Ultimate Spider-Man

"The graphics, story and bosses are all great - but the repetitive combat and gimped free roaming let it down"

Ultimate Spider-man shares many similarities to an earlier gem of a game – Spider-man 2. Unfortunately though for every improvement the game has over it predecessor there are many things that are worse.

The story is great. It follows the Venom storyline from the Ultimate Spider-man comics. For those who don't know, Venom is a vicious symbiote who has bonded with a man called Eddie Brock and is intent on killing Spider-man. Meanwhile Spider-man has to juggle defeating Venom, saving civilians and fighting against his usual enemies like the Green Goblin and Shocker. It follows the storyline of the comics almost perfectly which is a welcome change from what most comic based videogames usually do storyline-wise.

The gameplay is in two parts. One part is a free-roaming game that allows you to swing around a massive city (unfortunately not as massive, nor as varied, as in Spider-man 2). As you swing around the city you'll occasionally run in to random crimes or situations where civilians need help similar to those in Spider-man 2. However whereas there were about 15 different situations in Spider-man 2, there are about 5 in this game, and whereas Spider-man 2 has the situations occur reasonably frequently and rewards you for helping out, in Ultimate Spider-man the situations occur far less frequently and don't really reward you at all – this all adds up to less lively and less interesting city. You can also enter races, though more often than not these are frustrating and so the chances are you won't do many of them. As well as races there are also challenges which have you go around the city beating up about 5 groups of thugs from a gang – though these are initially very easy, eventually they get reasonably challenging, and they reward you with a bigger health bar. You can collect tokens as you could in Spider-man 2, but once again whereas Spider-man 2 would reward you for finding them, this game doesn't really reward you very much at all – there also aren't nearly as many tokens and they aren't nearly as well placed. In general the city just can't compare to that of Spider-man 2. Whereas I spent probably a week roaming around Spider-man 2's city after completing the main story, I spent only an hour after completing Ultimate Spider-man.

The second major part of gameplay is the missions. You play missions as either Spider-man or Venom. Spider-man's missions involve three things. The first is chases that sprawl across the entire city and require you to keep up with a fast moving villain. The second is saving civilians that have been hit by villains – you do this by lifting up debris off of people, or rescuing people from the middle of a fire and taking them to a nearby ambulance. The third are boss fights, often occurring in wide open spaces with you having to avoid attacks until there's an opening for you to hit them. Venom's missions involve four things. There are the chases as there were before, but there are also missions where you have to run away. As with Spider-man you also have boss fights, but you also have missions where you have to fight off the SHEILD army. Some of the boss fights (particularly Electro and the Green Goblin) are good, but other boss fights are an exercise in repetition as you jump forward, attack, jump back, wait for the enemy to finish using his only attack, rinse and repeat for five minutes. The chases are generally good, but they comprise far too much of the game, and some of them are a tad too long.

Spider-man's web swinging is still very fun, but the exhilaration found in Spider-man 2 is lost. Also you are far more limited – no more double webs for you. Spider-man's combat feels very stiff and doesn't flow as well as in Spider-man 2 – indeed combat often turns in to button mashing. Venom's combat is even worse though as he has only five moves – a tentacle swipe, a punch, can eat his opponents, pick up objects and throw them or pick up enemies and kill them…this leads to VERY repetitive combat. Instead of web swinging Venom has a massive jump which is surprisingly fun and a very good design choice.

The graphics in this game are absolutely brilliant. It uses cel-shading, and attempts to use it in such a way as to make the game look like it was lifted right from the comics. This works wonderfully and the game really does look like in the comics – buildings and such are designed in the same style as well and characters look fantastic. The cutscenes are actually laid out like a comic and look wonderful.

The music sounds alright, but isn't particularly great. However the truly bad thing about the music is that there are only about 5 or so different scores – the music will start to get very repetitive after a while. The voice acting is fantastic and the script is written with a lot of good humour and charm. Also the sound effects have a true comic like quality to them.

The game is about 7 or 8 hours long, but the replayability is VERY little compared to Spider-man 2. Overall this is a good game, but a disappointment compared to Spider-man 2.

Gameplay: Free Roaming = 5.5/10
Gameplay: Missions = 7.5/10
Graphics = 9.5/10
Music = 4/10
Sound = 9/10
Final Score = 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/08

Game Release: Ultimate Spider-Man (EU, 10/14/05)