I don’t know why, but playing as Spider-man just feels cooler than any other superhero title currently in the market. Maybe it’s the mutual understanding young gamers feel about Peter Parker’s unfortunate predicament of living life as a teenager and a hero, or maybe it’s having the ability to swing around New York City like your own personal jungle gym. Whatever the case, there have been several attempts developer Treyarch have made to bring a quality taste of Spidey splendor to game consoles, changing the gameplay mechanics and look of each installment of the Spider-man franchise. Now the boys are back with another game, Ultimate Spider-Man, that delivers a very different gaming experience from its predecessors. Although I like the cell shading art technique used to bring the game straight out of the comic books, almost everything in the game lacks improvement from Spider-Man 2 and to some extent offers a downgrade in quality.

The story rehashes what is already burned into our brains as the “Story of Spider-Man” about the field trip and the radioactive spider and blah, blah, blah. The story does head in a new direction as we learn about the backstory of Venom, one of Spider-Man’s evil arch-nemeses and one time childhood friend Eddie Brock. Essentially, Peter and Eddie’s fathers were working on a bioengineered suit to cure cancer before they died. But like every law-abiding citizen-to-villian story goes, Eddie Brock finds that he bites off more than he could chew when putting on the suit, becoming an unstoppable killer that feeds on his victims. Spider-Man must stop him as well as a heap of other Spidey baddies from destroying the Big Apple such as Carnage, the Green Goblin, and Electro. Although Ultimate Spider-man has a backstory, it doesn’t really have a fluid plot all the way through, leaving scattered fragments of storyline in place of a solid central theme on which to build a quality game. Unlike previous Spider-Mans where the final objectives laid right before you, I failed to see the main goal of completing this game. As such, it feels like an incomplete version of Spider-Man 3.

The gameplay is a mixed bag of pretty cool Boss fights with a large assortment of boring races and skirmishes with small time thugs. Swinging around New York completing simple tasks, like fights with gangs, are the kind of activities that make up the majority of the game. I found them to be a little monotonous and boring. What makes matters worse is that completing these events are mandatory in order to continue on with the more exciting stuff like boss fights. Roaming around New York City to practice jumping into floating orbs while racing the clock isn’t my idea of fun, but you be the judge. When fighting the crooks, the combat can be a little repetitive and over simplified, relying on button smashing and awkward maneuvering controls to thwart your enemies.

Luckily, taking on main foes doesn’t follow the same shortcoming and delivers a pretty fun game experience. Fighting super-villians isn’t just a normal day on the job for Spider-Man, as the battles can become quite heated and difficult to win. The quantity of these kinds of fights is lacking to say the least, but I enjoyed them when played. What really makes Ultimate Spider-Man stand out is the ability to play for a time being as Venom. Consuming innocent bystanders on the street is necessary to replenish your life through the levels, and his combat mechanics are slower but stronger than Spider-Man.

Graphically, the game is unique and entails cel-shading to bring the characters of Marvel to life right out of the comic pages. Yes, it adds a flare to the game as a whole, but doesn’t add anything else to the mix besides looks. New York City is a lot smaller than Spider-Man 2 and it takes several seconds to load up blocks of neighborhood, detracting from the idea of free-roam web-slinging this franchise has recently been known for. I also found the camera view during fights to be problematic, hiding opponents away from view. The sound is a mixed bag of clever voice acting on a continuous loop (some times, one-liners repeat 3-4 times in a given period), comic-type sound effects, and a so-so soundtrack.

All together, Ultimate Spider-Man is only an adequate representation of what young Peter Parker’s adventures as the web-slinging super hero are like beyond the movies. Treyarch has repeatedly tried to bring the video game franchise to a new level of excitement similar to that of the blockbuster hits on film, but nothing has been added from previous games to take the next step in bringing Spider-Man to a new audience. At $49.99, you may want to rent it first to take Spidey out for a spin and get a sense of the artistic approach the developers tried to take.

Gameplay: 7.5
Ultimate Spider-Man is pretty repetitive and monotonous in-between boss fights, but the boss fights do a good job at keeping the gameplay interesting.

Graphics: 8.0
Cell-shading that imitates the comic books just works well for the game, although the city has shrunk compared to its predecessor and the camera system can be a little temperamental at times.

Sound: 7.0
Sounds of “THUD”, “SWAT”, “WIFF”, and “POW” are all present in Ultimate Spiderman. The voice acting is also entertaining, but one-liners repeat so often it's just silly.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Concept: 7.0
A new approach to Spider-Man that could have been designed better.

Overall: 7.4
To tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed with the final result of Ultimate Spider-Man. Bringing Peter Parker back to his roots was appealing to me at first, but the so-so gameplay and the undeservingly high price of purchase makes Ultimate Spider-Man for Xbox more of a rental.