Ultimate Spider-Man

"Budget title quality with full title price!!!"

So after the some what average Spider-Man 2, this is the what comes out after it in order to bask in the profits from the Ultimate series. Well this game starts from the Venom Saga as training and then 3 months later in Ultimate Spider-Man. Make no mistake, this game takes a lot of what was in Spider-Man 2, so if you have played that, then you are treading on familiar ground.

Graphics: 9

Pure and simple the best part of the game. The cell-shading is perfect in depicting the comic book like style. Although what was praised as an incredible thing, the comic book type scenes, are hardly used at all. Peter, the symbiote, Venom, Mary Jane and the villains are nice work though, there would be no better way to depict them. When you jump off of a web swing, Spider-Man's animations of his agility are really spectacular looking. What does knock down the full 10, is the above mention, and plus things like awnings can be fell through, like it isn't even there.

Story: 3 (this adds together with another part, Comic consistency)
Not bad, very good in fact (mostly at the end). The ending is very well done, but a lot of the other parts fall very short. Things like villain entrances just don't make much sense at all. Some villains feel extremely forced into the story and don't run well at all. A lot of the story is Peter doing research and then swinging to three spots (Aunt May, Daily Bugle, Midtown High School) for "dinner" with Aunt May (who is not seen or heard from), Jameson (also not seen or heard from), or just going to school (which you never see the inside of, or Peter's classmates).

Comic consistency: 2 (together with Story to make a 5 overall)
Some things just don't work together at all, and some things almost blatantly contradict what has been written in the comic books, if you really know the story (like reading the whole saga 3 times for example). The Trask company's existence and the strength of Brock's Venom suit are examples. Some quotes are taken away from those that gave the quotes in the comic. Like the dead body quote from Nick Fury is an example.

Sound: 6
Some of the soundtrack doesn't make much sense in the contexts/situations you are put into. At least one piece of music does what the music in Spider-Man The Movie video game does, where the music will just cut off. The sound effects work well, but then again, there is not much to this game, but punching, kicking, and web swinging, but those sounds are still there. On this X-Box version there is no custom soundtrack. What gets most of the six points here are the quips. Bendis, the writer of USM, has written the quips of the game and let me tell you, they blow Spider-Man 2 out of the water. The voice actor of Spider-Man Sean Marquette, who does the voice of Mac on Foster's Home for Imaginary friends, does a better job than Tobey Maguire on voice acting, although that isn't saying much. Puberty or not, this Spider-Man's voice is too young, you need to get use to it. The rest of the voices are fine though, its just that since Spider-Man is the real focus of the game here, the voice actor for him is very important. Mr. Marquette doesn't fail at Peter, he just isn't suited very well for 15 year old Parker.

Controls and Camera: 4
Ahh yes 2nd most important aspect of the game and it fails, pretty bad. This is game is hard, but not in the enemies' challenge in themselves. The poor controls are the reason for the challenge. Fighting and using the "Spider-Sense" (which looks remarkably like jump for some reason...) depend greatly on this significant aspect and aren't dead on. There is a strength minigame that depends on the triggers and pressing the Right and Left Triggers in rhythm or even in rapid fire result in the strength bar going up. Web swinging close to the ground is pretty good, but the higher that you increase height by the swinging, the more difficult it gets. For example, if I were to try web swinging very close to the street on a far away pole (this game's swing mechanics comes from Spider-Man 2 on the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox) I could easily reach it. If I were to say try that on top of a very tall building, the results are not the same at all if I were to try swinging from a far away building. As said before, fighting is a very difficult aspect in this game, because of the controls. This game goes along the aspect of the Devil May Cry series, in the way that the more style you put into the fight, the higher your rating goes. If you get hit, say goodbye to your rating. That is where the similarities stop. As you increase in style, you give more damage output, as well as decreasing the enemies' chance of blocking (this rating of fighting in a large group is very important). To increase the rating, you just switch bad guys with pressing the thumbstick in the direction you want to go to. The highest style is "Ultimate", but you should almost never see that ranking when fighting a big crowd of people. Why? Because of the controls. The game seems to only believe in four directions and the enemies hardly stand in those four directions. They surround you. So if you are fighting a criminal and their buddy is right next to you, expect not to switch targets, get hit, lose your rating, and maybe lose the battle. Why do I say lose the battle? Because by near the end of the game, the gangs (regular enemies) are blocking a lot, just like they did in Spider-Man 2 and if you can't keep your style up (which means increasing the power of your attacks and decreasing their blocking chance), they will beat you by sheer numbers, or by enemies surrounding you, each taking a punch (when you are hit, you are stunned, so they each can take another punch at you). And make no mistake, webbing them up won't give the same result as in Spider-Man 2, they can still block and in some cases get a free hit off you. The Spider-Sense is a joke (it is just the jump button and you jumping), and is completely worthless because if you take a hit, you are already set up for a free shot by the criminals. It is very common to beat this game, kill the "Super Villains" somewhat easily and then get eliminated (many, many times) by a group of five or more members in a gang (gangs will be your primary source of fighting) and I would like to point out, that you will be fighting more groups of mores and less groups of five in this game. The game will have you end up thinking that regular gangs are more powerful than Super Villains in comparison. Also if you don't like control configuration in this game, deal with it, you can't change it at all. I don't understand this, this is the first generation of next-generation systems and I can't even make custom controls? There is also no button to swing the view of the camera directionally behind you and in this genre and style of game, this kind of thing is a must. When there is a enemy to defeat there is a lock on for the camera, but it is rather poor and the view can become very bumpy and the angle may make it so that you fall into a pit, because you couldn't see it, because the camera was focused on the enemy (the Beetle fight is a excellent example). The good part of the controls in this game is the low height level swinging. Although the speed boost button is kind of awkward to use, the low height web swinging is really good and there are lots of places to swing from, so it is really good.

Gameplay: 4
Here is what makes the game. The game has you doing one of seven things (this is the combined amount of Peter and Venom) most of the time. Collecting stuff to be allowed to continue the story mission, go to the Daily Bugle, go to Aunt May's in Queens, go to Midtown High School, kill enough things to be told to go to a certain area, fight and chase people. Now to focus specifically on each of the two members of the game.

Peter
This is where most of the game revolves. And let me just say, it is boring. I liked the goals in Spider-Man 2 better. These of just boring. At least you were going to different places around in a really big city in Spider-Man 2. Three damn places you go to for goals, with the whole area size of the game, almost or equal to a third of Spider-Man 2. That is really bad. A lot of what the game developers chose to do this time is have you chase the villains around as part of the story. You will chase around Beetle, Venom, and Green Goblin, to name most of them. The villains take their specific same exact routes each time, so there isn't much variety there. While chasing them, they will attack civilians at specific points, and then they will wait until you save them and then the chase continues. This sucks. As I said before, some of the Super Villains seem very forced in this game and that goes against their character (when in any of the Spider-Man universes does Green Goblin just show up to run around the city and get beaten without any story and taken back to his prison?). Well the boss fights in this are just dodging until you get an opening. And by dodging (since the Spider-Sense dodge in this game is a joke), I mean staying medium to long distance away from the Super Villain while you jump/double jump their attacks. This game has most of the same city goals as Spider-Man 2 did. Stop trouble (although you don't talk to any citizens at all, you just see a red dot and go there), collect tokens, web swing races. New additions to Spider-Man 2 are that you can race Human Torch and the races can be completed with Bronze times. All your moves are there from the beginning. What is to unlock as you continue are Web Swinging speed (by beating Human Torch in races) and amount of attacks (you start with being able to chain 3 consecutive attacks and go up to 5, and increasing your health gauge, and do combat tours, involve just beat gangs (and because of amount of criminals, can lead to very hard combat tours). This time the tokens names are Landmark, Secret, Comic Book Covers, and Concept Art. As said before, in respect to the fighting, more often that not fighting a group of regular gang members is more difficult than lets say, Venom (I find that disturbing).

Venom
Aww yes the counter point to Peter Parker. College age Eddie Brock Jr. has put on a super suit that has no genetic memory of Spider-Man, but yet he is so much stronger than Spider-Man. Although the power is nice, it does come with a price, the suit eats away at his life bar. Think of this as a time meter. To keep the suit from taking your life, you press L-trigger against regular civilians and mercenaries (stronger people result in wasting time and getting hurt). Think of this aspect as time meter increases. What ends up being the gameplay for Venom on story missions is this: draining people and getting shot at until you can go to some point in the map and then it either ends or there is a boss fight or you chase people like in Peter's gameplay. Boss fights are better than Peter's because of the variety and also because you have access to a distance attack (a Venom tentacle) whereas Peter's does not. After you beat the game, you have "full control" of Venom (but not the suit eating aspect). Let me just tell you, that the game basically turns into what happens when you go on a killing spree in GTA. You just go around killing and eating people and then your Wanted Meter goes up and the authorities get more aggressive in attacking you. You also have access to Venom Races, but if I can already do that with Spidey, why should I need to do it with the Venom suit?

Game Length:
Story Mode: 3-10 hours (ten hours is really pushing it); also I beat this game in 4 hours and I had over collected in city goals and died many times in 3 boss fights.
Doing whatever: unlimited (but since the only real difference is the Venom aspect to Spider-Man 2, couldn't you just go play GTA?)
Full Game Completion: 15-20 (although completionists would much rather spend time on a better game, than this)

Replayablity: 3
A big concern with Spider-Man 2 was there weren't any unlockables. Here the unlockables consist of palette swapping the regular Spider-Man outfit with others like Peter Parker and the Ultimate Spider-Man's Wrestling costume. Let me just tell you, palette swapping does not make for unlockables at all. You can also look at concept art and the comic book covers. Unless you are a big Spider-Man enthusiast, these mean nothing to you. And even if you are a Spider-Man enthusiasts, you would have the US-M comic collection and not even need to look at these things. THESE ARE CRAPPY UNLOCKABLES! I don't understand why game developers do those concept art unlockables, 10% of the gaming population actually looks at this. At least in Spider-Man 2, you had a big city to go around in.

Glitches/Bugs:
-hit direction
-going through awnings
-enemies teleporting to different locations
-getting hit when there is no one around
-Spider-Sense going off when there is no one around (rare)

Comments about the Title:
Budget Title gaming symptoms
- those glitches above
- very short gameplay (I thought Fable's Story was short, I was wrong[but I did not think Fable was a budget title])
-poor controls
- older game mechanics (just avoid one attack, and then attack them in the boss fights)

Good Things:
Graphics and Animations are dead on
Low Height Web Swinging

Bad Things:
Controls
Fighting
Lack of Variety
Unlockables
Glitches

Game Length
Final Score: 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/05