Here we have a short, yet entertaining action game that is quite well presented.
As you might have guessed from the title of the game, you play as Spiderman alias Peter Parker. The story involves Kingpin, who has planted a bomb somewhere in town and accuses Spiderman to have done it. The bomb’s timer is set to 24 hours. It’s on to you to find the bomb, disarm it and let Kingpin feel what you think about his plan.
For SMS measures this game actually presents its story very well. Between each stage there are small dialogues between Peter/Spiderman and various other characters from the Spiderman universe.
The two buttons let you jump and punch (while standing), kick (while crouching) or perform a flying kick (when in mid-air). You can shoot webs which stun your enemies for a short time and hurt them even a little bit. Of course you can also use your webs to swing across the screen, which has a good feeling to it. The controls feel very good and are responsive.
There are some unique things that you can do while playing: When holding down both buttons you can select a camera and make a photo. Why you should do that? Because your web supplies will be used up quickly and for good photos (having a boss on one photo, for example) you will be given money that you use automatically between stages to stock up your web supplies.
Another part of the gameplay is that you won’t find healing kits or something like that to heal your wounds. Again it is between the levels, where you have the option to heal yourself. But healing takes up time and, remember, you only have 24 hours to find the bomb.
Besides some gun-wielding thugs (and sometimes also bats that shoot lightning…) you have to beat some of the most popular villains from the Spiderman universe: Doctor Octopus, The Lizard, Electro, The Sandman, Venom and the Hobgoblin. They are fun to fight and give the game a real Spiderman feeling to it.
The graphics are fantastic and there are only very few SMS games that have a better visual presentation. You will find a lot of details, whether they are on the great looking backgrounds or the well animated characters. The levels look very different from each other and some of the parts of the backgrounds are even destroyable.
While the music is rather boring and just doesn’t intensify the mood, the sounds are good.
You can choose between different difficulty-settings, but make no mistake: Even on the easiest setting Spider-Man can be hard sometimes. You’ll probably have to start the game over a couple of times to know how to handle your enemies and other dangers.
The game is short but has a nice replay value to offer. That is mainly because there are different things happening on the different difficulty-settings. Usually there’ll be more dialogues between the levels and you’ll encounter more or different enemies.
But there are more little things to find out…for example, in the second level you can break the lights and after breaking them all, the screen will become darker (and if you make photos while it’s dark, you’ll get less money). However, you can only break the lights on a higher difficulty-setting. Variety as such is no standard for SMS games…
Spider-Man won’t get away with some negative critics, though: There could have been more different things to do and some more different enemies. And as I mentioned before, the music really degrades to sound rating.
One more thing: Maybe the game should actually be easy on the difficulty “easy”…
If you own a SMS and haven’t played Spider-Man yet, you missed a good game for that time!