YMMV / Spider-Man (2000)

• Awesome Music: The whole game's soundtrack is jamming, but if there's a single thing that sticks in everyone's heads after playing this game, it's the remix of the 60's cartoon theme.
• Best Boss Ever: The game has a whole bunch of fun boss fights, ranging from several encounters with Venom, the first of many a Bullfight Boss battle with Rhino, and a battle with Scorpion where you can trash Jameson's office. One of the standouts is the boss battle against a giant Mysterio, helped by his magnificent boss theme.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • Daran Norris as Venom is considered a surprisingly good take on the character.
  • Dee Bradley Baker as Carnage has garnered attention; many fans consider it to be one of the most terrifying portrayals of the character.
• Demonic Spiders: The Symbiotes. Unlike the humans and lizard men Spidey had been duking it out before, they can shrug off your web attacks, and melee combat is just a health drain, as by the time you finally kill one, you'll be down to just a sliver of health left. Even the web fists barely help, as instead of three full combos to finish one off, it merely makes it so it takes two. Only the fire web cartridges can kill them with any efficiency, and those are in rare supply.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Venom, due to his funny dynamic with Spidey and bombastic dialogue.
• Fanon: While the game leaves the fate of Cletus Kasady somewhat ambiguous^note He's not shown with the other villains in the ending, but Carnage is also last seen retreating into the tunnels after abandoning Otto, which opens up the possibilty of him going back for Cletus, players generally assume he's Killed Offscreen given how improbable his survival inside a collapsing Underwater Base without Carnage would be.
• First Installment Wins: In two ways.
  • Though there's nothing wrong with Spider-Man 2 – Enter: Electro, which was (and still is) generally received positively, this first installment is largely agreed to be the superior Spider-Man game.
  • On a franchise level, it's the first proper 3D Spider-Man game, setting the template for numerous Spider-Man games to follow, and is agreed to be very well done to the point it still holds up today. It's also a source of nostalgia for many, which keeps it on many "best Spider-Man games" lists year after another.
• Fountain of Memes: Venom for his general goofiness and Spidey because of how often you hear certain game-play related lines. Specific examples are listed in Memetic Mutation below.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Human enemies seem incredibly slow, taking a while to aim and shoot or simply swing their guns for a Pistol Whip. At first that may just seem like game balance to keep the first few levels from becoming frustrating experiences where you're continually stun locked and gunned down, but Spider-Man has been shown to be fast enough to dodge bullets before. You're simply perceiving humans to be that slow because Spider-Man is that fast.
  • Venom doesn't get an arrow marker showing where he is unless you're looking at him, unlike everyone else in the game. It's possible that the arrows represent Spider-Sense, and as we all know, Spider-Sense doesn't work on Venom (a fact that Spidey points out in the game).
  • Whenever you web swing outdoors, the web doesn't seem to be sticking to anything than the open sky, until you realize the web actually sticks to the top of the TV displaying the game you're playing.
• Game-Breaker: Briefly tapping the web button shoots just enough web that bosses can be stunlocked by repeatedly doing so — Scorpion and Carnage are very vulnerable to this. Scorpion can be beaten just by tapping web and following it with a combo, and the repeating until he's down. And as soon as Carnage enters the damage bubble, he's done for if you keep stunning him with web every few seconds whenever the bubble goes down.
• Ham and Cheese: Daran Norris was clearly very dedicated in his portrayal of Venom, delivering a hamtastic growling voice on top of the game having a lovably goofy comic book story.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Venom refers to Spider-Man as a "wuss". By the 2018 Venom film, he uses the word "pussy" to Eddie Brock.
  • This game had a Traintop Battle 4 years before a more famous piece of Spider-Man media did.
• Inferred Holocaust: After his defeat at the hands of Spider-Man, Cletus Kasady is abandoned by the Carnage symbiote, which then bonds with Doctor Octopus and chases after Spider-Man as the underwater base explodes around them. Considering the fight takes place at the bottom of the lab, it's highly unlikely Kasady managed to escape the explosions, and there's no way he would have survived without the symbiote.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus serves as the secret mastermind of the game's plot. Faking redemption so as to divert suspicions from himself, Ock leads a breakout of New York's most dangerous supervillains and harvests the power of alien symbiotes for his plans. Using the villains to distract Spider-Man while personally pulling off heists to further his research, Ock also kidnaps Black Cat to prevent her from aiding Spider-Man and keeps the psychotic Carnage under his control. Ock successfully unleashes hundreds of symbiotes across New York City before revealing his plans to further humankind's progression as a species by forming symbiosis with the alien lifeforms, proudly bragging that those who do not share his vision will be crushed by it in his "new world."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "WHERE'D SPIDER-WUSS GO? SPIIIDER-WUUUUUSS! COME OUT AND PLAAAY!" ^Explanation Venom's chosen nickname for Spidey.
  • "SURF THE WEB, SURF THE WEB!" ^Explanation A pun from Venom. Tends to pop up if this Venom is mentioned.
  • "I'm already at full health!" ^Explanation A line Spidey says if he tries to pick up health at, well, full health. Used to describe yourself when you're feeling good.
  • "I can't carry anymore web cartridges!" ^Explanation  Said when Spidey has the max amount of web and he tries to pick up more.
  • "Ah, the good old trusty Spidey-armor!" ^Explanation  Said by Spidey when he picks up the titular power up. Used to describe any sort of protective item.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: On top of playing reasonably well, it's clear that the people at Neversoft had a lot of affection for Spider-Man and the greater Marvel universe as seen by the many references and cool unlockables, and the entertaining story and character writing that does a great job of replicating the feel of the comics. In fact, this game was considered the best Spider-Man game until the sixth-generation Spider-Man 2 licensed game based on the 2004 film was released four years later — and even then, this game is often considered a close second to that one. Of course, both have long since been overshadowed by the 2018 game and its sequels — but even then, this game and Spider-Man 2 are still considered a close third and second, respectively.
• Older Than They Think: While Insomniac's take on Spidey (23 years old) is frequently praised for depicting an older Peter, this Spidey game depicts Peter as an Experienced Protagonist almost 20 years prior. He's married, well-known to the superhero community of New York, and Mysterio even comments that he's been active for decades, making him much more experienced than Insomniac's version (the manual states he's in his early-to-mid 20's). The Spider-Man games before didn't make a big deal about it (being based on what was happening in the comics at the time) and most of the ones after were based on the movies, where Peter was still in high school and/or college, making the "older Spider-Man" stand out more.
• One-Scene Wonder: Monster Ock only appears at the end of the game, but everyone who saw him in their childhood wouldn’t soon forget him in their nightmares.
• Polished Port: The Dreamcast port did a complete graphic and model overhaul to match the system's capabilities compared to the PlayStation original. And they didn't stop at in-game models, too, all of the FMV's were re-rendered to not only update everyone's character designs, but also contains additional animations for better reactions (albeit at the cost of some missing effects and minor desynced audio)
• Porting Disaster: The N64 version handled by Edge of Reality suffered from muddy graphics, complicated controls that uses the C-pad for action commands, misplaced music (such as the Underwater Trench theme playing in the Stopping the Fog stage), slideshow cutscenes that uses beta footage for the pictures, and the cool Spider-Man theme remix was cut and replaced with a generic looping bass line. The PC version handled by Gray Matter didn't do so hot either, featuring a slew of bugs and glitches that weren't present in any other version of the game, and needs to be patched to hell and back in order to run properly on modern hardware.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Jumping straight into hard mode or choosing not to use the black suit and its infinite webbing throughout it caps Spidey to just 2 web canisters at a time, which makes certain levels outright maddening thanks to a combination of the games' regular Difficulty Spike, some Schizophrenic Difficulty, and the constant lack of web fluid in situations you absolutely need it for. However, the game also doesn't care how the player beats hard mode, meaning that using the symbiote suit is considered a valid option towards 100% Completion. As such, a "vanilla" hard mode playthrough can be skipped unless one specifically wants to try it out.
• Superlative Dubbing: The Japanese dub. In particular, Shin-ichiro Miki provides Spidey with a voice that really sells the character in a genuine manner.
• That One Boss:
  • Venom can turn invisible (read: completely disappear) and reappear anywhere. He has several attacks in which he grabs you and takes out approximately a quarter of your health and there's nothing you can do to stop it. He seems to be especially vulnerable to impact web, however. Similarly to another infamous boss, Ridley, while other bosses have a catch to them (Rhino has an electric fence to lure him in, Mysterio has weak points to hit, etc.), there is no such gimmick with Venom's first fight apart from his invisibility - you must simply harm him as much as you can before he kills you. Best of all, you fight him twice. And the second time, you're on a time limit!
  • While visually spectacular, Mysterio is this for all the wrong reasons — most of his attacks are pathetic, but the arena and the controls were not designed to go together. To summarize: the arena consists of 3 levels of round ledges where you run around him and destroy weak spots. However, the awkward camera means you need to stop and face him to even have a chance of hitting him, but if you are too close to the edge, there's a high chance that Spidey falls to the lower levels as you turn to him. On the opposite end, the arena is surrounded by invisible walls that seem to be made out of flypaper, and Spidey'll constantly get stuck on it if you stay away from the aforementioned ledges — making it harder to dodge his attacks. The second phase adds lasers that don't seem to follow any pattern in addition to the above problems. This on top of it already being a very web-expensive fight, and the web controls sometimes just plain don't work and Spidey uses the regular web attack instead of impact web. On Hard difficulty the 2 cartridge limitation turns the fight into a complete nightmare.
• That One Level:
  • The mission "Missile Attack" has you climbing an abandoned building that's been partially boarded up while the police helicopter that's chasing you fires missiles at you. They home in on the parts of the building that are boarded, and if you happen to be on those parts when that happens, you're pretty much screwed. Partway through the level, the chopper starts trying to shoot you more precisely through a sniper-scope, but since you can see the targeting reticule, it's easy to dodge the bullets. Then you have to dodge more missiles. And if you lose there? It's back to the checkpoint, which was before you started the sniper part. There is a pattern to the missile launches, and you can see the missile's targeting reticules so you know what's about to be hit, but it's still frustratingly hard. The final section can at least be cheesed by just zipping up as the final ledge is low enough to allow it.
  • "Subway" features a noticeably jolt in difficulty, as it's a Marathon Level that spawns endless amounts of Mooks, and it's easy to fail by falling off the train by accident - the most reliable strategy is to abuse the hell out of web-dome, but on hard difficulty the game's 2-canister web limit makes this a lot harder than it sounds. The game does throw pickups your way, but actually hitting them before they zoom right past you is another thing entirely.
  • While "Tunnel Crawl" isn't that bad on normal, on hard avoiding the rising water level needs to be timed so precisely that you basically have to find the exact pixels where you can stay without drowning and start moving as soon as the water starts lowering. And no, invincibility will not help you here.
• That One Sidequest: Obtaining the Quick-Change costume, done by getting 10000 points in the zip-line challenge in the training menu. In short, the challenge is simple, crawl on the ceiling, drop and collect points and the zip back before you hit the One-Hit Kill floor. It's barely doable with cheats, and later versions of the game lowered the goal to 8000 because of how ridiculously difficult the task was.

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