I recently released a video about the 2000 classic Spider-Man and mentioned that my favorite game growing up was its sequel, Spider-Man 2: Enter: Electro.
It made me wonder if the sequel was really as good as I remembered it to be, especially compared to the first one?
Inspired by this thought, I decided to add the game to my section.
By the way, I recommend watching my video (or reading the blog) on 2000 Spider-Man first, since I will be referencing it often in this episode.
Spider-Man 2: Enter: Electro was released exclusively for PlayStation 1 on August 26, 2001.
However, the game has a complicated history.
Originally, the final battle between Spider-Man and Electro took place at the top of the Twin Towers.
But after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when the towers were destroyed as a result of a terrorist attack, the game was promptly withdrawn from sales.
Later, on October 19, 2001, a re-release took place, in which all references to the Twin Towers were removed.
Thus, there are two versions of the game: "before" and "after" 9/11, with slight differences in the later levels.
The game received ratings slightly lower than the first part.
This time I didn’t have a choice of platform, so I took the PlayStation 1 version from the “green store” with a 100% discount and ran it through the DuckStation emulator, which allows you to improve the original graphics.
See how the picture has changed: the image has become clearer, the models have become smoother, and the image twitching characteristic of PlayStation 1 games has disappeared.
The emulator has the ability to enable widescreen mode, but in this case the image rendering process becomes noticeable at the edges of the screen, which personally brought me some discomfort.
Pay attention to the right wall
Unlike the previous part, here you cannot enable the correct widescreen mode through cheats, so I decided to play with the native 4:3 aspect ratio.
Graphics
First, let’s evaluate the graphics.
It looks nice and doesn’t cause irritation.
Compared to the first part, the graphics, in my opinion, have improved slightly. Textures and models, it seemed to me, became a little clearer and more detailed.
On one of the levels https://paradice-casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ I came across the lost technology of the ancients – reflections on the water surface, created before the era of Ray Tracing.
Just like last time, I ran into some problems.
This time there were no errors with incorrect texture junctions, but the problem with loss of frames at certain moments remained. The problem with texture twitching also persisted, despite the activated setting designed to fix it.
In addition, a new problem has appeared – incorrect display of laser and lightning effects, due to which the hero’s view was completely blocked.
As a result, I periodically had to disable the image twitch correction function in the emulator.
Let’s move on to the gameplay
The core gameplay remains virtually unchanged from the first game, so I won’t re-list all the features mentioned in the last video. Let’s focus on innovation instead.
Moving on the web
Spider-Man can now perform more than two web throws in a row, allowing him to cover greater distances.
However, this only works on levels where there is ground underfoot.
At levels located on rooftops, everything is the same: the hero can only fly to the nearest building.
Combat system
The combat system remained virtually unchanged: the same combos and attacks using webs. Except that in some moments the animations could have been slightly changed.
New pick-up items have appeared in this part:
The fire web, which was previously effective against symbiotes, has been removed from the game.
This is probably due to the fact that there are no symbiotes in this part of the game.
Opponents
As in the first part, there are three types of opponents:
People – as in the previous part, are armed with firearms and prefer to fight at a distance, switching to close combat only if necessary. In some levels they can occupy turrets to fire at Spider-Man.
Unlike the first part, there are no annoying enemies like symbiotes, so it’s quite easy to deal with all opponents.
As in the first part, opponents in the game are tied to their game segments and do not overlap with each other.
In the initial stages, the hero fights with people, then for most of the remaining time he fights against drones, and towards the end, enemies appear in one of the levels – armor.
Bosses
As in the first game, each boss fight has its own unique feature, but is not without its problems.
Shocker: He must be defeated before the warehouse burns down completely. The developers have provided the ability to drop boxes on it to quickly achieve victory, but while you are aiming at the box, you can take a lot of damage. In the end, I decided to go through this battle without using boxes.
Lizard: Becomes vulnerable only after injecting the serum.
The problem is that after each death of the hero you need to go back to the computer and create a serum through a mini-game, and then the Lizard comes running and comically kicks the character, after which the battle begins. Moreover, if you inject the serum at the moment of the Lizard’s attack, for some reason it does not work, which leads to damage and, after several attempts, death. In the end, I decided to go through this moment with immortality turned on.
Final boss – Electro: You need to provoke him to attack the generators.
The problem is that the boss constantly spams lightning, and each hit on the hero knocks him down for a few seconds, which is very annoying. After several unsuccessful attempts, I also completed this fight with immortality to save time, since the boss has too much health.
I agree, I could beat the bosses fairly after a few tries, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on them.
In general, I found the bosses from the first part more interesting and epic.
Levels
As in the first part, almost every level has its own unique feature:
Compared to the first part, there are no sewer-like levels where you could easily drown or fall into the abyss.
In addition, levels have been added in which the hero runs through the city streets.
Also, in the process of passing some levels, you will have to complete a simple mini-game on the terminal in order to progress further.
Comics
They, as before, can be found in the levels and then read in the main menu.
Suits
The number of available costumes has increased significantly compared to the first part, and, as before, some costumes have some special features.
Training
If in the last part there was only an arena with opponents, now a full-fledged training mode has been added.
Where Processor X and Rogue teach the hero all the intricacies of the spider craft.
Plot
Although at the beginning of the game there is a brief reminder of the events of the first part, during the game I did not notice any obvious connection with its plot. I thought the plot of the first part was more exciting. However, in general, the plot of the second part retains the atmosphere and spirit of the original.
General impressions
I don’t know why I used to think that the second part of the game was better than the first, but now, having completed the first and then the second part, I came to the opposite conclusion.
Perhaps as a child I first became acquainted with the second part, and then with the first.
I completed the game in about 3 hours, although there are walkthroughs on YouTube where players complete the game in as little as 2 hours.
Unfortunately, I didn’t notice any work on the bugs – the controls, while inconvenient and clumsy in places, remained that way.
Checkpoints weren’t implemented and I had to use the emulator’s save state to create my own save points since I didn’t want to go through the entire level again from the beginning.
This was especially true at levels where you need to look for key cards for a bomb or climb for a long time, trying not to fall into traps.