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Posted on July 25th, 2005 - 3807 Reads

Rated Rating Pending Ultimate Spider-Man GameCube Preview

-- Written by Justin Joseph



 One of the beauties of the Spider-Man franchise is that it's been continually improving since the early days of its iterations on the NES and SNES. Ever since the beloved web slinger graced current generation consoles for the first time, fans across the globe have fallen in love with his various abilities! The first game, Spider-Man relied on a mix of unique story elements derived from the movie and a decent combat system that offered a wide variety of battle tactics. Spider-Man 2 also focused on the movie, but not as well as it could've. However, with the vast improvement over the web swinging physics and free roaming aspects, it was a superhero hit! Now with Ultimate Spider-Man, we no longer have to worry about a poor movie story emulation, it's taken straight from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book universe itself!

In recent years, the use of the cel-shading technique has not only evolved, but it has become more and more prominent as the engine for bringing us the graphical display of numerous games. Whether that might be the controversial Wind Waker, XIII, Tales of Symphonia and even Killer 7, cel-shading/anime has become more and more popular among developers. Joining another cel-shaded superhero adventure in X-Men Legends, Ultimate Spider-Man follows suit in delivering on an authentic cel-shaded experience that emulates the comics beautifully!

So yeah, Ultimate Spider-Man is cel-shaded, but how does it benefit the overall experience? Well, there are actually a few things that it does. US boasts not only unique character models and various world designs, but the game brings it all in a highly stylized fashion! The game actually gives the cel-shading technique a nice upgrade by offering multiple sources of light to bounce of the characters. Spidey himself can be seen having six different sources of light bouncing off him at once. Even more impressive are the game's cinematics. US can blend traditional graphic panels with jaw dropping in-game rendering techniques. So to basically sum that up, imagine the comic book world in motion, and you have this!

As far as the game goes story structure-wise, US splits various story-driven missions and exploits between two characters, Spidey and Venom! That's right! For all you fans out there that have so badly desired to play a Spider-Man villain in one of his games, the chance is coming! So you can play both characters, but unfortunately only one at a time. Thanks to comic book scribe Brian Michael Bendis, the stories of the two will be beautifully interwoven and not seemingly "thrown together" just to please fans that have waited so long for something like this. Actual story missions are tied into the freeform access of the city where you are free to swing about battling any evildoers you might encounter. Whenever any kind of citizen may be in distress, a beacon will appear on the lower right map on the screen.

Now just like in Spider-Man 2, you aren't forced to do anything, so you can just as easily allow distressed citizens to suffer at the hands of various criminals if you wish to. But come on.....you know you want to pummel the living daylights out of them.....I just know you do! You are also just as free to swing to your heart's content from skyscraper to skyscraper all day long. Now Manhattan may not be quite as big as it was in Spider-Man 2 this time around, but there will be more landmarks for you to check out to make up for it! Such Marvel landmarks like the Baxter Building and the Empire State University are easily accessible! So to put it simply, take Spider-Man 2 and some of the unnecessary aspects out and a nicer storyline, you have US! But what's even cooler about US is the fact that some parts of Queens will be accessible in some parts of the game, so there are newer areas to explore for you!

Just like mentioned before, Venom is now a playable character in US, so that will do nothing but add to the gameplay experience! Playing as him will be radically different as well. He moves completely different, jumps completely different and attacks completely different! Instead of taking the easy way out and just "swinging" his way through the city, he will more excitingly jump from rooftop to rooftop Incredible Hulk style! He can also claw up the sides of various buildings and stomp through Manhattan's streets! Also, just like how he is in the comic book universe, Venom needs to feed off hosts! That means you do lose a little bit of health every few seconds. But no matter, it's not that difficult to replenish, just grab an unsuspecting civilian and suck the energy right out of him! Dastardly yes, but necessary!

When it comes to actual story missions to drive the plot, they are initiated by the various beacons you can find throughout the city. This causes things to become more streamlined and linear, but that's just the way it was done. Each mission that you undertake will carry a number of unique tasks. This can include saving citizens (no, really?), stopping criminals (you're kidding?!) as well as various scripted sequences and boss fights! In an Activision demo, they showed off a mission where you take Spidey to save a bunch of helpless people from a burning building, and then afterwards, fighting Rhino! But rescuing certain citizens may actually take a little work. It may take a matter of careful button mashing, but it could be considered a sort of "mini-game so to speak. If done right, Spidey will lift a heavy object like a car to rescue the citizen in trouble!

Now this Spider-Man game couldn't be called a Spider-Man game without some street brawling could it? Heck no, and this game is chock full of it! Inbetween all the saving of helpless people, you will be able to enjoy physically torturing the likes of various gang members and thugs! Then just like in the other Spidey games, a wide array of fighting tactics is available to you! US actually rewards you for being creative with your battle tactics this time around, so encourage yourself to change up how you torture those nasty villains! Doing so will earn you a very nice damage bonus, which may seem to be just an extra at first, but later on down the road you'll realize just how important those are! This time around Activision is doing their best to ensure there's a balance of what Spidey can do in battle. Whether that's with punching and kicking, web tactics or aerial maneuvers, it's all in there! Also, instead of having to earn or purchase your newest moves, you actually learn of them in a gradual format as the adventure progresses.

Boss fights shouldn't be entirely uninteresting this time around either. Many new elements will be required to get through these, not just your traditional "beat the living crap out of them with your fists" to win. Take your first major boss, Rhino, for example. This isn't the ordinary Rhino we're used to seeing. Oh no, this time around he has even MORE excessive layers of armor to cover up that insanely violent temper of his, so punching it isn't exactly too smart. In order to take this big fella down, you have to operate a nearby wrecking ball and have it smash into his back! OUCH! This will knock a panel on Rhino's back loose, exposing his tender weak spot. This is your cue to jump right on him and start POUNDING until you can't pound anymore! After a while of making him angry (hey, getting hit with a bloody wrecking ball would do that to ANYONE), he eventually starts charging at you! Avoiding this attack will cause him to smash into the sides of nearby buildings, stunning him. Oh yes, yet another opportunity to jump him and take him down!

In other such boss fight, you find yourself as Venom taking on the dreaded Electro! In order to succeed in this fight, the environment is once again crucial to your tactics! Ironically enough, the two of you are actually fighting for the "respectable right" to go after and kill Spider-Man, who happens to actually be unconscious nearby! So you want to kill Spidey and so does Electro. Well, in order to get what you want, you have to remove who is in your way! At the beginning you can use Venom's tentacle attack to damage him, but Electro eventually grows tired of that. This causes him to really boost up his "power" by entering a substantially hardcore "electrical phase" that renders him virtually invulnerable. But what on the streets of Manhattan can make electricity go "buzz, buzz?" That's right, WATER! You will have to bust open nearby fire hydrants to hurt him any further, but of course the buzzard utilizes nearby electric street signs to regain his health, how cheap! Eventually he begins teleporting all over the place, and you just have to use the same routines to get him to just.....go away.

So to sum this all up, Ultimate Spider-Man is shaping up to be indeed the ultimate Spider-Man game to date! Of course the game isn't without its choppy frame rate and graphical glitches so far, but a couple more months of tweaking should be more than enough time to fix those right up. Another beauty of this game is Activision is virtually promising to make it identical across all platforms! So that means no one will get something the other won't, and the bonus features it has to offer will do something to please all comic book enthusiasts

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