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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All style, no substance, 25 Feb 2006
Ultimate Spiderman offers a thoroughly fun albeit simple Spiderman experience which perfectly captures the feel of Ultimate Spiderman’s style but, impressive though it is, comes at the expense of properly fleshed out gameplay resulting in a game well worth playing, but seriously lacking the depth or development to be called great.The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the game actually looks like the comic – from the comic style shading to the use of animated panels during cutscenes – the whole thing looks and feels like the comic and, while the visuals don’t compare to the flair of the best looking games the PS2 has to offer – they don’t try to, preferring instead to capture the feel of the comic. It works great and sets the feel of the game perfectly. The city is pretty big and there’s tons of area to uncover and explore, and cars and people mill about down on the streets below. Police, too, can sometimes be seen trying to stop criminals. But as you can’t really interact with the people or cars in any way (besides a few random events), I constantly had a feeling of being disconnected from the city – especially as you’ll swing above rooftops at high speeds, getting to know the city is almost impossible. More interaction would’ve been a good thing, adding depth and diversity The plot arc is a pretty short and feels really disjointed – like the story and free-swinging around the city were two entirely separate things on the same plate. It made the story seem a little shallow – in fact, the story is shallow, there’s not much to it – it can literally be summed up as: Venom is loose, Spiderman tries to stop him, a third party joins in and gets in Spiderman’s way, Spiderman wins; the end - and it mostly felt like instead of giving it depth, they just chose to write in as many iconic enemies for Spiderman/Venom to fight as possible. You can play as both Spiderman and Venom and the two characters are conveyed perfectly – Spiderman with his dextrous agility, able to swan dive off a building, somersaulting several times through the air before firing off some web and arcing majestically into a swing, landing gracefully and delivering a series of light but lightning fast blows to a thug, webbing him up and throwing him over a lamppost before leaping off to fight another crime. While venom stomps angrily over buildings, smashing his fists into the stone for purchase - if Spiderman is pure agility then Venom is raw strength – instead of swinging, he leaps great distances, causing craters in roads and rooftops as he lands. His attacks revolve around breaking backs, smashing faces into the ground and feeding off of enemies and innocent civilians alike for ever-needed sustenance. Venom is also able to lob cars around as makeshift weapons, which looks and feels great – as you smash around the city – you feel close to invincible. The missions themselves revolve around two things – chasing and fighting. In the chasing missions you have to keep up with some villain as they move around the city, you have a time limit on these missions, but it’s displayed as a ‘distance meter’ – if you fall too far behind, the mission is over and you have to restart, these missions – all of them – follow the exact same formula: swing around a set route in the city as fast as you can. The fighting missions are equally linear as combat revolves around working out the AI’s simple attack formula and then exploiting the weaknesses to defeat the enemy. Sometimes the missions feature both chasing and fighting as you’ll be charged with chasing the enemy to a location. Then fighting them. Repeat ad infinitum. Free swinging around the city, you’ll have a few things to keep you busy. City Events happen pretty regularly, and are random situations where you can prove your heroics by stopping some thugs beating up some guy, saving someone who managed to somehow be hanging off of a skyscraper several hundred feet up or getting someone quickly to a hospital. They are, like everything else in the game, linear and formulaic and limited to just a few scenarios each – but they’re a welcome distraction to simply swinging around. There are also two sets of non-plot missions dotted around the city which you can attempt whenever you like by standing on the corresponding icons around the city, there are two types. Wait for it. Racing and fighting. The racing missions follow the exact same formula as the plot missions except you’re on a time limit instead of chasing someone. The fighting missions revolve around beating up a few groups of thugs. But that’s not to say it’s a bad game – while short and sweet, and lacking the depth a serious gamer might expect, it’s a seriously fun romp through Queens. If you like Spiderman, or especially Ultimate Spiderman but have never played a spidey game – it’s very easy to recommend this. The comicbook style cutscenes are a pure joy to experience, the voice talent is perfect and the playable characters feel and play exactly as you’d expect them to. In the end, the emphasis was on style over substance – and while it works pretty well, as the game is a lot of fun – great games need style and substance. It’s too short, it’s too easy and it’s far, far too linear. But it’s a lot of fun, while it lasts.
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