Spider-Man 3

"The Absolute Truth About SM3"

So here's the deal.

Spider-Man 3, to me, is everything it should be and maybe a little of what it shouldn't.

When I played Treyarch's Spider-Man 2 back in 2004, I found myself faced with a very enjoyable - but flawed - gaming experience. The innovative sandbox-style approach to Spidey's NYC was contrasted with sometimes shoddy fight controls. The all-star voice work was contrasted by clunky and frustrating fighting mechanics. And so on.

Spider-Man 3 is very much the same; a game with many strengths and weaknesses, that counterbalance each other to still create a rewarding and exciting Spider-Man experience.

Let's get to it, shall we?

Graphics - The graphics for the 360 version of Spider-Man are fantastic. Spider-Man himself looks incredible. The city of New York looks better than ever. The sun reflects brightly off the windows on the building's during the day, and at night the bright lights leave you swinging through a neon wonderland. The game felt like a terrific leap from the standards set by its predecessor, and completely acceptable in presentation for a next-generation game.

The game manages to maintain its standard core of visuals from Spider-Man 2, in the sense that what's really been re-worked are textures and animations. Everything feels bigger and better, rather than seeing a complete overhaul. Satisfying to look at, but Gears of War or DOA4, this ain't.

Gameplay - Treyarch evidently put a lot of work into the new set of controls. The fighting mechanics have been significantly altered, making common battles more enjoyable this time around and less of a chore. With SM2, I found even a simple random encounter was a nuisance, as Spidey trying to take out a handful of thugs turned out to be overwhelming in some instances. Here, with the combination of the reflex button and super combos, dispatching villains has never been simpler. While Spider-Man will still get away from you at times, you'll find that once you get a hang of the combat mechanics you'll be pulling off awesome acrobatic moves with ease.

Swinging around the familiar skyscrapers of New York is as satisfying as ever. The actual web-sling mechanics seem to have simplified some since SM2, but I didn't find it really bothers me.

The introduction of "cineratives", and other context-sensitive buttons makes the game feel reminiscent of Tomb Raider: Legend or God of War at times. The array of stunts and combat you'll see yourself doing during some of these scenes is really intense, and makes the game feel that much more cinematic than any previous Spider-Man games. A great addition.

Story - Easily the weakest part of the game. Whereas I felt that in SM2, the movie plot and more comic-book related plots were woven together smoothly and made for an entertaining experience, this time around the story feels clunky and unorganized. Events will happen without any obvious provocation, there will be little to no apparent resolution to some plots, and others leaving you on a cliffhanger, wondering if they'll ever be resolved. As happy as I am to see characters like Scorpion and Kingpin re-imagined into the context of the movies, I found that the last game just handled cameos and villains like this much better.

On the flipside, the random encounters from SM2 have been greatly improved. Gone are the emotionless, thankless civilian crises. And as of yet, I haven't seen a little girl as me for her balloon yet. Not once.
Usually, whenever stumbling upon a random crime, it becomes much more involved, sometimes involving rival gangs that are currently haunting the city. There's dialogue, characters to interact with, and with that a sense of importance to what you're doing when you're stopping some of these things.

The disjointed story doesn't entirely hamper your experience, I find. But it makes feeling the flow of the game fairly uncomfortable.

Overall - When SM3 was announced for a primary focus on the next-gen systems, everyone - myself included - thought it meant a complete overhaul of the series. The series which, when you get right down to it, is just one of the best movie-tie in games there is. What we have instead is a lot of what was good from Spider-Man 2, updated with new content, better graphics, and a new combat mechanic. Ultimately making this the better game, but perhaps not the reinvention some of us were hoping for.

tl;dr version: If you liked Spider-Man 2, get Spider-Man 3.

Final score: 8 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/07