Although a very fun and entertaining game, Ultimate Spiderman offers a very short storyline to experience this fun.
Ultimate Spiderman is a fun and enjoyable game, yet its story only offers only about five or six hours of gameplay. The gameplay is very similiar to its predecessors. Yet this game offers another twist; Venom. That's right, the player has the chance of playing with our hero spiderman and his rival Eddie Brock, a.k.a. Venom.
Venom's character is pretty much all muscle and strength based. Since he does not have the cababilities of web-slinging around the city like spiderman, the guy just jumps. Similar to the hulk, when the right trigger is pushed down, venom bounds into the air covering a lot of ground in the process. The longer it is held, the further and higher he jumps. Of course venom can also climb on building walls and he also has the capability to zip across short gaps using the venom suit. Venom's health also needs to be continually replenished and this is achieved by grabbing pedestrians and other people running around the street and pretty much sucking the energy out of them. Venom's character is a lot of fun to use and probably the favourite of the two characters for most people.
Spiderman is still as classic as ever, except in the game he is a 15 year old boy, which results in cheesy one liners that get annoying after you hear them about 20 times. Web slinging is very well done within the game and zipping accross buildings is also a great feature that they continued to have in this version spiderman. His attacks consist of combinations of Y and X which get repetitive after a while. There are not any moves that you can buy from stores, but you do unlock up to five combinations of X and Y in one combo. There does not seem to be any uniqueness in his fighting moves, they are just punch and kick in different orders. Spiderman is a very solid character and also very fun to use.
The storyline in this story is good and playing the actual story is definitely the highlight of the game. When you are not in a mission, you are allowed to roam the streets doing other types of side missions that include races, where you have to reach several checkpoints to receive medals, combat tours, which consist of beating up thugs and gangs in various locations, and finally city quests, which consist of saving people that may be trapped under a car or saving someone falling to their death. There are many of these side quests available to you from the start and completing them all will take quite some time if one attempts it. A certain amount of these side quests must be completed in order to progress the story line, yet it does not lengthen the game very much at all.
Graphics
The graphics are in a cell shaded/comic book style, which helps with the overall mood. The cinematics are absolutely great and made very well. They flow in a comic book style throughout the game and the presentation of everything deserves top marks. The cell shaded style works well since it allows for very large characters with cartoon style detailing on them. The draw distance is not as good though. It seems that the buildings appear in front of you as you are swinging, which is not that bad, although it would be nice if you could see the details of them before your are fifty feet away from them.
Sound
Sound is also done fairly well in the game. The cinematics are once again great and the voice overs are done well. The phrases that spiderman uses are very cheesy though and they do get annoying really fast. It's also nice to hear the reaction of the people when you save them too; althogh these can also get repetitive.
Overall
This game is definitely worth a rental. I enjoyed every second of the story line and being able to use venom is the icing on the cake. Yet if one buy's this game, they will probably get tired of it once it is beaten. The side missions get very repetitive and there is not much you can do. This game is very fun though and it is definitely worth a rent.