Now Playing: Spider-man - Web of Shadows(Playstation 3)

 Now we're talkin'!

 I just spent way more time than anyone should scourging buildings for Spider-collectibles... and it was FUN. Now this is what I expected out of a next-gen Spider-man game, it looks downright beautiful. Combat seems fast and simple, I love being able to switch suits on a whim.

 The new swinging is taking me a little to get used to. First of all, there's no real easy way to cling to buildings besides blocking, which is a bit counterintuitive, but worst of all, they inverted camera controls. After game and game and game and game using a certain camera control scheme this is throwing me outta wack. I hope I can get used to it.

 Nevertheless, this one is shaping up to be the best Spider-man game yet. Fantastic swinging and fantastic combat? Too true to be true... or is it?

Review #427: Spider-man - Web of Shadows Amazing Allies Edition(Playstation 2)

 Comes back in black... never to return again...

 This is it. Spider-man's final outing on the PS2. And... it's a glorified handheld game. I mean, it really is, this is a port of the PSP's 2-D sidescrolling action-platform imagining of the Web of Shadows game. But despite its origins, despite how they opted to port the PSP version and not the Wii's version... it's not that bad of a send off.

 For the third time in a row Symbiotes take center stage in the plot. After tussling with Venom one more time, the symbiote infects Spider-man... and the rest of New York. And outbreak of Venom-like symbiotes infects the city and it's up to Spider-man and Nick Fury to stop it. And no, it's not a reimagining of Friend or Foe, don't be alarmed. One thing to keep in mind is that the presentation is very underwhelming, there're no cutscenes, instead you'll be stuck reading textbox after textbox after textbox. The dialogue is very cheesy and over-the-top, the writers certainly weren't taking the story too seriously, so your mileage may vary on the game's delivery. Oh, and the game's ending? There's none. You defeat the boss and a pop-up tells you that you unlocked New Game Plus. Fun.

 'Moral Choices' were a big thing at the time, and they somewhat implemented in the game to varying degrees of success. Throughout every stage you may come upon NPCs, most which will taks you with a quest, and all of them will bombard you with text and multiple choices, depending on your choices you earn Black or Red reputation points. As far as I know, these only affect which 'Summons' you get, but they also affect which skills you can buy. Mind you, earning Red points doesn't gate you out of Black points and skills, and vice-versa, reputation points only accumulate. Quests are very simple 'find this stuff for me', 'take me there' or 'defeat all enemies', and a very few have different outcomes, which was kinda interesting.

 While this is a 2-D side-scroller, things are rarely linear, making the most out of Spidey's abilities, you'll be able to stick on walls and ceilings, as well as swing with your web through the air or pull yourself with it against a surface. Spidey can punch and kick, and by pressing select you can switch between red and black costumes. Each costume has three exclusive unlockable moves, which were rather... bland. They don't combo to well between your punches and kicks, but they are fun to use every now and then. As for the combat itself, it's relatively fun, the web-head is fast and hitting enemies feels good. You'll also be able to find power ups, such as temporary strength enhancement or even summon enemies and allies(It's not Friend or Foe, I swear) to perform an attack and help you out. I felt it was a bit gimmicky and lame, I never really summoned them and they weren't really needed. Bosses will eventually take out about half of your entire health bar(Even when you bought all four HP increments) with a single hit, but they are very easy to figure out.

 I don't know if it's due to the nature of it being a handheld port, but I felt like graphics were a bit ... I wouldn't call them blurry, not necessarily, but not well defined, if that makes any sense. A few stages, particularly the Luke Cage one felt a bit sloppy, like the camera swinging to fast or finding Spidey apparently teleported elsewhere. IT was mostly a rare occurrence though.

 Spider-man: Web of Shadows Amazing Allies Edition(I hate the title) was not the ideal way to end Spidey's run on the PS2, but at least it wasn't a terrible game. I'm sure most people will find the game too underwhelming to give it a chance, but if you're willing, it just might surprise you.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man - Web of Shadows Amazing Allies Edition

 What an embarrassing title.

 This is it. The final Spider-man game on the PS2, and... and it's a port of the PSP game. Which was the cause of controversy when many PS2 players expected a downgraded port of the PS3 version, y'know, kinda like what the Wii received. But nope, it's a port of the PSP game.


First of all, the game's cover is absolutely hideous, it could've looked better without Wolverine and Venom, kinda like how the DS' cover looks. Secondly, after clearing the first level I though the game was utter crap, then I played the second stage and... and it might not be so bad. The game borrows a lot from handheld Spider-man videogames, which is understandable since the PSP is, well, portable. But it's not altogether a bad game, a waste of the PS2's potential, yes, but a bad game? I don't think so, not yet anyways.

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

Now Playing: Spider-man Friend or Foe(PS2) and Spider-man Web of Shadows(DS)

 Two for the price of one.

 One would think that the downgrade to a single attack button would hurt the game, but since punches and kicks were interchangeable in the DS version... it doesn't change a thing... however, allies have their own unique movesets, which helps a lot. Hitting enemies also feels a tiny bit better.

  It's still nothing special, but it's a better game than the DS iteration, that's for sure.

 It had to be Griptonite. It had to be them. Often accused of creating derivative and creativity-deprived games, I always found them to make pretty good handheld games. Earning their reputation through mobile games, they eventually made it to handheld consoles, and lemme tell ya, their 3DS Shinobi game is downright fantastic.

 But I digress, it had to be this company the one that would show up all others. This Web of Shadows game is a Metroidvania, and it's so much fun. Granted, it's the ugliest Spider-man game yet, well, maybe Friend or Foe was uglier, but what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in substance. I played a few minutes of the game, and I loved it. I actually loved a DS Spider-man game, unbelievable.

Review #425: Spider-man - Friend or Foe(Nintendo DS)

 Spider-man: Dumb or boring.

 I love beat'em ups, and I love starting reviews about beat'em ups with my classic 'I love beat'em ups', it's a very easy genre to screw up, and Friend or Foe for the Nintendo DS is no exception.

 There's a story about meteorite fragments and symbiotes but... I just couldn't get into it. It's not like I didn't want to give it a chance, but the presentation is so poor that it put me off. Cut-scenes, what few there are, are barely animated, and look ugly. The rest of the story is told via long-winded audio exchanges between characters, mostly Spider-man and Nick Fury, but you cant' fast-forward this glorified text boxes, even if you read faster than what they talk so... I skipped them. Sue me.

 X and Y punches and kicks, B jumps and A uses a special attack, you can select between special attacks by tapping L or press R to switch characters. The 'Friend or Foe' title comes from the fact that Spidey will be accompanied by another character on every stage, and the CPU will take control of either Spider or the ally, depending on which character you are playing as. The CPU is a bit dumb, but they don't lose health when hit by enemies. Friends and Foes are basically model-swaps of each other, same three punch and three kick combo as Spider-man, as well as a projectile and an area-of-effect special moves. Besides the fact that some characters have more health than others, there's no other reason as to why you'd use a character over another.

 Exploring stages nets you coins which can be used to upgrade Spider-man(and only Spider-man), buy allies to use in free mode(Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Black Cat, Blade, Sandman and Venom round up the cast) or buy a few extra modes. For whatever reasons, enemies don't drop coins, which is kinda weird, since there's no reward for defeating enemies besides being allowed to progress. And eventually I just avoided every enemy I could, since the fighting is exceedingly repetitive, unrewarding, bland and downright boring. The crappy framerate doesn't help this game's case either.

 As with every single Spider-man game on the DS, tacked-on touch-screen minigames rear their ugly, unwanted head, but at least these mini-games aren't too obtrusive. Kinda. Every level will have you engaging in the same mini-games over and over again, and every single time you engage these, which you must in order to progress, you'll be forced to sit through the explanation. What where they thinking?

 Spider-man - Friend or Foe on the Nintendo DS is yet another subpar Spider-man game on this poor handheld console. Will they ever get it right? Will we finally get a good Spider-man game on the DS? Only god knows...
 4.5 out of 10

Review #424: Spider-man 3(Playstation 3)

 Celebrating Spider-man's jump into HD with QTEs!

 When the time came to bring Spider-man into the HD world Activision got Treyarch to handle the new game. Ever since they created Spider-man 2, they could do no wrong, and now with the added horsepower of the PS3 and X360, surely the new Spider-man game would be a thing of beauty. It's about as pretty as its graphics.... which is not good.

 You get the gist by now, Spider-man movie tie in games have always been a loose retelling of the movie's plot with added micro-plots, and this is no exception. It's also quite different from the PS2 version, the only common threads being the Lizard/Kraven story, the Mad Bomber story and the movie's main story, but even then those missions play out very differently, sometimes with entirely different outcomes. It's a very different game, and even the way they handled certain scenes from the movie differ. For the first time ever, and about damn time too, story progression is not locked behind busywork, and it's pretty lengthy to boot, about 6 hours give or take, more if you indulge in side-activities.

 As with previous Spider-man games, this is an open-world action game, and just as before, between missions you can partake in side-heroics, although now it offers more involved side-activities, some which even take you inside buildings. Thanks to the power of the new consoles, the world around Spider-man is bigger than ever, he ends up feeling as tiny as a spider surrounded by giant buildings. As ugly as the character models are, the city itself is quite pretty to traverse, even if it's not graphically impressive, the scale makes up for that.

 Swinging has always been the best part about Spider-man games, and this Spider-man 3 is no exception. While it doesn't feel as fast as before, the added sense of scale makes it look almost as gratifying as it is to time your button presses. I can't say that it's the best version of the swinging, since it's kinda hard to get on top of buildings without overshooting your jump and thanks to the inability to use the web-zip to climb it faster. The Sprint button is back in action, and it helps speed up Spider-man on foot or on web, depending on when you press the sprint button will change whether you swing faster or higher. Pretty neat.

 The combat has been entirely redone, with Spider-man being able to string weak and strong attacks together, as well as using his webs to pull or push enemies around. There's a new blue gauge that recharges automatically when not in use, and it governs Spider-reflex, which makes everything but Spidey move slowly, and it also allows Spider-man to automatically dodge most attacks. Landing hits will also recharge a round Spider-symbol, once full you can use special moves. The black suit is no longer a power-up, but a shift that Spider-man undergoes midway through the game that can't be reversed unless the story demands it. Black Spider-man has a few different attacks, and the gauge used for special attacks is now spent to enter rage mode: Enhanced strength and the enemies can't block your attacks anymore.

 Look, Spider-man's combat has always been sloppy, and this one isn't any different. At times combat felt a bit too mashy for my taste, and bosses were pretty darn annoying, mostly because they were damage sponges and had way too many invulnerability frames. Mind you, they aren't hard per say, just boring. But what really soured the entire experience for me were the Quick Time Events. The game abuses them. and every boss must be defeated through one. Miss a button input and you take damage and they get back up again with a little health refilled. Because it's always fun having to redo the entire Kingpin fight again because I missed an input and it cost me a retry. The last two bosses, Sandman and Venom, which should've been exciting, turned into the most excruciating part of the game. They aren't even hard, but the QTEs had a short window of time which had me redoing the QTE scenes way too many times for my liking.

 The upgrade system was also very weird. You have to complete missions and sometimes the game will give you something new. Side-activities too, since that's how I got a Spider-reflex upgrade. Swinging is upgraded by swinging a lot, which actually made sense. It's a weird upgrade system, and not one that I liked, since I wanted to get the health upgrades but I didn't know how. A few missions were rather bland too, mostly the Daily Bugle ones.

 I wish I could rate Spider-man 3 higher. Whenever I wasn't doing story missions, I was having a blast. Stopping crime on the streets? Fun. Swinging around from place to place? Fun. Fighting bosses? Made me want to turn the game off. A few weird design choices and lame missions put me off as well. Spider-man 3 on the PS3 isn't a total blunder, but there're so many other, better Spider-man games that do what this one does just as well or even better, without the QTE nonsense.
 5.0 out of 10