YouGamers.com

Reviews

Spider-Man 3

Web-swinging across New York

Spider-Man 3 has one definite thing that just works - swinging across the city of New York. Once you get the hang of the system and figure out how the three-button system functions, it's effortless and fun to get around. Avoiding an overshoot when trying to get to a specific spot such as mission start location requires some skill, but overall this portion of the gameplay is sweet - assuming you are playing with a gamepad, preferably the Xbox 360 pad.

The thing is, Spider-Man 3 was obviously designed with the next-gen consoles as the primary target, and the controls are completely tailored for a pad. While web-swinging you need to use two triggers, A-button and the analog stick. On keyboard, this translates to WSAD and three keys, so while moving around you are already expected to pull off silly keyboard acrobatics. Add actual combat to this (one button for auto-dodge "bullet time", often held down, plus three other buttons for combat combinations), and the conclusion is that Spider-Man 3 is unplayable with a keyboard and a mouse - a pad is effectively required.

Once that's sorted out and you have a pad in hand, if you want to put your web-swinging skills to a real test, there are extra game modes where you for example race across the city following checkpoints or searching and disarming bombs. These missions are optional but do add a lot of extra content to an otherwise tad short game.

Superhero combat

Spider-Man is very versatile in beating bad guys and a huge array of new special moves can be unlocked by completing missions. The problem is, there are far too many complex combos and it's impossible to remember most of them, so combat tends to degenerate to button-mashing. This works fine against the generic thugs as the combat is very easy, if bit chaotic. Other parts of the problem are the horrible camera and the rest come from the controls which can only be described as "twitchy". Due to the poor camera and imprecise controls, in tight quarters the only working solution seems to be just blindly button mash as the view jerks around violently trying to keep up with the action. Animation also looks clunky while fighting - at times it feels like there are missing animation frames as Spidey jumps from pose to pose executing over-the-top combat moves.

Against supervillains and other boss types the combat is all about finding the routine to inflict some damage, and then repeating it over and over again until the boss goes down, and in most cases they take a huge amount of punishment before yielding. Most supervillain battles seem to revolve around the auto-dodge feature - Spidey can do his own take on "bullet-time" and while combat is slowed down, he automatically evades incoming melee hits and can do counterattacks off them. This works in all fights but becomes essential in boss fights, as often the counters are the only way to get past the defenses of the supervillains.

Spidey beating up some common thugs. Note the yellow icon indicating an incoming attack you could evade with the auto-dodge.

Softening up the Sandman.

As you link combat moves, you fill up a combo meter, and once full it allows the execution of yet another set of "super moves". When Spidey ends up with the new black suit, the combo meter is replaced with a rage meter that is filled up as you fight, and full meter allows black Spidey to go "off the deep end" for some extra damage. The black suit also allows some new moves otherwise not available - just in case you thought that the dozens of combos unlockable prior to that were not enough...

New Goblin attempting to beat up Peter Parker.

Missed a move - that flying police car is gonna hurt.

Some fights and chases are mixed up with cinematic action sequences - in essence these are cutscenes where you "play" by hitting correct button at the correct time. Mess up, and Spidey will be down for the count and you have to start the sequence again. These events are easy enough as you can retry the action sequence as many times as you want, and the sequences are static - so it's down to memorizing the sequence if your reactions are otherwise not quick enough to follow the onscreen directions.

Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5

Related Stuff

Tags