Ultimate Spider-Man

From the moment I saw the commercials, I hated the animation style. To me, cell-shading doesn't say "comic book". You want to see what a "comic book" game looks like, take a look at the classic Maximum Carnage. THAT looks like it came out of a comic.

When I got the game, my opinion of it didn't improve. Spider-Man 2 really set the bar for any future free-roam Spidey games, and this one falls far short. NY is reduced by HALF so they could add Queens. The buildings look like crap and the streets make no sense so they could add Ultimate locations. One thing I did like was the inclusion of additional NYC landmarks, although I'd rather not at the expense of all the others.

The comic panels were fine in moderation, but in EVERY FREAKIN' CUT-SCENE?! They got INCREDIBLY annoying. It's a comic, we get it, move on. I hated when they did that for the Hulk movie, and I hated it here. The city missions are the same as Spidey 2 (with the addition you fight Shocker and Boomerang every so often) but the boss fights really suffer. The vast majority of them include some kind of chase followed by a battle where you have to use your useless spider-sense (which doesn't respond anywhere near as effectively as Spidey 2) and they can be very easily beaten. No real challenge at all.

Spidey can't grab, Spidey can't throw, and there are no upgrades for the kind of web attacks you can do. Swing maneuverability has also gone the way of the dodo. Venom can grab AND throw, and has the strength Spidey is missing even if he can't swing. The only other negative is you need to constantly eat people when you play with him to recharge your health yet when you fight him his health stays full all the time.

Bendis' dialog is funny at times, but the story falls as flat as most of his padded out Ultimate issues. Frankly, Spider-Man 2 is your best bet to own. This game? Rent and return it.

Last year's Spider-Man 2 was a knockout in terms of what the series had done. It had so much going for it: a wide-open environment, amazing web-swinging mechanics, a solid fight system, and impressive visuals. Though the story itself wasn't too impressive, the gameplay more than made up for it. This year, the good folks at Treyarch have given us another impressive entry with Ultimate Spider-Man, but it isn't exactly what you would call "ultimate." First things first, this is the closest a video game has gotten to a comic thus far. Treyarch enlisted the talents of USM scribe, Brian Michael Bendis, whose monthly work on the Spidey comic title rarely (if ever) disappoints; and USM artist Mark Bagley, whose visual style is captured to near-perfection. The story is great -- revolving around Peter and his superhero duties mixed with his teenage woes. Never does it delve into the likes of the soap-opera nonsense found in The O.C., but rather, it focuses on a kid trying to do the right thing with the gifts he was given. Characters from the series pop up -- Nick Fury, Johnny Storm, Silver Sable -- and are an added bonus (if you're a comic nerd like me).

The visuals are so amazing, they astound me every time I play. This is probably the best-looking comic game out there. It's not that it's super-detailed, capturing every last hair on the character as you'd expect from an Ps2 game. Instead, it keeps things simple and maintains the look from the comic. If you took the comic and matched it up against the game, it's surprising how little variation there is. Buildings are simple and blocky, but they fit. The distant New York skyline is the slew of skyscrapers and towers one would expect. Even the characters themselves have the same Mark Bagley detail.

Spidey himself looks spot-on and he moves just like you'd expect him to. When swinging, his legs dangle appropriately; when he's in mid-air between web swings, he performs flips and flourishes that the wall-crawler is known for. His movements and exaggerations on his punches and kicks are taken straight out of his books. It's so much fun just to watch our hero in action.

The voice-acting is also impressive, especially since this is a video game. It's the same quality you'd expect from a movie or TV show. Despite it being a game, there's no bad or over acting going on here. Spidey is a squeaky-voiced teenager in the midst of puberty -- but that doesn't mean his trademark smart-ass quips and banter aren't accounted for. In fact, these are some of the best treats in the game. It's fantastic to hear Spidey say "sweet sassy molasses!" when he's shocked. The banter like "my point being: you truly do very much suck," is great. My personal fluorite is when he first meets the behemoth Rhino "…I'm so scared, I can even finish my lame joke." Good times, that's what that is. Besides, what is Spider-Man without his classic banter?

One of the issues that presented itself is that the combat system isn't as deep as in Spider-Man 2. Gone are the crazy combos that clear out any enemy standing next to you, as well as any purchased upgrade. Now, it's just a very basic button-mashing system. Kicks and punches are accounted for, but they're so basic that they're not as lively as they used to be. Though that change does make sense. This is a kid just starting out in the superhero racket, so he still has a way to go to becoming the icon we all know and love. The fighting system does rely on changing targets and bouncing off walls, which does add to the enjoyment of it. While the more intricate combos have been escorted out of the game, there is still some technique required. After all, Spidey always relied a bit more on his speed and reflexes before his strength.

Another point to touch upon is the web-swinging. In last year's title, collision detection on the web strands themselves were existent. Say you were rounding a corner, the web would catch the building it was attached to and whip Spidey around appropriately. Not so much in USM. If you want an extra boost when coming around a corner, you'll have to jump and shoot another web in the desired direction.

Also done away with is a sprint button. It's not a big deal, especially if you haven't played Spider-Man 2, but it is missed. Spider-Man can't sprint up the side of a building when crawling to make things a bit less tedious. While you can add an extra boost to your swing, that same boost is unavailable while moving along a surface. Charged jumps are also done away with. When climbing up a building, if you try to charge a jump to ascend a bit more quickly, Spidey will actually jump away from the surface he's scaling. Again, it's something that does indeed make sense, but it will be missed.

The biggest drawback of this game is the inclusion of Venom as a playable character. He draaaags. He can't web swing (but he can cover vast distances with his leaps), he relies on brute strength rather than finesse, and you must also devour people in order to keep the suit from killing the man inside. That's right, you are forced to eat people to keep your health up. Um, maybe it's me, but isn't that a bit off course from what's expected from a Spider-Man game? When compared to the swift, agile Spider-man, Venom is a slow, dull galoot. His missions usually consist of chasing a target around the city, which can get to be a real pain. Some chases require you to recharge your health during the pursuit, and in most cases, you simply don't have the time which results in a big ol' "Game Over" screen.

This is one of the most awesome Spider-Man games that has ever been made. There are so many good features that they have put into this piece of work that you almost lose yourself in the game. But everything, alas, comes at a price.

First, there's the good stuff, which is like, 99.9% of the game. The story is is understandable, which is a must for any game. The story basically revolves around the time where Peter Parker meets his childhood friend Eddie Brock. The game starts off with Peter against Venom for the first time. As the story develops, Spider-Man unlocks different attacks and Venom becomes harder.

The game play is very cool as well. The controls are easy to use. The swinging as Spider-Man is very good and so is the controls for Venom.

There is a variety of different villains that you face. They include Green Goblin, Rhino and Electro. There is a few more.

The only bad thing about this is some of the levels. In a few Spider-Man missions you have to prove your strength and lift or move heavy items using the triggers on your controller. Pretty difficult, but nowhere near the mission where you play as Venom against Carnage. You have to open some doors, and those doors are hard to open.

But overall, the acting, the story, the game play and the characters in this all add up to a really enjoyable game.

Ever played the Spider-Man 2 game of the movie? Of course you have, because everybody has. It was the latest in the endless parade of licensed games which were all but guaranteed best-sellers. But amongst the sludge that is churned out by the industry every year, there's always the one gem. Spider 2 was that gem: it's badly put together, the combat is repetitive to the max, the boss battles mediocre, and the acting average, but one thing is great: the swinging. You cruise through the city, making use of a near-perfect system for movement that is both easy to pick up and hard to master, meaning that just buggering about in the central hub was far more fun than actually playing through the story. It is rare that a single feature can save a title, but Spider 2 manages it.

Following in this surprisingly pretty good effort's footsteps is Ultimate Spider-Man, an adaptation of the alternate reality comic of the same name. Once again developed by Treyarch, the game inevitably shares many of its genes with the company's previous effort.

The first thing that jumped to my attention was the lovely cell-shading that envelops the entire experience, coupled with the genius use of panels like in a comic, which sees such moments as when characters jump to dodge an attack, fly out of a panel and land in another. It looks supremely stylish.

Less great, any veterans of Spider 2 will doubtless spend the best part of a half-hour struggling to get used to the unnecessarily altered control setup: whereas before one had to swing with R2, before pressing X to release and then fire another webline, the new game just requires holding and releasing R2 to move around. Some people prefer this, others don't, and I fall neatly into the latter category. It feels different to what I got so used to less than a year earlier, and therefore earns a good shunning from me. Still, a single nice addition comes with the ability to climb up a webline by holding triangle, which is a nice way of gaining some quick height. The worst part? The button layout is fixed, ergo completely uneditable. Grr.

Despite the flaws, I adjusted and enjoyed zipping about the (slightly smaller than before) city to a fair degree.

More problematic is the combat: to date, no Spider-Man game seems to have possessed a truly 'good' fighting system, and Spider 2's was competent at best, but Ultimate takes a step backwards. While less overflowing with pointless combos and more weightier-feeling, beating thugs up is simply a chore, made worse by the maddening requirement of webbing foes up either just before or after delivering the final blow. A minor annoyance, but absolutely essential, because the bastards keep getting back up otherwise.

An interesting mechanic is the fact that switching between kicking and punching (triangle and square) does extra damage, which is a big help during the game's many boss fights.

On the subject of boss fights, this is another adventure that is mysteriously spent witling away at massive life bars for half its duration. The brawls in question are almost all enjoyable, and display at least some level of development competence, although very similar repeated encounters can drag on.

The music is pleasantly acceptable, being a mix between funkiness for general work and orchestral epicness during the critical story battles. It's not that exceptional, but the main menu tune is pretty catchy, and sure as hell got stuck in my head a while. Why, there it is now....actually, that's bothering me....

The plot is based on the comics (nah, really?), and presented with gusto, through use of the nicey-nice cutscenes and generally hunky-dory acting. It's a combination of cartoonish silliness and grim seriousness, but makes for a more compelling watch than the awkward romances of the films, at least.

Highlighted amongst this are Spider-Man's trademark quips, which flow from his mouth during every cutscene and every clash. While it is all very much hit-and-miss, the majority of his comments are grin-inducing, although I can assure you that your sides are unlikely to split.

So far, I've made it sound a lot like Ultimate is just a prettier, more technically impressive version of its spiritual predecessor. While that is partly true, the most interesting aspect of the game is the supposed arch-villain and second playable character Venom, who was much-hyped, deservedly.

In contrast to Spidey's nimble acrobatics, Venom lumbers through the city like the beast he is, and jumps colossal distances rather than swinging, although his tentacles act as a comparable tool to the Spider's web-zip, and are used to move forward at speed.

Along with those extremities, the big purple dude slashes with his claws, punches, kicks, faceplants people, throws cars around, breaks the backs of slow-moving adversaries and even eats folks. By absorbing them into his body, Venom gains health (which constantly dwindles), before spewing the victim out. I checked, and they are clearly breathing, sadly. Still, broken backs are less easily remedied, eh? At the very least, there are now far more paraplegics in the world. Also, I count having THAT tongue as a superpower.

Back on the topic of Venom, he is so much more preferable to Spider-Man that the game became a case of slogging through until the next section where he was available. Typically, these bits are considerably fewer and less lengthy. Well, if that ain't just peachy. But not to worry, fans of evil teeth-and-tentacle monsters; if you manage to beat the (easy, and short) main plot, you can play as Venom whenever you want, with no restrictions, and even partake in a destruction mini-game wherein you fight endless hordes of human resistance, with different levels of pain-bringing.

Venom's inclusion is reason enough to buy this, but by no means the only thing going for it. Definitely worth having.

When it comes to a Spiderman videogame there are certain aspects you genuinely expect to see. Open world, great swinging mechanics and a wide array of familiar characters from the comics. Ultimate Spiderman delivers on all fronts here.

Created in the style of a living breathing comic book complete with transitions it's the best Spiderman game that I've played thus far (Though I'm told the 2018 offering will likely change that).

With plenty to do in the open world, a great fighting system that makes you feel rather overpowered and the best swinging mechanics to date Ultimate Spiderman is a fantastic superhero game.

I'm not keen on the animation style and I think the story is considerably too short (Like really really short) but it makes up for it in side content and never ending nods to fans of the original comic book.

Much of it can get a tad repetitive and I was left wishing there were maybe alternate suits, characters, more unlockables in general but I couldn't take away what they accomplished here.

The Good:

Solid mechanics

Lots of content

Web swinging is near flawless

Great comic book style

The Bad:

Graphical style doesn't suit me

More unlockables would have been nice

Story is far too short