Spider-Man 3

"Spiderman 3 - A good game, but not a next-gen game."

"Spiderman 3 - A good game, but not a next-gen game."

Spiderman has for me, like a lot of other people been a hero of mine since childhood. I've read the comics, watched the TV series, the movies. When I was a kid I got the action figures. I've played most of the spidey games since the first Playstation one, and they have for the most part only gotten better. Spiderman 3 is no exception to this rule, although there are a few problems I have with it, but more on them later. The game is based on the new movie of the same name, and features most of the same names in the title roles. The game is also Spiderman's first solo outing on the Xbox 360, but how does it play?

Gameplay

This game is as fun as any other free-roaming game around. Swinging around the city never gets old. The controls have been well thought out and everything works wonderfully. In order to swing, you need to have a target, so you can't swing on thin air like in the earlier games. You press left or right on the thumbstick and pull the right trigger to shoot a web in the direction you pressed, and then swing on it. It's amazing how natural it feels once you've gotten the hang of all the special tricks and upgrades to your swinging.

The combat is made up of dodging attacks with your "spider-reflexes" then counter-attacking and leading into a vicious combo. You have a bar that fills with each successful combo move and dodge, which when full allows you to access your special attacks (or "rage" mode in the Black suit Spiderman outfit). You can web enemies up, tie them to lamp-posts, swing them around you and throw them into walls, launch devastating air attacks. Fight just like spidey himself. However, your attacks often seem very weak. In both the films and the comics he has "The strength proportionate to a spider" and can lift and throw cars etc. Punch hard and survive onslaughts from many foes. Yet in this, it takes a while to deal with your foes. Their attacks seem just as lethal against you too. Some bad guys pounding you into the ground. But this is just a minor gripe of mine; after all it wouldn't really be fun to take out most foes in a single hit.

Story

The story is based on the movie, except it expands on it. It adds in more enemies to face. These new enemies include the Lizard, Rhino, Scorpion and the Kingpin. The story is split into 42 different missions. These missions vary from swinging Mary-Jane from one place in the city to another, fulfilling different criteria along the way, to sneaking into a military base to investigate strange goings on. The story of the movie doesn't take up a lot ofthe game, but other missions must be completed to unlock the movie storyline. You unlock the black-suit at about 50% of the way through the game and keep it for only a few missions. Then you switch back to your red and blue duds, but upon completing the game you get the option to play through the whole game again in the black-suit.

There are also random crimes in the city. You will be swinging around, then suddenly a fight between rival factions will break out for you to deal with. Or a speeding vehicle will zip past you for you to stop. Completing these random crimes awards you with more respect in each of the gang's zones, making the public feel more at ease with you.

In addition to these missions and random crimes, there are also side-missions. These are races, skydiving, combat tours, the arena and bomb tours. All of these offer some variety and involve you utilising a different set of skills for each.

For every mission you complete you will also unlock a new move, or upgrade to one of your existing skills, making you stronger as you progress through the story and more able to complete other challenges in the game.

Graphics and sounds

The graphics at times will stun you, the amount of detail in the suit for one, and the large scope of the city. However there are bits which just don't seem Next-gen enough for me. For example, there are only so many character models. Spiderman never takes his mask off, making some of the cutscenes hard to understand, unless you have seen the movie. The clothes seem very static, and there are only a few variations of the cars around. If I ever go to New York, and if this game is anything to base it off - then I will never need to look far for a taxi. 95% of the cars seem to be yellow taxis.

All of the cutscenes use the game engine, not FMV's. How hard would it have been to combine two of the skins to make things make more sense? The clothes are just big blocks on the characters, which isn't exactly next-gen. Weblines and people disappear right in front of your eyes. All in all the graphics don'tseem to be too big of a step up from last-gen games.

The sounds in the game are ok. The voice acting is brilliant, especially Bruce Campbell as the narrator. But that's it really. There is sometimes a weird chimewhen going from area to area, that I have yet to identify. But sounds aren't really why I play a game.

Playtime and replayability

Looking at the menu, it has taken me 14 hours to complete the story and many random crimes. This seems to be about the average for games nowadays. The game poses some challenge in parts, and the sidequests will take a while to complete them all 100%. The token will take ages to find all of them too, so that is good.

Once completing the game you have the option to play the whole game in your black-suit, this adds to the replayability. And the swinging system is fun enough to bring you back to just swing around the city completing random crimesagain and again.

Achievements

The achievements in this game are fairly straight forwards, you will unlock most of them in a single run-through of the game. Those that are left, will take a little while longer, some of the side-quests that they ask you to complete will drive you insane, so patience will be needed to get the 100% in this game.

Conclusion

Although the game is fun, I was let down by the graphics in parts of the game. And I can't help but remember back to how many unlockable outfits you had in Spiderman on the playstation. Now the only other costume is the black-suited Spiderman. You even get to play as scorpion, new goblin and peter parker throughout the game, and I fail to see why if these were included to play as for a mission, why they can't be included as unlockables when you are done with the game. Other skins would be nice too, such as venom, or some of the outfitsfrom the comics. These things were available in a PS1 game, they should be in a360 game!

Parts of the story don't make too much sense without first seeing the movie, so I would recommend this game as being used in conjunction with that.

Overall, the game is fun to play, so I will give it 79%

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