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Ultimate Spider-Man Review
Jon Wilcox
14/10/2005
TVG joins the wall-crawler (and his nemesis) in their latest adventure from Treyarch...
Looking back at the past twelve months it's certainly been a bumper year for superhero videogame fans with titles including Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, The Fantastic 4, the first X-Men: Legends title (we'll have a review of the sequel Rise of Apocalypse very soon), Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, and this, Activision's latest web crawling title Ultimate Spider-Man all making their retail appearances. After first checking out the title at E3 before finally getting our hands on a preview build earlier in the year, we were more than happy when Spidey's latest adventure landed at TVG Towers covered in a hideous mess of cobwebs and flies.
Contemporarily set in the Ultimate Marvel Universe (where the various superhero origin stories are brought into the present day), Ultimate Spider-Man follows the struggle between Peter Parker's alter ego and his arch-nemesis, Venom, as they battle through the comic book narrative. In the game, players will take control of both both characters, and face up to well-known faces from the Marvel Universe as well as each other.
The one aspect of the game that quite frankly slaps you in the face with awe right at the start of the adventure is the visual style that the developers have created for the game; simply put it's a living comic book. The technique (aptly named 'Comic Book Inking') follows the same procedure of the comic book inkers and sets it into a dynamic 3D world where light affects the colour and brightness of the various costumes. Whilst impressive enough during the game's daylight hours, the technique is shown off even more so during the night missions when neon glows from the Times Square lights affect the costumes of Spider-Man and Venom to amazing levels. Whilst other games have gone for cell-shaded styles before, Ultimate Spider-Man is probably the most successful title to date to bring the comics off the paper and onto the consoles.
Swinging through the city of New York of course is still a pleasure that continues from last year's Spider-Man 2 tie-in, but one detail that seems to be missing is the feeling of vertigo. Though free-falling into a web swing is still fun, it's not as exhilarating as last year's effort, which may be one of the few negative side-effects of using the comic-ink technique or maybe itās because ended up having to make the appropriate noises he Spidey drops to the ground. Taking control of Venom, players rely on Hulk style leaps that take the purple suited Eddie Brock Jr. across the city the blocks rather than threads of web, which isnāt as much fun. Relying on absorbing the energy of New Yorkers to rebuild lost health, the game throws an interesting moral dilemma right at the start of the player's control of the character: standing opposite Venom on a street corner is a small child (holding a Spider-Man balloon it has to be said.) Absorbing the child into the suit for a certain duration will kill the boy - so what option will you take? Either way the decision made by the player doesn't affect the game at all, although the more sensitive gamers may feel a pang of guilt when Venom spits out the boy's lifeless body back onto the streetā¦
It has to be said that ever since the Spidey made his appearance on PlayStation back in the late 1990s, one voice has been consistent throughout: Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell and his wise-cracking quips that dot each of the title's tutorial stages. Sadly for fans of the wall crawler's recent videogame existence, Mr Campbell doesn't lend his voice in the game (perhaps he was too busy working on a sequel to Bubba-Ho Tep), instead leaving it to Parker himself to go through the motions of the combat/control mechanics. Veterans to 2004's movie tie-in Spider-Man 2 and newcomers to the Spidey experience will slip into the suit with ease thanks to clever and intuitive controls that make even the most complex web-swing a straightforward affair to achieve.
Realising that fans of last year's title loved just web swinging around the streets and suburbs of New York City, the developers have integrated the 'pastime' to a greater degree of the gameplay. To progress the storyline, players have to complete a certain number of 'City Goals' be they collecting the many different tokens hidden throughout the city that unlock bonus material such as cover art, character renders, and costumes, Race Medals, Combat Tours (where Spidey follows a path of crime and beats the local criminals to a pulp), or City Events such as rescuing people and stopping crimes. Once the required number of these goals is achieved then the narrative can continue with the help of what can only be described as animated comic book strips with multiple frames and captions. Such sequences were one of the main attractions of the E3 demonstration back in May and they still havenāt lost their effect.
Collecting token and racing through various waypoints in races may be one thing, but the bulk of gameplay (web-swinging aside) rests with combat and rescuing people in need. One of the main failings in Spider-Man 2 was it's rather lacklustre combat system, which was rarely satisfying to use. Though it may not be the most complex combat system, the fighting sequences in Ultimate Spider-Man are at least fluid and flow well; punching, kicking, jumping down from walls into enemies, even spinning a web around an opponent and throwing them up to a lamppost can be done quickly and smoothly. Venomās combat moves on the other hand are even more devastating, though they are just as fluid and responsive to use. As youād expects from the mutant, punches, throws, and face-plants are just some of the techniques used to kill opponents (more often in Venomās case mercenaries intent on capturing him,) and the character can pick up most vehicles to throw at enemies on foot, in armoured vehicles, or even attack helicopters. Though individually they donāt have a particularly wide range of combat moves, by playing as both Spidey and Venom in the game, players are given enough variety to keep repetition away.
Taking in a number of mini-stages, the boss battles in Ultimate Spider-Man offer gamers smooth transitions between the standard gameplay and final showdowns with characters such as Electro, Wolverine, and Rhino. These transitional phases allow a certain amount of variety so that players might have to weaken an opponent before the final battle, save innocent bystanders from the situation, and just engage in an extended chase around the city streets. Boss battles do tend to occur within certain boundaries, though they arenāt too restrictive and means that neither Spidey or Venom can make a quick getaway ā“ perhaps this is something that can be looked at for future titles?
