My first video game review: Spider-Man 3 for Nintendo Wii

This is my first official video game review, so be gentle.

The Spider-Man franchise as brought to us by Sam Raimi has been truly an impressive series of movies.  Sure, he messes with canon, but by and large does a great job bringing Spider-Man to the silver screen, to the point where it could be said that only he could have done so.

In this age, there are few movies of the action genre that don’t try their hand as a video game.  Some are successful, arguably more successful than movies made from games.  The first installment of the Spider-man video game series was at best a place holder.  Nothing special there.  Spider-Man 2 however was a great title.  The ‘Sandbox’ notion of having Spidey roam all of NYC was fantastic.  The controls (I played on the Xbox for that version) were easy enough to master.  It was loyal to the film, while throwing in some extra villains (Mysterio, Rhino, and Scorpion), and the ability to respond to New Yorkers in distress.

Spider-Man 3 tries to carry on with the standard set by the 2^nd of the series, but in many ways comes up short.  To make matters worse, the game is riddled with bugs.  Bad cut scenes, truncated speech, loading screens that are poorly executed….  And the list just gets longer and longer from there.  I do not know if these problems are endemic to the whole title, or just the version released for the Wii.

The Wii as a platform does offer something that the others cannot: play via motion control.  The Wii’s vaunted movement based play makes the title on this platform worth trying regardless of all its glitches.  Swinging on webs through the cityscape has a meaning on the Wii that I imagine is missing on the other platforms.  You are involved, concentrating, and in the end having a great time.  The learning curve is a bit steep, but I figure most folks can pick it up in about 15 minutes or less.  Using the remote and the B button, along with the Nunchuck and the Z button can be challenging, but once you have it down its quite easy, and a wonderful application of the technology.

The motion control for the fighting system however feels underdeveloped.  There is some variation in moves, but by and large it is clumsy.  For the most part you move the remote back and forth from left to right, and end every combo by hitting the A button.  It is really not very inspired.  It is only in the fighting system that makes me miss the standard control pad.  I see potential in it, but its not there quite yet.  You have a charge function for upper-cut move that you can barely use because one of your enemies is going to hit you, there by interrupting the move, before you can execute it.  If you hold down A long enough, while standing close enough to an enemy, you give him the opportunity to smack you down.

There are a few other items that pop out as being bugs.  Quickly, they are:

1. Bad character animation – Spidey can get stuck in poses all too frequently.  I carried out an entire fight in a locked standing up position.  Not once did he move while he beat the bad guys down.
2. Poor targeting – Doesn’t seem to matter who’s closer, or which direction you are facing, sometimes Spidey is just going to shoot web blasts in a random directions.  But Hey!  He’s Spider-Man!  He doesn’t have to answer to you.
3. Difficulty difficulties – When you advance in levels it looks like the bad guys, in this case gang members, are going to advance too.  However, I have noticed that they don’t advance until I have restarted the system.  This leads to some boring and unchallenging fights, and is quite inexplicable.
4. Loading issues – Missions end abruptly, or sometimes only after a long and pointless pause.  For that matter, when you are really rolling, there are far too many loading pauses anyway.
5. Bad sound match up – Okay.  You rescue a kidnap victim who speaks with a Brooklyn accent, but when you drop him off at the ambulance, his voice has changed and now he sounds like he is from the Hamptons.  Not a big bug, but still.
6. Premature failure (or success) – I received some missions only to have them declared failures a second after I take off to begin them.  This seemed to happen mostly with the ‘Rescue the Psychic’ mission.  Inversely, I have had missions declared successful after one second, usually the mission where I had to help the police beat back the thugs.  Sometimes I would get there just as they subdued the last of them, and I didn’t get to throw one punch.  Kudos to the NYPD for being so hardcore though.

Other things just fell short:

1.      Audio – there are many and varied audio problems, mostly with consistency of voices.  Also we could have used more variety here.

2.      Video – In a word, unimpressed.  I expected more from a 3 time sequel, especially on an advanced console.  Maybe it looks better on the PS3.  I’m going to have to wait till I have a spare $700 to throw around I guess.  I played Spider-Man 2 on the Xbox, and to me it seems the graphics have only moderately improved.

3.      Cityscape – It seems to lack many notable landmarks and could certainly have been more interactive.

4.      Difficulty – This applies mostly to the gang fights.  Perhaps the only part of this game that might be considered a sedative is the repeated battles to wrest the city from the gangs.  Not challenging, just boring.   The Boss Battles aren’t immune here though.  After you sort the pattern out, all of the bosses are brought down quickly.  Morbius and Shriek get more points than Venom, although the initial Venom encounter is made more challenging by the 3 minute time limit.

So, here is the deal.   It’s a Renter, not an Owner.  Fun for a few days of play, but nothing to write home about.  The only thing is, I’m not sure if I’m really critiquing the game, or the execution of the game on the platform.  I know the Wii lacks the power of the other systems, but as a stand alone to the Spidey franchise, this could be considered quite disappointing.  The worst thing I could say is that it wasn’t finished.  A common malady with big name games.

I give the franchise props however for turning out a video game, based on a movie, that was in turn based on a comic.  Lord knows that sounds like a recipe for disaster.