I’ve been meaning to get around to this for a while and I’ve sort of offhandedly mentioned, but I’ve been trying to go through as many Spider-Man video games as I can get my hands on. I figure formatting it into a blog type deal is the best way to share the journey.
I think an ideal place to start with this is to establish my history with Spider-Man and why I want to do this. Like most people ever since my youth I’ve found Spider-Man extremely cool, mostly because he is, but I’ve actually never really read any of the comics (well sorta I had some assorted compilation books as a kid, but I hated reading so I just looked at the picture). Most of my exposure came from the Raimi movies and of course videos games. Well more accurately video game, that being Ultimate Spider-Man for the GBA. Very recently however I’ve fallen into a deep Spider-Man hyperfixation which has involved the purchasing of many Venom action figures, the consideration of actually reading comics, and of course my absolute favorite thing, video games. Aside from GBA games I’d never played any of the Spider-Mans (I had played 2 for like an hour once, but it was years ago) and I am nothing if not thorough so in order to get the broadest possible look at what Spider-Man has to offer game wise I’m just gonna play a ton of them in no particular order.
Notably I’ve already started this quest and I’ve been formatting my progress into a tier list. It’s specifically ranking them against each other as Spider-Man games and not necessarily games as a whole. Some stuff may shift around as I go and I might even add more tiers, but most importantly I should quickly catch you up to where I am now so that I can seamlessly add the new entries as I beat them.
Spider-Man 1&2 GBA:
The first 2 movie games are both awful and have very little in the realm of redeeming qualities. 2 is ever so slightly better than one, but they both have really stiff and weird platforming. Spider-Man really likes to stick to walls and not come off of them especially when you really need him to. The first game has a fight with Kraven where for the first 2 minutes of it you just have to wait for him to show up and the fight is really hard too so you’ll have to sit through that wait every time you die. If I had to pick one over the other though it definitely goes to 2. It feels very slightly better and there’s these weird open world 3D segments that I find funny.
Spider-Man GBC:
This game is up there with some of the absolute worst trash I’ve played in a long time. I thought the first GBA movie game was as bad as it could get, but boy was I wrong. like any bad Spider-Man game it has weird stiff controls and you get stuck to every wall when you don’t want to and won’t stick to any walls when you do want to. Its absolute worst quality however is the soul draining giant labyrinth-like levels. you will constantly get lost and then get unceremoniously beat into a pulp by the most annoying enemies ever. This is at its core a game about how every bird and bat in New York vioently hates Spider-Man and will stop at nothing to kill him. Also all the bosses are simoultaneously extremely difficult and way too easy. The best way to beat them it to just spam shooting webs at them, but if you screw up the weird sliding motion you have to do to shoot webs even once the boss will eviscerate you in seconds. Didn’t like this one much
Spider-Man 2: The Sinister Six:
This is a massive improvement over the previous GBC game. it controls WAY better and while wall sticking issues are still present it’s much MUCH better. The levels aren’t anyhing exciting to write home about, but the fact they aren’t nightmare mazes puts it leagues ahead. Honestly it kinda has the opposite problem to the first one where I’d say it might actually be too easy, but a light effort romp through a simple platformer is much preferred to a frustrating teeth grinder.
Spider-Man: Battle For New York:
This one is honestly just kinda boring. It has levels where you play as the Green Goblin, but he’s like a big hulking monster in this version of the Spider-Man universe instead of a funny guy who throws pumkin bombs. His game play just consists of mashing a button to throw fireballs while going down straight boring hallways. A constant problem is you’ll spend all your energy throwing fireballs and you just have to sit and wait for it to recharge and it is VERY slow. The Spider-Man levels (which is most of them) don’t fair too much better and are just as bland aside from the occasional instance of being on a timer to save civilians. This all culminates into a hilauriously easy final boss fight where you beat the tar out of the goblin in maybe like 2 minutes tops. All together it isn’t dreadful though it plays just fine and the I like the visuals because they’re mostly reused assets from Ultimate GBA, but it’s just such a snooze-fest.
Spider-Man: Mysterio’s Menace:
This one is honestly a worse game than Battle for New York GBA, but unlike that one it isn’t really boring. There’s a lot more going on in the levels with stuff like branching paths and secret upgrades to find. The visual style is also very charming to me, but I chalk that up in large part to nostalgia. As a kid I was never able to beat the final level which is a steep jump in difficulty from the rest of the game, especially if you want to get the hidden symbiote suit which makes the final fight against Mysterio a cake walk.
Spider-Man (PS1) & Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro:
These 2 are basically the same game mechanically and technically, kinda like a Mario Galaxy 1&2 thing except not as good and not as big a leap between titles. They’re really jank and time hasn’t been the kindest to them, but they’re not bad by any means. Just some really simple early 3D platforming/beat em up style games that you can easily wrap up in an afternoon. You get a lot of common Spider-Man control issues, but they aren’t horrendous. The cutscenes are really fun with really good voice acting (highly recommend checking out the reanimated versions of them from ChicoLantern on YouTube). As a big Venom fan this is also notably the first good game I’ve finished that prominently features him. Fun fact the last level of Enter Electro had to be changed cause it originally took place on the top of the twin towers so instead of swinging between 2 buildings they added a platform connecting the roofs.
Spider-Man 3 (GBA):
Spider-Man 3 like Battle for New York shares a lot of assets with Ultimate, but unlike BNY they actually use it all to great effect. The levels aren’t completely straight hallways with the same exact guys copy and pasted and it’s less of a button masher. there’s also a neat mechanic where punching stuff builds up a rage meter that gives you the symbiote suit. Unfortunately though while the levels are pretty fun the boss fights are extremely frustrating and almost, but don’t quite spoil the whole thing.
Spider-Man 2 (DS):
I’m conflicted about this one cause it’s very bad, but it’s also a lot more playable than some of the other bad ones. it definitely controls better than the first 2 GBA movie games, but it doesn’t control good. half of the levels are annoying mazes, but not to the same extent as Spider-Man GBC and the others are straight shots with annoying enemies. They also reuse some of the same maps a bunch of times which is the laziest thing ever especially considering there’s like 15 levels. There’s 3 boss fights against Doc Ock and they’re all really easy via a cheese strat, but they’re really tedious cause you have to keep waiting for your special attack meter to recharge. Also I can’t forget to mention that all the boss fights interrupt in the middle to make you play stupid touchscreen minigames which while I do find kinda cute they also kill any kind of flow the game might have had.
Spider-Man:
I get such heavy early 2000s vibes off this game it’s wonderful takes me back to the days of my youth like the scent of fresh lemon. I never had this game as a kid nor did anyone i knew, but playing it did remind me of back when I’d watch my siblings play garbage licensed game on the Xbox. Garbage is way too harsh though for this game as indicated ny the tier list. it’s definitely a square in the middle kinda game. There’s some weird stuff where it’s sometimes hard to make Spider-Man turn in the direction you want him to due to a weird stiffness, but it’s manageable. It really shits the bed though in the last half of the game a stellar example of which is a boss fight against a huge mech that can insta-kill you basically no matter what you do so it feels like winning is all up to chance. Really good big head mode cheat though so there’s points for that. Also I only learned this today, but my somewhat random choice of the Xbox version was a good call cause it has an exclusive level.
Ultimate Spider-Man (GBA):
This game is great it’s the one that started it all for me. Nostalgia is a huge contributor to why I like this one, but I’ve played it several times since my youth and I still think it’s good. I love how bright and fun the visuals are they feel very faithful to the comics based origins. Though I can’t lie the main draw for me has always been the Venom levels. My dream Spider-Man game is honestly just a whole game where you play as Venom and so far this is about as close as I’ve gotten. It blew my mind as a kid that you could just straight up eat the enemies while playing as him. The Spider-Man levels are fun too though, lots of interesting fun little objectives. It’s still definitely the best one I’ve played so far and it’d honestly be really funny if none of the other games get into S.
Anyways that’s all the ones I’ve done so far. I intend to update this thread as I go. I’ll probably give a first impression when I start one followed by a conclusion. I’m also probably gonna expand on some broader thoughts on these games as a whole here and there. If you read all this I’m sorry I don’t know how to write, but no one can stop me from doing it. If you have questions feel free to ask cause I definitely rushed through a lot of these so that I could catch up.
