Spawn - Armageddon

Kill something, then eat what's left of it. That's the loop underneath this one: Spawn's necroplasm is a finite resource, spent on his heavier abilities and refilled by absorbing the souls of enemies he has already put down. It's a neat bit of thematic bookkeeping, tying the character's mythology to a meter, and it gives the combat a rhythm that pure button-mashing wouldn't have. It also means the game punishes you for hoarding, which is more thoughtful than most licensed brawlers of 2003 bothered to be.

Point of View built it and Namco published it, with Todd McFarlane's studio close enough to the art direction that the cel-shaded look genuinely resembles the comic rather than a generic dark-fantasy pastiche. Alleys, hellscapes and rain-slick rooftops are rendered in thick outlines and flat blacks, and the story is told in comic-panel interludes. Keith David voices Spawn, and that casting does an unreasonable amount of work: the writing is thin, but the delivery gives it a weight it hasn't earned on the page.

Combat splits between the Agony Axe, the chains and cape, and a small arsenal of firearms, with the cape working as both a mobility tool and a whip. In practice the axe and the cape carry most of the game. Guns feel like an obligation to the character's iconography more than a considered system, and the lock-on is loose enough that crowds become a matter of swinging until the room clears. Enemy variety runs dry well before the level count does, and the encounter design leans on arenas that seal until a quota is met.

That's the honest limit here. Spawn: Armageddon is a competent, occasionally handsome action game that never solves the problem so many sixth-generation licensed titles ran into: it has one good idea and roughly eight hours of level to spread it across. The bosses are more memorable than the corridors between them, which tells you where the effort went.

Still, it holds up better than the PS2's usual comic-book fare, largely because it doesn't try to be anything other than a violent, self-serious brawl about a dead man with a cape. Fans of the book will recognise the tone immediately. Everyone else gets a solid weekend of hellfire and a soul meter that keeps you honest about how you fight.