I was so excited when I bought this game, Spider-Man (SM) 1 was OK but laid the foundation for controls. SM2, in my opinion, was amazing. It was like playing a superhero Grand Theft Auto with an entire, and accurate (apparently), city to explore and live in.

Web swinging was fun and easy to learn thanks to it’s control system and the option to change the way it worked. The one let down of SM2 was the fact that the missions were very boring and unbelievably repetitive.

Not much has changed in SM3. The basic plot follows the film although scenes, script and order of events have changed slightly so as not to spoil the film or to offer something new.

Graphics
Crap. That’s all I can say really. There’s no shading, instead everything has a garish white stripe that flickers on and off. Buildings disappear regardless of distance and their textures are appalling - grey slabs with black “windows”. All of which flicker, jump about, flash, annoy you. In-game characters look like identical to those in SM2 (reference to the PS2 title) if not worse, they’re badly animated and appear 2D at times.

The enemies all look exactly the same to each other depending on their gangs. There are 3 different models for each gang but between each gang they’ve all got the same roles (some dodge, some have shields/weapons, some are big and strong).

But back to the graphics. Oh my God are they crap. Terrible. Absolutely rubbish.

Audio
Another down side to this game, there’s not much music and when it does play it’s the exact same tune from SM2. All of the original actors lent their voices which works well and keeps with continuity but the developers must’ve spent their entire budget on them. The enemies, like gang models, have different voices but they’re used terribly. The same quips from Spider-Man and his opponents are used constantly, Spider-Man’s in particular rarely make sense and are out of context.

Spider-Man gets smacked to the floor by a fat bloke holding a lamp post - “Yeah no one can stop me now!” says Spider-Man. Haha?

Gameplay
Web swinging is very hard, I’m mean next to impossible. The remotes work well though and it can be fun to imitate Spidey’s movements across the skyline and between the buildings. But wait! I’ve shot a webline straight forward and yet he flung it backwards causing me to stop dead and fall to the floor. Haha that was funny, I bet it won’t happen again. Oh it did. And just again.

After 20 bajillion times of this web swinging becomes tedious. It wasn’t until a few hours after I completed the actual storyline (about 4 hours or so I think) while doing gang missions that I really got a knack for it. And it’s still slow and difficult to control.

Fighting is generally okay although it’s basically shaking the remote about, there’s no skill or timing really needed. In big gang cuffufles everything slows down a little and you spend a lot of the time jumping away and webbing back down, repeating the same “sniping” strategy to pick off outside targets.

While fighting Spidey’s enemies the responsiveness vanishes and I spent a lot of the time madly waving the controls with no action from Parker.

Conclusion
The game has it’s moments where things are fun but the bugs, bad graphics, bugs, repetitiveness, bugs and crapness of the game get in the way far too often.

Oh and they’ve thrown out the acrobatic moves from SM2 that let you learn more adrenaline (special attack power) and generally made you look cool playing the game. And once you’ve finished SM3 you get a chance to kill all the gangs, there’s roughly 30 gang hotspots and normally about 4 missions per spot so that means repeating the same missions 120 times or more. Not good. Especially when you start a mission and then instantly fail it!

Oh yeah there’s also the ongoing effort to find all Spider Medals and Meteor Fragments - the first reward lets you play as black suit Spider-Man which would make things cooler but it’s a huge endeavour to find all the medals. The Meteor Fragments, all 100 of them, get you a bright yellow congratulations sign appear. That’s it.

This game, in general, INSANELY SUCKS. If you’re a huge fan of the film, like me, buy it but leave all even moderate expectations behind or that’s where you’ll want to leave the game.

4/10

And I did the whole review without making a joke about Spiders and bugs.