THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE PS3/XBOX 360/PC VERSION
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm about to write a short Spider-Man 3 defense piece. It's not perfect by any means, hell it has some pretty bad flaws. QTE's are insane at times, and there wasn't a single boss that didn't make my thumbs hurt. However, underneath all the rubble is a game that was rushed to completion, and my theory, probably forced into a Spider-Man 3 tie-in game. Think about it. The plot is almost completely unrelated, and only 4 missions out of 42 are actually related to the plot of Spider-Man 3 at all. Couple that with the fact that this was being developed concurrently with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and I think this is a "Spider-Man v. Crime" game turned into a Spider-Man 3 one. Now, another thing. The combat, and this becomes a theme here is ALMOST pretty good. The combo variety is crazy, but where the problem comes in is when the dodge is on the trigger instead of the face buttons. This results in massive thumb pain from pure mashing while your index finger does all the work on dodging. The same goes for the swinging. It's ALMOST pretty good, but brought down by wanting to be more advanced than Ultimate was. Every swing has an animation, but there's no variety, and because of that it feels repetitive. It also feels slow. but it has upsides, it has a proto-Spider-Man PS4 tricks, one of which was actually ripped straight out of this game and put into Miles Morales. I even think it improves upon the previous 2 in some ways. They're finally confident enough in their length to not have you be forced to do side content to unlock new missions, but make no mistake, it's just as plentiful as it was in those games. It's now just what it's meant to be. Side content. What people really rag on this game about though are the graphics, and they do not look nearly as bad as people exaggerate them to be. It's mostly all held in the facial scanning, which is something that still looked bad in games like Infamous Second Son seven years later. The city, and effects look beautiful, if a little flat, but feel alive. The windows light up at night, the city feels dense with these weird paper people, and the traffic feels more alive than even Spider-Man PS4 does at times. Speaking of, I see the most influence from this game in Spider-Man PS4 than I do in any other Spider-Man game. There's the air tricks I mentioned, but also a similar swing kick, grabbing and throwing objects, creative, and expansive crimes and more. Coincidence? Probably, but I thought it was neat.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm about to write a short Spider-Man 3 defense piece. It's not perfect by any means, hell it has some pretty bad flaws. QTE's are insane at times, and there wasn't a single boss that didn't make my thumbs hurt. However, underneath all the rubble is a game that was rushed to completion, and my theory, probably forced into a Spider-Man 3 tie-in game. Think about it. The plot is almost completely unrelated, and only 4 missions out of 42 are actually related to the plot of Spider-Man 3 at all. Couple that with the fact that this was being developed concurrently with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and I think this is a "Spider-Man v. Crime" game turned into a Spider-Man 3 one. Now, another thing. The combat, and this becomes a theme here is ALMOST pretty good. The combo variety is crazy, but where the problem comes in is when the dodge is on the trigger instead of the face buttons. This results in massive thumb pain from pure mashing while your index finger does all the work on dodging. The same goes for the swinging. It's ALMOST pretty good, but brought down by wanting to be more advanced than Ultimate was. Every swing has an animation, but there's no variety, and because of that it feels repetitive. It also feels slow. but it has upsides, it has a proto-Spider-Man PS4 tricks, one of which was actually ripped straight out of this game and put into Miles Morales. I even think it improves upon the previous 2 in some ways. They're finally confident enough in their length to not have you be forced to do side content to unlock new missions, but make no mistake, it's just as plentiful as it was in those games. It's now just what it's meant to be. Side content. What people really rag on this game about though are the graphics, and they do not look nearly as bad as people exaggerate them to be. It's mostly all held in the facial scanning, which is something that still looked bad in games like Infamous Second Son seven years later. The city, and effects look beautiful, if a little flat, but feel alive. The windows light up at night, the city feels dense with these weird paper people, and the traffic feels more alive than even Spider-Man PS4 does at times. Speaking of, I see the most influence from this game in Spider-Man PS4 than I do in any other Spider-Man game. There's the air tricks I mentioned, but also a similar swing kick, grabbing and throwing objects, creative, and expansive crimes and more. Coincidence? Probably, but I thought it was neat.