Sunday, October 30, 2011

Spider-Man Games Retrospective pt 5

Spider-Man 3 (2007)
To start with, this review is of the PS2 version which is naturally inferior to the next gen versions, but the game is still largely the same.
This is the first game in my retrospective that is actually a disappointment, just like the movie with the same name. I was immediately confused by the opening cutscene and I had no idea what was going on when I started playing. Many features from the previous game aren't being carried over to these later games, like slingshot or the ability to web zip to ceilings with one button. There might be an argument for doing this from a game design perspective in order to simplify things, but as a player I feel gypped that I don't have the powers that I had in previous games. Shouldn't games build on what was already done? Not take parts away and redo the basics. Web-swinging is also a bit worse, which I've always said is the most fun part of these games.
There are some new improvements that this game brings to the table: an upgrade menu to spend XP on new moves, and the player has influence over which gangs control parts of the city, and new villains that I haven't fought in the previously reviewed games. I'll go crazy if I have to fight Scorpion or Rhino one more time. The best thing is that I've been waiting a long time to finally get to play as Spider-Man wearing the Symbiote suite. 
Example of a glitch.
Spidey should be holding him in a fireman's carry.
But back to the bad stuff: I have to deliver fruit pies? This is really what Spider-Man would spend his time doing? And then later we retrieve STOLEN fruit pies?! What is with all the fruit pies?  
This game has is the poorest Spider-sense I've seen so far. You can barely see it on screen and it took me until the final boss fight to recognize the sound in time to dodge out of the way.  There's a lot of odd things in this game and I'm not sure if they're exactly bugs or just "by design." For instance, when Spidey retrieves a stolen stick of dynamite, he just hands it off to what looks like a random person on the street, not a cop in uniform or anything. "Here you go, citizen. I trust you'll turn this into the proper authorities and won't blow your arm off or anything!"  Gamefaqs has 125 different types of glitches counted for this game.  After I finished the game it immediately froze and I lost my progress. Maybe the next-gen console versions are a bit better.

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