What tangled webs we weave...

The Game

Overall, this is an excellent game, and kudos to Treyarch for their excellent job. The play control is responsive and crisp, and make it a joy to interact with. The graphics are sweeping and superb, making the 3-D digital environments that you interact with as Spider-Man an absolute blast to play in. It's just plain fun to web-sling through the city and crawl around on buildings, or web up bad guys.

The storyline of the game is accurate, the dialogue is well-written, and doesn't become corny or stupid at any point (as most video game translations tend to do). It's loaded with great comedic quips from Tobey MaGuire, as he squares off against the baddies. Even though this is a storyline game - the gameplay itself is so enjoyable that it's a game you can play again and again even though you've beaten it.

While the game does closely follow the storyline to the Spider-Man movie, it embodies a whole lot more of the Spider-Man comic book universe, by bringing in characters Shocker, the Vulture, and Scorpion, in addition to the Green Goblin as the main villain. The end result is a well-rounded interactive retelling of the beloved comic.

Essentially the game is done in third-person walk-around style, though there are additional camera angles that you can employ as needed (including a first-person 'look around' view). There's also a "Camera-lock" mode that enables you to focus the camera on whatever is directly in front of Spidey to better follow the action.

In addition to the traditional punch and kick moves, Spidey collects combination moves as the game progresses - and there are something like 28 possible moves.

Aside from standard fighting moves, Spidey's web slingers are way cool in their own right. Aside from being able to "web swing" through the city (at any point, you can break free and switch directions at necessary.) Another form of speedy travel is shooting out a "zipline" of sorts that can be attached to a wall (there's a targeting feature that allows you to do it with more precision, as is necessary in a few levels) and it will pull Spidey rapidly toward that wall. You can also use your web to form gloves of sorts, create a super-strong shield over Spidey as he crouches on the ground (which will explode and damage nearby bad guys, and web-up and detain enemies (the longer you hold the web shooter on them, the longer they'll stay detained). The game also allows you to shoot "blobs" (for lack of a better word) of web at enemies to do damage to them. You can also use your web slingers to pull enemies off walls, and just like the comic book, you can attach a single web line to a celing and descend silently like a real spider, hanging upside-down.

The game also emphasizes the height of the environment you're working with, so you can swing or climb way up high, and drop 10 stories if you like, before resuming your web-travel.

The folks at Treyarch have also thrown in a few secrets on almost all of the levels, which adds to the amount of fun stuff you can do.

Features

Like many games, this one features small CGI movies (the quality of which is excellent) - the caveat here is that the characters (in most cases) look STRIKINGLY like their movie-star counterparts. The digital Peter Parker is almost disturbingly exactly like Tobey MaGuire.

UNLIKE many games, this one allows you to watch the little movie vignettes after you've beaten each respective level, kind of like the chapter selection feature on a DVD.

Also UNLIKE many games, the movies aren't so long as to be intrusive on the game play (like Metal Gear 2: Sons of Liberty). They tell the story in an entertaining and abbreviated fashion.

Narration of the game is provided by some of the actors in the actual movie (including Tobey MaGuire, Willam DaFoe, Bruce Campbell...). A very cool touch.

Though I've not yet found most of them, apparently if you play long enough and well enough, you can get different special features like costumes (such as the first spider-man suit attempt Peter Parker makes to wrestle Bonesaw McGraw, which you start out wearing in the first mission). The special features are unlocked by earning points (which you earn on every mission - they have secrets and time demands which help earn you more than the standard number of points for just beating the level). One of my current favorites is "Pinhead Bowling" which essentially involves Spidey web-slinging to the end of a bowling alley which has webbed-up bad guys standing like bowling pins which you kick down. It's scored just like a bowling match and takes place in a delapidated bowling alley while Bruce Campbell cracks wise over the Bowling Alley PA system. "Remember, Thursdays Supervillains bowl for half-price with proper ID". "Call on Line 4 for Sam Raimi, Line 4 for Sam Raimi."

For the video game neophytes who might have trouble picking up on the controls, there's a tutorial (and spaced throughout the game are areas where you can get tips and hints, narrated by Bruce Campbell).

You don't have to take my word for any of this - if you like - you can check out more of the game, including trailers at Treyarch's website: www.treyarch.com