Spider-Man: The Movie

Pros • Many more moves • Improved graphics • Better controls than the last PC port • Open-ended levels that look real • Aerial combat added	Cons • Occasional slow performance • Camera can be tricky
Bottom Line The movie is good fun, and so is the game. I saw the Spider-Man movie with the guys from Pseudo Interactive (long story) on the weekend, and had lots of fun. I thought the movie was pretty good--it was relatively faithful to the comic with changes that either didn't hurt or made sense. Willem Dafoe made a great Green Goblin, Tobey Maguire came off well as outcast Peter Parker and as super-lippy Spider-Man; and we even got to see Vern Schillinger play J. Jonah Jameson. It just wouldn't be a blockbuster without a game tie-in, and fortunately, the one it got is also pretty good.

Spider-Man: The Movie has been released for every active platform, much like the original Spider-Man was. The game has been designed for console play, so I was a little worried about the transition, since the first Spider-Man game came off rough when they ported it to PC. But the good news is that Spider-Man: The Movie for PC is an improvement on nearly every level.

First, graphically there is such a difference that the original looks like something you'd play on your Game Boy. Ok, maybe not that drastic, but you get the picture. Spidey is far more detailed, and the city is very real. You can see cars down below. Look out into the distance and you can see New York's docks. The buildings feel more proportionate, have more details, and what's more the levels are open-ended, so you can turn around, circle the city, swoop down low, or drop for quite awhile before the game kills you. It's a long way from that performance-saving fog of the original.

Spider-Man has a lot more moves. A lot. He's even more quick and agile than before. You can now zip-line in the direction that he moves, clearing a room rapidly or zooming up a sheer surface, instead of climbing all the way. Or you can hit the space bar for a quick double jump. It's even easier to move--when swinging on a web line you can automatically gain or lose height using the W/S keys. Hit jump to break the line, use the WASD keys to choose a new direction, hit the web swing key again, bingo, you're moving in another direction.

There are so many new combat moves it isn't funny. Even the old ones have been improved, and are quite entertaining. Remember how Spidey could land on an opponent in the original? Well he can do that, but as Spidey is punching him, the guy will run around in a panic. It's hilarious. There are all sorts of new combos that can be unlocked by finding special spider-icons as the game progresses. Combat and movement is entirely keyboard driven, and it works surprisingly well. In fact, I think I even prefer it to gamepad play. I'm a PC guy first, console second, so I've always found it easier to hit combo keys with the keyboard than a gamepad.

Combat is a lot more complicated, and not just because of the extra moves. In fact, it's essential to fight like Spider-Man would. When six goons get in close, the best idea is to zip line your way out of there. Maybe retreat to a safe distance and throw/punch objects at the crowd. Civilians now get in the way, and you may be required to actually pick up and swing away with Mary-Jane or another civilian in peril before you can turn around and fight the baddies. They've also added aerial combat, which is a lot of fun. You can shoot webs at flying villains like the Goblin and the Vulture high over the city, which is positively dizzying. It really gives the feeling of a life and death struggle high above the streets of New York.

There are just two things holding Spider-Man: The Movie back from the really high scores. The first is the camera. The camera can be controlled manually, using the mouse or the arrow keys, or it can be set to follow Spidey. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory and can leave you looking at a blind angle at inopportune times. Second, though the game calls for a Pentium II 500 with 128 MB of RAM minimum, it had real moments of slowdown on a Pentium II 750 with 256 MB of RAM. I might also point out that some of the new dialogue, even the stuff provided by Maguire and Dafoe, comes off stiff at times.

Still, the game works out better than the original Spider-Man PC game. Plus, you've got all the extras that can be unlocked by accumulating secret points and spending them in the store or by (ahem) finding the cheat codes. These will allow you to look at pictures and storyboards from the movie, concept art from both movie and game, and do silly stuff such as play through the game as different characters (including Mary-Jane in that Kimono-style dress).

The game follows the basic plot of the movie, but of course gives you extra things to do, including fight more supervillains, such as Scorpion, the Vulture, and Shocker (all classic villains except for this last guy, who I don't know. I preferred Electro, but oh well).

As movie tie-ins go, this one is pretty good and would be fun to play even without a movie in theaters. It helps that it's based on a game that came out and was great before anything hit the box office. At any rate, the Spider-Man games have a reputation for being the best console superhero games ever, and now that reputation is justified on PC.

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