Spiderman 3
News
Posted June 6th, 2007 at 10:26am
by Matt Hargus
Introduction
The newest entry in the Spiderman franchise injects us into the life of Peter Parker just as he seems to have found balance between his job, his girl, and the whole super-hero thing. As this would make for a rather brief and boring story, we are soon introduced to the three (yes, three) villains of the story. Along with fighting the forces of evil, our Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman must deal with his dark side, brought on by his exposure to a mysterious alien substance. Like so many others, I too wanted to experience this adventure in a way only games can deliver (aside from some unpleasant spider bites and pesky mutations). This brings us to Spiderman 3 for the Wii, from Activision.
Storyline/Plot
Spiderman 3 for the Wii primarily follows the movie plot, with the introduction of a few more villains for good measure (five more, to be exact), and a number of disjointed side quests that pit you against gangs roving through the city of New York. There is no real connection between cleaning up the gangs and the main story line, and you could successfully play through the game a never stray from the primary thread. The side quests are dull and repetitious, consisting of about five themes (e.g. assist the police, find some evidence, retrieve the fruit pies) repeated over and over again. The sole benefit from completing these missions is to gain experience points that can be spent upgrading the abilities of our web slinger.
One of the more interesting aspects of the game is the ability to switch from the traditional red and blue spidey suit to the dark and mysterious black suit. When donning the black suit, Spiderman gets a big boost to his health bar, and packs a much meaner punch. However, you’ll need to keep an eye on how long you wear the black suit. Wear it for too long, and it’s game over for you. Removing the suit involves a series of motions with the remote and nunchuk, which increase in complexity as the game progresses and the suit starts to gain more control over poor unsuspecting Peter Parker. When you start experiencing tunnel vision, that’s your sign to switch.
After gaining the use of the black suit, you make your way through the various bosses while swinging around the city: Carlyle, Lizard, Morbius, Shriek, New Goblin, Sandman, and Venom. Each story lives on its own, with very tenuous connections to the others, and virtually no tie to the gangs around town. The boss fights are a bit tougher than the other battles, but can be completed without too much trouble even on the highest difficulty level.
Controls
Vicarious Visions, the developers of Spiderman 3 for the Wii, attempted to take advantage of the unique motion sensing capabilities of the Wii remote and nunchuk, but often with unimpressive results.
Movement is controlled using the analog stick on the nunchuk. Simple enough in concept, moving while climbing led to roars of frustration from yours truly. This stemmed from the camera control issues that plague this game, which often leave you looking in the wrong direction and not knowing which way is up. The camera can be manually controlled by tilting the nunchuk while holding down the C button, but this method is tragically slow and twitchy, rendering it unusable. I resorted to tapping the C button to center the camera behind Spiderman, leaving the nunchuk tilting to those of you with more dexterity and patience than I.
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McBilly
June 13th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
And I was even thinking of buying this game. Thanks for the outright review!
GameLedge » Spiderman: Friend or Foe Gameplay Vignettes
September 21st, 2007 at 4:09 pm
[…] by Kit Pierce Being ported to just about every system out there right now, Spiderman: Friend or Foe is looking pretty good. We all know looks aren’t everything, but the developers would be hard pressed to mess it up much worse that the utterly craptacular Spiderman 3 game. […]