Reviewed: May 4, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Vicarious Visions

Release Date: May 4, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

8
8
7
7
8.6

Supported Features

Borrowing on design elements we saw in Ulimate Spider-Man, we now get one of the most action-packed and intutive Spidey games in the history of portable web-slinging. Despite the small DS screen, the designers manage to keep the scope of the game and the story right up there with the film, while adding in a few plot threads to turn a two-hour movie into a ten-hour game.

Unlike Spidey's previous outings on the DS you now have complete freedom to travel anywhere in the city at any time by merely tapping the city icon to bring up the city map. Scroll to the part of the map you want and click on the sector to go there. As you run and swing through the screens you'll come across various colored rings. These will trigger various challenges, races, or take you to new sections of the city without accessing the map.

Control has been improved while keeping most of the basic swing and web-zip controls from the previous titles. You can literally move and swing through town with nothing more than your thumb, and the bottom screen now acts like an overlay of the top screen so you can touch the screen to tap out web attacks or zip to a building, plus you can make sweeping motions with the stylus for powerful uppercuts that can be finished with a rapid punch juggle.

There are a few control quirks and the screen doesn't always see your swipes as what you intended, but that is probably more my inability to draw a downward sweep in the heat of combat without straying so far as to make the game think I was doing a diagonal sweep. It was never enough to get me killed or even angry at anybody other than myself. You can usually redraw a move and correct any mistakes in time to save yourself.

Much like the Wii version, only without the cool web-wheel interface, Spidey will earn Hero points that can be used to purchase new abilities and upgrades. Expect that black suit to come into play granting Spidey all new powers and abilities during combat. Unlike the other versions of this game, the black suit is more of an automatic rage upgrade triggered during combat. You have no real control over when and where you use it.

All the major plot points from the movie are here as well as major villains like Sandman, New Goblin, and Venom. The female cop, Dewolfe, is your primary source of missions, as she will send you out into the city to fight off the rival gangs trying to take over the Big Apple.

Once in the game you are treated to some truly massive environments that span both screens for epic scale and a sense of verticality that we haven't seen with any previous Spidey titles. The colors are rich and vibrant and the environments of full of detail.

Character design is amazing with excellent animation. Spidey is poetry in motion, even as a 2D side-scrolling game. Actually, the game is 3D but presented in a 2D style that twists the camera around various perspectives as you move across the endless screens that make up New York. Only when you zoom out to the top-view map can you really appreciate just how big this city truly is.

There is some really great music for the DS version that blends traditional orchestra score with some cool techno tracks that energize the gameplay experience. I never got tired of listening to any of the music in Spider-Man 3.