Spawn: Armageddon
The war between Heaven and Hell is fraught with mediocrity.
Published: December 20, 2003
Despite the endless stream of crappy games, movies, toys, and whatever else Todd McFarlane has managed to turn his Spawn comics into, I still hold out hope for Al Simmons' conversion into something more than just an expensive reading habit. Unfortunately, as demonstrated time and again, Spawn's knack for being fleshed out by game developers with far too little talent to do the source material justice is uncanny. Spawn: Armageddon joins the ranks of failed attempts at bringing the war between Heaven and Hell to console gamers in anything but a sloppy mess.
For those that don't have the background on ol' prune face, we'll give you the low down. Al Simmons had things rather good; a cushy government black ops gig where he killed people and nobody knew about it, a loving wife and daughter, and a reliable partner. Turns out, however, that his boss, Jason Wynn is rather evil, and on a routine mission, kills Al, sending him to hell. Instead of dying, Al is transformed into a Hellspawn and given the task of heading up Hell's army by Malbolgia, McFarlane's version of Satan. Al agrees, wanting nothing more than the chance to return to his wife and daughter and avenge his murder.
When he returns to Earth, however, plenty has changed. Spawn's old partner, Terry, has married his wife, and his body is wracked with pain. Confused and angry, Spawn slowly begins to learn that his deal with the devil was hardly a fair one. Instead of joining Hell, however, he decides to straddle the line between good and evil, using his Hell-based powers to fight evil, yet never really good enough to get on Heaven's good side. In fact, Heaven is having issues of its own while Spawn slowly figures things out. A rogue sect of Heaven's angelic army has built a weapon to strike right at Hell. This of course allows Hell's minions to escape and terrorize Earth. Spawn doesn't take too kindly to uninvited demonic houseguests on his turf and sets off to stop the onslaught.
This is about as much story as you're going to get in the whole of Spawn: Armageddon. Most of the 20 or so levels in the game are taken up by seemingly endless amounts of boring, repetitive combat. Spawn can use his demonic powers, chains or guns to take down enemies, but for the most part your attacks will come in the form of a three-hit combo from Agony, Spawn's axe. A handful of in-game cutscenes barely move things along through a collection of painfully bad dialogue voiced by none of the HBO cartoon series' cast, making for a painfully bland storyline with no recognizable voice talent (though Steven Jay Blum and John Dimaggio - the voices of Spike from Cowboy Bebop and Bender from Futurama - lend some decent parts to the mix).
Part of Armageddon's problem is that it's just plain boring. Jumping puzzles that should break up the constant wafer thin fighting mechanics are bogged down by sloppy controls and lousy clipping, the upgrade system (similar to Devil May Cry's in that you can upgrade weapons, health and special attack energy with the currency of souls picked off of slain enemies at the end of each level) can't really make the underlying gameplay any more attractive, and the sloppy controls and camera keep attacks from falling where they should at times - particularly special attacks that eat up valuable necroplasm.
There was an attempt to bring a decent amount of the Spawn mythos into the game, but mainly in the form of encyclopedia info for the enemies and comic book covers. Armageddon is incredibly short, but you won't unlock all the bonus goodies available on the title screen until you've played through the game's increasing difficulty levels, which of course requires you to actually play through the game multiple times, something that most gamers won't even want to do once.
Part of the game's less than stellar feel comes from the graphics engine, which pumps out barely next-gen level graphics and offers nothing in the way of attractive eye candy. Even the blood spatters harken back to the 32-bit days, flying off of targets in huge, angular clumps instead of more refined particle effects. Overused pieces like boxes or cabinets give environments a repetitive feel, and astonishingly, the framerate stays at or below the 30fps mark nearly all the time - a real head scratcher considering the low quality texture work and small levels.
Aside from the use of a Marilyn Manson track, most of the music and effects in the game are utterly forgettable. Spawns grunts and enemy yeps are cookie cutter basic and the rest of the effects for everything ranging from Spawn's weapons to explosions to footfalls fall flat. The music is slightly dynamic in that it switches from the moody, ambient refrains to a more action-oriented basic guitar loop, but it's all quite boring. Even the voice acting is rather mild, and the aforementioned script means dialogue is laughably clichéd.
Spawn: Armageddon is quite simply a bad game. Period. There's just not enough variety in the combat to make the action entertaining, and poorly designed jumping puzzles, sloppy combat and unresponsive controls all add up to a game that won't even keep Spawn fans entertained for more than a few seconds. Stay far, far away from this one and hope that there aren't any more Spawn projects in the works for a while. Spawn fans deserve better than this.
For those that don't have the background on ol' prune face, we'll give you the low down. Al Simmons had things rather good; a cushy government black ops gig where he killed people and nobody knew about it, a loving wife and daughter, and a reliable partner. Turns out, however, that his boss, Jason Wynn is rather evil, and on a routine mission, kills Al, sending him to hell. Instead of dying, Al is transformed into a Hellspawn and given the task of heading up Hell's army by Malbolgia, McFarlane's version of Satan. Al agrees, wanting nothing more than the chance to return to his wife and daughter and avenge his murder.
When he returns to Earth, however, plenty has changed. Spawn's old partner, Terry, has married his wife, and his body is wracked with pain. Confused and angry, Spawn slowly begins to learn that his deal with the devil was hardly a fair one. Instead of joining Hell, however, he decides to straddle the line between good and evil, using his Hell-based powers to fight evil, yet never really good enough to get on Heaven's good side. In fact, Heaven is having issues of its own while Spawn slowly figures things out. A rogue sect of Heaven's angelic army has built a weapon to strike right at Hell. This of course allows Hell's minions to escape and terrorize Earth. Spawn doesn't take too kindly to uninvited demonic houseguests on his turf and sets off to stop the onslaught.
This is about as much story as you're going to get in the whole of Spawn: Armageddon. Most of the 20 or so levels in the game are taken up by seemingly endless amounts of boring, repetitive combat. Spawn can use his demonic powers, chains or guns to take down enemies, but for the most part your attacks will come in the form of a three-hit combo from Agony, Spawn's axe. A handful of in-game cutscenes barely move things along through a collection of painfully bad dialogue voiced by none of the HBO cartoon series' cast, making for a painfully bland storyline with no recognizable voice talent (though Steven Jay Blum and John Dimaggio - the voices of Spike from Cowboy Bebop and Bender from Futurama - lend some decent parts to the mix).
Part of Armageddon's problem is that it's just plain boring. Jumping puzzles that should break up the constant wafer thin fighting mechanics are bogged down by sloppy controls and lousy clipping, the upgrade system (similar to Devil May Cry's in that you can upgrade weapons, health and special attack energy with the currency of souls picked off of slain enemies at the end of each level) can't really make the underlying gameplay any more attractive, and the sloppy controls and camera keep attacks from falling where they should at times - particularly special attacks that eat up valuable necroplasm.
There was an attempt to bring a decent amount of the Spawn mythos into the game, but mainly in the form of encyclopedia info for the enemies and comic book covers. Armageddon is incredibly short, but you won't unlock all the bonus goodies available on the title screen until you've played through the game's increasing difficulty levels, which of course requires you to actually play through the game multiple times, something that most gamers won't even want to do once.
Part of the game's less than stellar feel comes from the graphics engine, which pumps out barely next-gen level graphics and offers nothing in the way of attractive eye candy. Even the blood spatters harken back to the 32-bit days, flying off of targets in huge, angular clumps instead of more refined particle effects. Overused pieces like boxes or cabinets give environments a repetitive feel, and astonishingly, the framerate stays at or below the 30fps mark nearly all the time - a real head scratcher considering the low quality texture work and small levels.
Aside from the use of a Marilyn Manson track, most of the music and effects in the game are utterly forgettable. Spawns grunts and enemy yeps are cookie cutter basic and the rest of the effects for everything ranging from Spawn's weapons to explosions to footfalls fall flat. The music is slightly dynamic in that it switches from the moody, ambient refrains to a more action-oriented basic guitar loop, but it's all quite boring. Even the voice acting is rather mild, and the aforementioned script means dialogue is laughably clichéd.
Spawn: Armageddon is quite simply a bad game. Period. There's just not enough variety in the combat to make the action entertaining, and poorly designed jumping puzzles, sloppy combat and unresponsive controls all add up to a game that won't even keep Spawn fans entertained for more than a few seconds. Stay far, far away from this one and hope that there aren't any more Spawn projects in the works for a while. Spawn fans deserve better than this.
