Spider-Man is back for another web-slinging adventure in this PS1 sequel
What Is It? Spider-Man 2 Enter Electro is a 2001 PlayStation 3D action-adventure game. Electro has taken over as the main villain as he recruits a handful of fellow bad guys to try to take over the city.
The gameplay is nearly identical to the original game. The face buttons are jump, kick, punch, and web. The web aspect is the most interesting and original in this game as you have a few different options with the d-pad being used to control which one you want. These are important during battle, so read the instruction manual!
The game is played linearly through 20-something levels. A few early sections tease a bit of an open-world/area feel but that is quickly dropped in favor of linear indoor levels. There are extremely light puzzle aspects which mostly amount to finding a button to push so you can open a door to push the next button and repeat.
You will get the chance to web-sling your way between rooftops and, new to the sequel, on the city streets as well. This is mostly fine, but far from perfect and you will find yourself missing your target while swinging more than a few times.
The enemies in this game are almost all the same just with a different skin and increasing hit points; bad guys with guns. The original featured a much more interesting variety, particularly late in the game. Their AI is pretty awful as most of them will prefer hand-to-hand combat despite having guns which deal big damage to Spidey from range. We’re lucky criminals are so dumb, I guess.
The bosses each have a bit of a twist which is a nice, well, twist. You’ll need to yank Hammerhead’s gun before attacking him and Lizard can only be neutralized with a certain webbing, for example.
Swing, punch, kick, and web your way through a bunch of short levels and you’ll find yourself hitting the credits within five hours or so. I would guess at least 90 minutes of that time is spent replaying a few specifically annoying levels which have some kind of speed/time limit requirements to meet. The game isn’t terribly difficult on Normal outside of a handful of try-and-die sections.
The game looks quite good for an original PlayStation title. The Spider-Man model looks really nice and the bosses do as well, with Sandman being a particular standout as a shape-shifting mix of sand and human. It is, of course, going to be ugly today, but I think this is a very good looking PS1 game.
The game features a separate challenge mode along with Create-a-Spider which allows you to pair special abilities with different costumes that are unlocked through hitting certain goals.
The Best Part: Stan Lee. Stan Lee probably didn’t need to spend so much time doing the voiceovers for this game, but it’s wonderful he did. He handles story beats between missions which are fun. Even better, there is a character view option in the main menu and Lee provides a two or three sentence overview for each character. Some of these are throwaway, generic henchmen or robots, but the info on the actual comic characters are great. This also highlights how few cameos this game has compared to the original, which is one of my bigger complaints. Regardless, it is great to have Lee’s voice guide you through the story.
The Worst Part: The emphasis on speed. It makes sense for a Spider-Man game to want to lean into Spidey’s speed. He often chases down bad guys, trains, or whatever else across all of his media appearances, so it’s natural to want to include that in a video game. The problem, however, is in the execution. The levels which are timed all require a bunch of try-and-die in order to learn the patterns required to hit the timing goals. Others simply aren’t much fun, such as needing to take out Sandman’s giant wall so you can catch a train, while also avoiding Sandman’s attacks. You really need to learn which barrels you can pick up in order to be far enough away from Sandman so you are able to throw before getting hit. This is one example of many.
The Verdict: Spider-Man 2 Enter Electro screams “rushed sequel.” It is, functionally, almost identical to the original but it manages to be slightly worse in most regards. The move list in the instruction manual for this game is identical except for a couple of additional web impact moves.
The moves, controls, and graphics are copy+paste which leaves the level design and story as potential differentiators. Unfortunately, Spider-Man 2 falls short there. The early levels tease open-area stylings, but those areas are so barren it turns into a game of hide-and-seek instead of interesting levels. Elsewhere, the game leans too much into forcing you to move fast when the controls make that tough. There is too much try-and-die across all of the levels, the boss fights are significantly worse across the board, and so on.
My last gripe is that the game cuts out almost all of the cameos the first game heavily featured. Beast takes you through the tutorial which makes you believe the game will have a handful of Marvel drop-ins throughout as was the case in the first, but there is nothing after Beast. The boss fights are the only other Marvel characters you will come across (one minor exception aside).
That’s a lot of complaining, but I definitely had fun playing this game. My problem is that this game is almost impossible to recommend unless you are a hardcore early 3D beat-em-up and/or Spider-Man fan. The original game is a better version of the same idea, while there are many significantly better modern Spider-Man games. Spider-Man 2 is one for the hardcode fans only, but those interested enough to dive in will likely find a good time.
How to Play: PlayStation 1
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