Post by <<<{AnMoL}>>> on Apr 6, 2007 15:59:01 GMT 6
In 1999 when comic book videogames were still horribly envisioned and poorly executed, a little company called Neversoft fully realized what is, in my humble opinion, the first genuinely great comic book videogame. Just like GoldenEye 007 was the turning point for first-person shooters on consoles, the first Spider-Man on PlayStation was the turning point for all comic-book videogames to come. In between Tony Hawk games, Neversoft somehow got it all in one game. The developer nailed Spider-Man's nearly impossible camera angles and provided an excellent 3D engine, it got the humor, personality and flavor of the comic book and revealed them in perfect form on PlayStation, and it essentially brought in, and gave you the chance to fight, all of the top-tier Spider-Man bosses in one go.
Eight years later, Activision is still hard at work making Spider-Man games. If you're a comic book fan, videogame fan, or movie buff (basically, if you're any kind of geek at all), you know that the third Spider-Man movie is coming to theaters this May. Along with it is Activision and Treyarch's "third" Spider-Man game (technically it's the sixth Activision Spider-Man game), Spider-Man 3, a third-person action-adventure game that takes the best qualities from Spider-Man 2 (the GTA-ization of the series), and Ultimate Spider-Man (the Venom-ization of the series) and combines them into one. Spider-Man 3 will ship on multiple systems including Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, the Wii, PC, and Nintendo DS, the day before the movie debuts, but only the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are similar in content. Incidentally, the PS3 version offers an extra little goodie -- the ability to play through the whole game as the new Goblin, while the Xbox 360 version offers Achievements and Xbox Live friends' lists but not online play. Spider-Man 3 follows the story of the movie -- Spidey's discovery of and struggle with the Venom symbiote, his newly fueled battle with Harry Osborne/the new Goblin, and his confrontation with the wild and beautifully animated Sandman -- and, oh yeah, his famously mishandled relationship with Mary-Jane.
Spider-Man busts out with a high-res look.Like any licensed videogame, in this case a game based on a movie based on a comic book, creativity and innovation is countered at every step by Hollywood studios, but Activision is now a hardened pro at handling such restrictions. Unlike Spider-Man 2, which followed the movie with a rather strict linear path, countered with about seven repeating and unrelated city missions, Spider-Man 3 follows four relatively independent story branches that coincide at a story bottleneck, then split into four separate branches again, the bottleneck at a story junction again, and so on, to create diversity, interest, and a feeling of newness.
For instance, you'll start off learning how to play as Spider-Man accompanied by the brilliant sarcasm of Bruce Campbell (this Evil Dead master appears in about 20 minutes of voice-over), then encounter side characters such as Jean DeWolf, who points Spidey into a stealth mission, which takes place in conjunction with the story-based missions but isn't related to the movie. You'll fight as red suit Spider-Man and switch to black suit Spider-Man, switch back, and in the mean time encounter all sorts of non-related movie scenes. You'll fight a slew of thugs including rocket launcher-wielding ninjas (oh yeah!), the mercurial Sandman, the vengeance-seeking new Goblin, the knuckle-headed Scorpion, and the professor-gone-mad Lizard (why else do you think they included those sewers?). You'll see at least one old foe, plus an entirely new one to the videogame series.
PS3 shot: Fight the Lizard and his scaly minions beneath the city of Manhattan.Learning from its experience with Ultimate Spider-Man, which introduced gang territories, Treyarch's Spider-Man 3 offers more than 21 non-story related mission types and rewards players for exploring and fighting back the crime in each of the cities' three gang-controlled territories. The city is 2.5 times bigger than massive Spider-Man 2, and gives you a top-down map and view of the city, dotted with district names, mission objectives, and comes complete with a GPS-tracking system. All of this should solve the biggest complaints gamers had with Spider-Man 2's often ridiculous and mundane side-quests, and it gives gamers reasons to replay the game and explore its vast environments and varying missions.
But we're talking about Spider-Man here. Like me, you want to know about the action. How well does the game throw you into the role of Spider-Man and keep you riveted? And does it satisfy that comic book geek in you? First, Spider-Man's action is similar to previous games. Treyarch didn't reinvent the wheel here. You'll run, jump, double flip, punch, kick, web-sling, sling web attacks, and freely roam through the newly built landscape of Manhattan. You'll jump straight into the air with great ease and swing through the city at incredible heights. You'll mock enemies while fighting them. You'll self-reflect while in combat. You'll worry about Mary-Jane. You'll do everything that a spider can. Most of the game is very familiar; in many respects this is a good thing.
What the team has done to differentiate the action is to literally elevate it. Remember in Spider-Man 2 when you web-slung an enemy and comboed the hell out of him in mid-air -- but the game left you wanting more? In Spidey 3, as both the red suit and black suit Web-slinger, you'll find you're lifting enemies into the air, combo punching the lunch out of them, upper-cutting them 10 feet higher, comboing them some more, and so on. Your web attacks complement this aerial progression, lengthening their reach to pull enemies up, and giving players the ability to hang enemies onto lamps and telephone poles -- where you can attach each limb drawn via web to a different pole, leaving enemies to your own less-than-noble urges, and giving cops the chance to take out their anger too.
Treyarch has replaced repetitive tasks with multiple objectives, all with a purpose.Getting to grips with the aerial combat is not only fun, it's really fun. You can combo an enemy into the air and then jump after him. Or, when surrounded by enemies, you can jump up and web them into the air with you. All of the moves from Spider-Man 1 and 2, and Ultimate Spider-Man have returned including favorites such as the pile driver, rodeo, and air yank, but new moves such as the paddle ball, the ROFL Copter and the annihilator are brand new. The paddle ball enables you to web sling an enemy back and forth like a paddle ball; the ROFL helicopter gives Spidey the chance to spin attack enemies while in air, and the punch fury is a super-fast moving flurry of punches. Most moves are enacted with the face buttons, and exploring new combinations is half the entertainment.
Unlike Spidey 2, you won't be buying any moves from a "Spider Store." Instead, like in Tony Hawk's Project 8, you'll build up various characteristics such as strength, speed, web length, and moves by doing specific things like slinging across town and fighting in air, for instance, and those characteristics will automatically upgrade. You'll unlock moves as you progress and usually after a chapter new moves emerge. Doesn't that mean that in the beginning of the game, Spidey will be rather slow and lack a little punch? Yes, but this won't be the first time it's happened (see God of War and Crackdown, for instance), and it's just one more reason to build out your powers. You'll also notice that Treyarch built in an auto-targeting stance that does a soft-lock into Spider-Man's closest enemies.
PS3 shot: Use counters and Spidey reflexes to beat the dumb but powerful Scorpion.Adding the appropriate depth and character to Spider-Man, Treyarch has implemented Spider Senses and Spider Reflexes. The Web-head's spider-sense is an environmental effect. Press the right bumper and you'll see the screen turn black, gray and white, leaving only desired objects such as computer keyboards, hidden enemies, doors, keys, and the like highlighted in full color. If you get lost and can't find the right direction: Use your Spider sense to save the day. Spider Reflexes are Treyarch's take on Bullet Time. When surrounded by enemies, press a button and it slows down time, enabling Spidey to get in extra punches.
Perhaps even more significantly, Treyarch also built in a fully working counter system that, the more I think about it, is the highly refined and improved counter system used in Spider-Man 2. Remember how you had to use Bullet-Time to beat Doc Ock in the final battle? That same move is back, only it complements the spider reflexes system. To enable it, press a face button when being attacked to slow down time, and when an enemy is just about to slug you, an icon appears, prompting you to attack. Press the X button at the right time and you'll dodge his attack and flip over his head and punch him. You can then turn this single counter into a string of attacks, combing them into oblivion
To ramp things up even a little further, about 1/3 or 1/2 way through the game, you'll "transform" into black suit Spidey. Not that it's too much of a spoiler, but in the all-powerful black suit you'll receive a full upgrade in power, speed, and aggression with 40 unique moves special to the black suit experience. If you thought playing as red suit Spider-Man was rewarding, playing as black suit Spidey is like playing Spider-Man with the power and anger of the Hulk and the quickness of Quicksilver. It's just plain awesome. All of a sudden you're a bad-add mutherf*&^%$er who's more powerful and predatory. You'll pelt enemies with web balls, power slam enemies with jump-and-slam moves, and basically everything you could do as red suit Spidey is doubled, doused with aggression, and more exhilarating. Black suit Spidey's combat is based on a rage meter, which, when full, enables brutally powerful and sinister attacks that smash your enemies in far more dangerous and shocking ways than as the "clean-cut" red suited Spidey. For instance, when initiated in rage mode, you can web sling four or five enemies in a group and then slam them back and forth on the street until they're dead.
Sandman takes a beating in the sewer fight.That's a lot of combat, but it's all entirely necessary. Spider-Man's combat has always been light and arcade-like in style, but it's never been terribly deep. With all of these additions and refinements, especially with stand-out abilities like black suit Spidey and the much-improved aerial combat, you'll feel more like a real Spider-Man than in any previous game.
Boss fights all look to provide new dimensions to the overall sense of precision and power. Like all Spider-Man games beforehand, you'll fight a gaggle of classic Spider-Man rivals from the movie, plus a handful of rivals outside it. However, these fights are different because they're not only deep, multi-tier confrontations with the Sandman, the new Goblin, and the Lizard (plus a few others), you'll get to experience Treyarch's "Cinteractive moments." OK, OK, "Cinteractive Moments" is a stupid term, and Activision has dropped using it (because it's so hokey sounding), but essentially they are an additional feature that seamlessly integrates traditionally passive cutscenes. These interactive moments are actually not new at all. If you remember playing SEGA's Diehard Arcade, which first introduced the interactive cutscene, you know exactly what these are. Tomb Raider: Legend recently updated the concept nicely last year.
Web and draw but don't quarter enemies.For example, you'll fight the Sandman in the sewers and for a long time you'll mix up real fighting tactics such as counters and web attacks with straight up brawling. At some point, however, the fight will come to a close. In these instances, the game will seamlessly transition from giving you full control to an interactive cutscene, which prompts you to press various face buttons, d-pad directions and bumpers at exact times to progress through the fight. These scenes are particularly quick so you'll have to be on guard or you'll die. In the fight against the Sandman, the scenes quickly prompt a series of button presses while presenting excellent camera angles, unreal movie-like scenes, and really amazing action all at once. If you flub a scene, you'll die a horrible death, which forgivingly returns you to the beginning of the cutscene again. In classic videogame style, we learned that watching the various death animations -- and there are lots of them -- is stupid fun. For instance, Spider-Man misses hitting Sandman and he gets slammed by a train. Or while passing through a secret lab, he'll get seared by lasers. Or while fighting the new Goblin, he'll get slammed against a brick wall at full speed. There are dozens and dozens of scenes that call on you to stay sharp, keep your eyes on the screen and know that controller like the back of your hand.
When it comes down to it, Spider-Man 3 is an accumulation of all the tricks, features, and systems from every single Spider-Man game to date, which makes this an especially erudite rendition. That Treyarch has handled the side missions well, raised the ceiling in the sewer and underground environments to get better camera angles, and broken up the combat with many ways to attack and counter, especially using aerial combat to Spider-Man's strength, portrays the team's vision is clear and far-reaching. Now we just have to wait until May to satisfy all of our slinging urges. Man, April truly is the cruelest month.
au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/777/777505p1.html
Eight years later, Activision is still hard at work making Spider-Man games. If you're a comic book fan, videogame fan, or movie buff (basically, if you're any kind of geek at all), you know that the third Spider-Man movie is coming to theaters this May. Along with it is Activision and Treyarch's "third" Spider-Man game (technically it's the sixth Activision Spider-Man game), Spider-Man 3, a third-person action-adventure game that takes the best qualities from Spider-Man 2 (the GTA-ization of the series), and Ultimate Spider-Man (the Venom-ization of the series) and combines them into one. Spider-Man 3 will ship on multiple systems including Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, the Wii, PC, and Nintendo DS, the day before the movie debuts, but only the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are similar in content. Incidentally, the PS3 version offers an extra little goodie -- the ability to play through the whole game as the new Goblin, while the Xbox 360 version offers Achievements and Xbox Live friends' lists but not online play. Spider-Man 3 follows the story of the movie -- Spidey's discovery of and struggle with the Venom symbiote, his newly fueled battle with Harry Osborne/the new Goblin, and his confrontation with the wild and beautifully animated Sandman -- and, oh yeah, his famously mishandled relationship with Mary-Jane.
Spider-Man busts out with a high-res look.Like any licensed videogame, in this case a game based on a movie based on a comic book, creativity and innovation is countered at every step by Hollywood studios, but Activision is now a hardened pro at handling such restrictions. Unlike Spider-Man 2, which followed the movie with a rather strict linear path, countered with about seven repeating and unrelated city missions, Spider-Man 3 follows four relatively independent story branches that coincide at a story bottleneck, then split into four separate branches again, the bottleneck at a story junction again, and so on, to create diversity, interest, and a feeling of newness.
For instance, you'll start off learning how to play as Spider-Man accompanied by the brilliant sarcasm of Bruce Campbell (this Evil Dead master appears in about 20 minutes of voice-over), then encounter side characters such as Jean DeWolf, who points Spidey into a stealth mission, which takes place in conjunction with the story-based missions but isn't related to the movie. You'll fight as red suit Spider-Man and switch to black suit Spider-Man, switch back, and in the mean time encounter all sorts of non-related movie scenes. You'll fight a slew of thugs including rocket launcher-wielding ninjas (oh yeah!), the mercurial Sandman, the vengeance-seeking new Goblin, the knuckle-headed Scorpion, and the professor-gone-mad Lizard (why else do you think they included those sewers?). You'll see at least one old foe, plus an entirely new one to the videogame series.
PS3 shot: Fight the Lizard and his scaly minions beneath the city of Manhattan.Learning from its experience with Ultimate Spider-Man, which introduced gang territories, Treyarch's Spider-Man 3 offers more than 21 non-story related mission types and rewards players for exploring and fighting back the crime in each of the cities' three gang-controlled territories. The city is 2.5 times bigger than massive Spider-Man 2, and gives you a top-down map and view of the city, dotted with district names, mission objectives, and comes complete with a GPS-tracking system. All of this should solve the biggest complaints gamers had with Spider-Man 2's often ridiculous and mundane side-quests, and it gives gamers reasons to replay the game and explore its vast environments and varying missions.
But we're talking about Spider-Man here. Like me, you want to know about the action. How well does the game throw you into the role of Spider-Man and keep you riveted? And does it satisfy that comic book geek in you? First, Spider-Man's action is similar to previous games. Treyarch didn't reinvent the wheel here. You'll run, jump, double flip, punch, kick, web-sling, sling web attacks, and freely roam through the newly built landscape of Manhattan. You'll jump straight into the air with great ease and swing through the city at incredible heights. You'll mock enemies while fighting them. You'll self-reflect while in combat. You'll worry about Mary-Jane. You'll do everything that a spider can. Most of the game is very familiar; in many respects this is a good thing.
What the team has done to differentiate the action is to literally elevate it. Remember in Spider-Man 2 when you web-slung an enemy and comboed the hell out of him in mid-air -- but the game left you wanting more? In Spidey 3, as both the red suit and black suit Web-slinger, you'll find you're lifting enemies into the air, combo punching the lunch out of them, upper-cutting them 10 feet higher, comboing them some more, and so on. Your web attacks complement this aerial progression, lengthening their reach to pull enemies up, and giving players the ability to hang enemies onto lamps and telephone poles -- where you can attach each limb drawn via web to a different pole, leaving enemies to your own less-than-noble urges, and giving cops the chance to take out their anger too.
Treyarch has replaced repetitive tasks with multiple objectives, all with a purpose.Getting to grips with the aerial combat is not only fun, it's really fun. You can combo an enemy into the air and then jump after him. Or, when surrounded by enemies, you can jump up and web them into the air with you. All of the moves from Spider-Man 1 and 2, and Ultimate Spider-Man have returned including favorites such as the pile driver, rodeo, and air yank, but new moves such as the paddle ball, the ROFL Copter and the annihilator are brand new. The paddle ball enables you to web sling an enemy back and forth like a paddle ball; the ROFL helicopter gives Spidey the chance to spin attack enemies while in air, and the punch fury is a super-fast moving flurry of punches. Most moves are enacted with the face buttons, and exploring new combinations is half the entertainment.
Unlike Spidey 2, you won't be buying any moves from a "Spider Store." Instead, like in Tony Hawk's Project 8, you'll build up various characteristics such as strength, speed, web length, and moves by doing specific things like slinging across town and fighting in air, for instance, and those characteristics will automatically upgrade. You'll unlock moves as you progress and usually after a chapter new moves emerge. Doesn't that mean that in the beginning of the game, Spidey will be rather slow and lack a little punch? Yes, but this won't be the first time it's happened (see God of War and Crackdown, for instance), and it's just one more reason to build out your powers. You'll also notice that Treyarch built in an auto-targeting stance that does a soft-lock into Spider-Man's closest enemies.
PS3 shot: Use counters and Spidey reflexes to beat the dumb but powerful Scorpion.Adding the appropriate depth and character to Spider-Man, Treyarch has implemented Spider Senses and Spider Reflexes. The Web-head's spider-sense is an environmental effect. Press the right bumper and you'll see the screen turn black, gray and white, leaving only desired objects such as computer keyboards, hidden enemies, doors, keys, and the like highlighted in full color. If you get lost and can't find the right direction: Use your Spider sense to save the day. Spider Reflexes are Treyarch's take on Bullet Time. When surrounded by enemies, press a button and it slows down time, enabling Spidey to get in extra punches.
Perhaps even more significantly, Treyarch also built in a fully working counter system that, the more I think about it, is the highly refined and improved counter system used in Spider-Man 2. Remember how you had to use Bullet-Time to beat Doc Ock in the final battle? That same move is back, only it complements the spider reflexes system. To enable it, press a face button when being attacked to slow down time, and when an enemy is just about to slug you, an icon appears, prompting you to attack. Press the X button at the right time and you'll dodge his attack and flip over his head and punch him. You can then turn this single counter into a string of attacks, combing them into oblivion
To ramp things up even a little further, about 1/3 or 1/2 way through the game, you'll "transform" into black suit Spidey. Not that it's too much of a spoiler, but in the all-powerful black suit you'll receive a full upgrade in power, speed, and aggression with 40 unique moves special to the black suit experience. If you thought playing as red suit Spider-Man was rewarding, playing as black suit Spidey is like playing Spider-Man with the power and anger of the Hulk and the quickness of Quicksilver. It's just plain awesome. All of a sudden you're a bad-add mutherf*&^%$er who's more powerful and predatory. You'll pelt enemies with web balls, power slam enemies with jump-and-slam moves, and basically everything you could do as red suit Spidey is doubled, doused with aggression, and more exhilarating. Black suit Spidey's combat is based on a rage meter, which, when full, enables brutally powerful and sinister attacks that smash your enemies in far more dangerous and shocking ways than as the "clean-cut" red suited Spidey. For instance, when initiated in rage mode, you can web sling four or five enemies in a group and then slam them back and forth on the street until they're dead.
Sandman takes a beating in the sewer fight.That's a lot of combat, but it's all entirely necessary. Spider-Man's combat has always been light and arcade-like in style, but it's never been terribly deep. With all of these additions and refinements, especially with stand-out abilities like black suit Spidey and the much-improved aerial combat, you'll feel more like a real Spider-Man than in any previous game.
Boss fights all look to provide new dimensions to the overall sense of precision and power. Like all Spider-Man games beforehand, you'll fight a gaggle of classic Spider-Man rivals from the movie, plus a handful of rivals outside it. However, these fights are different because they're not only deep, multi-tier confrontations with the Sandman, the new Goblin, and the Lizard (plus a few others), you'll get to experience Treyarch's "Cinteractive moments." OK, OK, "Cinteractive Moments" is a stupid term, and Activision has dropped using it (because it's so hokey sounding), but essentially they are an additional feature that seamlessly integrates traditionally passive cutscenes. These interactive moments are actually not new at all. If you remember playing SEGA's Diehard Arcade, which first introduced the interactive cutscene, you know exactly what these are. Tomb Raider: Legend recently updated the concept nicely last year.
Web and draw but don't quarter enemies.For example, you'll fight the Sandman in the sewers and for a long time you'll mix up real fighting tactics such as counters and web attacks with straight up brawling. At some point, however, the fight will come to a close. In these instances, the game will seamlessly transition from giving you full control to an interactive cutscene, which prompts you to press various face buttons, d-pad directions and bumpers at exact times to progress through the fight. These scenes are particularly quick so you'll have to be on guard or you'll die. In the fight against the Sandman, the scenes quickly prompt a series of button presses while presenting excellent camera angles, unreal movie-like scenes, and really amazing action all at once. If you flub a scene, you'll die a horrible death, which forgivingly returns you to the beginning of the cutscene again. In classic videogame style, we learned that watching the various death animations -- and there are lots of them -- is stupid fun. For instance, Spider-Man misses hitting Sandman and he gets slammed by a train. Or while passing through a secret lab, he'll get seared by lasers. Or while fighting the new Goblin, he'll get slammed against a brick wall at full speed. There are dozens and dozens of scenes that call on you to stay sharp, keep your eyes on the screen and know that controller like the back of your hand.
When it comes down to it, Spider-Man 3 is an accumulation of all the tricks, features, and systems from every single Spider-Man game to date, which makes this an especially erudite rendition. That Treyarch has handled the side missions well, raised the ceiling in the sewer and underground environments to get better camera angles, and broken up the combat with many ways to attack and counter, especially using aerial combat to Spider-Man's strength, portrays the team's vision is clear and far-reaching. Now we just have to wait until May to satisfy all of our slinging urges. Man, April truly is the cruelest month.
au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/777/777505p1.html