Spawn Armageddon

The countdown to Armageddon has begun! Spawn must save humanity from extinction.

NA release: 21st November 2003
EU release: 12th March 2004
JP release: N/A
Developer: Point of View
Publisher: Namco
NGC Magazine Score: 52%
Mods Used: None

Spawn is a superhero that I know very little about, other than he was the Xbox exclusive character for SoulCalibur 2. From the mumbling dialogue (and no subtitles in the game), he’s someone that made a deal with the devil to save his wife or something. He reminds me a lot of Ghost Rider, especially as he uses chains as a weapon – there they’re a short range, weak “gun” that has the benefit of infinite ammo.

The game is a beat-’em-up using both melee weapons (a big axe) and guns (you get multiple types though the game), very similar to Devil May Cry, just without any of the flow of DMC’s gameplay. Your axe is assigned to the X button, your magic hell powers to Y (essentially a powerful magic grenade) and weapons to B, although there’s a very awkward lock-on system in place for the weapons. It’s all very simple and not very exciting, and most of the game is just mashing your way through enemies until the path unlocks.

There’s also some simple platforming, you can double jump and glide, but this is also not done in any kind of exciting way. Spawn can use his chains as a grapple, which requires getting close to a floating icon, which can sometimes be off screen as the camera doesn’t like to look up. The camera is often quite bad, changing to camera angles where you can’t see your opponents. Levels also feel disjointed as you’re warped to new sections due to unexpected loading screens. This doesn’t feel as tedious as the TNMT or Batman beat-’em-ups, but it also doesn’t do anything interesting, either.

Fine

Here’s a game that plays a lot like the PS2 title Devil May Cry, but is nowhere near as good. And when you consider that Devil May Cry isn’t all that much cop anyway, it’s odd that anyone would want to copy it.
NGC Magazine #91

Remake or remaster?

A re-release would be great for fans.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Spawn Armageddon.