Spider-Man for the PS one is a decent enough game even by today's standards, which I think says a lot for the care that Neversoft took making this game.
It's based on the early 90's Spider-Man cartoon and as such it has decent voice acting for the most part (a few choices such as Venom are just annoying but that's more of the cartoon's fault than Neversoft's). The figures are blocky, but this is a PS one game, so what are you gonna do? The cut scenes are good (not great but solid) even if the figures do have pretty limited body language.
The game allows you to do a few creative web tricks without making the controls too complicated. And even if you do find them a bit difficult you can always try the "Kids Mode." As Guy Ryder said, "there's no shame in Kid's Mode. I just leave out that part when I'm telling people I beat the game." If you're over the age of eight, however, and have more self-respect than Guy (which is not hard) then you can do the training mode and try to improve yourself. To monitor your progress there's a record section that keeps track of all your best times of each event.
It's evident that Neversoft loves Spider-Man. Each major arc of the game even has its own comic cover to kick off the introduction. Also, they've hidden comic covers throughout the levels (thanks to a FAQ from gamefaqs.com, I was able to find them all). You can also unlock numerous variants of the Spider-Man costume such as Ben Reilly's costume, Scarlet Spider, the symbiote Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Man Unlimited, Peter Parker and even quick change Spider-Man among others (my personal favorite is the Amazing Bag-Man).
But those aren't the only extras. It also has a character viewer where you can get a three dimensional look at all of the major players in the game and even a few important cameo players such as Daredevil, Captain America, the Human Torch and a couple of others. There's also one of my favorite features, a movie viewer where you can see cut scenes from any point in the game. They also have the storyboards from each of the sequences. Another little quirk is that if you leave the controller alone during the opening menu you will see a few demos, including Spider-Man in a James Bond parody. I think that in terms of extras, this game is as good as the PS one gets.
The story that holds the whole thing together is pretty thin but they do their best to see that it holds up and for the most part it does. The problem comes in that Neversoft is trying to get in every villain that they can get. In this game you have to fight the Rhino, Venom, Carnage, Lizard, Mysterio, Doctor Octopus, and Scorpion, not to mention countless thugs, goons and lugs. When the creators cram in lots of villains into one game, the storyline almost always suffers from it.
The game has an adjustable difficult setting but for the most part it is straightforward and easy. The ending is surprisingly difficult considering how easy the rest of the game is but the final cut scene is worth putting in the time to defeat the game.
The best part is how cheap this game is, if you can find it. I got my copy from Blockbuster for five dollars. This is a good clean fun game and it's a good way to spend an afternoon or two.
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