Ultimate Spider-Man (2005)

I feel like I've seen enough opinions on this game and so many wild takes regarding it, but honestly, everything is justified with a given reason. If you're someone who came off the heels of Spider-Man 2 on the Playstation 2 of that era, then this game is cool but disappointing. You literally lose a lot of gameplay and content here compared to it's predecessor. the game feels extremely empty once you finish the story. And everything considering unlockables, rewards, etc... are so much thinner and incentive-less compared to the prior entry.

On the bright side, the game has a stellar cast of characters, voice actors, and a great story to follow. great artstyle and atmosphere, and vibes as well. the city is sadly far emptier and lacking in life compared to the prior entry, again.

But if you're not in the same example as above, or an example of playing the later games and having much more fun with those, this game is a masterpiece.

On Dual Screen, Ultimate Spider Man played like a good dark alternate Spider-Man graphic novel. The top screen was quality pixel graphics with 3D characters from a 2D side angle, and the bottom screen was comic-art style that flashed stills of the animated attacks to one's peripheral vision. In about 40% of the levels the player is Venom, and one of the core mechanics for Venom is his health is constantly depleting, and he has to consume human NPCs in order to regenerate health.

So, give this to your ten year old child for Christmas and they will quickly learn that if SHEILD Operatives ambush you in the sewers, you grapple them with your tendrils and then eat them alive.

The consumption animation was a solid 4 seconds of Venom hugging and chewing his victim and the player has to hold down the right trigger or else the victim will escape hehehhe . They had a great set of sounds for Venom, growls, roars, whips, and bubbling sounds, especially what they threw along with the cutscene graphics. The climax of the story is full on SCP Foundation, with a fight with Carnage in a containment chamber. There is a dark purple aura that follows with Venom throughout the game. The sound was just all around mixed well and all the voice acting was great.

The webs for Spider-Man and the tendrils for Venom had a great sticky audiovisual texture to them. A good thing about the gameplay was that shooting a web/tendril at a wall or ceiling had a set animation and it was up to the player if they held down the directional button toward the wall the web to then retract and pull you toward that surface. Therefore there was a fluid transition between tossing out a web/tendril as a projectile or using it as a grapple.

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.