In a perfect world, Spider-Man: Friend Or Foe would have been released a good year before Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Videogames are supposed to take leaps forward in gameplay and graphics, not five steps back. Thanks in large part to its young audience, Friend Or Foe feels like a giant leap backwards from the fantastic four-player button-mashing goodness of Ultimate Alliance.
The thin storyline involves a meteor that has split into pieces and scattered throughout the world. Spider-Man's job is to go around the world to locate the five missing shards, with Nick Fury toting him from one country to the next in his ship. With only five main levels, each with five sub-levels underneath, the game is far too short. While it lasts, it does get the sharp Spidey wit correct though, especially in some downright hilarious exchanges with Fury's computer. The game really feels like it has done the best job capturing the essence of Spider-Man in quite some time.
Fans of the wiry web slinger disappointed with how flimsy he felt like on Marvel Ultimate Alliance will enjoy the appropriately supped-up version of Spidey here. He no longer feels like the weak sibling of the super-hero bunch, as Spider-Man now plays fast, slick, and incredibly dangerous. The same is true of Spidey's enemies, whom eventually turn into your fighting partners. Part of the game's hook is the ability to fight as Spider-Man alongside his famous enemies, and the game delivers a nice variety of battle styles with each unlocked 'friend'. Like Spider-Man, gamers are able to level up each 'friend'. While it sounds like it adds quite a bit to the game, it is one of the game's biggest weaknesses. It is simply too quick and easy to fully level up your characters.
There is the same familiar RPG-lite gameplay, with players able to level up their skills by purchasing upgrades between levels with coins collected during level exploration. Unfortunately, the RPG elements are a little too light this time around, to the point that you will have Spidey fully 'pimped' before the halfway point of the game. The other characters will take you even less time to fully upgrade. The game has the right idea, but when you will have your characters completely upgraded long before finishing the game, it feels halfhearted. Each player's combos and fighting styles go through slight evolution with each subsequent leveling, but even at their full capacity the character combos become stale fast.
Players can shift from Spider-Man to his counterpart on the fly with a quick hit of the 'Y' button. With fourteen 'friends' by the game's end, there are plenty of different support characters to give a spin. Unfortunately, the game never lets you swap out Spidey and go at the game with two of the unlocked characters. Equally as limiting, the game allows for drop-in/drop-out co-op gameplay, but only on the same console. The lack of Live support is the most frustrating omission and the biggest reason the game will fail to hold your attention beyond a day or two.
Anyone with any experience playing button-mashing beat-em-ups will feel right at home with the game's easy to use controls. The game only uses three buttons, for its jump, bash, and special attack moves. The only bit of originality in the control scheme is the on-the-fly flip between special moves using the right bumper; like web slinging versus web throwing for Spider-Man. For a game skewed towards younger gamers this works just fine, but gamers that are more advanced could have used a little more depth in terms of the controls and fighting options.
