Spider-Man 3 - Review
Added May 15th, 2007 by James Bolan
In the past, movie inspired video games have mostly been a plague over the gaming community. One of the few exceptions has been Activision’s Spider-Man series. The first game, Spider-Man: The Movie made you feel as if you were Spider-Man and surprisingly remained tied into the movie. Swinging by the skyscrapers of New York City on your way to defeat some new threat was great fun and had yet to be done in such an entertaining and graphically impressive way. Spider-Man 2 the movie introduced free-roam to the series and a brand new “realistic” swing-system. The player now needed buildings in the immediate area to swing. This opened up a whole new depth and, dare I say, strategy from traversing point A to B. Random crimes, races, and secret tokens were all added to lengthen the gameplay experience and allowed the player a choice of whether or not to save the day or swing around without a care.
Here we are years later, and yet another Spider-Man movie game has made it onto store shelves. Does Spider-Man 3 improve upon the solid formula of the series or does it rather turn into an over-hyped piece of crap like its movie tie-in? To the crapper, here we come!
For those who loved the second game, the swing system is mostly intact. You can still web-zip, wall-run, and boost during a web swing. The manual swinging from the series is now gone. Instead of Spidey holding onto the web until you jump or shoot out another web, he lets go as soon as you release the right trigger. This new way of swinging won’t be particularly hard to get used to, nor will you raise your fist in anger at Treyarch. It works. Swinging is just as much fun as it has always been and if that’s the reason you’re buying it, you’ll enjoy this game. It’s the rest of the mix that brings Spider-Man 3 down.
Combat is about the same as Spider-Man 2 -- lots of combos that you can ignore and just button mash. The soft lock-on system works out for you at times but that’s not the major problem I had; it’s the new dodge system. When you’re in the midst of a huge fight with a gang or some of the mutated lizards, there’s so much going on with projectiles and standard melee attacks (both of which have icons). With so many icons on the screen, it becomes difficult to evade and counter-attack. When combat is frustrating and unrewarding in a super-hero game, you have a major problem. What happened to web-yanking the gun out of an enemy’s hand or dodging in the direction YOU want to? Don’t ask the camera to help you here either because it clearly wants you to swing.
The introduction of the Black-Suit in Spider-Man 3 is actually a positive thing. It helps to spice up the combat with new moves and a Rage meter that unleashes a devastating attack when activated. I literally mean devastating. You can knock enemies almost a block away with a super attack! Sure, Red Suit Spidey had super moves too but they’re just more entertaining and powerful in the Black Suit. You spend a relatively short time with the black suit, (about 20% of the game) but luckily you can unlock it after completion.
One of the new and semi-exciting features is the new interactive cut-scenes. Now you get to feel as if you’re performing one of Spidey’s cinematic feats of agility from the movies. A few are pretty entertaining. One of the problems is that you don’t really have a clue when they’re about to come up. I don’t want to compare this to God of War and Resident Evil 4 but I have to. Somehow in those titles you could sense when one of those events was approaching. Sadly, there isn’t the same feeling in Spider-Man 3 and it brings down the cool factor of this feature.
Swinging and combat upgrades are back in Spidey 3 but instead of a store you level up from completing missions. It seems like specific move unlocks are tied to certain missions so the order you complete the game could potentially make life harder for you. Speaking of life, the game-play in this title is just about as lifeless as the city of New York. At no time while you’re swinging will the pedestrians say anything. No one will honk a horn and scream at you for being in their way. It’s so eerily quiet in the streets that it takes you out of the experience a bit. Boss fights all have their own special feel and rhythm to them but none are truly epic (not even the last fight) or fun.
Graphically, the Spider-Man model is a looker but that makes him look even more out of place in a not-so-next-gen textured New York. Some of the areas look really good (pipes in the sewers with their wet shine) but others don’t match up. The actor models need to be talked about. What the hell happened to Tobey’s face? He looks like a burn victim! It seems as if James Franco is the only one that dodged the terrible modeling bullet. Scorpion looks great but most of the other bosses didn’t receive the same treatment. Average thugs and pedestrians look much better than the last game but nothing amazing, and they don’t have to be.
Summary:
Spider-Man 3 is an undeniably rushed product. It’s obvious in the lackluster gameplay and visuals. Content-wise, there’s a TON of activities and sub-plots in Spider-Man 3 such as sky-diving, Mary-Jane thrill rides, bomb defusing, races, etc. The only problem is very rarely are they fun. When I play a game from start to finish and can’t remember a fight that really stood out from the rest or that I want to talk to friends about, there’s a problem. Swinging is still amusing, but it just isn’t enough to recommend this one for a purchase. I’d wait for this one to hit the bargain bin folks. Better luck next time true believers.
Here we are years later, and yet another Spider-Man movie game has made it onto store shelves. Does Spider-Man 3 improve upon the solid formula of the series or does it rather turn into an over-hyped piece of crap like its movie tie-in? To the crapper, here we come!
For those who loved the second game, the swing system is mostly intact. You can still web-zip, wall-run, and boost during a web swing. The manual swinging from the series is now gone. Instead of Spidey holding onto the web until you jump or shoot out another web, he lets go as soon as you release the right trigger. This new way of swinging won’t be particularly hard to get used to, nor will you raise your fist in anger at Treyarch. It works. Swinging is just as much fun as it has always been and if that’s the reason you’re buying it, you’ll enjoy this game. It’s the rest of the mix that brings Spider-Man 3 down.
Combat is about the same as Spider-Man 2 -- lots of combos that you can ignore and just button mash. The soft lock-on system works out for you at times but that’s not the major problem I had; it’s the new dodge system. When you’re in the midst of a huge fight with a gang or some of the mutated lizards, there’s so much going on with projectiles and standard melee attacks (both of which have icons). With so many icons on the screen, it becomes difficult to evade and counter-attack. When combat is frustrating and unrewarding in a super-hero game, you have a major problem. What happened to web-yanking the gun out of an enemy’s hand or dodging in the direction YOU want to? Don’t ask the camera to help you here either because it clearly wants you to swing.
The introduction of the Black-Suit in Spider-Man 3 is actually a positive thing. It helps to spice up the combat with new moves and a Rage meter that unleashes a devastating attack when activated. I literally mean devastating. You can knock enemies almost a block away with a super attack! Sure, Red Suit Spidey had super moves too but they’re just more entertaining and powerful in the Black Suit. You spend a relatively short time with the black suit, (about 20% of the game) but luckily you can unlock it after completion.
One of the new and semi-exciting features is the new interactive cut-scenes. Now you get to feel as if you’re performing one of Spidey’s cinematic feats of agility from the movies. A few are pretty entertaining. One of the problems is that you don’t really have a clue when they’re about to come up. I don’t want to compare this to God of War and Resident Evil 4 but I have to. Somehow in those titles you could sense when one of those events was approaching. Sadly, there isn’t the same feeling in Spider-Man 3 and it brings down the cool factor of this feature.
Swinging and combat upgrades are back in Spidey 3 but instead of a store you level up from completing missions. It seems like specific move unlocks are tied to certain missions so the order you complete the game could potentially make life harder for you. Speaking of life, the game-play in this title is just about as lifeless as the city of New York. At no time while you’re swinging will the pedestrians say anything. No one will honk a horn and scream at you for being in their way. It’s so eerily quiet in the streets that it takes you out of the experience a bit. Boss fights all have their own special feel and rhythm to them but none are truly epic (not even the last fight) or fun.
Graphically, the Spider-Man model is a looker but that makes him look even more out of place in a not-so-next-gen textured New York. Some of the areas look really good (pipes in the sewers with their wet shine) but others don’t match up. The actor models need to be talked about. What the hell happened to Tobey’s face? He looks like a burn victim! It seems as if James Franco is the only one that dodged the terrible modeling bullet. Scorpion looks great but most of the other bosses didn’t receive the same treatment. Average thugs and pedestrians look much better than the last game but nothing amazing, and they don’t have to be.
Summary:
Spider-Man 3 is an undeniably rushed product. It’s obvious in the lackluster gameplay and visuals. Content-wise, there’s a TON of activities and sub-plots in Spider-Man 3 such as sky-diving, Mary-Jane thrill rides, bomb defusing, races, etc. The only problem is very rarely are they fun. When I play a game from start to finish and can’t remember a fight that really stood out from the rest or that I want to talk to friends about, there’s a problem. Swinging is still amusing, but it just isn’t enough to recommend this one for a purchase. I’d wait for this one to hit the bargain bin folks. Better luck next time true believers.
