It's been 17 years since the release of Spider-Man 3. Saying that feels bizzare, as in the Spidey world it sure hasn't felt that long. The film has lived on and has enjoyed some retrospective praise. Personally speaking, I still think it's a bit underrated and I have my finger crossed that one day, someday, we'll get that 3 hour cut that Raimi cut into 2 hour and 30 minutes. The game however....
Well it's complicated. The PS3/X360/PC versions, developed by pre-CoD Treyarch has just sort of existed. It's found its use for making fun of it's "G-Mod tier" cutscenes (it's really not that bad) and failed QTEs. For the more hardcore Spider-Man game fans, it has also benifitted from retrospective praise for the scale of the open world and emphasis on air tricks for maintaining momentum. It's an accquired taste for sure.
Then there's the "last-gen" versions. Cobbled together by Vicarious Visions to cash into the still quite sizable PS2 install base at the time, and the novelty of the Wii, it retains the standard open world Spider-Man game blueprint and borrows a bit of story from the Treyarch version. I have experience with this version dating all the way back in 2008, when I got it for my PSP-1000. I was 7 years old, and had no "understanding" of open world games, so I just found a lot of fun just swinging around after the tutorial. Picking up fragments, beating up a couple of gangs, and doing a mission when I actually knew what to do. As a pick up and play game for my PSP, it was good enough for my needs. For all intents and purposes, the Vicarious Visions is "my" version of Spider-Man 3, even though I liked the 7th-generation version much more in a lot of aspects.
Back in 2021, I played the Wii version. It was quite a while since playing through the PSP version, so the experience still felt fresh. Visually, the game looks much better. There's more NPC and vehicle variety, there's overworld dialogue from the NPCs, and there's some extra nifty graphical features like bloom, lens flare, and unique black suit animations. Of course, the Wii's highlight was the motion controls. Swinging with the Wiimote and Nunchuck is so fun, especially when you really try and "imagine" you're Spidey swinging through the city. It carries a lot of positive weight over the eventual mediocore total experience that is the game, which i'm about to get into.
A couple of weeks back (writing as of May 2024), a RetroAchievement set came out for the PS2 version, and I wasn't feeling trying out new games, so I succumbed to this comfort food. Mentally, I feel like this is the final time i'm gonna go through this version of the game. But I know somehow, someday, it'll find it's way into my rotation of games on that PSP-1000 or my Wii. For now though, let's get into the PS2 version.
Spider-Man 3 for the PS2 follows up on the excellent Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man also on the PS2. It's a short playthrough, with the story probably only taking 5-6 hours, but we don't play through Spidey games just for the story. But for what it's worth, SM3 has an underrated story. It's short, sweet, and adds just enough extra to the film structure to be worth going through. The last-gen version benifit from having a unique Morbius storyline, that incorporates the effects of the symbiote. It accentuates the "terrestrial" and sometimes bizzare vibes that should come with the symbiote. The storyline also toys with the psychological aspects of having the symbiote, which I can appreciate for a game of this scale.
Unfortunately, the actual missions themselves are just okay. You don't do much unique apart from the boss fights, so the missions can blend in sometimes. This isn't helped by the additional "crime patrol" missions that pad out the length.
A large majority of the trick races aren't even "races", they're more like tiny challenges that are done by less than a minute. Out of the 30 races or so, a good 90% can be done on the first try. They're too easy, but it's a nice departure from the crazy times you need to beat in the older games.
Crime patrols simply suck. There's really no part in them apart from farming Hero Points (the upgrade currency), collecting villain photos and padding out game time. The game in the tutorial hypes this up to be this dynamic thing that runs in the background, but it's not really that. They're just missions to beat. Once you've played one for each gang, you've basically played them all. A wasted opportunity.
The web-swinging? It's servicable. Webs attach to building, sometimes too much, but the games suffers from pretty bad building detection at times and can screw with your momentum. The air tricks are also here, but they're not as important as the next-gen versions. The game does a good job of portraying your speed when you really get going, but if you're playing the PS2 version, there's little reason to be playing this game over Spider-Man 2 or Ultimate Spider-Man if you just wanna swing around. I have a sneaking suspicion that this version was refined last minute with the Wii in mind, because swinging is really just that fun on the Wii version. It's not perfect, but it works just good enough.
As you're web swinging, you'll encounter a bunch of boringly placed Meteorite Fragments that offer nothing but to say that "we put collectibles on the map". The Spider Emblems that spawn at the end of the game are much more interestingly placed and are fun to look out for.
For a sixth generation title, it looks OK. The city changes based on which you use more. With the classic suit, the city is decorated with bright green trees, colorful buildings and a sometimes aggressive bloom that accompanies some heavy motion blur as you swing through the city. If you use the black suit more, the streets become unkept, the trees wither, and the skyline becomes a dull grey. There's some Autumn vibes with this look and it fits the latter portion of the game well. A day-night cycle keeps things moving, and swinging through the night feels the best. But in totality, things just feel cheap at times. Especially the texture work of the enemies. Apart from the H-Bombers, a lot of the enemies of the other gang appears smudgy and don't hold up that well on upscaling on a flatscreen. You'll also see a lot of repeated building textures. The webbing on swing animations look more like string cheese than an actual web. Animations on enemies also is weird. They sort of shuffle and at other times look like a cheap imitation of C-walk. Whatever they're doing, it's not pretty on the eyes. On the brightside whatever Spidey is doing looks nice. The game features a nice, albeit reptitive soundtrack with mediocore sound design. It's not really remarkable. It just falls into the background.
Spider-Man 3 works best as a weekend blast-through. It can be beaten in about 8-9 hours and provide a dosage of some Spidey action if that's what you're craving. It doesn't require as much commitment as the other Treyarch titles, and in that aspect it functions the best. As a full on game to get the 100% in, you're better off looking elsewhere. If you want to have the most fun, play it on the Wii. The PSP version is worth it for any of it's enthusiasts as a pick up and play game to swing through the city. The PS2 version offers nothing extra that you'd be missing out on. Other than vampires and weird alien stuff.
Well it's complicated. The PS3/X360/PC versions, developed by pre-CoD Treyarch has just sort of existed. It's found its use for making fun of it's "G-Mod tier" cutscenes (it's really not that bad) and failed QTEs. For the more hardcore Spider-Man game fans, it has also benifitted from retrospective praise for the scale of the open world and emphasis on air tricks for maintaining momentum. It's an accquired taste for sure.
Then there's the "last-gen" versions. Cobbled together by Vicarious Visions to cash into the still quite sizable PS2 install base at the time, and the novelty of the Wii, it retains the standard open world Spider-Man game blueprint and borrows a bit of story from the Treyarch version. I have experience with this version dating all the way back in 2008, when I got it for my PSP-1000. I was 7 years old, and had no "understanding" of open world games, so I just found a lot of fun just swinging around after the tutorial. Picking up fragments, beating up a couple of gangs, and doing a mission when I actually knew what to do. As a pick up and play game for my PSP, it was good enough for my needs. For all intents and purposes, the Vicarious Visions is "my" version of Spider-Man 3, even though I liked the 7th-generation version much more in a lot of aspects.
Back in 2021, I played the Wii version. It was quite a while since playing through the PSP version, so the experience still felt fresh. Visually, the game looks much better. There's more NPC and vehicle variety, there's overworld dialogue from the NPCs, and there's some extra nifty graphical features like bloom, lens flare, and unique black suit animations. Of course, the Wii's highlight was the motion controls. Swinging with the Wiimote and Nunchuck is so fun, especially when you really try and "imagine" you're Spidey swinging through the city. It carries a lot of positive weight over the eventual mediocore total experience that is the game, which i'm about to get into.
A couple of weeks back (writing as of May 2024), a RetroAchievement set came out for the PS2 version, and I wasn't feeling trying out new games, so I succumbed to this comfort food. Mentally, I feel like this is the final time i'm gonna go through this version of the game. But I know somehow, someday, it'll find it's way into my rotation of games on that PSP-1000 or my Wii. For now though, let's get into the PS2 version.
Spider-Man 3 for the PS2 follows up on the excellent Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man also on the PS2. It's a short playthrough, with the story probably only taking 5-6 hours, but we don't play through Spidey games just for the story. But for what it's worth, SM3 has an underrated story. It's short, sweet, and adds just enough extra to the film structure to be worth going through. The last-gen version benifit from having a unique Morbius storyline, that incorporates the effects of the symbiote. It accentuates the "terrestrial" and sometimes bizzare vibes that should come with the symbiote. The storyline also toys with the psychological aspects of having the symbiote, which I can appreciate for a game of this scale.
Unfortunately, the actual missions themselves are just okay. You don't do much unique apart from the boss fights, so the missions can blend in sometimes. This isn't helped by the additional "crime patrol" missions that pad out the length.
A large majority of the trick races aren't even "races", they're more like tiny challenges that are done by less than a minute. Out of the 30 races or so, a good 90% can be done on the first try. They're too easy, but it's a nice departure from the crazy times you need to beat in the older games.
Crime patrols simply suck. There's really no part in them apart from farming Hero Points (the upgrade currency), collecting villain photos and padding out game time. The game in the tutorial hypes this up to be this dynamic thing that runs in the background, but it's not really that. They're just missions to beat. Once you've played one for each gang, you've basically played them all. A wasted opportunity.
The web-swinging? It's servicable. Webs attach to building, sometimes too much, but the games suffers from pretty bad building detection at times and can screw with your momentum. The air tricks are also here, but they're not as important as the next-gen versions. The game does a good job of portraying your speed when you really get going, but if you're playing the PS2 version, there's little reason to be playing this game over Spider-Man 2 or Ultimate Spider-Man if you just wanna swing around. I have a sneaking suspicion that this version was refined last minute with the Wii in mind, because swinging is really just that fun on the Wii version. It's not perfect, but it works just good enough.
As you're web swinging, you'll encounter a bunch of boringly placed Meteorite Fragments that offer nothing but to say that "we put collectibles on the map". The Spider Emblems that spawn at the end of the game are much more interestingly placed and are fun to look out for.
For a sixth generation title, it looks OK. The city changes based on which you use more. With the classic suit, the city is decorated with bright green trees, colorful buildings and a sometimes aggressive bloom that accompanies some heavy motion blur as you swing through the city. If you use the black suit more, the streets become unkept, the trees wither, and the skyline becomes a dull grey. There's some Autumn vibes with this look and it fits the latter portion of the game well. A day-night cycle keeps things moving, and swinging through the night feels the best. But in totality, things just feel cheap at times. Especially the texture work of the enemies. Apart from the H-Bombers, a lot of the enemies of the other gang appears smudgy and don't hold up that well on upscaling on a flatscreen. You'll also see a lot of repeated building textures. The webbing on swing animations look more like string cheese than an actual web. Animations on enemies also is weird. They sort of shuffle and at other times look like a cheap imitation of C-walk. Whatever they're doing, it's not pretty on the eyes. On the brightside whatever Spidey is doing looks nice. The game features a nice, albeit reptitive soundtrack with mediocore sound design. It's not really remarkable. It just falls into the background.
Spider-Man 3 works best as a weekend blast-through. It can be beaten in about 8-9 hours and provide a dosage of some Spidey action if that's what you're craving. It doesn't require as much commitment as the other Treyarch titles, and in that aspect it functions the best. As a full on game to get the 100% in, you're better off looking elsewhere. If you want to have the most fun, play it on the Wii. The PSP version is worth it for any of it's enthusiasts as a pick up and play game to swing through the city. The PS2 version offers nothing extra that you'd be missing out on. Other than vampires and weird alien stuff.