Spider-Man 3 (the game)

So I got this game two weeks ago. I've never had any of the previous Spider-Man games but I assume this is the most involved, advanced one. I even bought one of those strategy guides, which I highly recommend because it comes with a nice foldout map of Manhattan that shows where the tokens are that you need to collect. Well, I don't know how much you "need" them, but it's obviously one of the things you're supposed to do. There are 25-30 tokens each for skyscrapers, "secret", and the three gangs you fight. The game works on three levels: missions, activities and crime-fighting. The latter is probably the most fun because it's essentially just practicing web-swinging through various parts of town, frequently checking your Spidey Sense, and responding to it if there's a crime. When your sense is on, the screen is shades of gray, with criminals appearing in red and police in green. In keeping with the film, the cops like Spidey, so the only time you see a green car is when you need to help a police officer or they have some job for you to do like chase after a getaway car. When you defeat a gang, your crime-fighting ranking goes up, as signified by a lighter color for that section of the city, and you periodically get power upgrades. Each gang is susceptible to different fighting moves, and there are a lot of them, though I have no time in a fight to really think about the various button combinations. One thing that works well is for Spidey to jump in the air, web a creep and pull him up for a few hits or a throw-down. This is actually pretty easy, and the added benefit is when you're jumping around you don't get surrounded or shot.

The missions are pretty hard. A lot of them seem to require that you retry them many times--there are several already that I've had to abandon for a while out of frustration. Usually you can't get it right the first time because while you're fighting a bunch of guys, you'll get instructions for some action you need to do, immediately before you need to do it, so it's hard to read. It's good to try to keep punching your Spidey Sense on (it goes back to normal after 5 secs or so) because it only highlights what's important in the scene. The missions are a few different storylines that progress as you complete one. Say, the Arsenic Candy girl gang are going to kill some judges. You save the judges and defeat the gang, but then get a tip on where to find the factory where they make their teddy bear bombs, and so on. The game does have storylines involving the Lizard and I know New Goblin, Sandman, Kingpin, Venom and Scorpion will all appear, but that must be a ways away. One of the tough things with the missions is you don't get upgraded after each section, so if you take some punishment from the criminals in one, you may not have enough health for the rest.

Activities are different other challenges, usually involving how fast you can get Spidey from one place to another. I'm not that fast a web-swinger yet so these are frustrating. However, I think you can upgrade your speed the more you go.

It's a fun but often quite difficult game and I know I will need every page of that guide for tips. There are no cheat codes or anything like that in the book, though, which I may end up needing as well. There are quite a few unmentioned little missions like taking an injured cop to an ambulance, or finding the Order of the Dragon Tail's hideout, but so far I haven't really found cool non-mission-related places to explore. I happened upon a Chinese restaurant but there wasn't anything happening in there. Also, most of the buildings are fairly samey, which makes climbing and searching them a little tedious, plus it's hard to find the right building where your token is supposed to be without copious map searchs.

Finally, I should point out that all the major talent in the film aside from Kirsten Dunst does voices for the game and the likenesses are good. These aren't voices taken from the movie--this is exclusive work, and it's funny and kind of heartening to hear Tobey Maguire use such gusto on lines like, "What's your problem with Spider-Man, Mr. Jameson? He's a GOOD GUY!" and "Spider-Sense is going CRAZY right now! Better check it out."