences besides that but nothing important in the grand scheme of things, they’re both attacks that yield similar enough results, just pick one and spam it, you sadly cannot mix them up as you are locked to either one combo string or the other which makes the melee combat feel sterile. Thankfully there is an aerial attack that I found to be far more useful as it lets you approach a locked on enemy from the air with a diving attack, given the fact that this is a Spiderman game, you will be attacking enemies from above a lot and it’s often the best way to engage in a melee combat situation as it’s kind of like Ninja Gaiden’s Flying Swallow attack, an ever abusable diagonal strike that covers a great distance very quickly.

The downside to this though is that if you want to follow up with a melee combo, good luck because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to cancel out the recovery time of Spiderman’s landing after his aerial attack. I tried many things and the results varied. Sometimes it would cancel the recovery time, other times it wouldn’t, it just felt random, perhaps there is a mechanic that I don’t know about that allows me to cancel attacks but even if there is, the melee combat is so shallow that the difference it would make would be insignificant since even if you do manage to cancel, the combo ends after 3 punches anyway which may not even be enough to take the enemy down. My point is that this recovery time leaves you wide open to be attacked and this can be incredibly frustrating as it can happen seemingly randomly. Sometimes you will jump attack and be unable to move for a brief period because Spiderman is in the middle of his landing animation, where he can be attacked, other times you will jump attack and go straight into a combo, it’s so inconsistent that it’s hard to rely on melee combat alone but sometimes there is little choice but to do so. There’s also a grab attack you can perform which can be useful in some of the few stealth missions the game has which are surprisingly the best missions and these missions are mainly found in Enter Electro which gives it some bonus points. They can’t be used on bosses though so don’t bother trying to grab Sandman, they of course can grab you though because double standards. You can however grab objects and throw them at some of the bosses though this can be pretty tricky to do when you’re getting chased by a boss, what makes this even more annoying is that the button to pick up objects is square and this means that you will find yourself punching the object instead of picking it up sometimes.

Thankfully you can always fall back on your web techniques to deal with certain foes but doing so consumes web cartridges which you have to replenish by finding items littered throughout each level. The good news is that unlike the melee combat, there’s a good array of web skills at your disposal, you can shoot a line of webbing at your enemy directly to tangle them up, though this only works against non-boss enemies, you can shoot web balls at enemies that act as projectiles which can be used on bosses and is arguably the most useful web skill in Spiderman’s arsenal, especially in Enter Electro as you can use it in mid air which could be handy for speedrunners to utilize in certain sections but sadly it can only be used while on the ground in the first game for some reason. There’s also the web gloves that increase your melee damage if you want a little bit of extra power to your attack at the cost of webbing, then there’s the web grapple which you can use to trip people up or bring them up close for a melee combo. Finally there’s the web dome which costs a lot of webbing to use but is arguably the most useful as it protects you from attacks for a short period of time as well as dealing damage to multiple enemies around you.

You should have called for backup!

The downside to all of this is that the controls for these web moves are tied to directional inputs which are the same buttons for movement and it doesn’t work in the same way as Devil May Cry where you can only perform them when the lock on button is held since in these games, the lock on is toggleable. Speaking of which, the lock on in this game is absolutely terrible since it unlocks the moment that you turn so you don’t get the same strafe stance that you do in Devil May Cry. It certainly shows how far action games have come over the years but it doesn’t do these games any favors. If they released this game today, people would laugh, like it’s an absolute joke of a lock on system, arguably one of the worst lock on systems in the history of lock on systems and because of this, doing any of the web moves is an absolute nightmare since you might accidentally move in a direction instead of performing the necessary directional input with triangle to execute the move. Talk about a massive pain in the web balls.

To add insult to injury the camera in these games is really bad. Now thankfully there is a camera focus button so moving the camera manually isn’t an issue. The problem is that whenever you turn around, the camera will automatically face the position that you are facing and while this may seem intuitive, like I said before, the lock on will disappear because the character you are locked on to is no longer in view because the camera just turned away from them. Thing is, the camera is somehow at its worst when it is fixed. I swear the stages that have fixed camera angles in this game are the absolute worst since the camera angles are horrendous. For example there’s a mission in Spiderman 2: Enter Electro where you have to catch a train, now you would think this would be a simple fixed vertical camera angle but nope the camera shifts to a diagonal view when standing in certain spots which annoyed me to no end as I would end up swinging diagonally by accident instead of forward because the camera angles fucked with me so goddamn much.

Obviously there’s more to these games than combat, there’s a heavy emphasis on platforming as well and this is handled a little better as you can web swing across buildings with ease. The only downside is that Spiderman can be very difficult to control when upside down because the controls feel as if they’re inverted since pressing forward doesn’t move him forward in the direction of the camera, rather it moves him forward in the direction he’s facing and this can be a real nuisance. Spiderman moves rather slow when climbing which can make climbing walls feel a bit tedious at times, though I can’t really complain too much as the camera focus button also doubles as a camera control button, yes you can actually move the camera with the left analog stick or d pad, not the right analogue stick though, this is likely due to the fact that the PS1 didn’t originally come shipped with a right analogue stick but it would have been so much easier if it did since you could do all of this on the fly. The camera movement can feel a bit slow and clunky but it gets the job done, you can zipline with the press of a button, letting cancel your webswings with a simple jump into a zipline which feels surprisingly good.

Now there are many different levels in each game, some of them are timed chase sequences, others are platforming sections with a few baddies along the way, then you have the combat focused levels where there are a bunch of enemies in a room to fight, usually with an objective to deal with along the way and of course you have the boss fights. Some of these take place indoors but others take place atop skyscrapers. The only thing each level has in common is that they feel more like a wrestling match with the horrible controls, camera and lock on as opposed to fun challenges. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty cool ideas such as stopping a plane from exploding and escaping from police helicopters but these levels can be very frustrating to deal with as well, no thanks to the controls of course. Seriously Spiderman really can’t catch a break at all in this game, though quite frankly it’s quite fitting for our friendly neighborhood hero to be put in all of these bad situations. I can’t help but love all of his one-liners in this game and how snarky he is, it’s almost as if the games are self-aware about how aggravating some of the levels can be since Spiderman never ceases to comment on all of the ordeals that await him, in fact I’d argue that this is probably the best part of both games.

This visuals are absolutely shocking

Another great thing about these games is the visuals, now sure, the facials are absolutely horrific for the human characters but I find Spiderman and some of the less human-like villains to look pretty well designed for a PS1 game (Enter Electro even adds a layer of webbing under his armpits which is a nice touch), though they did come out late in the ps1’s lifespan to be fair. I think the city skyline feels a bit empty though, you can’t see any city beneath you so you feel like you’re jumping across floating platforms at times. There are moments, particularly in the second game where you get to move around on the city streets which is nice I suppose. I personally found the final few levels of the second game to be the most interesting in terms of aesthetic, while the first game for the most part I found to be pretty forgettable by comparison in terms of level concept.

The music in the first Spiderman is done by everybody’s favorite advocate Intellevision Amico advocate, Tommy Tallerico, while the other was done by Todd Masten, so it goes without saying that both soundtracks are completely different. The first game has a mix of electronic and rock while the second game is mostly electronic music. Now considering the fact that I played the second game as a kid, the soundtrack is somewhat memorable to me, however I can’t really say that either soundtracks are particularly noteworthy personally, I’d say Tommy Tallerico’s soundtrack in the first game is a little better than the second game’s soundtrack overall but not by much. Some tracks are just short loops that repeat over and over again seemingly endlessly and that’s likely what makes them so memorable since they are so unbelievably repetitive that they get stuck in your mind. I wouldn’t say that either of the soundtracks are terrible though, I mean it’s not as bad as say Crazy Bus but it’s still nothing special either.

Meanwhile, at the Dreadlords’ Citadel somewhere in the Twisting Nether… oh wait wrong game.

The story of Enter Electro takes place right after the story of the first game, so they are loosely connected. You don’t necessarily have to play the first game to understand the second game but the game’s ending does have a reference to the first game that players might recognize if they played the first game. Ultimately the story is best described as being your typical day in the life of Spiderman as you unravel a conspiracy and stop the big bad at the end. Both Spiderman and Venom are the highlights in terms of characters, though some of the villains are so absurd, you can’t help but love them. It’s just dumb fun throughout and you can’t go wrong with that.

Honestly I’m bitterly disappointed with these games as a whole, perhaps it’s a sign of aging but they just suffer from too many issues for me to recommend. I found both games to be incredibly frustrating to play which is a shame because it could have been so much better had it not been for the terrible controls, camera and lock on. It’s hard to go back to these games nowadays after having experienced so many legendary games over the years and quite frankly, I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy, they are that annoying to play. The sad thing about all of this is the fact that these games have a surprising amount of replay value as you can hunt for comics and unlock costumes for Spiderman, some of which can give him cheats that can be used in game to make the game slightly less annoying to play. It sucks to have to be so negative about a game that I had such fond memories with but I have to be honest with you all, don’t waste your time and especially your money with these games, they really aren’t worth it in this day in age. They are nothing more than a relic of the past, which may have been fun back in the day but have aged like horseshit.

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Story/Plot: Satisfactory

Visuals: Good

Gameplay: Mediocre

Music: Mediocre

Lifespan: Decent Length

Difficulty: Play on Kid Mode and save yourself the ordeal, because it’s frustratingly hard otherwise due to the controls

Would you replay? I did and I regret it already

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Overall: Mediocre

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