The Bottom Line
Pros
- Possibly the best superhero videogame of all time
- Comic-Inking technology is stunning, worthy of television cartoons
- Ultimate Spider-Man has perfected the free-roaming superhero genre
- Play both as Spider-Man and Venom
- The fluidity of Spider-Man's moves is mind-blowing
Cons
- Ugh, enough with the races. Why do videogame superheros love racing?
- Why isn't there more crime for Spider-Man to stop, New York seems safer than ever
Description
- Graphics: 5+ Wow... comic-inking should be mandatory for all superhero games
- Sound: 4 Good music, great sound effects, dialog sometimes gets clipped too soon
- Concept: 4 Ultimate Spider-Man is everything ever done right in a superhero game, only done better
- Control: 5 Spider-Man is not only fun to control, but he looks amazing while you swing through NY
- Difficulty: 4 Goofy races aside, Ultimate Spider-Man is challenging but not unfair
- Replay: 4 If you don't keep playing Ultimate Spider-Man, your friends sure will
- Rated: Teen for language and violence, both of which are fairly mild. It's PG not PG13.
- All scores out of 5. The star rating is not an average of the above scores.
Guide Review - Ultimate Spiderman Review - PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC
Let's start with the visuals. The new comic-inking technology is stunning. I would love to see an afternoon cartoon made with it. But it's not just the tech, the art direction, the living comic pages, Ultimate Spider-Man delivers the type of visuals we expected from the next-generation systems now.
Spidey controls amazingly well. Web swinging is far more challenging now, as Spider-Man must actually have something to swing from. The way Spidey moves... is superb. The flips, tricks, and movement is so slick, it's almost distracting. Venom moves completely differently, but every bit as cool.
The story is ripped straight out of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic books. The retelling of Spidey and Venom's origins are not only intriguing, but set the stage for some awesome gameplay. Aside from the silly racing levels, all of the missions and goals actually help build the story and feel very Spider-Man.
At the end of the web we find an amazing superhero game. I've been impressed with the recent Spider-Man games, but this one goes above and beyond. In a perfect world Treyarch/Activision would make all superhero games, heck they may even be able to rescue the dismal Batman series... maybe.