Ultimate Spider-Man

"Not worth $60.00..."

Okay, I'll be frank. This game is just plain bad. You'll see some people defend it, some people boast about how long they've played it, and even some people who praise it. All I can say is that if you want a good GAME, you best play something else.

Graphics: 8/10

First up, graphics. This game looks amazing. Venom looks really fluid, and almost like a walking being of goo, which is good, concidering that's pretty much what he is. Spidey looks really good from far away, but up close he looks like he's made out of painted chrome. There are also occassional hiccups now and again, but nothing too jarring. I myself haven't had the misfortune of slowdown, and there were only rare cases of clipping now and again, but that's to be expected. The city looks 100% better in this game over Spider Man 2, with crisper textures and slick graphical design all around. Although there are some buildings where the windows(particularly larger windows) will begin to bug out, and are really bothersome on the eyes. But overall, the graphics are a treat, and possibly the best part of this game. But we all know graphics don't make the game...

Sounds Effects: 5/10

Nothing too jarringly bad, but nothing extrodinarily done. All the thwips of the web, thuds of the fists, and snaps of the bones are there, but some sounds are muddy, and just seem like a "that's good enough" job. Besides, most of the sound effects are ripped from Spider Man 2...

Music: 3/10

Bleah. Bland, repeatative when it's there, and 90% of the time, you'll be listening to sweet nothing while swinging around. There seem to be about 3-4 music tracks, and the only decent ones seem to have been ripped off of the Time Splitters 2 soundtrack.

Voice Overs: 8/10

The best of the sounds. Bendis did good with the writing, and the actors did a damn fine job. The jokes are usually funny, and the voices to everyone fits like a glove. Well, with the exception of Parker. He sounds a little too young, even for a typical 15 year old kid. Not that they picked a bad actor(he's 100 fold better than Toby), but it's more of a personal preference. Otherwise, this is the 2nd best part of the game.

Story: 5/10

Let's see here... Hmm... It's based off of Bendis' Ultimate Spider Man, which has practically nothing to do with the classic 616 Spider Man except for names and some minimal similarities. The story takes place during some portion of the Venom arc, and while some think it's well done, some don't. I myself didn't really see any reason to advance the story. It just didn't drive me to want to know what happens next. The only reason I pressed on was the promise of free roaming with Venom. That, and it's short. Like, "I can beat this game in a single afternoon without TRYING" kinda short.

Gameplay: 3/10
Seeing as how Venom and Spidey play pretty differently, I'll divide this next section to highlight key points.

Spidey

Webswinging:

This is what will make you either love or hate this game. I like the new web slinging personally, but a LOT of people don't. It's not bad, but anyone looking for the Spider Man 2 swinging mechanics will probably want to snap this game in two. You hold R to shoot your web, Y to climb your web(to increase your altitude), X to speed up, A to jump(and double jump), and release R to release your web.

Having the X button for speeding up is very uncomfortable and awkward, seeing as how you're probably going to be pressing Y at the same time as well to gain altitude, and then pressing A to get additional distance... Ugh. While I do like the new system, I would have loved to have been able to switch the X button for the L trigger, but alas, there is no way to change the controls...

Battle:

Spidey has puddle deep combat skills. You have 4 attack buttons. L fires your web, B grapples, X is punch, and Y is kick. You start off with a lack luster 3 hit combo, and eventually make it up to 5 hits, but it doesn't really matter much. You are awarded more damage and better ratings by switching targets constantly while in battle. While this seems good on paper, what it does is cause all combat to disolve into mindless button mashing. You have a total of a dozen or less combat orientated actions, and it really, REALLY hurts the game. I mean, in the new hulk game you have like, 120 different combat actions... That just makes this game look like utter crap in comparison. Also, Enemies will block... A LOT. Especially late in the game, where general thugs are just as hard, if not harder than all of the games story bosses. BUT you can't block. All you can do is dodge... with the jump button. Yep, that's right, all those fancy dodging animations seen in Spider Man 2 are gone. Instead, when you see your little spidersence go off, you simply push the A button, and leap out of the way.

All of these short comings are due to, according to the dev team , Parker's being young and inexperienced. In other words, the Dev team got lazy, and expect you to forgive this utter crap for a combat system because they're being "accurate to the characters abilities"... Pfft. What a load of bull.

Venom

Leaping:

Yep, Venom has no web slinging abilities at all. All he has is a monsterous leap, that sends him up to about 2 blocks in distance, and about 50-70 feet vertically. It really adds to the whole "I'm a monster!" feel you get from Venom. This is probably the only saving grace to Venoms character though.

Combat:

Oddly enough, Brock has fewer combat actions than Parker does... While Parker can have up to a 5 hit combo, can attack from walls, and can web guys up, Brock gets stuck will piddley squat. You have X for punch, Y for tendril attacks, B for grab, and L for consume. You have a max of 4 hit combos, punching doesn't go far enough to warrent any use, and you have all of 3 grabs(grab and throw, grab and face plant, and grab and spine snap). You must use L to consume people to stay alive, as your health continuously drops, and be prepared for mass Y button spamming. Because if not for his long range, wide spread tendril attack, Venom wouldn't even be able to defeat the basic thugs. Sure, during some boss fights Venom seems pretty damn strong(when you're playing as parker), and he has some neat abilities, but when you control Venom, all the cool is gone. He can't do ANY of the heavy hits(that can literally send spidey flying a good 50-60 feet), and when you beat the game, you're playing as the same venom as you've been handed in the half dozen or so story missions, save for one obvious visual difference.

Venom has one unique ability though... He can throw cars. "Cool!" you say to yourself. Well, it kinda is for about 5 minutes, just long enough to throw 5 or 6 cars. Then the lameness sets in. I mean, there's nothing destructable in the city, so flinging cars results in nothing but a scream from the pedestrians/driver, and a pretty explosion of the car a few seconds later. Hell, if you fling a car strait up, it'll explode before it hits the ground. You can't break signs, you can't blast holes in buildings... It's like "the Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction", minus the ultimate, the destruction, the Incredible, and the hulk... You can freely go where you want, too bad there's nothing to do on the way, and nothing to do when you get there.

Boss Battles

Boss battles play out the same for both Spidey and Venom. You go to "check point", watch a cutscene, chase the bad guy, then fight the bad guy. Spideys chases often involve saving people at specific, never changing locations, where the villian will do some dastardly deed endangering civilians. He'll then sit and wait for no apparent reason while you casually save these people, then continue on. Venom is just a simple run, eat, run, eat, climb, eat.... yeah... It's that boring...

Upon completing the lame attempts at covering up lame races from previous games, you are set to battle with the said villian. Each villian are so goddamn predictable and pattern set it's not even really a battle... All you do is jump out of the way of their attacks until they get "tired"(ie: They stop moving, attacking, or thinking apparently), then spam the attack buttons. Wash, rinse, repeat. Honestly, gang thugs are harder because they don't have pre-set AI, and BLOCK even when webbed. Venom, Green Goblin, Beetle, or hell, ANY Spider Man badguy should be wussier than a random street thug. It's an insult to the fans.

Side Missions

This time around, you have your typical Token Hunt(blargh), races, random crimes, and, new to the series, Combat tours. Combat tours are just that. A tour around involving much combat. You fight several groups of certain thugs in sucession, and when all of them are defeated, the combat tour is done. Harder tours are unlocked when you complete the previous level of tours, and reach certain points in the story. Races are just that, races. There are Spidey and Venom exclusive races, although Venoms are absurdly HARD. Not like, "wow, that's hard" hard, more like "You'll feel cheated in ways you never though possible with every attempt..." kinda hard.

Random crimes just happen randomly now, and this is both good and bad. It's good because you don't need to talk to civilians any more, and there isn't a flood of green dots on your map. Only one crime will ever happen at any one time. But it sucks because you can go from one end of the city to the other and you may only see 2 crimes. Also, crime are scripted to certain areas and locations, so prepare to rescue the same worker from the same ledge quite frequently. One thing they did right with the random crimes was the elimination of the balloon and boat "crimes". In their place stands random Shocker and Boomerang break ins. These guys are stronger than random thugs, but weaker than bosses. They're dumb as bricks, and block like mad. It's shameful how much of a joke Shocker's been made out to be in this game... I weep for him, I truely do.

Overall, the gameplay will make even GTA's combat seem Street Fighter deep, Incredible Hulk: UD's freedom that much more appreciated, and makes even some of the most medicore spider man games look gold. Spider Man 2 may have been a shoddy mixed bag, but at least you could shoot web into bad guys eyes and yank their weapons(both of which are classic spidey, but both of these abilities are oddly missing in USM...)

Unlockable: 3/10

You get several costumes to use AFTER completing the story mode, but most of them are LAME. 2 costumes for Peter Parker, 1 lame assed yellow and green Spider Man ripoff costume(known as arachnoman), his wrestling attire(all it is is his normal suit minus the web pattern and spider symbols... lame...) and the black sybiot suit spidey. They ONLY costume worth unlocking is the symbiot suit, and that involves collecting all those annoying little tokens and doing a lot of boring tasks. That alone makes it almost not worth getting. You can also look at some concept art, although some of it looks like 30 second scribbles from some marvel guys notepad... And you can look at a 3D model of the story characters, and some characters not even in the game(like Parkers school friends... Why are they even there? You don't even see them!?! What a waste...).

The old PSone Spider Man game had far superior unlockables. This is utter garbage.

OVERALL

If you're a spider man fan, rent this game. This game tries to get away with shortcuts and lazy dev efforts by being "accurate to the comics", and is a budget title at best. It may succeed in portraying the Ultimate Spider Man character with his random, sporatic, repeatetive fighting, boring chase scenes, and "comic inking" styled graphics, but it fails as a game. This one is for the die hard fans who don't want to do anything in a spider man game except swing around a city. Because that's about all there is to do...

The game developers really dropped the ball on this one... Go buy Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction and Spider Man 2... this one ain't worth you $50-$60 bucks($60 for Canadians... poor me... I feel so cheated...)

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/05