Reviewed by Dyson Turner
Maximum Carnage in my opinion is an outstanding game at
first. Spiderman is huge, and well done, and so is just
about everything else. This game looked like and played much
like Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2. I t was a beat them
up type of game, and it was a first for the Spiderman games.
It was pretty good at first glance. I was like wow this game
is and looks great huge character highly detailed stages.
And there were a lot of fun things to do however in some
areas it just falls short of what was expected of it, and
what was speculated. I was hoping and looking for a much
better game. This game is just a little too shallow for my
taste. It could have been better but they did try to mimic
the comic book series of Maximum Story. I'm not saying that
I didn't like it, but the minimum play value of this game
was just a little too short for my taste. I would have
rather had a few more options thrown in, and some better
features. The game just seemed too incomplete, and not well
rounded like many would have expected of it.
Story 9.0/10
A pretty good story and I read the comic book series that
this game was based on. It was about the recently obtained
man known as Carnage, he was kind of nuts. They finally
caught him and brought him to the insane asylum. When they
brought him near the back he got too close to his symbiotic
suit they gave him the powers he transformed into Carnage.
Carnage reeked havoc on Asylum and made it back into the
streets of New York. Spiderman hears of this and the people
started rioting and causing chaos it was up to him to a put
a stop to it. The comic book had an excellent series of
books, this tries to sum it up in one game and misses out on
key details. Although this is still good for a video game
story, think of this as a movie to game video game, because
of the incomplete key elements were left out.
Graphics 9.5/10
The graphics in this game were pretty good, and some of the
best on Genesis on the time this came out. The Spiderman
character was fairly large and highly detailed, he looked
kind of built like the way he did in the comic book. The
Venom character and Carnage both had a lot of detail too,
and the way they move was pivotal to the way the frames
showed them. The enemy characters that you fought through
most of the game however were pretty lifeless. They're as
maybe, and are huge maybe 7 different types of enemies. Even
though for the most part you would only encounter 3 or so
throughout most of the game. The were all faceless, and the
colors of their clothing lacked any life or meaning to it.
The backgrounds were slightly better though, and they're all
looked like important places in New York and other parts of
the country. The cut scenes where you would read what
appeared to be comic book pages looked pretty good. The
makers did a good job here though. What really made the graphics
great were the huge main characters and some of the bosses.
Sound 8.0/10
The sound in the game was pretty good. It was done by a
group called Green Jelly, which I never heard of. For the
most part though it was pretty good and it came off loud and
clear. Not the actual content here, I'm talking the way the
Genesis speakers produced it, Genesis made sure it was good.
Many people did not expect this from the Genesis at all. The
sound effects in the game was top notch as well, although
reported before the game came out that you would have voice
actors doing some parts of the game there wasn't any voice
acting here. The sound effects like Spiderman's web and him
throwing things and punching sounded generic at best, but
for the most part clicked together with the music. Some
musical pieces in the game I highly enjoyed like the opening
theme, it came off loud and was quite an enjoyable music to
listen to. For a game of this magnitude on the Genesis the
sound did not destroy it one bit which would usually happen
with games like this. The sound and the music worked quite
well with the graphics to make this an enjoyable game on the
outside and a very attractive one.
Game Play 7.5/10
This game is for one player only, another huge blow to it.
And one of the many flaws found throughout the game. The
game had about 17 levels. Which was another huge flaw in the
game. No save feature, no two-player mode and too many
levels is quite hard to get through and quite boring. This
was your typical rockum sockum beatum up. Spiderman did have
some nice moves though he could pick people up punch and
kick and do some other cool moves like grab people with his
web fluid. Venom had similar moves to Spiderman but he was
much stronger and more viscous. At certain points of the
game you could pick between Spiderman and Venom. When you
did this did change the story slightly adding a little
something to the replay value. During the game you would
find icons with other super hero faces on them. Using these
would call on other Super Heroes like Captain American and
they would whip out all the enemies. Depending on which
character you would use they would do something different.
This was a feature that was talked about on the beginning of
the game when it came out but it fell short of being
awesome. The difficulty on the game was Hard and there
wasn't any save or password feature.
Overall 8.0/10
Well this game isn't bad it was pretty good actually but too
many evident flaws. Like no two-player mode, it was too hard
for one play through without a password or save feature. No
options to lower the difficulty of the game also lowered
this game badly. If and when you ever get through it isn't
worth playing through, sure there were secrets and other
levels, but it still isn't worth it. The Fun Factor through
the original play through during the beginning was fun.
After beating through countless men this game gets boring.
The Replay value is none, its not fun enough or worth to get
through again. The good things about this game were you got
to play two characters like Venom and Spiderman and That's
rare to do. The sequel is actually worst, but That's another
story, if you like Spiderman and comics get this.
