Ultimate Spider-man for PS2 – Retro Review

In my last blog entry, I gave a Retro Review of Spider-man: The Game, in honor of the recently released movie. In keeping with that id, I decided to dig into the crate-o-games yet again, and pull out another PS2 classic based on your favorite web-head: Ultimate Spider-Man!

To begin with, this game has aged REALLY well. The game is 7 years old, and plays really well!

One of the first things you will notice about the game, is the graphics. They are amazing! However, to be honest, Cell shaded graphics are always going to look amazing. Cell shaded games from 7 years ago, are going to look as good as cell shaded games from today. Still, the Cell Shading style fits well with the game, since it’s based on a comic series, and not any type of movie.

So, since I was impressed with the graphics, I tackled the controls. To my surprise, the controls were actually quite responsive. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and could definitely use a little refining, but compared to the controls in Spider-Man: The game, they were a work of art. Sure, it needed some work, but I was able to play it with minimal frustration toward the controls.

The sound too was great! Everything from the voice acting to the sound effects helped add the comic feel to the game experience.

One thing that was nice, was the fact that your webs had to catch onto buildings in order to swing. This might not seem like a big thing in todays age, but the Spider-man games were notorious for just letting your webs stick to the clouds. You could swing all over the city, even if you were higher than any of the other buildings in the vicinity.

When all is said and done, this game is a treasure! It’s aged well, and upon replaying it, was actually better than I remembered it being!

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions – Review

Image via Wikipedia

Marvel is my all time favorite Comic company. I also love most of the newer movies and games that have been released and based on Marvel properties. So, when I heard about the release of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, that was going to give you the ability to play, not just one spider-man, but 4 different spider-men from 4 different established marvel realities. Unfortunately, Zombie Spider-Man wasn’t one of the characters.

In any event, I picked the game up for the PS3, because I wanted to try and build my trophy list on that system. What kind of differences are their between the games on different platforms? Couldn’t tell you, but this review will be regarding the PS3 version.

The first thing I noticed was that the cutscenes were boring. They weren’t very animated, and I suppose this was done to reflect the Comic book history of the characters, but to me it was just a humdrum experience. Other than the cutscenes however, the games graphics were beatiful! The cartoony look gave just the right tone to the game, and helped put me in the proper mind set for the game.

One thing I found disappointing was, how different it was from previous Spider-Man titles. It wasn’t the same style or gameplay that I have grown to love and expect from a spidey game. Instead of the world being free-roam and sandbox, it has become very linear, and is broken down into “Levels”. Each level requires you to play a different spider-man, and battle baddies in a different location within their universe.

Maybe the gameplay format isn’t a big deal, but it’s what I have grown to expect, and to be honest; I am not thrilled with linear level based gameplay anymore, unless it gives you some sort of freedom.

I sincerely hope, that this isn’t what we can expect from future Spider-man titles. I hope, that after this release they will return to the normal sandbox style of gameplay and leave the linear level based gameplay behind.

Related Articles

• Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions Web-Slings Into Retailers (cinemablend.com)
• Shattered Dimensions’ Spidey swings in 4 worlds (sfgate.com)
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (guardian.co.uk)