Game - Ultimate Spiderman
 djhufford  rates it:    Community rates it:
   165 of 337 readers found this review helpful.

I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Playing as Venom is awesome. Being able to jump around town hundreds of feet at a time, is just plain cool. Then, you get to kill the way God does, indiscriminately. Just to maintain your health, you have to eat civilian men, women and children. And to top it off you’re in a sandbox situation. You can go anywhere in any direction, within the borders of water, and do anything you please. It doesn’t take long for you to question your sanity.

I do apologize to the non-Spiderman aficionados for being presumptuous. What I am reviewing is the new entry into the Spiderman series by Treyarch. They decided to stray from their proven formula of trying to recreate the movies. They instead dove into the comic book realm. And when I say dove, I mean in the sense of being dropped into a river wearing concrete boots. They went with cel shading this round. They also framed many of the shots, and added comic elements such as panels within panels. They literally make it feel as if you are playing within a comic book. It does take a moment or two to orient yourself to the situation, but you get used to it quickly.

For those of you wondering, Venom is Spiderman’s defacto enemy. He is what the Joker is to Batman, or Lex to Superman. He is a spider-person as well, so to speak. He is big and bulky like the Hulk, wears a black spandex suit that is actually a part of himself (don’t ask). He also has teeth like a shark. He’s pretty gruesome, yet hella cool.

The game alternates you between playing as Peter Parker, Venom, and Spiderman. The storyline is more linear then Spiderman 2. It still has the open-endedness, but the storyline will lead you down a very direct path. Along the way you will pick up the things you need for such pointless unlockables as comic covers. They really do not give you any logical reason to venture out on your own other then pure exploration. For some odd reason, they made the city noticeably smaller as well. They tried to make up for this with better graphics. I’m not a fan of this. I’ll take the bigger city any day.

The game play has been dumbed down. The web swinging is now an afterthought. No web combos worthy of acrobatics anymore. No extensive fighting combos either. They turned it into an old-fashioned button masher. Yet, once you get over the initial disappointment, it seems to not matter anymore. That’s the beauty of this game. It has a lot of individual disappointments. I expected so many aspects of this to be better. But instead of putting it down, I strangely kept playing. Before I knew it, I was having a blast. On some level it embraces what video games are supposed to be. Just plain fun. Not many bells and whistles, but it doesn’t need them.

The boss battles are spectacular. I really enjoyed beating the crap out of the Rhino and Carnage. Especially Carnage. We haven’t seen him since the SNES classic, Maximum Carnage. It includes a full rouges gallery. Along the way, many friends pop up as well. It’s always nice to see Wolverine, or Iron Man. Strangely enough, The final boss battle isn’t really that challenging. I found some of the mid-level bosses to be much harder.



This brings me back to the first paragraph. After you defeat the game, you unlock Venom, playable in the sandbox. Sure, you’ve played as him before, but it was in very specific situations. Now you can run wild with him. The novelty of this wears off after a couple of hours, but it is a fun couple of hours. This aspect alone almost makes this game worth picking up. Overall, it is a smart game. It is a highly polished product, packaged very well. It has some pitfalls, but nothing that would make me discourage anyone from playing it.

Added:  Saturday, October 22, 2005

Related Link:  Official Site
Language: eng[ Did you find this review helpful?  Yes  No ]
[ Back to reviews index ]

Want to comment on this review?
Register here for a free user account, and you'll be able to.