It's like a Ferrari Enzo with a super-polished finish, but a rusted, broken-down engine underneath.
One noticeable difference is the fact that the game is designed to mimic the comic series, this results in character models that look nothing short of astonishing, one might say perfect. Despite this, noticeable texture pop-up and draw lines make themselves visible whenever the player decides to ascend the tallest of skyscrapers.
This is not the only problem. Most of the game will remind vets of Spider-Man 2 with it's open-ended cityscape, its various but played side missions (Foil the bank robbers, stop the muggers, etc), and it's interesting secret tokens to find. Even though it looks different, I got this feeling like I had already done this before, just under a slightly different name.
The storyline suffers from the same problems too. While the game does offer the chance to play as Venom, until the player can actually beat the game, roaming around as the symbiotic nightmare is impossible. Only during certain basic and short missions is he used. To make matters worse, the game fails too with its very simple and unexciting missions as the wall-crawler. Most of the time it's simply "Chase after enemy X, Beat up these bad guys, Race this person", all of which lose their value extremely quickly.
But all is not lost. While the story missions do lack any kind of substance. The boss battles are where this game shines. Not much is more exciting then fighting Rhino, Wolverine, Carnage, the Green Goblin, Electro, and other spandex-clad baddies all in the same day. Sadly, some of these fights get watered down by first having to chase said bad guy down before you actually get to fight them, something that becomes not only annoying, but also significantly frustrating. About half-way through the game I got this sense that many of these missions were made simply to stretch out the playing time, making the game seem longer. Needless to say, it certainly works, just not for the better.
Treyarch definitely could have done better. But Ultimate Spider-Man looks and feels like a 2006 Ferrari Enzo thats been polished to a sparkling glow, but underneath the engine is rusted and falling apart. This game might be worth checking out at a friend's house or a quick weekend rental, but only the strongest of Spidey fans should merit this game a full purchase.