Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, GameBoy Advance, Xbox 360, PC

Genre: Action

Number of Players: 1

Supported HD: 420p, 720p

The Spider Man movie franchise has spelled some big business for everyone who has managed to get their fingers caught in the web. It’s not just been something profitable for the film studio, but merchandise of all types has come to the marketplace. You can have all the underpants, bubble blowers, and toys you want, but video games happens to be just another portion of the web of gold, and Spider Man 3 not only brings yet another game to ravenous fans, but it marks the debut of the series on next generation consoles.

Spider Man 3 of course follows the plot of the movie, though with some changes here and there as well as some additions. As we all know by now, Peter Parker, secretly the spectacular Spider Man, is about to ask his sweetheart Mary Jane to finally marry him, but this blissful occasion is going to be marred by the appearance of some new super villains. Harry Osborne, Peter’s long time friend, has become the new Green Goblin and is looking to avenge his father’s death, but he’s on the low end of the food chain as far as villainy goes. The Sandman, a new foe who can transform his body into living sand has emerged, and he also happens to be the same man who shot Uncle Ben. Peter’s also managed to obtain a snazzy new black suit, but it’s changing him, and soon it will lead to the creation of one of Spider Man’s most deadly foes; Venom!

With any of the Spider Man games though, you can’t simply use the same baddies that appear on film because quite honestly, it would make for quite a limited amount of gameplay. Added into the game for good measure are some other well-known Spider Man nemeses such as The Lizard, Rhino, Scorpion, even the Kingpin and Kraven the Hunter. The game departs however from the usual garden variety, forced gameplay wherein you must complete A to get to B and instead goes for something a bit more free flowing.

Just like with the Spider Man 2 and Ultimate Spider Man games, Spider Man 3 gives players a free flowing environment to explore and web across; New York City of course. By checking your map, you can not only see where you currently are, but also what missions there are available to undertake. Some of these will provide a progression to the games main story line while others are more or less side missions. Being the superhero, your other objective of course is to fight crime and presently, NYC is under siege by four different gangs. At times you’ll find them causing trouble in the city, something you can keep tabs on by watching for a yellow dot to appear on your HUD. Sometimes you’ll simply be brawling in the streets with them, other times maybe trying to stop them while they cause destruction in a stolen vehicle, and there are even instances where you’ll hear the familiar sound of sirens and should you follow the police, you may find another petty crime to stop.

You don’t have a worry about wandering around aimlessly in search of missions either. Not only can you see where they are located on the map, you can also chose them as your destination and a blue reticule will help get you where you’re going. There are also activities to do, such as races and skydiving, and much like the missions themselves, these can all be see and targeted thanks to the map. If you simply want to roam around NYC and try your best to find what you’re looking for, you’re free to do so as well, but I’d advise against it unless you’re simply looking to stop minor crimes and increase your ranking.

The necessity of collecting tokens or just about anything else developers can think of to unlock new abilities has also been removed. All you need to do is complete the missions in the game an little by little, you’ll gain some new skills, something every spider needs to stop the criminal element. You’ll start with the basics of course, and to get you started, you’ll even get a tutorial voiced by none other than Mr. Bruce Campbell himself. Hey, he’s appeared in every Spider Man film to date, so it’s best to just add him into the game for good measure. Spider Man has two basic attacks, his webs, and of course, his amazing leaping ability. Attacks can be linked into combos, but there are some other nice abilities as well. While being attacked, if you see the yellow warning indicator, you can press and hold the R1 button to slow down the action and counter attack, and it’s all fairly straight forward, though the real trick is that you need to have some energy in your reflex meter.

As you begin gaining other skills, you’ll find yourself with some nice combos which are performed with simple button combos, but there’s a trick. Much like your reflexes however, you’ll need to have your combo meter charged and this is done simply by fighting. The more punches your land, the more it will rise. When you finally get the black suit oozing over your body, your abilities will become increased but, this does come at a price. The game also utilizes a method of cinematic combat that is much like what has been seen in the God of War titles. You’ll find instances where different button combinations will pop onto the screen and your job of course is to quickly press them. Spider Man also has that handy Spider Sense that he can use to locate enemies and important items, and you’ll find some other familiar moves and abilities unlocked as the game progresses.

There are some downsides to the game however. Often, the missions aren’t nearly as straight forward as what they could be. While it’s easy to follow to your destination mark, at times the next step isn’t always clear. The combo cinematic are often too quick in the way that you must execute them and you almost need to have reflexes that go above and beyond what is normally expected. Collecting health can be troublesome as well and instead of simply picking up icons, you will be awarded them after stopping crimes or periodically during true missions, though on the positive side, mission failure and continuation will find you with full health. There are also some camera issues such as entering a building to fight and finding that the game isn’t intuitive enough at times to remove walls so that you can see leaving you to quickly rotate the camera, taking hits in the process.

Spider Man 3 looks good, but it’s not quite what I was hoping for with the PlayStation 3. Probably the best thing about the game is the city itself, and New York does look quite amazing. There are areas though that could stand improvement. Often characters suffer from polygons being too visible in their bodily construction. Mouth movements aren’t always fluid and aren’t done nearly as well as what was done with the latest Tony Hawk on the PS3 (though we are dealing with different developers in this case.) The frame rate is good, but the overall presentation really doesn’t take advantage of what the PS3 is truly capable of, feats that have still been untapped by developers. Spider Man 3 on the PS3 feels more like it is just a slightly modified Xbox 360 version, but when you’re under the gun and need to get a tie-in game out, there’s not really enough time to fully modify a game for unique cross platform release I’m sure.

Despite some flaws and a few cosmetic issues however, Spider Man 3 ends up being a rather fun game to play, though somewhat monotonous at first. Once you get a better feeling of exactly what the game is all about, things move much more quickly and with so many different things to do in the game, especially for those looking for perfection and 100% of everything complete, you’ll be busy for quite some time. I suppose that you could miss out on this title, but just like having a black suit, it will have its consequences.

 -mike-