Spider-Man 3 Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

Is he strong? Listen bud, he's got radioactive blood!

Before I get onto the review, let me start with a quick diatribe about Spider-Man 3. Don't worry for those who haven't seen it, I'm not going to give any spoilers away, but for me I preferred the first two as I think Sam Raimi has begun to demonstrate symptoms of what I call the "Joel Schumacher" syndrome. Movie buffs will know what I'm going on about, the rest of you see the film and make up your own minds.

Still, onto the games then. On the consoles, the spidey games have been rich and full gameplaying experiences with great battles and cut scenes, tremendous webslinging action and engaging plots and villains. This game has one out of those three, and you can probably figure out which one.

To be fair to the game, it mirrors the film very well and even has a better portayal of Venom than the cinematic version, including the correct grammatical mannerisms. Again, if you're a comic book fan, you'll know what I'm talking about, otherwise, it's not worth worrying about. It is also quite fun to play, largely in part to the webslinging that you can pull off in the game.

For a mobile version, you can do a whole host of things, from swinging around the city, zipping around the walls and taking out the bad guys. Here's where I had the most fun as the moves you can pull off are quite varied. You can fire web balls at your opponents or web them up and sling them around. Or if you prefer, you can jump from one to the other pummeling away, and let's not forget the fighting combos you can do. The game makes it quite easy as even if you forget the combos, you can do any of the ones you remember as they do fairly equal damage. Except for the chain combos which you get during the fight when you see a direction arrow above Spidey's head. Press in that direction and Spidey will do a 3 or 4 move combo that you can't otherwise pull off, usually ending in a cool looking finish. And if you want to jog your memory, the combos you get are listed in the help section.

Where the game falls down somewhat is in the longevity and playing time. I played the game through on easy and it took me half an hour. Instead of having extra levels or different endings, there was nothing new to accomplish by playing through on hard or normal. In fact, once you finish the game on easy, you get a choice of which suit to wear although one nice thing is they have different properties and different attacks.

Even on easy, the game at times can get a bit too easy. Attacking opponents is usually a case of button mashing unless you remember the combos, and if you do then 2 or 3 combos later and you'll have finished off most opponents. There are boss battles which mirror the film so you get to fight Harry (stop the sharp intake of breath for those who ain't seen it, you all knew it was gonna happen from Spidey 2 and the trailers), Sandman and Venom (who are both done a lot better in the game than the film).

These battles aren't quite as easy as the normal stages as you may have to utilise certain properties like web swinging kicks or double jumps. But after a go or two, you should be breezing through them in no time. The levels aren't all the same, so on some you have to get to a certain point, others you have to destroy or save a number of things and others still you have to fight the boss. The different objectives break up the monotony quite well and the only level I found tricky was the one where you have to save people.

What's also disappointing is the somewhat lack of freedom in the game, as although you get to do all this cool web slinging stuff, you basically move through the level as the game tells you. There's no time limit so you could just hang around zipping from wall to wall, but it's not like the console versions where you can go off and explore an entire city. Still, what was I expecting from the mobile version. At times when there are multiple enemies you can just run off the screen and one might follow you or you can sling one around to take the others out. The only one who isn't affected by your webs is Venom and to defeat him you need to understand that his weakness is sonic vibrations.

The graphics and sound are reasonable, the screen size is a little small which makes the character detail not that great but you get the picture of what's going on. The movement of Spidey is very good though, but the still pics of him and the others are pretty average. Sound isn't bad with a tune on loading and during the game but no real sound effects to speak of, plus the tune doesn't really add anything to the atmosphere. It was also very quiet even though I had my phone volume turned up to full.

Even with these limitations I had a lot of fun playing for that half hour because the webslinging action is so good. It kind of reminded me of the acrobatics of Prince of Persia, but that game was actually tricky, whereas I finished this on the train during my journey to work. You can replay any level once completed, and I did a few times to finish it on hard and normal, but had too much fun swinging around to want to do much else.

An enjoyable webslinging romp for a while, let down by the longevity and ease of completion.