The intro to this game is something of a slog admittedly, as it seems to just be tutorial-based gameplay interspersed with frequent cutscenes to drop the player into what appears to be the middle of a story. There's a lot of exposition to get through just to place the player in the middle of a tutorial boss fight, and while I appreciate that the game seems to skip a bunch of perhaps unnecessary introduction tropes, the beginning of the game is rather jarring to experience as a result.
Spiritually, the game feels a lot like Spider-Man 2 (2004), with a lot of the same controls, gameplay, and even sound effects. However, even though Ultimate Spider-Man was released second, it actually feels more basic in nature than Spider-Man 2. Where the latter could have been held back by being a movie tie-in game, it actually feels a lot more expansive than Ultimate Spider-Man, with a long runtime and greater mission variety. Along with this, the gameplay in Ultimate Spider-Man is a lot less smooth than in Spider-Man 2, particularly with reference to combat and web-swinging - the lack of a sprint function, and the one second delay on web swinging and web zipping all contribute to the game feeling harder to handle than its earlier counterpart. The art is certainly more stylised, and is perhaps the most unique element about Ultimate Spider-Man, in spite of this, it does also feel noticeably cheaper. There are also a ludicrous amount of tutorial pop-ups for the first portion of the game, that stop gameplay in its tracks to allow the player to read them; this is another feature that is noticeably worse than in Spider-Man 2, which was graced with the voice talent of Bruce Campbell to teach the player the ropes of the game in a way that is both educational and entertaining. By comparison, frequent, game-stopping text boxes are much less appealing.
The game features a rather large map that is fun enough to swing around in, unfortunately the game doesn't seem to do anything particularly interesting with all of this space. Between each short mission is a series of repetitive overworld tasks to complete to unlock the next mission, and very few of these actually require exploration, so one may find themselves treading the same ground or swinging between miscellaneous buildings to achieve goals before returning once again to the high school or to the Daily Bugle to trigger the next mission. In addition to this, Ultimate Spider-Man seems to take place in a larger universe that references and has cameos of wider Marvel universe characters, however they don't really play that much of a role in the overall story so I can't exactly say that the game is better off for having them, they really just appear for fan service purposes and then they're gone.
Overall, Ultimate Spider-Man is pretty good for what it is, but it is absolutely ripe with missed potential. A longer story campaign, a higher budget, and more imaginative missions would have made this game not only more enjoyable, but far more fondly remembered today - as it stands, the game is neither good nor bad enough to be of particular note in the pantheon of Spider-Man games.
Spiritually, the game feels a lot like Spider-Man 2 (2004), with a lot of the same controls, gameplay, and even sound effects. However, even though Ultimate Spider-Man was released second, it actually feels more basic in nature than Spider-Man 2. Where the latter could have been held back by being a movie tie-in game, it actually feels a lot more expansive than Ultimate Spider-Man, with a long runtime and greater mission variety. Along with this, the gameplay in Ultimate Spider-Man is a lot less smooth than in Spider-Man 2, particularly with reference to combat and web-swinging - the lack of a sprint function, and the one second delay on web swinging and web zipping all contribute to the game feeling harder to handle than its earlier counterpart. The art is certainly more stylised, and is perhaps the most unique element about Ultimate Spider-Man, in spite of this, it does also feel noticeably cheaper. There are also a ludicrous amount of tutorial pop-ups for the first portion of the game, that stop gameplay in its tracks to allow the player to read them; this is another feature that is noticeably worse than in Spider-Man 2, which was graced with the voice talent of Bruce Campbell to teach the player the ropes of the game in a way that is both educational and entertaining. By comparison, frequent, game-stopping text boxes are much less appealing.
The game features a rather large map that is fun enough to swing around in, unfortunately the game doesn't seem to do anything particularly interesting with all of this space. Between each short mission is a series of repetitive overworld tasks to complete to unlock the next mission, and very few of these actually require exploration, so one may find themselves treading the same ground or swinging between miscellaneous buildings to achieve goals before returning once again to the high school or to the Daily Bugle to trigger the next mission. In addition to this, Ultimate Spider-Man seems to take place in a larger universe that references and has cameos of wider Marvel universe characters, however they don't really play that much of a role in the overall story so I can't exactly say that the game is better off for having them, they really just appear for fan service purposes and then they're gone.
Overall, Ultimate Spider-Man is pretty good for what it is, but it is absolutely ripe with missed potential. A longer story campaign, a higher budget, and more imaginative missions would have made this game not only more enjoyable, but far more fondly remembered today - as it stands, the game is neither good nor bad enough to be of particular note in the pantheon of Spider-Man games.