All Webbed Up
To say the least, I was displeased to hear the news. Last year I got to fool around as Venom on my DS and make use of some really spiffy touch-screen controls with which I could whip Venom’s tendrils around to cause harm and fear. Now what do I get? I get a belligerent Norman Osborn whose relevance as a villain is completely eliminated because his inner turmoil cannot be represented by smashing things. Goblin isn’t an interesting villain because he can throw fireballs. Whoopee doo, everyone in comics can do that. He’s interesting because his business, riches, and son hang in the balance of the greed and hatred that has consumed him as a result of his work. It’s his relationships to the other characters that make him noteworthy, not his powers. Apparently, the developers decided that this was not the case, and that jumping around and tossing guys at walls would be too much fun to pass up.
I’m just going to dig in and attack the gameplay first. The handling of the Goblin’s levels is abhorrent. He isn’t agile, his fireball attacks are weak at best, and his unique character move is being able to pick up enemies by the head and then throw them at whatever he chooses. Admittedly, throwing guys around sounds like a pretty fun way to pretend you’re the hulking Ultimate Goblin. What you don’t find out until you’re actually playing is that with puny human in hand, you cannot move. At all. Apparently, holding a man that’s a quarter of your size prohibits the Goblin for using his super strength and being able to, I don’t know, do anything. Because picking guys up is such a hassle and that that is Goblin’s only real shtick, his levels quickly degenerate into stomping through the area mashing the attack button to clear the way. Some fun.
Spidey’s levels, on the other hand, offer a bit more fun. First of all, all of the animations from Ultimate Spider-Man on the DS have been carried over, and they were strong to begin with. Spider-Man is pleasing to watch swinging about, mashing up baddies or making huge leaps. He looks natural doing what he’s doing and that’s a lot more than can be said for the Goblin. However, the gameplay premise behind Spidey’s levels will wear on you somewhere just after the third level mark when it dawns on you that all you’ll ever being doing as Spidey is A) Moving a citizen to a safe place B) Mashing the attack button to watch canned animations
or
C) Hitting switches
Simply playing as Spider-Man does not a fun game make. It would have been nice to see the developers really make use of Spidey’s abilities and maybe toss some stealth levels into the game, or perhaps have spider sense available outside of boss fights. As is, Spider-Man just bursts into an area, mashes X, hits a switch, and busts out of there. There’s hardly anytime to fit fun into that tight schedule anyway.
This game is also jam packed with real oddities. The first thing that stuck out for me was that even though the game is set in the Ultimate Marvel universe, the art style was from Amazing Spider-Man. Don’t get me wrong, the art is still cool, the comic book treatment that the cutscenes got is entirely fitting, and I really appreciate the fully voice acted story. It’s just inconsistent because in the Ultimate universe, Spider-Man is fifteen, and very (I mean very) scrawny. In gameplay, this remains true, but whenever the cutscenes swoop in to take the story reigns, Spider-Man looks and sounds thirty five. It just seemed careless to me to omit the Ultimate Universes unique art style and replace it with another one when, one game previous (Ultimate Spider-Man DS), it had been executed so well.
The second, and intolerable, oddity that I was able to nail down was the hit detection. Not only was it a recurring issue during fights, it remained an issue for every boss fight in the game. If the enemy, be it the Goblin, Kingpin or any other, is in the midst of carrying out an animation, they cannot be harmed. During the Goblin fights, he exposes his entire front as he raises his arms to attack, but if you move in to take advantage your flailing Spidey limbs will catch nothing, only to have the Goblin clobber you on the noggin for being stupid enough to try. It’s infuriating, and it forces you to find exploits in the bosses’ patterns rather than defeating them by outwitting them. That’s right, you’ll have to find a way to cancel their animations, or get them stuck clipping in a wall in order to get your shots in. It’s not satisfying in the least.
On the whole, the game just does not merit a purchase. If you’re an Ultimate Spider-Man fan, you already know this story from the comic books. If you’re not, I can tell you that it’s much better told in the comics if you’re interested. The story may have been the saving grace of Battle for New York, but having fallen flat and with no strength of gameplay to back it up, there’s just so little fun to be squeezed out of this title that it is in no way recommendable.