Spider-Man 3 review

Gamestyle fondly remembers the Spider-Man game that graced the Playstation, N64, and Dreamcast in 2000. For its time, it was masterful superhero game, quite possibly the best of its generation, with its great sense of humour and excellent gameplay. Yet ever since the franchise moved from Neversoft to Treyarch, the newer Spider-Man games have been somewhat lacking. The second movie game certainly came close with its introduction of a free-roaming New York and excellent web-swinging mechanic; however, we are now fully two generations on from Neversoft's enjoyable game and, with this latest film tie-in, it seems Treyarch still can't get the formula quite right. True, they are somewhat limited by having to tie the games into the movies, but they barely do that as it is, and the comic book tie-in Ultimate Spider-Man was an utter farce.Still, Spider-Man 3 isn't a completely lost cause and does provide some enjoyment, mostly because Treyarch have stepped back towards the Spider-Man 2 web-swinging mechanic, leaving the lethargic pace from Ultimate behind. Swinging around New York city, rendered with decent if bland graphics, is still as much fun as it ever was and Gamestyle is sure players will finds a few hours of delight in simply swinging around the city without bothering to play the missions needed to advance the story. There are still few gaming pleasures as good as leaping off the Empire State Building and slamming into the ground... and this time round you get achievement points for it too!Treyarch has also done away with the 'comic shop' upgrade system from Spider-Man 2, which required players to perform well at crime fighting and story missions in order to buy upgrades from the various shops littered around Manhattan. Now all abilities are unlocked simply by progressing through the game and completing missions. It keeps the focus on the crime fighting and is far less time-consuming.However, actually completing the missions is another matter entirely as Spider-Man 3 has some truly frustrating difficulty spikes during its twelve to fifteen hour lifespan. Many missions are incredibly difficult mostly due to the annoying combat system, which unfortunately seems based on Ultimate Spider-Man. While Spidey is free to dish out punches, kicks and various cartoon combos at will, he must dodge incoming attacks from enemies or get flattened. Pressing the Left Bumper on your 360's controller activates the 'Spider-Reflexes' (bullet time) and, when an enemy has a yellow symbol over their head, allows Spidey to dodge that villain's blow. Unfortunately, it's not that effective; when multiple enemies launch attacks at you simultaneously, the reflexes never last long enough, even after the upgrades. And God help you if you get stuck next to a wall while the teenage umbrella-wielding girl gang smashes your face in, which is quite embarrassing.And the problems don't stop with simple 'beat up the bad guy' missions. Sometimes Spider-Man is tasked by saving a falling pedestrian. How is this achieved? By jumping in their general direction and hoping you get near enough for the game to randomly decide you've caught them. If you don't, it's back to beginning of the mission then repeat fifteen times before throwing your pad at the floor in disgust. There are also bomb diffusing missions, which break the trend of random difficulty spikes by being easy enough to complete with your eyes shut, and probably just as exciting.It also seems that Spidey has been taking queues from Shenmue, God of War, Resident Evil 4 and the like, as we are now 'treated' to a stupendous amount of Quick Time Events. To be honest, these feel incredibly tacked on, only appearing so the developer can fart around with the camera angles and make it all Hollywood-esque. Eighty percent of the time, these appear in places where it would be much simpler, and faster, for the player to continue through the section as normal, especially considering the reaction times needed would give Spidey himself trouble, forcing players to repeat them constantly. Indeed, one section in the New York sewer features a QTE, only to discard it when the player returns to that section later in the game. Oh yes, you can go into the sewers and subways now. Is there any point to this outside specific missions? Not unless brown is your favourite colour.Spider-Man 3 seems riddled with issues that could have easily been solved with some more QA testing. However, the game was delayed for a month for this very reason, with no indication of what the developers did with that extra time. Enemies range from superhero conquerors to intellectually-deprived practice dummies, and don't even get Gamestyle started on some of the boss fights (Kraven = pure unadulterated rage). There's also some annoyingly blatant pop-up in the game at certain points, causing whole buildings to appear not a few dozen feet in front of you.To be fair, when it works, Spider-Man 3 is an enjoyable return to New York, and it quite often does work. However the myriad problems soon build up and cause frustration, leaving a distinctly average taste in our mouths. Activision, just give the franchise back to Neversoft, they must be sick of doing Tony Hawk games by now.