May 2007

Spider-Man 2 was a great game. It looked good, it played well, and swinging around the city was a blast. The absolute minimum that Activision needed to do here was take the existing Spider-Man 2 game and add some assets to it. Maybe they lost the original game’s code because Spider-Man 3 somehow looks, sounds, and plays worse than its predecessor. It also looks, plays, and sounds worse than the 360, PS3, and Wii versions of the game, but that’s to be expected from the previous generation’s hardware. Development effort was very obviously concentrated on the 360/PS3 versions of the game, and the poor, decrepit PS2 was left out to dry.

Missions are boring and repetitive, and they often drag for far too long. Tracking lizard-men was entertaining for the first few minutes, but by the end of the mission I was rooting for them. If you’re not beating up generic lizard-men, then you’re beating up generic gang-bangers. This wouldn’t be so bad if the combat was challenging in any way, shape, or form, but you’ll find yourself bypassing as much combat as possible to get to the boss fights. Not that the boss fights are terribly difficult either, but at least they offer a change of pace. Add Spidey’s black suit to the mix and combat is an absolute cinch.

With little in-game opposition, one of your biggest foes is the camera. How is it that we’ve been making three-dimensional games for three console generations and we still can’t consistently deliver a half-decent camera? Honestly, what is so hard about A

Spider-Man 3

May 30, 2007

Spider-Man 3 is simultaneously extremely entertaining and highly disappointing. Spider-Man 2 was loved for its sprawling city and web-slinging mechanics while being panned for its repetitive missions and lack of random crimes. Spider-Man 3 boasts a larger city to swing around, greater mission variety, and a larger pool of random events. As with every other game though, there are some bad points mixed in with the good. In the case of Spider-Man 3 those negatives are cheap bosses and poorly placed mission checkpoints.

Boss fights all boil down to one strategy; avoid the boss while your spider sense gauge refills, slow time, counter a move, lather, rinse, and repeat. For the first bosses, this isn’t so big a deal, but it takes over an hour to fight the Kingpin and boss fights are easy when they all play the exact same way. After slowly whittling away the health of your foe, a Shenmue-esque QTE begins and Spider-Man defeats the boss once and for all in a flashy display of physical prowess and quick web-slinging. Along the way to these various bosses there are both storyline missions and non-storyline missions, and many of these missions are made up of multiple segments. Under normal circumstances there is a checkpoint after each fight or major event. In one Apocalypse gang mission, there are checkpoints after the initial fight and after a bomb is disabled. This allows the player to attempt the boss fight at the end, fail, and try again without needing to reattempt all the portions of the mission that were successfully completed. In other missions, however, the developers completely forgot to insert checkpoints. In one photo mission, for example, Spider-Man must follow an impostor performing stunts while hanging from a helicopter. There are four photos to take, and all of them depend on following the helicopter and quickly getting into position. Fail the fourth photo and you’ll have to start over at the beginning. Few things are more frustrating than replaying the same section of a game over and over again in an attempt to move forward.

If all you’re looking for from a Spider-Man game is the ability to swing around a realistic New York City and complete the occasional non-storyline mission then Spider-Man 3 is easy to recommend. Web-slinging is fun; it’s fast, it’s easy to control, and the more you swing the more swing-related upgrades you unlock. And as you’re meandering about the city you’ll come across hurt cops, gang fights, random lizard-men, trick races, Mary Jane Thrill Rides, skydiving challenges, and four different types of collectible tokens. Those that ignore the story missions still have plenty to do in the world of Spider-Man 3.

Despite the larger metropolis, increased number of random acts of violence, and the plethora of optional side missions, Spider-Man 3 just doesn’t look like a 360 game. Spidey’s character model looks great, but everything else suffers from pop-in and pop-out – including buildings, cars, and random textures. Similarly, Spider-Man will sometimes dodge attacks by letting them fly right through him. Another issue related to the visual presentation is the lack of lock on and the shoddy auto-targeting. It isn’t uncommon for Spider-Man, despite the player’s best efforts, to attack a pocket of rather menacing-looking air instead of the gun-toting thugs.

Spider-Man 3 certainly isn’t without its flaws, but it satisfies my inner nerd’s desire to web around New York City and beat up gang members in an attempt to clean up the neighborhood. Spider-Man operates on a more personal level than many other superheroes, and it works to the game’s advantage. For some reason, it’s more satisfying to help the random New Yorker than to beat up on Sandman or New Goblin, and that’s Spider-Man 3‘s greatest strength. There’s plenty to do, and whatever part of the game you don’t enjoy can be safely avoided without impacting the fun to be had elsewhere in the title.

Spider-Man 3

May 30, 2007

Spider-Man 3, on the consoles, touted a huge, fully-explorable world. Starting up the DS version, I was expecting the same because the games’ faux 3-D makes it look like there might be a way to explore New York on more than two axes. Sadly, you can’t. Spider-Man 3 for the DS is purely a side-scrolling game. Side-scrolling isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s so much city in the background that’s just begging to be explored. There are gangs over there, and I want to beat the tar out of them and earn more power-ups. Now, the city can be explored, but only on a 2-D plane. And if going on random A

Spider-Man 3

May 30, 2007

Maybe Activision shouldn’t have attempted a simultaneous launch across eight platforms synchronized with the film’s release because Spider-Man 3 for Nintendo’s Wii could – and should – be a much more enjoyable game than it is.

The Wii isn’t a graphics powerhouse. This doesn’t mean that it can’t have fun games, but it does mean that porting a 360/PS3 game to it probably isn’t the greatest idea. In order to maintain the same sense of scale so much detail is lost that Spider-Man 3 looks like it belongs on the PSP. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the PSP, but when your console game looks like a portable game, it’s time to step back and ask A

he Game Boy Advance refuses to die, and games like Spider-Man 3 and TMNT are excellent reasons that all gamers should rally around the little handheld and hold it up as a shining example of portable gaming done right. Spider-Man’s foray into the world of the Game Boy Advance is a completely different experience than any of the consoles or other portables offer. And it has to be; the GBA has been around a long time. It has less buttons than the DS and PSP, and it’s certainly less powerful, but given the right developer – Vicarious Visions in this case – and a solid gameplay concept, a good game is easy to make.

If you’ve played any of the console versions of Spider-Man 3, then you know how complex his move set is and how difficult it can be to remember what button (combination) does what. Thankfully, the GBA version doesn’t include every move that Spidey has ever performed on the big screen. Jump with A, and hit A again while in the air to swing on a web. Punch thugs with B, and hold R while pressing B to kick. Shoot webs at enemies with R. As the game goes on, Spider-Man learns a few new moves (press up to shoot a web on the ceiling or hold up while pressing B to perform an uppercut), but they’re largely unnecessary, and I’m glad that they are. This time around Spider-Man is less about fighting and more about rescuing people from burning buildings, disarming bombs (by punching them!) and thwarting bosses using his brain vice his brawn (defeat the Mad Bomber by webbing his bombs to his hand, for example).

The game tries to follow the plot of the movie, but like its bigger brothers, the GBA version features plenty else to do and many characters that don’t show up in the film. This is a welcome change as I’d much rather be saving civilians than talking to Mary Jane on a bridge. Sure, it makes for decent cinema, but I don’t play superhero games to pretend I’m them and woo their girlfriend; I play them to use their superpowers and look and feel like a badass doing it. Spider-Man 3 for the GBA delivers on that front, and it looks good while doing it. Animations are fluid, characters are recognizable, and the whole package is great fun. The game is a bit on the short side, but it has the same charm that SNES games had- that quality that kept us coming back for more and replaying Turtles in Time even though we’d already beaten it a dozen times.

Spider-Man 3 is fun, and for a platform that is six years old and, by all rights and privileges, should have been replaced by the DS, that’s enough. If you’re looking for a superhero game that’s light on story and heavy on fun, then Spider-Man 3 on the GBA is an easy purchase.