Ever wanted to know what it would be like to swing from building to building in New York City, or to be able to climb walls and fight villains? Activision’s newest addition to the PS3 lineup, Spider-Man 3, uses the movie as a basis and then builds in more missions and side quests. The game is built on a replica of New York City through which you can swing, climb, run, or even ride on top of cars. The player can choose to play the game in many ways.
There are secret items to collect, and for those that have to collect all the secrets there are coins for each of the areas of the game to be collected. Collecting the coins will give you special skills. When Spider-Man is moving through the city, there will occasionally be a siren. The game allows the player to help the cops catch the bad guys and bring down the level of crime in that area of the city.
The missions move the story line along quickly. For example, Mary Jane gets Spider-man to give her a ride to work. She will tell the player to swing faster, higher, or lower, and to complete the mission the player must get to the destination, and follow the instructions Mary Jane gives. After dropping off Mary Jane there is a scene where we see the alien sludge start to follow Spider-Man.
Another early mission has Spider-Man come across some thugs trying to dunk someone into the river. The object of this mission is rescue the man on the crane, before the apocalypse gang can drown him. To do that, the player has to stop the crane but at the same time, fight off the thugs that will try to restart the crane. This mission leads to more missions where Spider-Man thwarts the new gang’s attempts to cause trouble.
With the non-linear form of the game, if the player gets stuck on a given mission, they can stop it, go do another one, and come back at a later time. There is a sequence to some missions, however. When the game starts, there are only three available, but as the player completes the missions, then others become available.
There are also races throughout the city. If Spider-Man comes across a race icon, he can compete in a timed race. The game will have markers along the route to go through, and have times set for gold, silver and bronze medals. The best time that the player has achieved is recorded. The races seem to all be swinging competitions. This is sensible, since out of all the ways to get around in the city Swinging is the fastest.
Swinging in the game is where it really shines. By pressing the R2 button on the controller, Spider-Man shoots out a web and it attaches to the first thing it hits. Once it’s connected, he can swing like on a rope. The left analog stick can then control what direction he swings in, similar to shifting your weight on a real swing. When the player releases the web, Spider-Man flies through the air on his original trajectory. So as long as he set’s up another web before he falls, he will keep swinging. This can sometimes be a problem, however, if the player isn’t paying attention: they can swing past all the buildings and have nothing to swing off of. The game seems random where it shoots off the webs, but after playing a little while, the player should be able to mostly predict which direction it will shoot in.
Overall, the game was great and entertaining, and it scores an 8 out of 10.
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