Spider-Man 3

THE BAD:
-Poor side missions
-Awful graphics
-Button bash orientated combat

SUMMARY:
Spiderman 3, undoubtebly the most popular movie of 2007, and as always, theres a spidey game to accompany the films release.

The games made a massive leap in gameplay when spiderman 2 was released. In 2 players could free roam around the city to their hearts content and find secret items as well as do side missions. 2 was undoubtebly the best of the series so far, and with spidey 3 taking on a similar gameplay as 2 did you would expect it to me as great as its predecessor? Well we don't always get what we expect.

The first thing you notice is the graphics. They take on a similar style to 2's, obviously with a lot of polish and smoother edges (especialy on HD) but really the graphics aren't up to scratch for a 360 game. The lighting is poor, with very few shadows except on main characters. The face models are pretty awful, and some look nothing like their corresponding actor *coughMJcough*.

As you'd expect the story pretty much follows that of the film, although it makes some minor changes. The time span is ditto of the movie, beginning with harry and ending with venom. Although it has various little extra characters that didn't appear on the big screen, such as Rhino and Scorpion. They usually have their own missions, how many depending on the character, and always end with a boss battle. These stroylines are pretty good, especially Scorpions which goes into some depth about his character and origin.

Players don't have to play a fixed storyline but have various options laid before them, for instance, I may have an arsenic candy girl mission, a photography mission and a Rhino mission available, so I can pick whichever one I want, and do the others later.

The missions themselves differ between three core types, boss characters, gangs and photography for the bugle. As you'd imagine much more effort abd polish has been put into the boss missions than the others, and a deeper plot is also apparent. The photography missions are rubbish, and just seem like a waste of time, I mean, lets be fair, do you want to take photos or smash the hell out of bad guys? The gang missions are pretty simple, diffuse some bombs, rescue a hostage, beat up some gang members etc.

The combat is full of button mashing, you can kick, punch, and do a variety of combos, such as the canonball. As you progress you get more combos to use, although I much preferred the spidey 2 system where you buy your combos. A new addition to combat is the ability to slow things down, this depletes a blue bar next to your health, but while doing this enemies attacks are very easy to dodge and spidey is free to beat the hell outta them. Also players can initiate all sorts of super attacks, but these only become usable when spidey has hit enough enemies so his "special-bar" is full.

As for the audio the voice acting is good, as after all, it's from the original actors (well most of it...). But the actual acting behind it seems very bland, and even in dire situations Tobey Maguires voice still sounds as calm as ever. The music is ok, with each gang having their own tune, but it's nothing special.

Gameplay: 5/10
Button mashing isn't exactly fun, and the missions are all pretty simple with a fairly set route to follow.

Graphics: 4/10
As mentioned earlier, the graphics really below standards, with poor textures and lighting effects it seems most of the game could be done on an xbox.

Story: 7/10
Follows the movie plot with added bits, sometimes good sometimes bad.

Audio: 7/10
Decent voice acting and sounds effects.

Controls: 8/10
Seamless, everything seems in the right place.

Spiderman 3 is a mediocre game, with little going for it, strictly in the middle of the game scale. Definitely not worth 44.99.

THE BAD:
- Bugs, a fair few of them
- Acceptable graphics, could have been better with time
- Can be quite hard at times

SUMMARY:
Where to start. I suppose with the big factors that make the game what it is.

The websinging is amazing. Much much better than Spiderman 2 (everything is better than in Spiderman 2 but what the hey). Spidey seems to move more fluently, like he's gliding. The animations of swinging really make it feel like he's doing the sorts of acrobatic swing-moves you see in the movie sequences. I felt that Spiderman 2's swing system was too bland, and stiff. When you get to wear the Black Suit, it becomes even better. The moves Spiderman does mid-air in the suit are quite amazing to look at.

The combat mechanics are great. Although you have dozens and dozens and dozens of combos to pull off, you'll probably find yourself button mashing half the time, especially indoors. Almost everytime Spidey gets in combat, it's with a group of enemies (5-10 in size). I've rarely faught a single enemy, or even 2 enemies. Fighting large groups is fun, but you'll probably die a lot. Enemies seem to carry more guns this time around, and guns are actually quite powerful. Pretty much every group of enemies will have at least one gunman(and occasionally a bazooka-man), and you can't dodge the bullets unless you're in reflex mode. So, trying to fight multiple enemies while dodging bullets while trying not to deplete your reflex bar is pretty annoying, but it's still great fun. The combat system itself is reletivly the same to Spiderman 2. X is quick attacks, Y is strong attacks, B is web attacks. You can use the RB button to use 'super' moves, which are like super powerful attacks that rely on your power meter. These aren't terribly useful with normal Spidey, the Y super attack is the only one I find myself using. The RB button becomes more useful when you're playing as Black Suit Spidey. Pressing RB when your Rage meter is full allows you to go into Rage mode. Rage mode is like Spiderman downing 16 cups of coffee, 24 pep pills and several jars of steroids. He instantly becomes twice as fast & powerful as before. No enemy is able to block you when you're in Rage mode, not even bosses. Most of your attacks will knock enemies several hundred feet down the road, which is fun. On top of that, you can still do super attacks while in Rage mode. They're actually useful now, with the Y super attack pretty much killing anything within about a 10 metre radius of you.


The city itself is great fun. Things are much MUCH more detailed this time around. One thing I like is that the traffic is actually quite New York like. Not a lot of traffic moves, seeing as there are so many traffic jams in NY. You'll also notice tons of cars on the road in your area, usually with 30+ on screen at once. There's also the inclusion of trees on sidewalks, which Spiderman 2 lacked. The only trees were in parks, but now they're in most sidewalks around NY (like in real life). They don't really do anything besides act as another grappling point for your webs, but they make the place feel more realistic and New York like. The city size is much larger aswell, around 2.5x bigger than the Spiderman 2 map. This is partially thanks to the inclusion of a fully mapped subway & sewer system.

Mission wise, there's a lot of variety. You'd be suprised to hear that there are more missions based on the Spiderman comic villains than the actual movie. You will get to fight New Goblin, Sandman and Venom, but there's more missions involving villains like The Lizard, Scorpion, Carlyle and Kingpin. On the topic of missions, the crime missions are much better in this game. You no longer talk directly to a civillian to start the mission, instead they all happen in real time. The crime missions themselves seem similar to Spiderman 2, with brawls, car chases, police gun fights, and some new ones like manhunts (tracking down a hiding criminal), gang hits (having a gang attack someone, like a civillian, usually with weapons & explosives) and bank robberies. Thankfully, there are no lost baloons in the game.

Lastly, the Black Suit itself. It's amazing really. The speed, power and general manovurability of Spiderman increases tenfold. You can litterally punch people down a street. You get a real sense of power when using the suit, which just makes kicking criminal ass much more enjoyable!

The conclusion; Spiderman 3 is a well crafting game, especially for a game based on a movie. It has it's share of bugs, but nothing terrible significant. It's a very enjoyable experience that should keep any Spidey fan entertained for months.

4.2/10