In only three days the Marvel Comics’ tights wearing superstar Spiderman managed to break every box office record known to man, pulling in around 150 million dollars over the opening weekend. Does this make the movie good? If you read around at the critics, and comic book fans, reviews you will see a lot of mixed feelings concerning the number 1 movie in the country right now. Being one of those fans, and critics, myself after seeing the movie I will only say that I also was left a bit disappointed. Why is this important you may be asking? The reasoning I am trying to explain is that monetary or chart-topping success does not exactly equal a good product. While this is debatable concerning the movie Spider-Man 3 it also happens to partly be the case with the videogame of the same name from publisher Activision and developer Treyarch, of Call of Duty 3 fame. The game will surely make some fans super happy while making other fans, and the more hardcore gamer, very frustrated. There are some parts of Spider-Man 3 that really shine but unfortunately the bad parts are really bad and they bring down what could have been a triple A title, had it not been rushed to meet the deadline of the movie release date.
Spider-Man 3 is very similar to Spider-Man 2: The Game that was released on last generation consoles. If it was not for the storyline I might even call this one a revamped version of it’s prequel but that story is for another day. Controls are also very similar to the last game and fans of it will swing into action very quickly here. Bruce Campbell is back as the game’s narrator but he also takes over in the first level to teach newcomers the basic controls. Simply put, two of the face button’s attack (combos available), the other jumps, last one shoots webs. The left control stick moves Spidey around and the right stick starts and controls your “Spidey sense”, the LT and RT control your swinging when outside in the city, LB activates slow motion and controls your counter-attacks, while the RB activates your special moves. You can also climb buildings, take pictures, and shoot web directly up using some button combos or the d-pad. Even though there are many different things to do when fighting crime, control wise, I found myself over and over again just button mashing during most of the fights with basic enemies. This was a big disappointment, as games such as this really need to be deeper than a button masher to keep you hooked for more than a few hours. I will give credit to Treyarch for making such an ambitious control scheme though.
Activision has been touting Spider-Man 3 as a true sandbox game with deep storyline elements. While it succeeds greatly at the first part it fails miserably at the second. First let me tell you a bit about the storyline, which does follow the movie pretty closely. The storyline elements take the form of CG created movies with real actor voiceovers, yes Toby, Kirsten, even the guy from Wings that plays the Sandman; the whole Hollywood gang from the movie is here. The thing about a sandbox game is that the storyline can either work really well or just seem like an un-needed addition to an already full game. In the case of Spider-Man 3 the implementation of the plot elements actually works pretty well. It can get really boring doing small tasks over and over again so the core of the game, around 42 missions, is really what keeps things progressing.
As I said the meat of the game is the missions that progress the storyline, while these may be what moves the game forward they are not necessarily that fun. Some are better than others but more than a few times I felt very bored and frustrated doing the same thing over again but with a different purpose. Let me explain: the game takes place in a full-scale replica city from the Spider-Man universe, you are able to swing around the city, enter some buildings, play in the park, etc. Rival gangs (created for the game’s purpose) divide the city into three sections. Each of these sections can be conquered through small crime-fighting events that take place in between storyline missions; doing this increases your health and other fighting attributes. Basically there are three different options to keep you busy during your stay in the city: missions, mini-games, and crime-fighting.
