Video Games : Spider-Man 3 (Xbox 360)

Rating: - No where near as bad as it's been made out to be...
Okay, well to start off with i should just drop in that i am a bit of spiderman fanboy, and own all the games, including spiderman 3 on ps2.

All the movie games so far have been incredible, number one revolutionised visuals for the ps2, and number two revolutionised gameplay. As far as i'm concerned this next-gen spidey game has taken all the best elements from its pre-decessors and made a very impressive piece of software. Why specifically? Well ...

First the swinging, which, for any fan is a vital concept in a spidey game, and i am pleased to say that this 360 super hero doesn't fail to deliver. The physics engine is more impressive than it's ever been and swinging through New York feels deliciously real. I have to say however that I actually prefer the swinging system of the ps2 version. I think with all the games before (except the first on ps2) the swinging animation speed has been blasted up to compensate for races and general ease; I like the ps2 version's swinging because you see spidey reach out and shoot the webline in normal speed, not simply hitting R2 and then the webline more or less appearing. Obviously I am splitting hairs, as even this 'flaw' has been majorly enhanced for 360 since the spidey from his second outing, just maybe more so on its ps2 counterpart. The 360's web line transition animations cannot be faulted, and make swinging smoother than any rival, by a long way. For example after hurling yourself off a webline, if spidey is falling un-spectacularly, he will, by himself, form the diving position and enter a dramatic pose from which to shoot out his next line, it's small things like this that make the experience, for me, infinitely better.

This leads me onto the visuals, as the most breathtaking scenes will be out in the air over the streets of New York. The character models are ugly, there is no denying it, and I understand to a degree why this game has been picked up on when it comes to visuals, however it is impossible to knock the light shining off every window around you as you force yourself through the air towards your next objective. Spiderman himself looks very smooth, i hear even smoother on the ps3, however I also hear it makes up for this with a poorer frame-rate and as a result apparently the ps3 delivers a far choppier game. This aside, apart from the character models, the visuals are clear and constant throughout, and I think if you played the ps2 games you would see a truly massive leap forward in presentation. The poor quality of the character models is one of the reasons I only rated this game with 4 stars overall. The second reason is the crazy camera, which at times can become annoying (for example the transfer between sticking on a ceiling and crawling around the walls and then on to the floor can become a nightmare), but not enough to dampen your overall experience.

The combat is good and refreshing yet suffers from some time lag with the faster moves, this may also occur when you are attacked by a number of enemies exceeding nine or ten. Despite this there are many moves, maybe too many, at spideys disposal, this, combined with the reflex slow motion ability allows spidey to dodge and counter-attack with ease. The system basically involves spidey dodging everything in slow mo automatically; it tends to fall down when multiple enemies attack simultaneously leaving the engine confused about how to cope, and spidey with a face full of fist. I havn't actually played with the black suit yet however even the game's notoriously bad reviews seem to like it, so I imagine it adds an even deeper element to the fighting.

The missions are dotted around an impressive map randomly, it's entirley up to you when it comes to which one to play first. Unfortunately this leaves the story complex and unlinked, rendering the whole experience a bit confusing. The missions generally however are varied and fun, ranging from spidey's baffling ability to defuse bombs to taking down force fields whilst on top of scorpion, using his tail to fire in the middle of a fight. I havn't fought all the bosses yet but the ones I have played are fun and challenging enough for me not to find it annoyingly easy. The missions also offer interactive cutscenes when you least expect them; suddenly spidey is performing all sorts of impressive feats of agility and you have to press the buttons that come up on the screen, the lack of expectation adds to the effect and they are implemented into a healthily large amount of missions.

Overall then, Spiderman 3 on the Xbox 360 delivers the speed, power, and visuals that spidey and the player needed. Despite maybe not utilising the 360's drive to its full capacity or being very revolutionary, spiderman 3 proves to be a fun game that I think would appeal to children and adults alike. Unfortunatly it seems to have been tarred with a black brush in all its bad reviews, all I can say is, in my opinion it is a very impressive and more importantly, fun game.

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Rating: - camera crap
it's great swinging around and jumping off the sky-scrapers and all that. the game could have been a classic if it wasn't for the camera! in a boss fight its rubbish, you can't tell if your on a wall or the roof or the floor. and it flicks around all over the place! hells teeth! unplayable i reckon!!

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Rating: - Saved by a webline?
After a relatively reasonable outing in Spiderman 2 I had high hopes for a greatly improved 3rd outing which would improve on all of the shortcomings of the first. However this is not to be as this game has actually managed to include more annoyances and general bad design than the previous.

It seems to be an impossibility for any Spiderman game to do interior wall crawling levels without an extremely jerky and unhelpful camera making it impossible to navigate and this is one of the worst. I seem to remember a relatively decent attempt in the very first Spiderman 3D iteration on the original Playstation but this is definitely the worst. Not to mention that several of the levels actually occur inside small areas (saving people from a fire being a memorably poor one) and suddenly it no longer feels like your controlling a superhero as you end up jumping straight into flames and getting stuck in corners.

This wouldn't be so bad if the combat was reasonable. For the most part it's passable and using midair juggles to keep about five characters airborn is certainly entertaining. However when in a fist fight against certain bosses (Kingpin step right up) it turns into an exercise of sheer patience as what feels like an hour is spent whittling down a seemingly never ending energy bar with the same 2 button press sequence.

There are now Quicktime cut-sequences which are basically God of War/Shenmue esque tests of reaction time whilst amazing spidey-villain fights are on screen. These are nothing special and in some cases (punching a chandelier three times...????!?!) are just exercises in selecting "continue" and watching the same unskippable cutscene for the 50th time.

HOWEVER... this would be a completely dire game if it wasn't for the amazing web-slinging in the game. Swinging through the streets of a much larger New York city in glorious 360 graphics is fantastic (and quite a relaxing post work way to spend half an hour.) As superhero games go this is the closest that I've ever found to actually feeling in full control of the superhero. Slightly tweaked over Spidey 2's swing mechanic it takes a while to get used to but is soon completely intuitive.

Any gamer who has no interest in Spiderman will be hard pushed for any reason to buy this game but Spidey fans will want to at least take a look, if only for the swing mechanics (and a semi-reasonable boss fight with The Lizard.)

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Rating: - it gets worse
i loved this game at the start then it seemed to get worse its hard i know hard is good but its so hard its frustrating and it makes the game un-fun

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Rating: - its ok.. for a bit
i was playing game for weekend, almost non stop, from the saturday afternoon, to the sunday night. But the game gets way 2 reppetetive. you start to realise that it is just button crushing. It deserves alook at, hence the 3 stars, but probarbly not a £40 purchase