#22: Ultimate Spiderman

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Rating: T

Players: 1

Price Range: ~$36 USD

An original Spiderman game.

For a licensed game, it is quite good.

You see, unlike the game based on the first movie, in which you just...fire webs at the sky, here, you have to swing on webs you fling to buildings.

With some fluid web abilities meant for travel and the physics, this makes Spiderman unbelievably fluid in his control and movement. Just the simple act of swinging in Manhattan is so enjoyable.

The combat, while not the most complex and without any major upgrades, is quite decent, as you have to attack with a flurry of punches and webbing them to defeat them. It isn't half bad.

The aesthetics are also quite great, using cel-shaded graphics and a cartoony art style. This makes the game resemble a comic book with flying colors, with animated panel cutscenes to boot.

Just a great open-world game all things considered.

Also, Venom is a playable character with his own abilities. He has more health, has to climb on buildings to scale them, and has a much more hack-and-slash-playstyle with slower, but wide-range moves. He could also absorb enemies into the suit to not only take their health away, but also to heal yourself, which is very cool.

Playing as Venom is what definitely and the aesthetics makes the game stand out compared Spiderman 2, which we will talk about a bit later.

However, the game definitely has rough parts as well.

While Venom can be fun to play as, it is arguable that he is worse to play as compared to Peter Parker, especially since he is more of a hulking tank than an acrobatic superhero like Spiderman. Also, some of his parts in the story are not good at all.

Easily the worst example is the boss fight against Wolverine, which, while a cool reference, is easily the worst boss fight in the game, possibly in this generation of consoles. He has way too much health, regenerates it due to his healing factor, and is the only enemy in the game to be able to claw out of you if you try to absorb him. There are also thugs which are meant to restore your health, but when you are fighting Logan, you risk him regaining his hitpoints and they just become nuisances. It is just an unbearable slog with only the fan service carrying the fight, but it just isn't enough in my opinion.

The city feels...surprisingly empty for Manhattan for some reason, the music gets repetitive very quickly and is something that starts grating on my ears at some point, and there isn't really any stellar post-game content to really do either.

Overall, a stellar licensed game. Spiderman enthusiasts should definitely try this one out, especially since it's stuck in this generation.

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