Look at that beast of a cover. Carnage at his most frightening looming over the city of New York. If that doesn't scream in your head the words "Maximum Carnage", then I have no idea what will. But great window dressing doesn't always mean the most sturdy windows, and is that the case with the 1994 game "Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage"? Let's delve deep within the insanity to see for certain.
Acclaim had a firm grasp at the Marvel license for a good chunk of the early to mid 90's. They had released a couple Spider-Man games previously under both their LJN and Flying Edge banners. But with the ambitious Maximum Carnage, Acclaim worked with Marvel in an attempt to make the first video game based off an actual comic book. This case being the 1993 event of the same name that saw its way through the many Spider-Man titles over that summer.
Acclaim went with their tried and true team at Sculptured Software to develop the title, and even got the rock band Green Jellÿ to provide music for the game. It got some heavy hype, and even a really cool advertisement (though I love almost all mid-90's game ads, so that may be bias)
Hell, to prove how big a deal this was, they went the extra mile and made carts for both the SNES and Genesis carts a blood red instead of their standard grey and black so that they really stand out in one's collection. I've always found it odd that no other companies ever tried different color carts until the N64 era.
Maximum Carnage saw its release on September 16th, 1994 on both the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis consoles respectively to solid sales. How was the general consensus on these games? Let's see for ourselves.
The game's story follows that of the comics. Maniacal Cletus Kasady turns once again into his alter ego Carnage, and along with the likes of other villains like Shriek, the Spider-Man clone Doppelganger, Demogoblin, and Carrion, they go on an all out killing spree through New York. It's up to Spider-Man, Venom, and many other superheroes to try and stop Carnage's fun. It follows through the story mainly through animated cutscenes featuring stills from the comics themselves.
It's a fine example of that said ambition that I was talking about from Acclaim, who truth be told, usually half ass a lot of their projects. However, while the art and cutscenes are really nice, for the most part they feel randomly chosen in places Making for scenes that are cherry picked for how cool they looked instead of how well the flow in the narrative. For example, they'll have one cutscene with Carnage talking to J. Jonah Jameson, but then there's nothing of it in the rest of the game. It's fine if you read the comics beforehand, but if you're someone like me who never did before the game, they just come off as nice to look at, but not necessary to the game.
Speaking of the game, it's a one player action beat-em-up akin to the likes of Streets of Rage or Final Fight. Yes, despite the addition of both Venom and Spider-Man, you can only play as one at a time. And it's not even a situation where you can choose which to play at a certain time, but rather at certain intervals of the story. Sometimes that changes the progression of the plot, and sometimes it just means you'll do the same stages with a different character.
You use the D-Pad to move, the A button to punch, B button to Jump, and the C button for your main web attacks. With a standard 3-button Genesis controller, some of the other tricks aren't easy to pull off, but with a six button controller, you can throw a web to swing with Y, summon a stored superhero with X and shuffle through with Z. The game allows for the likes of Black Cat, Cloak and Dagger, Deathlock, and many more superheroes to be found through icons via each level.
You go from level to level beating what are literally the same five or six different thug characters. From trenchcoat bums to hair whipping women. From massive thugs to guys with umbrellas, you'll mow down the same enemies over and over again. While that's a given for most games of this kind, it does make the game feel repetitive. The only time this changes is at the Fantastic Four HQ, where you battle little robot spheres.
Boss battles don't help the feeling of repetition as you'll face the same enemies over and over just in a harder progression each time. First you'll fight Doppelganger, then Doppelganger and Shriek, then Doppelganger, Shriek and Demogoblin, and so on. Again straingely this only changes at the Fantastic Four lab where the boss is a giant robot named Muzzoid that can straight up murder you in seconds. Makes me wonder if the FF HQ levels were added last minute.
Control wise, the game plays pretty solid. Hit detection is well, and it rarely feels broken. Graphically, levels look nice and colorful, always giving off that animated comic book feel. Sound is also very solid, even on the Sega Genesis as the digitized Green Jelly music all comes off sounding authentic and hard rocking, making for one of the most enjoyable soundtracks on the Genesis console.
However, while I praise those, I will say the gameplay does suffer from some drawbacks. The difficulty is wickedly high as it's easy to lose lives fast to cheap damage. There are thankfully extra lives and continues to find through each level, the downside is that you only get a handful, and you don't respawn where you left off when you continue. Add to that no save or password system and you have yourselves one of the hardest games on the system.
Despite its many flaws, I still like to go back to Maximum Carnage from time to time. It does have its fun points despite frustration and some mediocrity. If you can find a cart, I'd say it's worth a play. Granted that you know exactly what you're in for.
RATING: B