Spawn: In the Demon's Hand

I never asked for a Spawn fighting game, that I can assure you. And even though the prospect seems good in theory, what I just played is far from the glamorous fair, and more like the Spawn movie.

My hopes were high, given the success Capcom has had with fighting games, and their good uses of licenses. But alas, there is very little to recommend with this strange Power Stone wannabe that looks dated, and plays even worse.

Departing from their usual 2D hand-drawn fighting style, Capcom's has tweaked the Dreamcast game Power Stone, and turned it into something REALLY lame. Don't get me wrong, I think that Power Stone 2 is one of the best games for the system, but frankly, I can't say much good about Spawn.

Like so many other fighting games, Spawn has you going through different levels beating up one fighter at a time. Each level is pretty big, filled with things to hide behind, multiple layers, and tons of walls to break down. While the levels are big, they aren't always easy to fight in. Since a lot of the characters rely on shooting attacks, many of the levels are unfit to do battle in, and the ones with wide open areas tend to be over far too quickly.

The game features a cast of characters straight out of the comics. Each character is large and animated extremely well. But none of the characters have enough attacks to be interesting. And one thing I'll never understand, why the heck can't you control the game with the analog stick? In this day and age, with a built in analog stick, there's just no excuse.

But even with a rather impressive line up of characters, Spawn fails to impress on a game play level. The game is far too repetitive, hard to play, and too dull to even express in words. It's not the worst fighter on the market, but if it comes up between this and Power Stone 2 ... I think you're choice is clear!