Spider-Man 3

"Nobody swings like Spidey, until now."

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can…hopefully most fans know the theme song. That song pretty much describes my feelings for the Wii controls in this game, especially the web swinging, but we'll get a bit more detailed on that in a bit. Spider-Man 3 is the latest Marvel movie tie-in, and after Spider-Man 2, it better be good right? For the most part, it is. The story when you start opens in a building where you are trying to stop a gang from succeeding in their latest attack. Most of the story pretty much progresses like that, villains suddenly attacking, and then loosely connecting to the next random villain attack. One time you'll be fighting The Lizard, then you'll be fighting Morbius and The Lizard's alter ego will agree to help you because of that incident. Really only the last hour or two of the game actually covers the movie, which is kind of sad, because it feels condensed.

Like Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3 is a free-roaming game where you can swing around New York as Spider-Man stopping random crimes. In the last game, you'd randomly talk to people who would give you information about crimes going on nearby. I believe they improved this system, now there's a message that will appear on the screen randomly, and you press the – button on the Wii remote, and you'll begin the mission. However, unlike Spider-Man 2, the missions are less varied. Instead of rescuing people from a sinking boat or fighting super-villain villains, you'll be fighting gang members or recovering stolen items, or maybe a combination of both. But there's just not as much variety, so I was disappointed, but the game is still fun. To beat the bad guys up, you'll shake the Wii remote. Yes this has been done on many Wii games, but they add a combo system that for me makes this feel fresh. You can now vault, use strong attacks with the A button, web people with the B button and do a bunch of other cool tricks to mix up the combat. The thing is though, I found most of the random enemies in the game to be a bunch of wimps, and while there are 4 different gangs to fight, they each seem to have the same classes of enemies. They try to add variety to the random goons by making it so that you'll have to pull shields away with webbing or vault over their heads, but it won't make much of a difference.

A great thing about the last game was the web swinging, and I'm glad to say that it's more fun in this game. To swing you either hold Z on the nunchuck and flick the Wii remote up, or hold B on the Wii remote and flick up. You decide which direction to go in by tilting the nunchuck stick, and it's really fun. New York is huge, and there's awesome to see things go by so fast while you're swinging. Like I said above, there are missions where you fight super villains. You'll meet up with villains like Shriek, Venom, and The Lizard, but there's definitely not as much villains as I'd like. The missions range from going down into the sewers to find and fight The Lizard and the people he's transforming to do his bidding, to riding on the New Goblin's glider trying to knock him to the ground. Only about 3 of the missions actually have to do with the movie though, the rest seem to just be random attacks.

They try to break up the missions by forcing you to go on crime patrols, which are where you find a guy with a colored light around him, talk to him, and then go on a bunch of small missions featuring a certain gang. These are usually fun, but I ran into a glitch once where I just suddenly failed for no reason, but this has only happened once.

Another new feature in this game is the black suit. By pressing left on the control pad on the Wii remote, you'll change costumes and get a huge power boost, not to mention that you'll also look cool. If you use it too much though, you'll black out, so you will need to change back if you're beating up a ton of thugs. The more you use it though, the harder it gets to take off. By that I mean, to take it off you use Wii gestures that they show you on screen. The more you use the black suit, the more gestures they add on to it, making it harder. I though the black suit was used rather well, even if it's really just a power-up.

Finally, there's fighting the super villains. Most of the fights are pretty varied, like to fight Morbius you'll want to trap him in a web fence until sunlight comes out so that he's weak enough to attack. There are also just some good old hand-to-hand fights like Venom and The Lizard. They're fun, but most of them are pretty easy with the exception of one or two.

This game is filled with voice acting from the cast of the movie, but some of the actors (especially the guy who plays Harry) sound really bored. Also, when Toby Maguire (the guy who plays Peter/Spider-Man) tries to sound angry, he comes off sounding more goofy than ticked off. Bruce Campbell returns as the narrator, and I couldn't be happier, however he doesn't seem to have as much lines in this game, which I was disappointed with. There's some dramatic music, but I didn't really find it all that memorable, and sometimes when you're swinging around New York there's no music at all!

The graphics are probably the worst part about this game. Basically, it looks almost exactly like Spider-Man 2, if not a bit worse. The expressions in the cut-scenes look weird, and in the in-game movies the character's mouths don't move. Don't let the poor graphics job keep you from enjoying this game however, it's still plenty fun.

The main game didn't seem to be that long unfortunately, and I was disappointed to see it end so soon. There's a ton to do afterwards, but it feels more like a wild goose chase. You see, there are one hundred meteorite pieces and fifty spider emblems hidden around town, and you have no clue where they are, and they can be hidden pretty much anywhere. This can lead to frustration if you're specifically looking for them, as you're more likely to just stumble upon them. You can also upgrade Spider-Man to learn new attacks, web moves, combos, and other upgrades by collecting experience points. You can get experience by stopping the random crimes or going on crime patrols, but by the time you beat the game there won't be much of a point in upgrading Spider-Man, unless you want to beat up the gang members to the fullest of your abilities. You can also take pictures of enemies and bosses to earn experience, but for the bosses it seems to be only a one-time deal, so if you forget to take a picture you'll never be able to get it unless you start a new game, so I'm not really sure I liked that addition.

While Spider-Man 3 may not be the prettiest or the longest of his movie adaptations, make no mistake that's it's some of the most fun you can have on the Wii right now, ‘nuff said.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/08/07