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Review: Ultimate Spider-Man
- Title: Ultimate Spider-Man
- Developer: Treyarch
- Publisher: Activision
- System: Xbox (PS2, GC)
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 7/10
The translation of the comic to the game is extremely faithful. While it's not necessary, having read the comic will give the player a deeper understanding of the characters and their motivations. The developers received permission to effectively extend the canon of the Ultimate line, going further in exploring the repercussions of Peter Parker's encounter with Eddie Brock and the Venom suit. The majority of the story revolves around Brock and Parker, with both characters being the controlled protagonist at various points in the game. Besides Venom, fans of the comic will have the opportunity to interact with the likes of Green Goblin, R.H.I.N.O, Shocker, Silver Sable, Beetle, and Carnage. All this fan service comes courtesy of a Bendis-penned script. Despite some of the gameplay shortcomings the plot of the game is top-notch, and will be a treat to anyone who is a fan of the series.
If you've played Spider-Man 2, you will be intimately familiar with the control scheme for Ultimate Spider-Man. Most of the additions to the controls are subtle tweaks to the combat system. This Spider-Man is much more bouncy than the Spidey of the previous game, leaping off of walls to strike at opponents. Movement for Peter is the same as it ever was, and the web-swinging is easily one of the most entertaining travel modes in any video game I've played. Control over the thwipping has been simplified, with fewer options available but a more intuitive experience the result. Venom is a very different animal, much bulkier and far stronger. Instead of swinging, Venom makes tremendous leaps in a style similar to the Hulk in Ultimate Destruction. Venom's attacks are extremely powerful, tossing cars at opponents and lashing out with tentacles. He has some neat wrestling style moves, but mashing the tentacle attack button is usually the most effective way to finish an opponent. In an interesting nod to continuity, Venom slowly loses health as the suit consumes Brock's strength. To counteract this and to heal up damage from fights, Venom can consume bystanders by drawing them into his suit and draining them dry. In essentially all ways the man in black is more suited to combat that his red-suited counterpart. Parker is much more entertaining to control than Brock, though. The slim form of Spider-Man has a level of grace and finesse that shows how much care the development team put into crafting the experience. My only real complaint is the lack of a quick method of scaling a building. Having played Hulk, where the big green can surge up the side of the building in giant leaps, Spider-Man's slow crawl was somewhat frustrating. Speaking of the Hulk, Venom reminded me of Banner's alter-ego in less than pleasant way. Venom handles like a flying Buick. Leaping is a very inexact form of travel, and the combat system isn't tuned for his powerful attacks.
Movement and combat are tested often in the linear confines of the game's progress. Unlike the more GTA-like Spider-Man 2, Ultimate requires the player to progress in various city-wide activities in order to gain access to new story mode missions. The two most common requirements are race medals and completion of combat tours. Races are just what you've come to expect from a game like this, and are similar to races you'll find in other super-hero titles. Combat tours require you to follow waypoints around the city, defeating baddies at each location until you've whupped a goodly number of whatever gang you're concentrating on. A certain number of completed races and tours are required in order to reach the next story mission, along with found tokens (unlockables like comic covers or hidden coins) and spontaneous city events (wounded citizens needing a lift to the hospital, muggings, and carjackings). These activities are nothing more than time killers, spacing out the interesting and fanboi satisfying story missions. The story missions are all different, and many combine several activities into a comic-book's length action piece. In one, you pursue a retreating Rhino in a form of race. Along the way you rescue trapped and wounded citizens, delivering them to safety. Finally, you and Rhino have it out in grand melee. Each story mission is accompanied by beautiful comic-panel action and entertaining dialogue. The busy-work races and combat tours are very frustrating, though, and comparatively speaking there are just too few story missions compared to the amount of time you'll spend racing around the city.
One way in which Ultimate Spider-Man is clearly superior to Spider-Man 2 is in its graphical presentation. I really enjoyed the cell-shaded look, making the deformed art style come to life on the television screen. The game looks terrific, with every character a detailed, fleshed out, and articulated 3-D representation of the comic book images. Just as impressive as the animated look is the presentation style. Comic-inspired panels are used heavily during cut scenes, with the characters literally leaping off the page. The effect is quite striking, and makes for a game that flaunts its comic book roots in a very satisfying fashion. I wish I could say the same for the audio environment. Musically, the game is very frustrating. Pieces alternate between generic-sounding electronic music and quite annoying "action" selections that distracted from my enjoyment of the game. Sound effects are fairly standard, your thwaps and smacks and thwips getting across movement and action well enough. The voice acting is relatively well done, thankfully, with Parker and Co. straying to this side of the comic book corny line. Bendis does excellent dialogue, and the cast imparts his words with feeling and emphasis. While it only makes sense that the game's visuals were more the focus than the audio, it would have been nice to enjoy a more full sensory experience while playing the title.
Ultimate Spider-Man is lots of fun. Graphically it's an improvement over the previous incarnations, and the refined controls and combination gameplay switch up the established formula. Despite lackluster racing elements, the freewheeling movement and bouncy combat combined with the engaging story missions makes for a number of entertaining moments. The brevity of the overall story is probably the most frustrating aspect of the game, with the quality of the voice acting and writing leaving the player wanting more than the title can provide. The only real way to satisfy the itch this game will cause is to read the books, which is in many ways the highest compliment the game can receive. If you're a fan of Marvel's universe you'll have a hard time not enjoying the fun this game can offer. Ultimate Spider-Man is well worth a rental, with the only folks likely not to find something worthwhile in this title the ones who spent their time in forums referring to Wind Waker as "Cellda".
What does that acronym mean anyway?
My biggest problem with Spiderman 2 was that poor Peter Parker evidently never learned to swim. Can the wallcrawler swim this time around? I didn't see that mentioned in the review.
What I really loved about Spiderman 2 was the way that you really had to plan out your webbing on the fly, webbing onto specific buildings. The rest of the game was just so-so, but swinging around the city was an incredible blast. I was planning to pass this one up because it sounded like it was missing the one thing that I really liked in Spiderman2. I was really hoping for a sequel to Spiderman2 that kept the web swinging but with more types of random events and a better story.
So how badly has the web swinging been dumbed down? Does the webbing still attach to buildings? (I hope we haven't returned to the old webbing-from-the-sky scheme of older Spiderman games). Are the acrobatics still there? What could you do in Spiderman 2 that you can't do in this game?
I recently played the PC version of this game, and had a horribly buggy experience. My gaming desktop is moderately powered machine (AIW 9800 Pro, Athlon 3200+, 1g RAM) and I was able to play the game in 1600x1200. That is, until I met up with Human Torch. During that racing sequence, I had to drop the game down to 800x600 so I could play. After that sequence, I was able to play the rest of my time in 1600x1200. The controls also seemed off, in one mission I was asked to set someone down, by pressing a key (had not changed it from default). For the next 20 minutes I hit every key on the keyboard trying to put the person I was carrying down. Exit...reboot.. Problem still exists. This was still very early in the game, so I thought perhaps I would start over, that somehow I had just happened to do something that caused me to be "stuck". Got back to the same part, and encountered the exact same bug.
So 20 minutes into the game, I was hit by a game ending bug twice... At that point I uninstalled. I'm sure the game was much better on the consoles, but the PC port seemed untested, as I encountered all these issue within the first 20 minutes of playing.
Gailin
I wish there was a fscking blue pill
Look, I don't mind advetising. Really I don't.
But advertising on Slashdot pretending to be a review or news story is unethical. If you are going to accept paid advertisments, make it clear that they are paid advertisments!
Think of all the big games that get ignored on Slashdot, and then think of the ones that have huge glowing reviews (Hulk, Spiderman), and it is clear that there is some payola going on here.
COME CLEAN SLASHDOT!!! We know this is a scam!