Ultimate Spider-Man

Be Legendary. Be Predatory. Be Both.

NA release: 22nd September 2005
EU release: 14th October 2005
JP release: 29th June 2006
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision (NA/EU), Taito (JP)
NGC Magazine Score: 70%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

With the success of Treyarch’s Spider-man 2 game and the Spider-man 3 film taking a bit longer to make, Activision were keen on getting a new Spider-man game out there. So rather than trying to tie things to the film, they went full in on the comic book route, giving Ultimate Spider-man a lovely visual style (although the city looks quite bad at a distance) and cutscenes that make great use of comic book panels.

The skill-based swinging from the previous game is back and is combined with a greater sense of speed, with zips and really satisfying jumps to let you move around with ease. With the basics done really well, its a bit of a shame that the game doesn’t do enough with it, as the story missions are all quite dull (although seeing scripted damage from bosses in the open world afterwards is a great touch) and the game destroys its pace after every single one.

The side events – time trials, combat events, hidden tokens and random events – are now a requirement. Between each mission, you need to complete a certain amount of each one. It’s rather annoying just swinging around waiting for the random events to spawn because you have to complete a couple just to do the next story. It can be disjointed, too. After one mission, Peter Parker says he’ll be taking a few days off being Spider-man, then you have some random stuff to complete straight away.

After every few missions, you’ll get to play as Venom, with much stronger combat and an immensely satisfying giant jump – he’s a ton of fun to play as and it’s a shame he doesn’t have optional side stuff in the city. You can even absorb people to drain their life force to restore health, with the tutorial having you eat a kid with a balloon (a jab at how people hated the balloon random event in Spider-man 2). Of course, you spit them out afterwards and they’re absolutely fine.

It’s a shame as you have two great feeling characters, with the swinging vs massive jumps making them very different to move around with, but the game doesn’t provide enough fun ways to use their abilities. You just follow waypoints and beat up random British thugs.