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“With great power comes great responsibility,” probably the most famous line in the entire Spider-Man series, and with good reason as these are words to remember when playing Spider-Man 3.
Why you ask? Well, the simple temptation of being black Spider-Man, not to mention having all that power right at your fingertips demands responsibility, also a whole lot of fun. So, is this web-slinger a worthy buy? Well let’s find out!
Spider-Man 3 follows closely the story of the movie (well as close as possible) and gives you a satisfying experience. Although if you have seen the movie you’ll notice quite a few changes, which are reasonable due to the fact that no game can match a movie word by word.
Now the game progresses much like the second, you do certain missions that are basically “Story Missions”. By playing these missions the story advances, usually there’ll be a cut-scene after and before the missions giving you a little better feel for the story. Of course, there’s some different stories added to the game on top of the movies plot. There are many extra plots like the Morbius and Shriek story arc.
The storyline that follows the movie seems to be really well done; it flows well and seems pretty close to the movie. But, on the other side, there’s the “Gang story” now it’s not really a storyline, but like in the 2nd game you can do side-missions, although unlike the last game these are actually meaningful side-missions. They aren’t really side-missions though; they’re called patrols (I’ll get into patrols in more detail later). Now the story for the patrol missions are rather, well, idiotic and practically always the same. Go rescue that scientist, go get that bomb, go beat those guys; it’s always the same. Plus sometimes you’ll be rescuing a scientist and it’ll be some fat guy in a muscle shirt. Talk about weird.
So when it’s all added up in the end, Spider-Man 3’ story is fairly good, but not great. The main plot is all right, but those gang sub-plots are painfully bad. But if you only planning on playing the story missions, then I guess you’ll think the story is much better then it seems.
Visuals, well, let’s just say Spider-Man doesn’t fair too well in this category. Spider-Man 3 has some of the, oh how should I say it? Ah yes, worst graphics I’ve seen in a while. Now at first glance you may think it looks alright, well you’d be wrong. First off, Spider-Man has some weird lighting stuff going on; part of him always has some weird light shining on him that makes him look very fake and odd. But, Spidy doesn’t look too bad.
The real problem with Spider-Man 3’s graphics is the background, when swinging around things will pop up right in front of you. Also, try and go stand on top of a tall building then look around, all the buildings become large rectangles with no detail when you look at them. Also when you go onto the small island and look out towards the end of the bridge it just stops halfway out and is connected to nothing.
I’ve found it rather hard to find things that look good in this game, but there are a few, even though the characters look rather odd they still look human and are probably some of the better character models out there, but Activision really does a horrible job placing these character models, I have an example in the next section. Also the attacks are pretty fluid and look pretty good. But really, that’s about it. I can’t say I was very impressed by the look of this game, actually I was quite disappointed. In the videos it looked very nice, but oh well, you can’t always get what you want.
Now Spider-Man 3 isn’t a complete failure, as the gameplay is pretty good, well it’s reasonably fun. So, to start things off I’m going to talk about the patrols that I said I’d elaborate on early in the review. Basically patrols are when you do some side-missions one after the other to help eliminate a gang from the immediate area. Now at first some of these side-missions may seem fun, but soon they become strenuous and often times odd. As once I had to get a purse back for a lady…who was a man…so yeah, some of them are very weird (and yes, that’s the example I talk about from the visuals section). Now playing a patrol from time to time can be enjoyable, but playing a few of them in a row starts to feel more like a chore and less like a fun activity as they’re usually the same sort of missions.
Now when it came to fighting it was usually rather bland, all you really had to do was punch the enemy a bunch. Not much strategy to it, unless you count pulling a shield from a guy once and awhile strategy. You have some special moves at your disposal, but with no need at all to use them it just feels like your wasting time when you do. But the fighting is kind of fun for awhile but will feel just like doing patrols if done for too long: a chore.
The last part of the gameplay is the story missions, these missions are pretty fun and MUCH more varied then the patrol missions. It’s a lot more fun to play the story missions then the patrol missions because they actually put some effort into making the missions fun and exciting unlike the patrol missions. Although, sometimes the story will just make you beat the crap out of some guys. But the story missions are usually pretty fun.
Now, on top of all that there’s black Spidy. Black Spidy is when you go into the black suit, it doesn’t change much of the game but you are much more aggressive and a lot stronger. But you’re also meaner, and the longer and more you use it, the harder it is to take off. It’s a pretty cool way to use it and I liked it.
Again, add it all together and Spider-Man 3 barely passes the acceptable level for gameplay, as its faults are pretty big; but it just struggles by, but that isn’t a good thing what so ever.
Now, honestly the biggest thing that separates this game from being just a PS2 game is the controls. By pressing the B button and flicking the Wii-Remote Spidy would shoot out a web from his right hand, and if you press the Z button and flick the nunchuk he’ll shoot out a web from his left-hand until you let go of the button. Now, these motions take a little while to get used to, but after you master them, it’s a whole lot of fun. Now the control isn’t perfect, but it works pretty well, it’s definitely one of the better parts of Spider-Man 3.
Along with web-slinging there’s fighting, when you fight you flick the remote left or right for basic attacks, press A for strong attacks or you can shoot your web at a targeted enemy with the B button. The attacks are pretty basic and like I said before all you really need to do is shake your controller to beat the crap out of your enemies. But the controls for fighting work, and I don’t think the game has missed an action that I do yet.
So, for Spider-Man 3 the controls come out with a win, and sadly they’re probably the best thing in Spider-Man 3, which is pretty sad.
Music will most definitely be a small section in this review. When playing the game I hardly ever noticed any music, and when I heard some I hardly paid attention to it. Hell, sometimes I took my iPod and listened to the theme of the Spider-Man movies. So for music the game fails.
But I can’t leave out the sound effects, they were alright in this game but they aren’t really worth mentioning. It’s just the usually thuds and whacks when fighting, although the web slinging sounds good.
Although, one thing that did impress me was the voice-overs, they had all of the actors which added to the experience. But really, Spider-Man 3 just doesn’t do a great job in the Audio division.
So here we are, the end of my review, now I guess it’s time for me to tell you whether or not you should buy this. Well, I can confidently say no, the game is worth a rent at most but I don’t think you should spend your money on it. I mean after you’ve beaten the game there’s not much left to do, well you’re supposed to wipe out the gangs, but that’s not much fun. So this game is definitely NOT worth it.
Story-7.5/10
-The main story was alright but the patrol stories were horrid.
Visuals-5.5/10
-Odd lightning, horrible backgrounds, and much more weigh the visuals down.
Gameplay-7.5/10
-The story missions are pretty good, but the patrol missions aren’t.
Controls-8/10
-Web-Slinging took a little getting used to, but was still good.
Audio-5/10
-Voice-overs were good but the rest of the audio doesn’t fair well.
Well, there isn’t much more for me to say other then I’m back and reviewing. This game may be older but it’s a taste of things to come. You guys should expect more reviews this month as I’ve got a whole list of games to review! Oh and remember everyone, don’t just look at the scores, read the reviews!
-Alex51011
This post was last modified: 09-01-2007 08:53 AM by Alex51011.
Woah, such a professional looking/sound review! Very nice read indeed. I do however want to try this game, just 'cause I enjoyed Crackdown due to being able to jump high and fast, and feel that swinging through the air will give another cool experience (though I doubt it would last long). Nice review, and I look forward to reading more (I wonder who of the news team will review Brawl O_O I sense arguments.. ).
Graphics is my thing.
Your white tee, well to me, looks like a night gown/
Make ya momma proud, and take that thing 2 sizes down/
-Andre 3000
).
