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

In June of 2004, Activision released the Treyarch developed Spider-Man 2 for multiple consoles, to compliment the recent release of the comic book based movie of the same title. The game was highly received, and rightfully so with the genius decision to put the franchise, mostly known in the gaming world for an unsuccessful run of shoddy beat-em ups and plat-formers, into a Grand Theft Auto sandbox game. It let’s the player swing around a well mapped out recreation of New York, with great graphics for this type of game at the time, a simple battle system with a wide variety of acrobatic eye candy, and plenty of missions and activities.

It's time for a new movie, and such, another Spidey game, and what better way then to try and retool the formula that made the second game so popular? The idea was sound, and a good opening mission and a Bruce Campbell narrated opening tutorial would lead you to believe that it was successful at first. Unfortunately, once you've escaped into the world, you begin to realize that maybe the added variety wasn't such a good idea.

Swingin' High
But let's worry about that later; let's talk about what's that first experience with the meat of the game. It's still fun. You're still swinging through the city, you're still going at a decent speed and it's still easy and intuitive. The city looks good, if not a bit plain, and over all it's a pretty decent looking next-gen title. It's not on par with a lot the system has to offer, including other sandbox titles such as Crackdown or even Saint's Row, but that's ok. You're Spider-Man, you're swinging through New York, and it still looks better than Spider-Man 2 did on the older consoles, and that's all that matters, right?

The combat system largely remains unchanged too. There's two punch and kick buttons, light and strong, that you can combine with to do a variety of moves, as well as a web combat button that you can also use in combination with the fighting buttons to throw the web into the mix. The one change from the former game is that, instead of pressing a button at the right moment to dodge an attack, you now have a new reflex button, which slows everything down. When an indicator comes up, you can slow down time and Spider-Man will automatically dodge the attack, and sometimes you can press the attack button and counter the attack.

So it all sounds good on paper, it sounds like more of Spider-Man 2, and your about ready to rush out and buy the game because that's what you were looking forward to. If things were that simple, I'd finish off telling you all the short comings from the first game were here, slap an B+ on the game and let you go web sling your heart out. It's never that simple however, and once you’ve justified the purchased to yourself, the flaws become painfully apparent.

Ganged Up
First off, there are three gangs in the city for you to deal with. This seems like a wonderful addition considering there were only generic punks to worry about in the second game, and it would be if each gang member didn't boil down to two different types: The thugs and the Elites. The thugs all can be taken care of by simple button mashing; much likes the thugs from Spider-Man 2, but with one significant annoyance: They call carry projectiles. This wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't feel the need to pit you against 50 at once and mostly focusing on one-on-one combat maneuvers. You won't even get to finish your combo most of the time before a random bullet/beer bottle/teddy bear grenade knocks you out of it, allowing the thugs enough time to swarm up on Spidey and eat him alive like ants. Then there's the elites, who carry massive weapons and are completely immune (And can counter) your web. For the most part, you have to let them come to you and counter there attack to get them in a combo, and even then they seem to have the magical ability to get out of your counter and attack you through it, and God be with you if they have thugs backing them up.

Worse yet, there's no move in your arsenal for taking care of them, and if they are, they come far too late for them to matter since your dealing with tons of thugs and a few elites from the start of the game. Kudos goes to Treyarch for trying to vary the action since that was everyone's biggest complaint with the second game, but it doesn't complement the battle system at all, and only leads to much more frustration on part of the game.

Headaches
Graphic and programming errors litter the game, adding to the frustration. One instance in particular calls for you to go into one of the gang hide outs, stop the gang members from spawning by destroying the spawn point artifacts, and defeat the enemies that remain. This wouldn't be so bad, but the room is confined, you get attacked by the prerequisite 20 or more thugs at a time, there's no manual lock on so half the time you go to destroy a spawn point you more then half the time target a near by enemy, but all of this doesn't even equate to the frustration as being punched through the walls and floors (Yes, floors) by enemies not even in the same room as you.

If you played Spider-Man 2, you remember the random crimes that you could take part in as a distraction to the normal game play. They were ok, but there were only four or so repeating events. There's a lot more events in this game, which is nice outside of the frustrating combat system. The problem is that if you had a specific mission in mind and you're on your way, you are forced into completing the event you happen to randomly pass by. If you decide not to and continue toward the mission marker, it won't be there, and you'll be forced to go back to the event you had once skipped over. I understand this is a super hero game, and Spidey needs to save the day, but this is a video game. Telling the player what they have to do in a Sandbox game isn't fun.

At this point, you begin to realize that most of the problems in the game seem to be in response to all of the bad things people had to say about the second game, mostly how little there was to do. The trend continues with the missions, which includes a ridiculous bomb defusing mini game that you only have so much time to complete. There's also some really unforgiving twitch button pressing on some of the missions. These seem to be the newest trend in gaming, but the indicator seems to pop up when there's only a half a second left to press the button. Don't expect to memorize the patterns either, since most scenes, the button presses are random.

Conclusion
I'm not saying I didn't have fun with Spider-Man 3. I still enjoyed swinging through the city, and I know the battle system well enough to try and make by through most of the frustrating battles. There are, however, way too many confusing design decisions and bugs that serve only to clutter up the things that made its older brother so fun in the first place. Really, it's hard to see anyone who isn't familiar with the earlier titles to find anything to like about this title, and it's certainly a disservice to the Spider-Man name.

Game Score

C-

Reviewed By: Contributed