Ultimate Spider-Man - Review

Added November 3rd, 2005 by Sallizar

Introduction:

A few years back Marvel Comics released a new comic book series dubbed “Ultimate Spiderman.”  It’s a retelling of the Spiderman saga for modern readers that completely reboots the story by tossing out decades of continuity and starting from scratch.  In the series, Peter Parker is back to being a nerdy high school kid and Nick Fury is now the spitting image of Samuel L. Jackson.  What I’ve read of the comic has been extremely well written and illustrated.  When I heard that Treyarch (developers of both Spiderman movie games) and Activision were working on a video game adaptation of the series that let gamers play as Spiderman and Venom my “Fanboy Sense” started going crazy.  

Gameplay:

The joy of sandbox style gaming stems from the feeling of freedom you get while playing.  Typically one is given a location or two to visit that will progress the story and on the way you have multiple opportunities to be sidetracked by various mini-games or subquests.  Not so in Ultimate Spiderman.  My first item of business after strapping on my web shooters was to find some evildoer’s head to soundly bash.  I open up the map and prominently display on the legend is an icon labeled Story Mission.  I scan the length and breadth of New York, but to my dismay and I can’t find the icon.  To access the story missions you have to complete a specified number of side missions.  A few time trial races, clumsy people hanging on to ledges, and web tied gang members later, I finally get on with the meat of the game.  A few minutes of intense boss bashing later and I’m right back to having to do side missions to unlock the next story missions.  This has got to be the worst way I’ve ever seen to lengthen two hours of actual game play into something that will take the average gamer six to seven hours to complete.

So, I now know I have to waste around thirty minutes between story missions but the story missions should be awesome.  Wrong.  Story missions amount to “Hi! I’m a bad guy!  Want to play chase?”  An example is the Venom versus Electro (not Elektra) story mission.  It starts with Electro flying all over the city.  A bar at the top of the screen shows the players distance from the villain.  Your goal is to keep up with him until he reaches the destination that will be used for the final battle of the story mission.  I’m not the most elite gamer, but having to try this mission over at least thirty times before I learned his movement pattern almost made me throw in the towel.  On top of that, when I did finally did catch up with him the anticlimactic boss fight only amounted to Venom heaving parked cars at Electro while dodging his electric blasts.  This wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for the fact that over half of the story missions start with these silly chase scenes and end up in yet another simplistic boss fight.

The only real winner in the whole package is the actual story itself.  It’s set immediately after the comic book arc that introduces Venom and even introduces a new character, Silver Sable, to the Ultimate universe.  Instead of just grabbing the license and having at it, Treyarch brought in series writer, Brian Michael Bendis and penciler Mark Bagley to ensure the story and artwork in the game captures the essence of the comic book.  That decision is about the only one that salvages this version of Spiderman for me.  Even with all the gameplay flaws, at the end of the day it’s an opportunity to step into the Ultimate universe and get to be the cool new Peter Parker and to smash stuff up as Venom.

Graphics:

Remember when you would play a lousy game just to see the new breathtaking cut scene?  That’s how Ultimate Spiderman is.  Each cut scene plays out like a comic page come to life.  Spiderman swings between panels, bombs go off with a “KA-BOOM” sound effect, and Venom knocks everyone’s favorite Canadian X-man into the next page.  This only works so well because Treyarch modified their Spiderman game engine to support cell shaded graphics.  While cell shading isn’t right for everything it’s a no-brainer for a game based on a comic and it works perfectly in Ultimate Spiderman.

Treyarch’s virtual New York makes the transition well from the photorealistic version used in the Spiderman movie games to the cell shaded version of Ultimate.  Textures are fairly simple and objects like cars, lampposts, and park benches all seem a bit blocky.  It fits the comic book look the designers were going for though and you’ll be web zipping so fast that you’ll hardly notice.

While the city looks pretty decent, its masked and mutant inhabitants look great.  Spiderman and Venom both look just like their comic book counterparts and their animations look just like I would have pictured them.  The various bosses are also extremely well crafted and animated.  Other Marvel characters that make cameos, such as Nick Fury, also get the star character design treatment but civilians, as usual, all look alike except for their shirt color.

Audio:

The soundtrack for Ultimate Spiderman is a generic techno flavored rock.  It fits the game to a degree, but I normally just tune it out.  There is no support for custom soundtracks, so if you had planned on webslinging to tracks from the movie soundtracks you’re out of luck.  The various sound effects fit the game well.  They sound comic book like without resorting to the BIFF, POW, BANG style of the ‘60s Batman TV show.  The creative team for the comic series had final say on the voice acting.  They did a great job of picking out little known actors that fit the parts well.  There are several lines that are repeated to the point of annoyance, like Spidey letting you know every five minutes that he’s late for work at the Daily Bugle, but that’s pretty normal in free roaming games these days.

Controls:

The controls boil down to that of a simple brawler.  You can jump or double jump with A, and X and Y bunch and kick.  Wallcrawling is activated by B, and hitting both triggers let you webzip.  Right trigger nets you the trademark webswinging action.  Venom’s moves are pretty much the same except for the right trigger initiating a super jump instead of a webswing.  Combos in combat are fairly straightforward and usually involve jumping around a lot to avoid attacks until you can catch an opening to string together some punches and kicks.  Overall the controls work well and I rarely had trouble getting my onscreen persona to act in the manner I had intended.

Replay:

Why do I have to beat a game before I can start using alternate costumes?  I have no intention on playing this game over just so I can swing around as Peter in his civilian clothes or his wrestling outfit.  That’s the kind of feature I want to be able to play with at any point in the game.  The only other incentive to replay the game is the option to switch to Venom at anytime is also unlocked upon completion.  While rampaging around New York as the evil suit is a fun distraction it gets boring after about ten minutes.  Other unlocks include 3D character models that spin around for your viewing pleasure, concept art, and…  Oh wait.  That’s all there is.  Not much point in trying to unlock everything on this one.  Ultimate Spiderman gets relegated to the shelf until I get the urge to throw on tights and go and fight crime as a masked vigilante. I might pop it back into my Xbox instead to avoid the costly therapy sessions I’d need afterward.
 
Summary:

With all the great comic games that have hit the shelves in the past few years (except Batman games, but I don’t want to talk about that now) I was fairly surprised at how uninspired Ultimate Spiderman turned out to be.  The graphics are a great fit for a game based on the comic and webswinging around the city is a blast.  It seems like Treyarch phoned in everything else.  Dull side missions that the player must complete to progress combine with chasing down almost every boss just doesn’t appeal to me.  The storyline and the cutscenes are great, but didn’t we stop playing games for the cutscenes when we upgraded to the current generation of consoles.  If they can make Ultimate Spiderman 2 as action packed as the cutscenes in this one then count me in.  Only pick this up if you’re a die-hard fan, otherwise I’d keep this one in the weekend rental category.