Ultimate Spider-Man Review

By Martin Coxall Published 19 October, 2005

Doing some of what a spider can.

Version tested: PlayStation 2

Spider-Man. Doing whatever a spider can!

Well, most of it. And a few things a spider can't, like upside-down mouth action with Kirsten Dunst and spewing from his wrists. W00t. But is 'whatever a spider can' all that we want from a Spider-Man game?

The last Spidey outing was a mixed bag. The console version was fun, but buggy [and with some patently ludicrous difficulty spikes inserted at random - Ed]. The PC users were rogered royally on the other hand, by a game that was a patronising kiddies' outing, and was no fun whatsoever, and yet the box art made no hint to the poor unsuspecting PC gamers of the awfulness within. Many were cross, and understandably so. Grrr.

And this time? Hurrah, the PC version is a port of the console version. PC users may now rest happily, having punished the developers for their infraction last time when they lost a big wodge of cash. Their fault.

As the game opens, you are immediately confronted and struck by a control system that has taken a massive step back since the previous game. Now you can only shoot one web at a time (why?) and you have to double-jump and zip your way around the city in what feels like an alarmingly limited and retrograde way. Whatever a spider can? Only if it's a curiously lazy and stupid spider. You will get used to it, but you will never fully come to terms with the fact that it used to be so much better.

dance

This year's Strictly Dance Fever promises a new edge.

On the plus side, you do get to play as Venom, and his control system rocksaws proper gaming hide. He flits and flounces around the city, full of the joys of spring, and generally feels like a modern-day Bomb Jack [as if to continue our retro obsession of late]. This has to be a good thing. However, while Venom is a Big Whoop of fun to control, he's far too easy to play with. As you suck in bystanders and foes, your health is continually recharged, and if you do this all the time, you never have to fight anyone. As a result you will race through Venom's levels and never feel challenged, which is a great shame. His dynamic and flexible controls demand greater challenge, not less.

Unlike Spider-Man 2, the game doesn't attempt to follow any cinematic storyline, and is instead based on the Ultimate Spider-Man comic books. The story starts with a nerdy and deformed angst-ridden teen Peter Parker suffering an identity crisis and struggling to come to terms with who and what he is. Mary Jane, looking somewhat Kirsten, is fully aware of Peter Parker's arachnoid proclivities. Tragically, she works not as a photojournalist, but as a web developer. Hmm. These days, these kind of things are known as 're-imaginings'. You may like it, but this take on the Spider-Man mythos and story does nothing for me.

Ultimate Spider-Man has oodles of style though, and it seeps out of its greasy teenage pores most during the cut-scenes. With an unusual semi-animated comic-book style, they are most reminiscent of the opening credits to Grange Hill, the original series of all things, in the way the story spills over into adjacent panels in an amusing Brechtian estrangement.

nickname

I'm sure I'm missing a great opportunity to give you an amusing nickname.

Voice acting, still something of a bane of this generation of action games, is passable but not spectacular. There's an underlying feel of mild embarrassment from the actors that they're doing a game, and I felt sure they'd rather be doing an insurance commercial.

For better or for worse, the game has an unusual structure. Naturally, you expect to spend a significant wodge of game time whooshing and performing heroics around the city, cute and handy little map in tow. In a now de-facto Grand Theft Auto sandbox-style, little icons around the edge of the map indicate places for you to go to advance the story and undertake various marginally enjoyable side missions, such a races against the clock or against Jonny Storm, and also the occasional city event, when you will be called upon to dish out some webby justice or save some peasants.

Sadly, after a short while these side quests become tedious, and you'll want to focus on the main game. But you can't, because they aren't side quests. They separate out the chapters, and thus become the main arc of the game, which is immensely frustrating, because you could and should be doing so much more.

menace

Gangs of superheroes lurking on street corners. The city's newest menace?

Graphically, it's a bit of a stunner. It eschews the unnecessary attempts of the previous games to go after realism, and embraces the comic heritage of the source material head-on. There is a wonderful quasi cel shading effect, and it seeks to convey overall that you are playing your way through an actual Spider-Man comic, and it works wonderfully, especially with the cut-scenes.

After countless more-or-less failed attempts to create a great Spider-Man game (what's taking you so long, guys?), Ultimate Spider-Man ranks ultimately as the next great 'nearly'. There is a solid visual dynamic and story here, but the control and missions were better in Spider-Man 2, and the story worked best in Spider-Man. Taking the best bits of all three and rolling them into an Ultimate Spider-Man game would be brilliant. Alas, Ultimate spider-Man is not that Ultimate Spider-Man.

It's a missed opportunity. The open city dynamic offers scope for a wide array of challenges and playing styles that could have produced an awesome game. By limiting it to repetitive and limiting challenges, the game is condemned to that of pretty distraction.

6 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy

Comments (42) Latest comment 7 years ago

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  • Psi #1 7 years ago

    does whatever a spider can

  • kangarootoo #2 7 years ago

    Ah, thats a real pity. I was liking the look of this one.

    Can't remember what score EG gave Spiderman 2 on XB when it game out, better than this I would hope. I loved that game (despite the sucky combat and repetative missions). Just swinging about the place was a lot of fun once you got the hang of it.
    Edited by kangarootoo at 19/10/05 @ 12:05

  • groovychainsaw #3 7 years ago

    How could they have removed the web-swinging bit from spider man 2 - that was by far the best bit in the game, and was universally praised by every review i read as being the standout. It criminal, i tell you, criminal
    /crosses ultimate spiderman off his xmas list
    /realises it wasnt there anyway... no money left after the xbox 360!

  • zErOb_cOOl #4 7 years ago

    The coolest thing about Spiderman? Swinging about and doing cool stunts. All Marvel characters have their strong/weak sides, and Spidey's is his agility, as he's not the strongest when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

    So why the hell can't you swing about?!!! Unforgivable in a Spidey game, especially given the last Spidey game, Spiderman 2, which had it nailed in this respect.

    With current technology and programming ability, some programmer(s) somewhere should have invented a flexible and usable swing system. You are Spidey, swinging along, you shoot a web out behind you, and you do a vertical 180 degree turnabout. This sort of game physic is perfectly do-able on current hardware and programming knowledge.

    This game sounds more like a 1/10, 1 being for the authentic graphics, which I love BTW.

  • Bezzy #5 7 years ago

    Beautiful game. Awesome little tricks with mipmaps. Some of the NPR on characters like Rhino is great. Some of it can be poor.

    Controls get a welcome simplification. But yeah. The open world aspect is not embraced fully. It becomes space to play in, but it doesn't react back at you in any way.

    The minimal improvements made to game play feel tame compared to the very well judged aesthetic leap. Now, you don't have to "start" the generic missions, as in spiderman 2. The generic missions now just passively appear in the world, but they're practically the same as 2's.

    Some good choices are made to refine what already exists, then. But this ultimately exposes the flaws obscured by spiderman 2's overcomplex controls.

  • mattigan #6 7 years ago

    Wont be getting this now, webslinging should have been made MORE complex, not dumbed down.

    I remember it being a bit "Tony Hawks" in all the tricks/moves you could perform, but not enough for my liking, and now they've broken it.

    Looks like they've spent too much time trying to make it look cool, when the main draw of the last one was it PLAYED cool.

    It's a Shame.

  • PearOfAnguish #7 7 years ago

    Did you just use 'w00t' in a review?

  • Bezzy #8 7 years ago

    Who said you can't swing?

    You CAN swing.

    It feels a bit more toned down in this version (the lack of noisey detail in the buildings due to the cartoon style doesn't give you that epic sense of speed and size), but the system is simpler, and more refined.

  • Bezzy #9 7 years ago

    My main problem with spiderman 2's controls was how it was unnecessarily hard to do things which ought to come naturally, like wall running. Adding extra buttons and move modifiers does not a good game make.

    What's lacking in this is a deeper WORLD for you to use your abilities in. The controls themselves are pretty much alright. I suppose that the combat IS a bit shallow, though.

  • kangarootoo #10 7 years ago

    I'm with you the side controls issue in spiderman 2 Bezzy. The number of times I tried to jump up a building to save a bit of time, and ended up just leaping into space with the camera dancing about like a trapese artist on fire... grrrr.

    Swing around buildings in a sort of upwards spiral was the winning technique though. Took a while to get it working, but once you had it pinned it was very quick and looked super cool too.

  • markypants #11 7 years ago

    I think it's a shame they didn't stick with Spider-Man 2 and just give us less repetition, and expand the game world (More interiors, greater depth of game world etc.).
    I think the truth here is that they are trying to separate the 'Movie' license and the 'comic' license. That way they can release 2 games instead of just 1. Wait for Spider-man 3 to come out along side another instalment of the 'Ultimate' brand.

  • Chtulie #12 7 years ago

    so the wait is for an ultimate-ultimate spider-man game?

  • Derblington #13 7 years ago

    Wow.

    I think this game is much better than Spider-man 2. The controls have been dumbed down but they work well, the story is much, much better, faster paced and grips you from the start.

    The actual story missions are better too. They are much more fleshed out and give you a much better sense of being Spider-man, for instance; Rhino is trashing the place and you have to chase him down, but on the way he's throwing cars and smashing buildings so you need to rescue injured people as you go.

    If you liked Spider-man 2 I'd recommend you at least try this. For me (and I'm a fairly big fan) it's a much better game and definitely an 8.

    The let downs are the non-story missions - races and fight tours. These kind of padded extras never hold my attention, but I'm still playing the game after completion because being Spidey (and Venom) is still good fun just moving around the city and looking for stuff.

    I agree with bezzy that the city never really reacts to you, but it never has so I don't think you can really put it down for that. The city is better realised as a playground (although not as big or realistic).
    Edited by Derblington at 19/10/05 @ 12:54

  • Derblington #14 7 years ago

    "Sadly, after a short while these side quests become tedious, and you'll want to focus on the main game. But you can't, because they aren't side quests. They separate out the chapters, and thus become the main arc of the game, which is immensely frustrating, because you could and should be doing so much more."

    The game took me about 5-6 hours to complete over 2 days. While playing the main game I did a total of 5 races (4 of which I got gold medals on first time), about 5 combat tours, and about 5 city events. Each took about 1.5 minutes.

    They are not the main arc of the game at all, more like a mild distraction that are, admittedly, not as fun.

  • spidermanalf #15 7 years ago

    The controls have been dumb downed as this is at th ebeginning of The Ultimate Spider-man saga, and therefore Peter does not know loads of moves!

    As much as I loved this game it did annoy me that I had to do loads of side missions to open up the main missions! The races etc just pissed me off after a while. And the fact that the Spidey mission before Venoms always tended to start off with the lines 'I must get to the Daily Bugle' and you had to swing across to the Daily Bugle from Aunt Mays house, and that was it!

    The comic book art and the comic book cut scenes are all good and very well executed!

    Oh and before I forget THERES NO AUTO SAVE (on the xbox version)! As I found out after turning off after 3 hours of playing!
    Edited by spidermanalf at 19/10/05 @ 13:22

  • kangarootoo #16 7 years ago

    "THERES NO AUTO SAVE"

    Thats a bit weak. Given the storage of the XB and the fact that the TCR requirements for autosaving on XB are pretty liberal, I would expect all XB games to autosave your progress.

  • Derblington #17 7 years ago

    I've got the GC version. None of them autosave.

  • Blerk #18 7 years ago

    Now I'm confused. :-(

    Is there a playable demo anywhere?

  • Blerk #19 7 years ago

    an unusual semi-animated comic-book style, they are most reminiscent of the opening credits to Grange Hill

    Flying sausage on a fork? :-)

  • Chtulie #20 7 years ago

    "The controls have been dumb downed as this is at th ebeginning of The Ultimate Spider-man saga, and therefore Peter does not know loads of moves!"

    I've heard that excuse over and over again, but it clearly is bullshit because the film spiderman is ALSO just starting out with his superhero career. In fact, the ultimate version of spiderman has had a lot more experience under his belt by the time he reaches the story of the game, having already dealt with a dozen or so superpowered foes, then the film spiderman who only had confronted one superpowered foe before the storyline of the second spiderman game.

    Or: ultimate spiderman is actually more experienced, chronologically speaking, then film spiderman.

  • kangarootoo #21 7 years ago

    "but it clearly is bullshit"

    No need to be so angry about it ;)

  • spidermanalf #22 7 years ago

    I am not making the excuses! I was just saying what I have read!

    I too miss the moves off Spider-Man2! And I played this directly after Hulk Ultimate decstruction with his plethora of moves, to having web swing and web line, and thats pretty much it!

  • Derblington #23 7 years ago

    It's not because it's a new series, it's because that's all Spider-man can do in USM (and most of the other comicbooks he's in). They were added to Spider-man 2 to flesh it out a bit - USM is following the reference material much more closely. I didn't find it a problem - the only thing that I thought was dumbed down was the swing mechanic, but it works fine after a while.

    I shouldn't imagine it will be a problem if you didn't spend any/much time with SM2.
    Edited by Derblington at 19/10/05 @ 14:48

  • kangarootoo #24 7 years ago

    I know spidermanalf, I'm just messing about, hence the ;)

    For game design in general, I'd much rather have a few well implemented mechanics than a plethora of untidy ones. I did think that a lot of the combat moves in SM2 were a little redundant and I tended to stick to a few combos that worked well.

    The swinging mechanic was the main event for me (with the jumping and running bringing up the rear) and I would probably miss it if it were removed or reduced. Not played US at all, so I'm sort of speculating in open water a bit here.

  • octo #25 7 years ago

    I'd see if you can try before you buy. After the enormous freedom of movement in the previous game I found this quite restrictive.

  • kangarootoo #26 7 years ago

    "After the enormous freedom of movement in the previous game I found this quite restrictive."

    It does sound like it will disappoint me on that basis. I like my spiderman games as I like my underpants.

  • ecureuil #27 7 years ago

    6/10 is a bit generous - this game is rubbish. I finished it in five hours, and they ruined everything from the previous game. Combat is even worse - it wasn't even great in the last one, so how did they manage that? Swinging is -almost- the same but a bit less fun.. I don't know what went wrong.

    The whole game follows the same pattern - see rival supervillain, chase said supervillain through city for 5 minutes, fight supervillain in bland, square button-bashing fashion. Rinse and repeat for 5 hours until the credits roll. Why did they change the swinging? They removed the super jump move, they removed the sprint and vertical wall sprint moves, and most of spideys aerial tricks. As a result, you just feel a whole lot less agile. This is a bit of a problem in a Spider-man game.

    Where are the new moves to unlock? There's no sense of progression, really. I'm not motivated to rescue that falling worker 10 times just so I can see another chase-the-bad-guy sequence. It's very disappointing. I'm losing faith in Treyarch now, someone else needs to take this license because they appear to have no ambition - I feel that another developer could do great things with a Spidey game, the potential is obviously there. This one, however, is a disaster.

  • kangarootoo #28 7 years ago

    "I feel that another developer could do great things with a Spidey game"

    Depends how much cash they get and what the brief from the publisher is. There is always stuff going on behind the scenes that we aren't party too, especially in established franchises where the publisher knows sales will be good even if the investment in the game isn't that good.

  • funkyd #29 7 years ago

    trust me ive got Ultimate Spiderman and its really,really,really GOOD!!!

  • funkyd #30 7 years ago

    groovy chainsaw is an idiot ive got it and the area is twice the size of spiderman 2 and u can webswing everywhere!!!

  • ecureuil #31 7 years ago

    Actually, the area is smaller than in the last game. You get more areas (Queens too, as opposed to just the main island in the previous game) but the actual total size of it is smaller.

  • Derblington #32 7 years ago

    The city is smaller in size but it's plenty big enough.

  • Darth_Flibble #33 7 years ago

    when will the thick morons at Treyarch understand not to make the gamer do stupid filler missions to progress the story, I hate the races you have to do It just shows how lazy the designers are to padd out the game

  • Lothar Hex #34 7 years ago

    I was severly dissapointed with this one. I ended up giving a 4/10 for the GS review.

    NEVER get your hopes up kids.

  • urban #35 7 years ago

    it looked crap frm theinstance i saw ultimate

  • kangarootoo #36 7 years ago

    "It just shows how lazy the designers"

    A siren has gone off in my head, but I'm just tired of typing the same thing time after time. Can someone else fill in for me please.

  • tengu #37 7 years ago

    Bought this yesterday after reading some of the more positive comments on here, and I have to say, I think it's fantastic. It's very simple, very easy, and the swinging does feel a bit hard to control sometimes, but it's great fun. Thanks to the guys who actually had something good to say about it on here, else I may not have bothered at all.

  • Derblington #38 7 years ago

    Good on you Tengu. I think it's a much better game than most are saying it is.

  • tengu #39 7 years ago

    Sure is. I'm not too far in right now, but I've had a great time with it so far. Particularly like the Venom vs Wolverine fight, even if I am sick of seeing Wolverine everywhere these days :)

  • Blerk #40 7 years ago

    Venom pwns Wolverine!

  • Derblington #41 7 years ago

    /insanity prawn boy voice on
    "yes, that's riiight"
    /insanity prawn boy voice off

  • Chtulie #42 7 years ago

    After I've picked it up and played it thorugh, well.
    - Losing the run button and all the moves that implies is very much a let down.
    +/- double jump instead of charge jump is simply diffirent, it's not better but also not worse.
    - Web Climb is a neat feature
    + but web-zipping has become way too important a move

    So far it's pretty evened out with Spiderman 2.

    + the story and mission progression is a little better
    - the actual missions themselves, esp. the story missions are too similar.
    + the side missions have been somewhat improved, though they're still far from good
    - Combat's actually a little worse.
    + having a second character is a great thing, though slightly constrained by not being able to switch at will until the game is finished.
    - but loosing the character progression, buying moves and such is really painful.

    The pro's and cons are still pretty evened out.

    + is in the graphics and presentation, the game now very much has a character and personality of it's own, the way it looks and sounds and such now works, a lot better then the earlier attempt at lame, impersonal realism.
    - it is so, so incredibly short, and it's been made too easy.

    Still evened out, in the end it comes down to two things:
    the price: the full price for the console versions is just too much for a game that will be finished, in storyline anyway, this quickly.
    the other thing: if you can get it for a more reasonable price, it is in the end not a real progression from the last one. It makes about as much mistakes as improvements, which isn't something you'd expect a developer to do for a sequel.

    (and citing story reasons for simplified gameplay just isn't a good excuse in gamedesign. It might work in a passive medium where it will actually heighten the experience, but in a game, it means you're actually making the game less fun then before, which is completely unaccaptable)