Title Spider-Man 3 Date 05.16.2007 Genre Action Platform Xbox 360 Developer Treyarch Publisher Activision

If you're a gamer and a Spidey fan like me, you'll be familiar with the past movie games. Spider-Man (the first movie-based game) was, in all honesty, horrendous. There was no free-roam aspect which caused you to warp back up if you neared the city streets. There was no deep combat or webbing abilities. The voice acting was just plain bad. But there was a ray of hope that shined down from Hollywood when the second movie was released. That was the day all Spidey fans remember so fondly. Yes, Spider-Man 2: The Movie was an, dare I say, amazing improvement over its predecessor. The introduction of the series into a sandbox environment was just what the game needed to be a hit and with its interesting story and basic controls, Spider-Man was back on top of the superhero game world. So, did Treyarch and Activision improve the Spider-formula when they went to next-gen? No.

You'll be pleased when you first enter, with your childhood memories in tow and the taste of the second game still lingering on your gaming taste buds. But as soon as you escape the burning building after listening to Mr. Campbell's familiar voice and pressing buttons that seemed like they just took a trip from either God of War or Resident Evil 4, you'll wonder why you just paid sixty bucks on Spider-Man 2 (and no, that's not a typo). Yes, the graphics are improved. But the game only goes up to 720p, making sure that you think of a bad PS2 port half of the way through swinging around the buildings of New York. Yes, the city is larger and better than ever. But you'll find some disappointment when you attempt to swing from a helicopter; you can't (which would have been much appreciated during some of the ridiculously hectic missions including them). You can't even get to the Statue of Liberty this time around, even if you can see it from the shore line. And since you're out there, you might as well take a gander at one of the improvements we were given; Spidey can swim. Mind you if you swim to far a magical, invisible wall will jettison web-head out of the water back toward the city.

But let's get back to the subject. You'll find more random events occurring on the land this time around, making you fall from the sky to catch some criminals in the act. This is where you use your fighting skills…or lack thereof. The fighting system is broken at best. Peons can be simply destroyed with little skill as you jam your fingers on the face buttons of the controller, but once you run into the more “skilled” gang members, you find you run into an ever bigger obstacle than the invisible walls in the ocean. The elites cannot be hit nor can they be webbed. I found that only a jumping attack could bypass their defense. Once I found the strategy for those fiends, I could be seen jumping over and over off the same enemy models throughout the city. Well, I was jumping off their heads, but I couldn't be seen doing that, exactly.

The camera is horrible in this game. In the city it's bad enough, but as soon as you walk into a building or swing into the new subway and sewer areas, you'll find yourself looking into Spider-Man's own body or at a wall more than at the enemies beating you Spider-Senseless in the corner. The only enemies the camera can seem to keep an eye on are the bosses, and it doesn't matter during those battles anyway.

All the boss battles, which include major villains such as the Lizard and the Kingpin, are simply exercises in frustration. The dodge button has been replaced by a reflex button, slowing the action down so Spidey can automatically dodge or choose to disregard your presses and get hit. Each boss will simply engage a series of punches which you will hope Spider-Man will dodge, allowing you the opening to get a combo so you can wait for them to attack again. This process continues until the battle ends with either your foe falling or, more likely, the web-slinger dying.

The storyline that could be seen in movie theaters is nearly gone from the game. Each of the story sequences are hacked out of the movie and seemingly pasted together. The game never explains why Peter wants to kill Sandman. Eddie never gets his introduction. We never even see the major problems between MJ, Gwen and Pete. Activision basically just says, “Here, take this black suit and have a slightly better time, kid.” The only thing the suit does is allow you to hit those elite enemies a few times while you're in your red-aura-covered rage.

With all the variety in this game, you would have expected a bit more fun to be sucked from this game. In the end, with the random events, butchered storyline, broken fighting system, frustrating boss battles, and horrible camera the word that comes to mind is not “fun”. Instead, I think of “tedious”. The swinging is still fun when the camera is compliant, but that is really the only good thing about this game. At first, I would have given Spider-Man 3 an eight out of ten, but as the experience in frustration and tedium continued, the scored suffered more and more.

Game Score

C-

Reviewed By: Contributed