Narratively, this is a fascinating artifact. So disjointed and surreal it almost feels like the fever dream of a deeply sick crew member recalling their time working on the movie. Obviously rushed to be released at the same time as said movie and yet they completely forgot to incorporate anything from it into the game. Every single villain in the Spider-Man universe seems to be crammed in here and when the developers were ready to put this onto shelves they realized they completely forgot to include any of the major characters from the movie and just haphazardly threw them in there.
How else can you explain why they're given so little time here? If you knew nothing about the movie you would have no idea why all the climatic moments in this are centered around characters with almost no prior build-up. Without the opening and closing monologues that just flat out explains the entire Raimi series and Spider-Man's philosophy nothing here would make sense. Harry, a MAJOR part of the movie(s), only has two moments in this (both moments that the game INSISTS are majorly important) outside the opening monologue and when all is said and done we don't even know the fate of his character. He's just swatted off the screen by a strangely dummy thicc Venom and that's the last we see of him. No reconciliation with Spider-Man/Peter, not even a whisper of him in the closing monologue. He's just gone. Like where the hell did he go? Why did they put him in this??
The climatic finale taking place in a construction site that was surrounded by hundreds of bystanders in the movie is left completely barren here as Spider-Man and New Goblin battle it out with Venom and a GIANT Sandman (mind you, like Harry, this is only the second time the game has you interact with both Sandman and Eddie/Venom). The only person there to care is Mary Jane being her useless self (and that's okay) while bystanders are literally driving right next to the site giving it no attention whatsoever and it couldn't be any funnier how much the game doesn't give a shit about any of it. The game will dedicate four or five missions to each of its own villains but anything from the movie gets one mission after every 30 missions of the game's own. Almost feels like the developers had some kind of vengeance at Sony and purposefully sidelined the movie in favor of their own (boring yet hilarious) stuff. They're game developers working for a major company so it definitely wouldn't be shocking if they had any hostility towards the heads during the making of this.
Nonetheless, bless these developers. Entire game is a combination of rushed & "who fucking cares" with enough effort put into the existent yet non-existent narrative that it hits that peculiar line in the middle of "so bad it's good" and "they actually meant for this to be like this". You can really melt your mind thinking about how this one came to be. Was never not having a good time listening to these iconic characters they've made unbelievably deranged. Highlights of the game are that dummy thicc Venom and when you go idle while wearing the black suit Peter will eventually start screaming for no reason which is probably the only worthwhile gameplay in this. The slow motion dodge button makes the game stupid easy and if you don't use it some sections are almost impossible. Camera is just about the worst thing you can get in a videogame where a core gameplay element is swinging from building to building and the overall presentation is the stuff of nightmares. Back when this came out I remember thinking that this was (or at least was gonna be) next-level stuff that was going to push next-generation consoles to its edge. Maybe Peter sometimes looks neat in the black suit but overall not a single thing here looks good (even for back then) but for the best because would you ever want to replace something like this classic moment, among many, with anything else?.
Definitely a BAD game but certainly an entertaining one. At the end of the day, this has only made me miss the days of the movie tie-in game. Rarely do we get this kind of "memorable" anymore and it only made me sad that this era is long over with. Probably a 1 star for how awful it plays despite how entertained I was by everything else but I can't give anything with Bruce Campbell as The Narrator anything less than two (but this version of the game should really be zeros stars for the omission of our Father Doctor Michael Morbius).
How else can you explain why they're given so little time here? If you knew nothing about the movie you would have no idea why all the climatic moments in this are centered around characters with almost no prior build-up. Without the opening and closing monologues that just flat out explains the entire Raimi series and Spider-Man's philosophy nothing here would make sense. Harry, a MAJOR part of the movie(s), only has two moments in this (both moments that the game INSISTS are majorly important) outside the opening monologue and when all is said and done we don't even know the fate of his character. He's just swatted off the screen by a strangely dummy thicc Venom and that's the last we see of him. No reconciliation with Spider-Man/Peter, not even a whisper of him in the closing monologue. He's just gone. Like where the hell did he go? Why did they put him in this??
The climatic finale taking place in a construction site that was surrounded by hundreds of bystanders in the movie is left completely barren here as Spider-Man and New Goblin battle it out with Venom and a GIANT Sandman (mind you, like Harry, this is only the second time the game has you interact with both Sandman and Eddie/Venom). The only person there to care is Mary Jane being her useless self (and that's okay) while bystanders are literally driving right next to the site giving it no attention whatsoever and it couldn't be any funnier how much the game doesn't give a shit about any of it. The game will dedicate four or five missions to each of its own villains but anything from the movie gets one mission after every 30 missions of the game's own. Almost feels like the developers had some kind of vengeance at Sony and purposefully sidelined the movie in favor of their own (boring yet hilarious) stuff. They're game developers working for a major company so it definitely wouldn't be shocking if they had any hostility towards the heads during the making of this.
Nonetheless, bless these developers. Entire game is a combination of rushed & "who fucking cares" with enough effort put into the existent yet non-existent narrative that it hits that peculiar line in the middle of "so bad it's good" and "they actually meant for this to be like this". You can really melt your mind thinking about how this one came to be. Was never not having a good time listening to these iconic characters they've made unbelievably deranged. Highlights of the game are that dummy thicc Venom and when you go idle while wearing the black suit Peter will eventually start screaming for no reason which is probably the only worthwhile gameplay in this. The slow motion dodge button makes the game stupid easy and if you don't use it some sections are almost impossible. Camera is just about the worst thing you can get in a videogame where a core gameplay element is swinging from building to building and the overall presentation is the stuff of nightmares. Back when this came out I remember thinking that this was (or at least was gonna be) next-level stuff that was going to push next-generation consoles to its edge. Maybe Peter sometimes looks neat in the black suit but overall not a single thing here looks good (even for back then) but for the best because would you ever want to replace something like this classic moment, among many, with anything else?.
Definitely a BAD game but certainly an entertaining one. At the end of the day, this has only made me miss the days of the movie tie-in game. Rarely do we get this kind of "memorable" anymore and it only made me sad that this era is long over with. Probably a 1 star for how awful it plays despite how entertained I was by everything else but I can't give anything with Bruce Campbell as The Narrator anything less than two (but this version of the game should really be zeros stars for the omission of our Father Doctor Michael Morbius).