Solid Spider-Man Game
The Game Itself...
Based upon the popular comic book series released twice a month by Marvel Comics of the same title, Ultimate Spider-Man was hyped to be one of the most realistic adaptations of a comic book to date. The comic book series itself is basically a piece of re-written Spider-man history, sticking closely to the original themes, plots and characters created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko; the new comic delivers a revived and more modern adaptation of the much loved super-hero Spider-Man's early life.
Set not long after his 'gift' of super spider-powers, the game loosely follows the path of a young Peter Parker, as he grows up dealing with his new lifestyle. The game tries to tie in all sorts of your favourite Marvel super-heroes and super-villains from the series beginning with 'Human Torch' Johnny Storm to Carnage, Electro and Green Goblin. The inclusion of all these famous and well known characters appearing in a current generation game is a gift not to be taken for granted. The only problem with it is that the vast range of characters doesn’t necessary fit in with much of the main plot itself. They seem to be there, solely for the purpose of pleasing people like me who want to fight villains other than those in the blockbuster movies. Is there that much wrong with it though? Well, who cares? In one early part of the game you get to battle it out with Wolverine whilst playing as Venom, leading to some high paced slashing and tendril whipping. Now that's what I like to see.
Story...
The story within the game revolves around Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and his friend Eddie Brock (Venom). They end up inheriting their - now deceased - parent's experiment prototype that they left for their children before they died; the Venom suit. To cut a long story short, Parker & Brock Sr. were both experimenting to find a cure for cancer, but low and behold, it all went horribly wrong and all experimentation was cancelled leading to the suit being locked away... until now. The game takes little time to explain this to you, infact, what I've told you is just about how it explains it. This lack of depth at the beginning is more than made up for however, when the story is displayed in its own wonderful comic-boxed style that jumps from caption to caption.
As you progress, the story does tend to go off on tangents from time to time, diverging the plot to allow other villains to take center stage and lead very interesting boss fights. All in all I wouldn't say the plot is delivered to of excellence in comparison to other story-driven games, the entirety of it could have been fit inside a 6 issue story arc (130 pages) of the comic, which really isn't that long. So it does fall short, and there's not that much to it but don't get me wrong here, this is certainly the most gripping and original plot presented within a Spider-Man game to date. Bendis does a fantastic job combining all the major aspects expected of a Spidey title: characterisation; suspense; action; romance; comedy and drama all combined into one big explosive mix. I just wish there was more of it to make it that much better.
Graphics & Sound...
The graphic art style presented in Ultimate Spider-Man is nothing short of brilliant. The city of stands out to such a beautiful extent that sometimes I couldn't help but just swing around for quite some time to admire the work that went into creating the environment. Although the city is generally smaller than previous games, this ultimately needn't matter, infact, it makes the game much more enjoyable, allowing the player to get used to the city much more quickly into the game. It's not just the environment that makes this game such a great piece of work to look at either: The main character models themselves look like they have jumped directly from a page of a comic right onto your screen. Artists involved in the game have interoperated everything about the heroes and villains that the comic's artists Mark Bagley & Scott Hanna have come to invent to a fantastic amount of detail. In my personal opinion, this is Ultimate Spider-Man's ultimate .
Trailing behind the game's art and graphic features is the sound of the environment and characters. First off, let me just say that it is not the actual performance or sound of the audio that leaves me feeling like more work could have been done. What does disappoint me is the timing and repetitive nature of the audio. So although the voice overs are done fantastically (and they are), they just seem to repeat every couple minutes if you're engaging in some form of combat or chasing a bad guy down. As most of us all know, this can get a little tedious and annoying whilst battling an already frustrating boss battle. This is not just the case with the voicing however, the music within the game seems a bit jumpy at times and chooses to play itself at pretty random rates and intervals. There's no real bad point to this other than that it gives off an impression of incompleteness.
Gameplay...
As it has become a trend as of late to sacrifice gameplay element to more multimedia purposes such as improvements on graphics and sound, Ultimate Spider-man fails to fall into this trap. First and foremost, the control in this game handles beautifully. It takes a little while to get used to the web slinging and wall crawling but once you do, you can begin to truly appreciate the work that's went into making this the most realistic simulation of controlling the web-slinger and roof-leaper to date. The flow and very nature of the character your controlling -be it Spider-Man or Venom- is down to almost perfection, leaving you feeling like you really do have complete control of the characters on screen. It is a complete joy to be able to do this throughout he game's great free-play nature (where you can take your time and do what you want basically) and the enjoyment created through this is brilliant. The gameplay style of both characters playable within the game is almost two totally different experiences: Chose Spider-Man and you can swing, jump and dash around town doing all sorts of acrobatic stunts like a true hero; Chose Venom and wreck havoc on all that's in your path and leap higher than you could imagine onto rooftops and buildings. The combat system within the game is uniquely simple for a Spider-Man title, leaving battling for the most part to simple button bashing. Further on down the line however, you will have to start combining web-attacks with punches and kicks whilst taking down crooks, or picking up and throwing around vehicles whilst wrecking havok as Venom.
There are a few downsides to the gameplay however and they won't go unrecognized. One of the major issues within the game is that it relies too heavily on a sort of 'catch-up' style mission where you constantly have to chase down someone and stay within a certain distance from them. Yes, classic Spider-Man game, I know. This time around however, Spidey seems to like doing this a lot more, as he ends up chasing down enemies around 40% of the game's main missions. Not only this, but the actual missions themselves are a little frustrating and take quite a while to get through. I often found myself replaying a race 20-40 times before I could finally get it right. I quickly got bored of this constant repetitiveness and nearly lost interest in the game completely. Luckily however, it didn't get that bad. One final bad point to the gameplay is the overall variety of game missions to choose from. Basically you have the story mode which you will progress through as you play the game and will take you around 6-7 hours to complete. You also have the extra missions that help build up your stats to help with story mode. These little added bonuses are entertaining at first but leave a lot to be desired after around 3 hours of swinging around. Another bad thing about this style was that the game didn't necessarily force you to do these missions; usually you will have to do 1 or 2 before the next story mode mission can be unlocked but it really isn't enough to keep you on the edge of your seat and wanting to keep going. Leave these points behind however, and you have a marvelous example of how a Spider-Man game should be.
Subsequent to completion of the story mode, you will be free to roam , in search for all those 'hidden' tokens which in turn unlock 'bonus features' within the games menu. Very little of these un-lockables will appeal to a non-hardcore spidey fan, so I fear that a majority of people won't necessary find the need to go back and tour the city, in search for these bonus prizes. I mean, I'm a big fan and I don't think I'm going to be able to spend possibly 10+ hours doing so just for some comic covers that I already have in my home. There are a few interesting features however such as unlockable costumes and concept art. You can also go ahead and do some of the additional 'Race' (racing through town whilst going through hoops and giant spheres within a certain time) or '' (fighting numerous gangs one after the other) missions that you may not have completed during the course of the story mode. This too can be seen as unnecessary, but still adds a little replay value to the game. Lastly and most importantly in regards to replay value is the ability to chose between Venom and Spider-Man (which you can't do prior to completion). If you decide to go as Venom, you will have a huge array of different mission modes available to you, such as new Battle and Race missions that focus mainly on Venom's abilities and a hidden mini-type-game that resembles Hulk Ultimate Destruction in which you can tear up town and gain points to rack up a 'high score' by doing so. If you reach the ultimate level of destruction, you will have all sorts of military force tracking you down such as helicopters and army jeeps. This amused me for a little while but lost its charm the second or third time I tried it.
The Final Word...
Although it experiences some minor letdowns and faults, the overall feeling of the game is that it will certainly impress the average comic-book-reading-gamer, proving once again that comic book games can be done right. Even though the game surpasses previous efforts done with the Spider-Man license, it doesn't succeed them by all that much. It is nevertheless, the best there is out there for any Spider-Man fan and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in wearing the red & blue costume to fight crime one more time. Even if you're not a fan of Marvel and its gaming titles out there but are still undecided, I urge you give Ultimate Spider-Man a try. Its neat graphics and action packed gameplay may just be enough to change your mind.
When it comes down to it, Ultimate Spider-Man might not be among the highest quality group of games to come out this year but it certainly is the closest you're going to get to indulging in the ultimate Spider-Man gaming experience.
Overview
Story: B+
Graphics: A-
Sound: B+
Gameplay & Control: A-
Enjoyment: A-
Final Grade: A- (7.6/10)
