Continuing in the tradition of Treyarch’s well-received Spider-Man 2, the upcoming sequel Spider-Man 3 brings the film home by offering gamers a large-scale virtual recreation of New York City to explore. As players traverse the city, either on-foot or through Spider-Man’s trademark web-swinging, they can participate in a number of missions that recreate the various events and fights of the film, including Spider-Man’s acquisition of the symbiote Venom. This results not only in Spider-Man’s new black suit, which enhances the hero’s aggressiveness and power, but also his ensuing struggle with it, causing him to periodically switch between the two suits as the game progresses.

Further following in the tradition of past movie-based Spider-Man games, Spider-Man 3 expands upon its source material with a number of additional subplots and villains based off the web-slinger’s rich comic book history. One such example involves Scorpion, who appears in-game as the subject of a mind control experiment by Carlyle Industries. Though Scorpion does not appear in the film, he features a redesigned look that adheres to the movie’s sleek, realistic aesthetic. Other subplots in the game include a series of gang attempts to overtake New York, Kraven the Hunter and crime overlord Kingpen.

A simple two-button combat system allows players to easily perform all the fancy acrobatic kicks, punches and maneuvers that make Spider-Man so entertaining to watch, the action dependent on the order in which one presses the PlayStation 3’s Square and Triangle or Xbox 360’s X and Y buttons. Spidey also has a variety of special moves in his arsenal. One in particular, referred to as Pinball, proves extremely useful in close quarters as it sends him ricocheting from wall to wall in a high speed crisscross pattern — quite handy when facing off against a tightly-packed mob.

Environments also factor into the fights, as seen in a brawl with Sandman in the depths of New York’s subway system. Set in a tall chamber filled with subway tracks running across at various heights, players must take special care as Spidey and Sandman duke it out to avoid oncoming subway cars, which can knock the hero off the platform and provide Sandman the time to escape through a nearby vent.

Luckily, players can also utilize this situation to their advantage. Under the right conditions, an icon appears above Sandman’s head. By hitting the Circle or B button as this icon appears Spider-Man literally grinds Sandman’s face against the side of the subway car.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under XBox 360, PS3, All. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.