Much like Spider-Man 2, Ultimate looks to continue the open world formula of Spidey's adventures and experiment with web-swinging. While the result is not favorable and there's quite a bit of jank to deal with, there's still some fun and action packed presentation to chew on.

While taking place in the Ultimate continuity, players take control of both a young Spidey and Venom, mixing side quests throughout the city with chases and boss fights. Spidey can swing webs, double jump, control the height/boost/aim of his swing, zip line at the right distance - at first the amount of options and ability to sharpen traversal is great, but soon very much frustrated by a series of side races, a handful of which are needed to beat the game. Swing aiming isn't always reliable and the jumps are much too slippery, resulting in a lot of frustration if the player doesn't manage each race perfectly. Even later on versus a certain character, nothing less than perfection is required. While this creates a high skill ceiling, it often means running into the game's janky web and collision detection at the worst parts, pushing the player towards the shorter main game. Venom has less traversal (and even more frustrating races) but makes up for it in combat.

In combat, Spidey can chain a punch and a kick along with some jumps, grabs, web shoots, and wallbounces. This can create a little combo system which is cool to see, but is mostly a step down from previous combat systems with more interesting moves that flow together. Venom is a juggernaut by comparison, throwing cars and eating people like it's going out of style. Bosses mostly consist of large health pools and avoiding a few attacks, which isn't too satisfying but gets the job done. There are also combat tours against gangs in the city and random city events to flesh out the open world a bit.

As for presentation, the game shines most with a cel-shaded comic book presentation similar to games like XIII, with stylish panel cutscenes and plenty of cameos from the Ultimate universe. Expect a few surprising characters to show up (no spoilers!) The game is colorful and while some graphical bugs could be spotted, nothing hampers the experience too much. However, on the bug side there were some infuriating crashes, though that might be related to the version I was playing.

Ultimate Spider Man seems like a step down from games before it, focusing on frustrating movement systems and unsatisfying side goals amidst a breezy but pretty fun core game. It's worth playing but definitely not worth completing.