Spider-Man 3

"Was Spider-Man swimming in oil? Oh no wait, he's just evil now. Yay!"

Kill the younglings Spider-Man! Only then will your journey to the dark side be complete! Okay, this isn't Star Wars. Nonetheless Spidey still turns evil in Spider-Man 3, the video game based off of the third movie. Like Spidey 2 it's a sandbox game where you can swing around all of New York as your favourite webslinger. So let's get into it.

STORY
Peter Parker's sure got it made. He got the girl of his dreams, everyone loves Spider-Man, and his best friend wants to kill him. Err, scratch that last part out. Unfortunately happiness can only last so long as a whole slew of gangs and supervillains are looking to take control of the city. And to make matters more interesting, Spidey comes across a black alien life form from outer space. Any true Spidey fan would know that it's the symbiote. And this symbiote envelopes Spidey and grants him a new black Spidey suit with amazing power and speed....so it's a blessing right!? Oh if only it were that simple. The story is very different from the plot of the film, and there are barely any missions dealing with the film at all. So if you're not looking for a simplistic retelling of the movie, you won't be disappointed.

GRAPHICS
The graphics of Spider-Man 3 are a mixed bag. The city itself is absolutely breathtaking. I found myself standing on random rooftops just so that I could take in the scenery. The windows on the buildings have nice reflections. You can see traffic moving around from up high above. The water (though you barely go near it) also looks amazing as well. The game looks superb....unless you count some of these character models. The people walking around the city, too much like PS2/Gamecube graphics for my Xbox 360 liking. If you ever see the Peter Parker model, you will turn away in disgust. It looks nothing like Tobey Maguire, and it's forehead is ridiculously large. And in the cutscenes Petey seems to be half asleep no matter what the situation. Again Parker is one exception. Some character models like Spider-Man, Sandman, J. Jonah Jameson and various others look great. Others...not so much.

SOUND
I'm happy to report that many of the actors from the film reprise their roles in the game as well. Tobey Maguire is once again Spider-Man, and Bruce Campbell is once again your narrator! It's like being told the game by God himself. Thomas Haden Church, JK Simmons, James Franco and Topher Grace also lend their voices to the characters too. But word of advice for Topher next time you play a video game character....PUT SOME EMOTION INTO IT! For the most part the voice acting's great...aside from our lackluster Eddie Brock. As for everything else, they sound exactly as you'd expect and you got the same web slinging and spidey sense sounds from the movie. The one thing I wish the game had when you're swinging around is music playing. Most of the time when you play the game it's dead silent. Luckily Xbox 360 and it's hard drive can fix that. But still, more music next time! It's decent audio for the most part.

GAMEPLAY
Spider-Man 2 was easily the funnest superhero video game I've ever played. Seriously the amount of fun to be had from swinging around Manhatten was legendary. And now we get the sequel which continues the tradition of placing our hero in a sandbox world where you can accept any mission you want in whatever order, or you can swing around, or just maybe you wanna take care of some crime in the streets? Either way, it's all good fun to do. And being Spider-Man, why wouldn't it be? You can swing around buildings, climb up walls and ceilings, slow down time with your Spider-Sense, and even take pictures for the Daily Bugle. Though I thought the swinging maneuvers had much more finesse in SP2, but it's still fun regardless. Like a Grand Theft Auto game you have several markers placed throughout the city that are your missions. And you can do them in whatever order you want as well which is always great to see.

Some are important for beating the game, others are like taking pictures for the Bugle to earn some new moves. With each new mission you do, our webhead learns some new attacks or skills that will make the game much funner to go through, and change up the pace if you find the gameplay repetitive. Though honestly, this game is far from repetitive. Spidey does a lot to save his citizens. When madmen place bombs, Spidey defuses them. And defusing bombs was one of the funner activities if I do say so myself. Basically they throw this whole puzzle thing at you where you might have to lead an open circuit to it's power, or play a Parappa the Rapper style button input code, and you even unscrew the screws to open the bomb up.

I wish you defused bombs more often cause it was surprisingly fun. Not nearly as fun as some of the action scenes Spidey comes across every now and then. By action scenes I refer to situations in which the game plays a cutscene, and our hero is avoiding obstacles and doing his best to defeat the boss or whatever. So a scene plays and some buttons come on screen. Push those buttons and you'll dodge the dangers and move on. Push the wrong buttons or don't push them in time, and be prepared to laugh yourself silly. Seriously I almost had tears coming down my eyes when I screwed up the very first action scene at the beginning of the game. It said X, I pushed Y. Spider-Man was supposed to save this girl strapped to a bomb. Instead of webbing over to her, he just falls flat on his face and blows up with the bomb. Call me heartless, but watching a hero screw up like that is ridiculously comical. I found myself screwing up the action scenes just to see how badly Spidey gets hurt. And it was worth it.

Combat with thugs takes awhile to get used to. See the only way to counter enemies is to hold the spider-sense button and press X after they've swung at you. When you're in spider-sensed mode, the thugs will never hit you unless of course they're bosses and a purple icon appears over their head. But if you stay with the sense, and thugs will shoot at you only to miss, try and punch you only to fail. The sense however doesn't last forever. If you can remember that Spidey sense helps out a great deal, the fights will seem easy. Cause if you don't, these gangmembers will MURDER you. Ten on one really makes a difference, especially if you only plan on mashing the X button. Another thing I'd say is learn some of those better combos too. The more you can take out at once, the easier the fights will be. I'm not calling Spider-Man 3 hard, but it's not easy either.

Of course the big new thing about Spider-Man 3 is that our hero gets taken over by the Symbiote and dons a new black suit that makes our hero faster and stronger and better overall. And the only side effects are that he turns into a bit of a jerk. But does being a jerk affect us in the game? NO! So being black suited Spidey is good! Actually the two Spider-Mans aren't much different. Our symbiote lover has different motion capture when he swings, and much better combos. He also has a rage meter that fills up with each punch he gives a thug. And when the rage meter fills, you can become twice as strong for a short period of time and dish out a real beat down. So in my opinion, being evil is good, cause he has much better attacks and a rage meter that comes through in a pinch. And the best part is that there are no consequences for wearing the suit....other than a lack of color. Oh and you're a jerk, but who cares about that?

Now I must go over the few negative aspects of the gameplay. One, I hated wallcrawling. I don't know what they did to the old system, but crawling around on the ceiling just really gives me a headache. The camera does this ridiculous turn around and it's so close to you that you have no idea what's going on up above. Or below you I should say. Wallcrawling sucks. And secondly, the game lacks real sidemissions. I mean in Spider-Man 2 you had an arena to fight in, TONS of Daily Bugle assignments, you could deliver pizza to people and date Mary Jane and and look for hidden tokens and all this stuff! In Spidey 3 however, you're missions are easy. Doing the Daily Bugle missions in this game was a joke compared to the second game, mainly cause it was much easier and there like only 5 or 6 missions. Zuh?! When you beat the game (which shouldn't take more than 2 days), you will complete a few missions here and there, but then you have nothing to do but clean up the streets.

Lack of sidequests make this spider sad. Though you can rebeat the whole game as Black suited Spidey if you want. But still. Oh and Bruce Campbell is your narrator right? Well what good is it if you rarely hear him?! In SP2 he had information tokens all over the city you could activate to keep learning new tricks and secrets. In SP3, you hear him....at the beginning. Then he just goes away. I wants my Ash! But now I'm nitpicking though. Spider-Man 3 is still a really fun game to play regardless of these slight problems.

IN THE END...
I had a lotta fun playing this third installment. Action scenes are hilarious to die in, black suited Spider-Man sure is cool, and swinging around the city is still ridiculously fun. It's replayability could be a lot better, but it still works for me regardless. Check it out.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/24/07