Title Spider-Man 3 Date 05.16.2007 Genre Action Platform PlayStation 2 Developer Treyarch Publisher Activision

The best way to describe this game is like a cross between Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man, but uglier than both. For this review, I'm going to assume you've played the other two games and sort of know what to expect.

Story
If you're expecting this to be a copy of the movie, you're way off. The game has just a few missions that tie into the movie, and they've been drastically changed from what was on the silver screen. It's decent enough though, and it at least makes sense within the context of the game. The also threw in some extra villains to round things out, but it's not the same villains as the ones in the Xbox360 or PS3 versions of the game. The PS2 version has Carlyle (AKA the Mad Bomber), Harry Osborn (AKA New Goblin), Kraven, the Lizard, Morbius, Shriek, Sandman, and Venom.

Graphics
This game was supposedly made in conjunction with the PSP version (although right now, at the release of this game, the PSP version is nowhere to be seen), and it really shows. The animations and polygon count are decent enough, but the textures are really, really low-res, and when the sun is out everything looks really washed out. I'm sure it would look fine on the PSP's smaller screen, but it's just too little detail for the PS2. Sadly, Spider-Man 2 and especially Ultimate Spider-Man looked better.

Gameplay
This, thankfully, isn't too bad, if you liked the other two games. The web swinging is very similar to Ultimate Spider-Man, except a little faster. If you liked that game, you'll love it here. If you were looking for the more complex system used in Spider-Man 2, however, you might be a little ticked. As far as fighting goes, it's very similar to Spider-Man 2, except enemies block far less and when you take someone's weapon away from them, they don't just go pick it right back up again. There's a decent variety of web attacks and dodges, and you earn points that can be spent on new moves. As usual, the camera goes completely wonky every time Spidey decides to climb a wall. One of these days, developers will figure out how to do this right. As it is, you'll probably want to stay away from the walls if you can.

The rest of the game is handled much better than the other two games though. You still have your usual story missions, but the "Combat Tours" of Ultimate Spider-Man have been replaced by crime patrols, where you actually try to route gang activity in the city. Each gang controls a certain percentage of the city, as displayed on the map screen. As you thwart kidnappings, get rid of bombs, put a stop to riots, etc., the percentages change to reflect your actions. Eventually you can clean up the city entirely. The "City Events" are similar to previous games, and work via a police scanner that flashes messages along the bottom of the screen. It's nice to see the car-lifting mini-games and other things from Ultimate Spider-Man incorporated into the gang fights and city events now, instead of just story missions.

The black suit is another neat addition. Once you get it, you just press the d-pad to put it on, and it adds greatly to your available moves, strength, health, etc. If you use it for too long though, you'll pass out and fail whatever mission you're currently on. Since it's alive and doesn't want to be taken off, you have to do a button-press mini-game each time you want to remove it, which gets harder and harder each time.

Sound
The sound is barely passable. The actors from the movie all do an OK job, although Kirsten Dunst opted not to do MJ's voice. The other voice actors all do a poor job, and to make it worse, they seem to just randomly paste voices onto characters. Guys might sound like girls, someone's accent may change from one sentence to the next, and what they say might be wildly out of context. Plus ALL sound cuts out completely every time you complete an objective. They just completely dropped the ball when it comes to the voices and sound.

Overall
I think the changes to the way gangs are handled, the way your powers are upgraded, the way the black suits works, and the vastly improved fighting (thank god they don't block everything any more) outweigh the bad graphics and glitches, but this game won't be for everyone. You may want to rent it first… maybe.

Game Score

C+

Reviewed By: Contributed