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Rating : 7.4 / 10 Developers : Treyarch, Vicarious Visions, Beenox Availability : PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance, PC |
Spider-Man 3 pits you up against the city criminals, and the super villains we all grew up with.
You take on the Lizard Man, Scorpion, King Pin, a few extra casts, and of course, the main plot of Spiderman 3; New Goblin, Venom, Sandman.
What makes this special is that you feel like Spiderman. You swing building to building, wall to wall, crawl around and you have quick reflexes and senses. You also have a keen eye for things, just to help you out in the game a little. Although some battle moves don’t are a little over the top, some of them will remind you of those glorious moments when Spiderman delivers and handful onto his enemies.
With this much action, it is prone to problems, or at least to say, a couple of problems; poor camera and frame performance.
When swinging around, it may be grand and all, but the camera is set to follow you from behind. As soon as you make a sharp turn, you will find yourself doing a fair distance as the camera slowly follows you around. Not a huge deal. When fighting, the camera follows you around also as you pummel your foes with all the different combinations of attacks. Every now and again, the camera will become a little awkward. Still, not too big a deal. The real problem now is that the camera fits within the walls and boundaries. So when you’re fighting in a small space or a lot of poles and walls around, you will find the camera very painful to work with; I know I have, and it isn’t fun when happening during some boss fights. This camera issue also sticks to crawling as the viewing angle is close. You have the ability to make leaps from the wall to get around faster but the viewing angle makes it difficult to know exactly where you’ve leaped to a lot of the times and then it will completely throwing you off and disorient where you’re going.
Now, imagine this with some drops in the frame also; very painful. Though the performance doesn’t make a huge impact with regards to camera, it is an issue throughout the game. The lights of New York are so bright and because the game loads up a world full of it, you have slowdowns going through the city. During some fights, if there is a very involving background or area environment you’re in, it makes fights a little more daunting. The worst part is having this lag during a big fight when the controls aren’t very responsive to begin with, and too sensitive at the same time.
Through your swinging around and running around is great, fighting is sensitive. Button mashing your attack will some of the times make it not possible to do the exact combo you want, so you can’t bash on them. It will work most of the time though if you do it right, but because the system will queue up most of the input you make before it happens, with certain actions overriding others, combat can get a little out of hand a times and you find yourself doing combos other than those you would have preferred.
Though responsive, the only unresponsive issue I’ve found was the jumping. It was slow to react at times, and because of animations and delays in movement, jumping wasn’t just a button I can press and go, which can get annoying and with added lag, makes it harder.
Because you’re Spiderman, there are also a lot of quick time events to make you feel a part of those cool moments of Spiderman, dodging between two cars, flinging around enemies, and delivering those last moment blows.
This is great as during the cut scenes, rather than just watching the scene, it involves you in it by pressing the buttons according to the action, most of the time.
However, there will be times where just to throw you some fun scenes of even just swinging around, they’ll throw in the quick time, which is very unfitting and annoying for such minuscule tasks.
Nonetheless, these are just the game mechanics which you take with you in your 42 missions. Missions will range between the villains you fight against, story plot, the Daily Bugle, and some taxi work for Mary Jane. You then have the side missions of fighting crime within a certain amount of time, escorting, and races, against the general city criminal gangs throughout the city.
What you may probably enjoy however is the everyday, or every moment, crime that happens as you swing around. When you see it on your map, be sure to get straight to it to avert the crime and save the day.
But at the end of all this, there isn’t a lot to do other than beating your scores.
You will also find that the story, whether the main plot or the extra villains, has been altered a little which can be a slight disappointment for fans who want to relive the days, or learn more about the characters.
The game of course wouldn’t be dramatic without the music and sound. As you swing and the wind just gushes through you, and as you fight, the sound of each contact and effect. Things do sound good.
On the flip side, music is very poor. Every now and again as you go around New York, you will have the overwhelming and dramatic instruments you would have heard in the movie, only it’s very dull and weak in the game. During scenes and events, it’s very standard and plain and doesn’t really fill up the action.
Graphics on the other hand is a little better, but for what it’s got, it’s dissatisfying. Resolutions are great, but textures are basic. Through detailed, they aren’t crisp; only very plain and simple. You won’t notice it for example on buildings, as the camera is far and it will look great, but on larger objects with larger patterns like cars, you’ll see the plainness of the textures. Zoom in on a building with your camera and you’ll know exactly how simple it is. Yet, the performance is very poor which is, very poor. Understandable that during the night time when the lights are on, without proper optimization, there will be drops, but when the overall game is consistent with this, it becomes poor development.
There will be times when the game will run well, but that’s in confined areas which require little effects or anything really.
For the PlayStation 3, an added bonus is available to play as the New Goblin. Zipping around can be a little different due to unintuitive controls, but again, the poor camera work comes into play during certain movements. Unless you’re used to using him even without a good camera, you’ll probably find him a pain to fly around with.
The New Goblin also does not have any missions of his own, only the crime fighting segment of the game and the crime trials that Spiderman already gets.
But what can I say? For those who are big fans of Spiderman and would love to be just like him, swinging around, fighting crime, and experiencing his adventures, this game is a good pick up. Just don’t expect too much and you may find it quite good.
For those who are looking for some action, you’ll probably want to stay away from this or just give it a rent.
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