All right guys and girls it’s time to fess up. At one point
in time during your childhood you wanted to be a super hero. That’s perfectly
normal for a child; it’s no big deal at the time, kids are supposed to idolize
people with fantastic powers. For us adults, well, we still want to be a
superhero and we don’t have to ask our parents for money. Thus the reasoning
for yet another installment of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This game
fills a large demographic, ranging from actual teenagers all the way up to us
overgrown, overworked teenagers commonly known as adults.
This latest chance to become our favorite web slinger is in
the form of Activision’s Ultimate
Spider-Man, for the PS2. This
time around Activision bases the story line of the game on the comic book.
Previously, the Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 versions were based on the recent
motion pictures. As you would expect, from a comic book and/or movie based
game, this is obviously an action adventure game. Likewise, it is chalk full of
the standard fare of crashes, bangs, and booms like most games of this genre.
All the fighting along the way ultimately leads to a showdown with the baddest
of the bad guys. In this case his name is Venom.
As usual Peter Parker is acquainted with the person who
eventually becomes the bad guy. Peter’s dad and Eddie’s dad were developing a
suit. It seems that the suit is part of
a development gone awry. Naturally the Venom suit falls into the hands of the
misguided young Eddie Jr. Of course the result is havoc being wreaked upon New York City.
Where this game differs is in the path that the player must
take to the finale. Like the Spider-Man 2 version, this game takes on a very
GTA-esque feel in regards to the ability to explore the city. This free form
style is always welcome and I believe was pretty much expected in this version.
The kicker to this installment is the fact that you have the opportunity play
both major roles of the story line.
When playing the part of Spider-Man you have to complete
various city goals in order to advance the story. After you complete the city
goals you can then go to the next story mission. In addition to this, there are
city events that take place. City events can include mundane tasks like saving
a dangling person from a building or foiling a mugging. There are also many extras, such as
completing races and finding items such as tokens, landmarks, and comic book
covers. These extras unlock secret content.
While meandering through the adventure, I found that the
frequency of city events wasn’t enough to keep the pace of the game going. It
seemed that these events were relatively fun and sometimes challenging.
However, there simply weren’t enough of them to occupy our time between the
long periods of roaming around the city looking for stuff.
Page 1 of 3