| Spidey's back, and with a brand new look |
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Consider this less of a review, and more of a comparison. Last year's Spider-Man 2 was just flat-out one of my fave games of the year you see, so I've eagerly awaited this new instalment with a roll of toilet paper and some hand lotion for quite some time.
Of course, when I talk about Spider-Man 2, I refer to the near-perfect console game, not the travesty of a PC release that was a completely unconnected - and utter shit - title altogether.
So Spidey 2. Not only did it take the movie it was based upon and bring it to life beautifully, but it was also killer fun in its own right, with or without that license backing it up. In fact, the game is quite possibly my very fave of all the Grand Theft Auto-style free-roamers we've seen...including GTA itself. What a stunner.
This new release - now out on all three consoles
and the PC this time - uses the same engine and style of its predecessor, but is less of a sequel and more a re-imagining than anything else.
On the one hand it follows Spidey 2's basic formula of recreating New York city in miniscule detail, then throwing you in there to swing around at will and rid the streets of muggers. On the other hand though, it's now had a major facelift, and as the title might whisper a hint at, is also based around the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series too, as opposed to the films.
My initial impressions were sadly that it'd all done a bit of a "Warrior Within"; a tacked on follow-up, reworked to appeal to more of a mass market audience, losing what made it so great in the process. It has two rather annoying traits you see, neither of which plagued the first game.
My Spidey Sense is Lacking
First of all, the near-perfect swing mechanic from the last game has been reworked for the worse. Think back to Spider-Man 2 and how exquisite that web slinging was; modelled on somewhat realistic physics, webs only latched onto real buildings and trees, which not only looked fricken' awesome, but also took a modicum of skill.
| Swinging around is still a blast...I guess |
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While it required a bit of practice to finesse, just like with Peter Parker himself, figuring out how it all worked was damn fun, experimenting and testing the various abilities on offer. In the end every player sussed it out in their own unique way, subsequently defining their individual web slinging style thanks to all the different moves, abilities and sheer depth of the system.
Here, that underlying swinging mechanic remains, it's just been heavily watered down, keeping things "nice" and "easy". You can only fire off one web at a time for instance, there's no sprinting and worse of all the controls have been massively simplified. It also lacks Spidey 2's killer speed and expert camera work. Basically, in an attempt to make the slinging more accessible to newcomers, it's just lost a big old chunk of its pizazz more than anything.
I literally used to fire Spider-Man 2 up way after I'd beat it, and just go swinging around New York for hours, and although here it still works well enough I guess, it's all ultimately inferior than it used to be, and that knocks off some major, major points for me.
Spidey Smash
| Venom's stages are okay in small-doses, but feel a little tacked-on |
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The second troublesome addition to the game is the fact it now forces you to regularly play as the villain too.
The character is Venom, one of Peter Parker's buddies turned bad, and while he holds some decent value as a character and his levels aren't all horrible by any means, all the Venom stuff still just feels like filler to me, getting in the way of more good old Spidey action.
Venom lacks Spidey's web slinging, but can jump - quite literally - entire city blocks at a time. As a result, getting around is less about your expert, nimble finger work, and more about using the city as a trampoline to repeatedly launch Venom high into the sky.
He also has an insatiable hunger, one which can be alleviated by eating people, which I guess is reasonably cool. Really though, Venom is just Hulk-light when all's said and done, even down to the chaotic lobbing of cars.
Fucking Tracer
While these two bothersome elements aggravated me hugely for the first hour, I grew to appreciate Ultimate Spider-Man more over time. If you too can deal with these, it's actually a fine little follow-up in its own right, even if it doesn't quite match up to its previous outing.
| Story mode is improved, with a ton more interaction and top quality scripting |
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For instance the graphical re-lick I touched on earler is one change I approve of wholeheartedly. The cell-shaded look works impeccably well given the source material, with not only all the characters and buildings looking striking in their new solid black outlines, but bringing the story to life like nothing else is a also a huge serving of in-game cut-scenes pulled off brilliantly in the comic book panel look.
The only real problem with the visuals is the level of detail; I remember in Spidey 2 you could stand on the top of the Empire State Building and the entire city still looked beautifully complex from all the way up there. Not so here. Distant buildings are - literally - just a single coloured block, with the detail popping in as you get closer. On top of that, that kick arse motion blur effect seems to be stripped off too, meaning sky diving plummets feel oddly tame now.
While Ultimate is stylistically miles better than the previous game, technically it seems oddly worse due to stuff like this.
Sound wise, it's lost the epic superhero score in favour of aimless electronic ditties that don't work so well. The voice acting has also taken a turn for the cartoony, lacking in any big-name talent whatsoever this time out. Not so hot.
Verdict
| Combat too has been heavily simplified. A truly baffling choice |
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So a mixed bag all in all. There's some saddening changes to what felt like a winning formula here, but at the same time it still retains enough familiarity with its predecessor to make it worthy of a butchers.
Unlike Spider-Man 2, this game
is coming out for the PC, so although PC fans can't play the better of the two titles, at least they now have
something to check out. I'd advise any PC owning fan of action games or GTA-style free-roamers to give it a blast for that reason, as there's much brilliance to see here that a "veteran" will take for granted.
If you're a console guy though, I'd pick up last year's prequel first. If you similarly dug the hell outta that game like me and want more adventures with the web slinger, this is worth your time too, just bare those irksome problems in mind before diving in.