Game Review

The Ultimate Spider-Man comic book storyline has created the newest Spider-Man game in which Peter Parker is a modern-day teen. Take on the role of the world’s most famous Super Hero, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and one of his most menacing nemeses, Venom, in an original storyline written and illustrated by the creative team behind the best-selling Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series. Peter Parker is ... read morea Web designer for the Daily Bugle. The comic’s storyline takes place at the beginning of the perennial love interest Mary Jane becoming Mrs. Peter Parker. In Ultimate Spider-Man you get an incredible opportunity to play both a hero and a villain. Control Spider-Man as he faces criminals with strange abilities to defend New York. Then, switch sides and become the deadly villain called Venom, smashing Manhattan and destroying everything in his path.

Ultimate Spider-man (developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision) on the Nintendo DS may share the storyline and some of the graphical qualities of its bigger console kin, but instead of being a free-form title, allowing players to roam all over Spidey’s stomping grounds, this is a rather linear adventure, which works off timers for the most part. Save one person, get to the next before the timer runs out, or you fail the level and must restart. Fortunately, the game only requires you restart the level, not the entire game.

Much like the story, the gameplay is also double feature. The first part is the Spider-man phases, which play out on the top screen, use the standard array of controls. The bottom screen uses some of the motion graphics panels, allows players to select which attack Spidey will use, and monitors the power bar that will tell players when that special attack can be used. Certain actions do employ the touch screen, and players get a sense of that early on in the tutorial level. Lift a car with the Y button (this is the general action button), and then use the touch screen, moving the stylus or your finger in the direction indicated to throw it off the victim.

Venom, of course, is a different matter. The Venom suit feeds off Eddie’s energy, and in order for Eddie to survive, he must give the suit another source of life energy – which is where other people come into play. But the Venom suit is more than that – it can produce tentacles that can whip about, grab items in the environment and heave them about. That is where the touch screen comes into play. Players can grab people and pull them into the suit to feed, or grab environmental items and toss them about. Tapping the screen in front of Venom unleashes a short flurry of claw attacks.

Vicarious Visions has done a very good job of using the left shoulder button and the D-pad in concert with the touch screen to give players control of the super villain, and all without requiring players to grow a third hand to manage it all.

However, there are drawbacks in this game. The levels are very short and have elements that players must accomplish in order to advance. A typical example is a Spidey run-through of a level featuring box cars and bad guys. You have to get from one side of the level to the other, but before the blue portal opens to move you to the next level, you have to defeat a certain amount of bad guys. The first run-through will not do that. You will have to run through and beat up all the bad guys, and then backtrack and do it again. Of course, even though this is generally a side-scroller that does not mean all the action is either left or right. With Spider-man, sometimes the right way is straight up. The missions are generally on timers, but you will trigger when that timer goes off. And not every mission is a simple run-through, beat ‘em up. Sometimes you have to be stealthy and use your webbing at range.

The control scheme is well designed, with only a minor learning curve. The audio can sound a bit tinny at times, but the game boasts some witty one-liners and the graphical cutscenes are almost like they were culled from the comic books and really do an excellent job of propelling the story alone.

Ultimate Spider-man is a bit short in both scope and level design, but still manages to pull off a solid NDS experience, in large part to the graphics, story and alternating character modes. Extended usage of the touch screen for the Spider-man sequences would have been nice, but Venom is handled very well.