Ultimate Spider-Man

"Is Ultimate Spiderman Really the Best Spiderman Game?"

I once had the game Spider-man 2. It was an awesome game and it never got old. One day, I let my best friend borrow it since he had just bought a Nintendo Gamecube but had no games for it. He left the game and his Gamecube in his mom's car and his mom's car got jacked. I wasn't really mad at him since I didn't play the game much anymore, but after a while, I started missing it. I tried to buy it again but I couldn't find a store that sold it, so I bought another game which was kind of like it. Ultimate Spider-man.

I thought it would be just like Spider-man 2 but it didn't really live up to it's name. It wasn't a bad game but it wasn't very fun either. Ultimate Spider-man has it's good points. The graphics are pretty cool and the story is great. The game really feels like a comic book during the cut scenes. Also, playing as Venom is a fun twist that keeps the game from being repetitive. The boss fights are also fun and not extremely difficult.

The games flaws are it's short length and the stuff you have to do between story missions. To move the story along, you need to find tokens, win races, do Combat Tours, and do some City Events. The tokens are easy to find in the beginning because they're everywhere but it gets a bit difficult later in the game. The races are usually lame and excessively difficult. Combat Tours are generally easy except when you have to fight the Mei Hua Bang gang. The City Events are really boring and extremely easy. Not many City Events appear so if you see one on the map, go for it.

The thing that really pissed me off about Ultimate Spider-Man was how much of it they had taken out compared to Spider-man 2. In Spider-man 2, the city seemed bigger and it was much more fun to roam. In that game, you could swing faster and it was actually exciting to do so. In Ultimate Spider-man, they made the swinging dull, easy and slow. Another thing that Spider-man 2 had that this game lacks is a fun combat system. In Spider-man 2, you could perform a wide variety of moves and buy more if you wanted. All you do in Ultimate Spider-man is punch, kick, grab and web people up. Some other things that are missing from this game are the ability to charge jumps, run on walls instead of crawling, being able to boost your running and crawling speed, being able to web more than one person at a time, and being able to jump either far or high by using the boost button. The only thing I can think of that Ultimate Spider-Man has but Spider-man 2 lacked is a reward for collecting the tokens.

All in all, I'd give this game a 6/10. If you just want a good Spider-man game, buy Spider-man 2. If you really want to play this, I recommend renting it since you'll probably beat the game in the time you have and it really isn't worth the full price.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/06