The Spider-man games have been one of the few licensed games in recent years that have been good. Who can forget the atrocities that were Superman 64 and Aquaman, both considered to be among the worst games of all times. E.T. for the Atari 2600 is considered the worst game of all time by many. Spider-man 2 was one of the games I had the most fun with on the Gamecube. Naturally when Spider-man 3 was announced I hoped I’d be getting a bigger, more fun Spider-man 2, with Wii controls. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Let’s start with by taking a look at the graphics. The game itself doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look particularly great either. The character models and buildings all look good enough, but that’s all they ever approach. However, that’s not to say there aren’t any issues with the graphics. The first problem that really stuck out to me was some of the cut scenes looked pretty ugly, I remember early on in the game I was Peter at the Daily Bugle and he had a lot of white in his eyes, like his irises and pupils were too small. When camera in the cut scenes is closer to Peter this doesn’t happen. The second thing is in game there is a lot of pop-in/ out. When you climb a building at a certain point all the cars and people below disappear, when you come back down past that point they all come back. It’s not too huge of a deal to me, but I know some people really hate this type of thing. It does detract from the overall atmosphere of the game as well.
The controls are what got many, myself included, most interested in this game. Webslinging is done by holding B and swinging the Wiimote, or holding Z and swinging the nunchuk. Depending on which hand you use, Spider-man will use that hand. So if you use the Wiimote Spider-man will use his right hand (though the web may go to the left), and the nunchuk will make Spidey use his left hand. At first it feels a bit unwieldy, but after playing it for a while, it can be quite fun. Adding a swing boost in and you can cover quite a bit of ground quickly. You can start down on the street, swing around and use the swing boost to get higher until you can jump across rooftops, then jump off the top of a building back toward the ground, only to save yourself a few feet before you hit the ground (but it doesn’t matter if you do hit the ground from really high up as it won’t hurt you). Altogether swinging and jumping works pretty well.
The only gripe I have with movement is the wallcrawling, it can feel clumsy when trying to make precise movements. The best example of this is early on you have to complete a mission where you must crawl down a building and defuse several bombs, while the crawling itself isn’t bad, it’s just really slow and you will need to find a quicker way to get around on these walls which is where you run into the problem, it’s very difficult to move deftly. This isn’t that big of a setback as it only happens once or twice in the game (including this time), but it’s still another chink in Spider-man’s armor.
The games biggest flaw has to be the combat. The A button is used for a strong attack, B is used for webbing, and shaking the Wiimote does a weak attack. There are more attacks to unlock, but even then combat choices are meager. You can execute a 4 hit combo by shaking the Wiimote 3 times for 3 weak attacks and then pushing A for a strong attack. One thing I really ended up not liking was the Web Rodeo (where Spidey uses a web to swing an opponent around in a circle), in Spider-man 2, you could throw someone up against a car or building, but in Spider-man 3, once you hit a car or wall, they just end up standing there, and it doesn’t really do much to them. Something new to the series is the web mount. It allows you to climb on the back of enemies that are bigger than you and punch them a few times before jumping off. If the combat was better, this game could have been a lot more enjoyable.
The main game is pretty short, you could probably beat it in 6 or 7 hours, but finding all the games secrets and getting 100% will keep you playing for a long time, if you like it enough to continue. Altogether the game is disappointing, and this is coming from someone who a few months ago went back just to swing around in Spider-man 2. The swing mechanics are fun, but the combat drags the game down. At the game’s $50 price tag I can only recommend this game to the really hard core Spider-man fans, which have probably already picked this up. To everyone else, rent it if you are interested, or wait for a $20 or less price tag.
One final thing, one reason this game turned out the way it was, is because from what I’ve heard, working with a movie studio for a licensed game makes things very rushed. If Vicarious Visions had more time, they could have put out a good game, but in it’s present state it is a:
6/10
Edit: You may of noticed I said nothing about the black suit, that's because I only used the thing once aside from the one time you have to use it. I just didn't feel the point in using it.
No comments:
Post a Comment