Spider-Man 3
THE GOOD:
+ Easy to pick up
+ Several storylines, movie-based and game-only
+ Improved swing mechanics and physics overhaul
+ Flashy Combat
+ Bosses from the comics
+ Symbiote(Black) suit
+ Random CrimesTHE BAD:
- Difficulty is sometimes too hard
- Button-mashing combat
- Glitches and buggy A.I
- Decent-at-best graphics
SUMMARY:
The original movie tie-in that was released with the initial SpiderMan game was abysmal at best. Several years later, SpiderMan 2 was released and please gaming fans to no end with it's free-roaming gameplay and the ability to sling around beautiful New York City.
Spider-Man 3 uses the same concept as it's predecessor. The city is now two and a half times larger than in Spider-Man 2. The city is now living, or at least, partially living. The amount of traffic is absolutely amazing and really brings everything to life. The pedestrians on the other hand aren't really too bright. They absolutely never notice SpiderMan, but they at least notice the random lizards and thugs that are out to get them.
The game itself is easy to pick up and play. The controls are easy to get used to with a basic control setup. The analog sticks are your basic movement, A is your jump button, X and Y are your standard light and heavy attacks respectively, B becomes the grab and wall-crawl button. Though fast-paced, the combat is absolutely abysmal and comes down to nothing but button mashing 50% of the time. It boils down to the point where the A.I. becomes incredibly hard to defeat and takes away every ounce of fun the game has to offer.
The game has its fair share of positives, ranging from the the swinging to the black suit. After playing through the initial 20% of the game at leisure, one will more than likely get the urge to rush through everything else in order to become corrupted by evil in the form of the infamous symbiote suit. The developers did one thing right with SpiderMan 3, and that was to make being bad feel so good. When wearing the black suit, you'll see and feel noticeable speed differences as well as a massive upgrade in strength.
The symbiote suit eventually leaves you as the story progresses, and the game begins it's decline into boredom. The story mode is made up of you tackling random, tracked on missions in order to progress to the actual movie-based missions which, in all honesty, feel just as tacked on and ridiculous as the side missions. Every so often you'll be faced with a cutscene. In said cutscene, you'll be required to press buttons in order to make it safely to the next timed button press. This feature is over-abused in SpiderMan 3, as it is in many other games that strive to duplicate what Resident Evil 4 did so well.
All in all, if you're looking for a good game, you're going to have to be one heck of a fan of SpiderMan to go for this game. It has a great premise, the mechanics are there, but everything the game has to offer is just lackluster.
