Spiderman & Venom: Maximum Carnage for SNES
Review #519
Spiderman & Venom: Maximum Carnage
The most overrated beat-em-up on SNES
Gameplay
Has all the moves like punch, grab, throw, run, and a cool swing mechanic. Also a fun "get over here" move using your webs.
Unfortunately, the name of the game is to avoid grabbing enemies as much as possible since it makes you vulnerable to attacks. Throwing takes down other enemies but you can't just hold one direction, you have to press up to pick up the enemy before you can then throw. Again, in this added effort gives other enemies an opening to attack you. All this adds up to a sense of unavoidable cheap hits from enemies. It ruins what are otherwise good controls.
Very fast movement. Maybe too fast. Enemies dart around the screen making it hard to corner them all on one side of the screen.
Hit detection is ok but again there are a lot of cheap hits that come out of nowhere when you've got a group of enemies cornered. It's just really hard to fight more than one enemy at a time.
Level Design
Does some interesting things, like having you walk right, as normal, but then backtracking to the left a screen before continuing to the right. Why? Who knows. There are a few things to pick up and throw like a dumpster and a bundle of newspapers. Second level has you climbing up the side of a building, swinging between buildings. It's a bit awkward and I was glad when it was over. The third level has a steep incline rather than the usual flat arena. Kinda nice.
Theme
Very scripted storyline. Unexpected events happen, like beating a goon and then two more identical guys appear over and over until you inevitably lose all health at which point the stage ends and a cutscene plays. Follows the comic book story to a T which is certainly unique for this genre. Spider-man has never been my favorite superhero though.
One issue I have (and this is common of superhero games) is suspending belief that powerful beings like Venom or Spidey can be beat up by normal humans. In fact the most annoying enemies, who hit really hard, are these tall skinny girls. Riiiight.
Art Style
Great animation. The characters have a weird design to them. They don't look quite human. I don't know what it is. Maybe they're too tall or have weird contours to their bodies. They just look unnatural. Still, the graphics are undeniably good, it's just the character models and overall style of the artwork that I don't care for.
Audio
Rockin music. Sounds are satisfying.
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