Review #426: Spider-man - Friend or Foe(Playstation 2)

 Mostly foes, really.

 Sometimes a company just wants to release a game because they like money and the license is still burnin' hot. But sometimes there's no movie to tie-in with a videogame, so you pump out a low-budget game for the kiddies. Lo and behold, a Spider-man beat'em up game that trades free-roam for a more linear, simple romp about bashing baddies, while sporting an animated look inspired by Sam Raimi's movies.

 Short and simple: Remember the meteorite that brought Venom to the Earth? Turns out there're more shards and some symbiote-like beings, Phantoms, are attacking and imbuing Spider-man's allies and foes with meteorite shards, making them... even eviler? Now Nick Fury recruits Spider-man and takes him on a global adventure to recover the fragments and stop the Phantom invasion. The story tries to be funny, but unless you're a kid, it'll most probably fall flat on its face.

 On this adventure, Spidey will always be aided by a CPU ally, or a player if you have those things called friends. There's about a dozen different characters, and save for Goblin and New Goblin, all of them play slightly different, with their own unique animations. If you're playing solo, you're free to switch between Spider-man or the AI character at a button press, if you're playing with a second player... hope you enjoy being Spider-man. Characters can also be upgraded with yellow sparks that are left behind fallen enemies and broken objects.

 Square is your attack button, while circle is used for special attacks and grabs. While Friends and Foes are limited to a single special circle move, Spidey can rotate between three different web carts: Grab, Stun and Projectile. Honestly, the grab web is the best, and it's the most fun to play with, since you can do all sort of aerial combos and shenanigans. Honestly, the combat flows pretty smoothly, and it can get pretty fun.

 Spider-man Friend or Foe is simple to a fault, while the game can be fun at times, stages drag for a bit too long and the game is a bit too long for my liking. There're four enemy types, and they are reskined for each of the 5 worlds, so you'll have seen most of what the game has too offer after the first world. Take Final Fight, a game in the same genre, it lasts less than an hour, just before it gets old. Friend or Foe overstays its welcome, but it won't be a problem if you play it sparingly instead of, y'know, playing it all the way to the end in one sitting because you've a blog. Just sayin'. And by the by, the PS2 version is probably the last version you'd want to pick, X360 and Wii have additional characters, like Silver Sable, and even the PSP one-ups it by having Carnage and Electro.
 6.0 out of 10