Spider-Man 3 had me intrigued since the minute it was announced. You could probably even say before it was announced, since we all knew it would be coming along side the movie. Especially after playing the terrific Spider-Man 2 game, this was highly anticipated. After reading some previews of the game, I became pretty skeptical about the game. Some of my fears were dashed, some weren’t. Here is the breakdown of some of the facets of Spider-Man 3 Collector’s Edition:

Presentation and Graphics: The first thing I was hit with was the loading screen, where the game is pre-loaded onto the hard drive. The fonts here looked like they came out of a Windows 3.1 installation application, with very simple backgrounds. I think for the “next-gen” of gaming, something more elaborate is needed. Let’s face it, the graphics are nothing to write home about here. This is especially evident during cut-scenes. Character faces are jagged, have huge bug eyes, and have the worst facial expressions you can think of. The graphics of the city aren’t that bad, and when roaming the city, they aren’t too bad either. 2.5 of 5

Sound and Music: The city sounds very cool when you’re swinging around, especially with surround sound. The sound effects for most other parts of the game are fairly good, and the voice acting is a strong point in the game. The place that really hit me was the Mary Jane Thrill Ride. I had to mute the stereo whenever I did one of these missions because of the horrible repetitions you get. I don’t think I could take I hearing “I wanna go high!” or “Go faster!” or “Stay low to the ground!” one more time. 4 of 5

Gameplay: Spider-Man 2 left everyone with a high hope for this game. There was a broad base to start from that was widely enjoyed. Spider-Man 3 offers much of the same. There’s a lot of button mashing to string together combos to fight off some villians, but nothing too special. I was expecting some more additions to the game, but Activision stuck with what works. A lot of people have criticized them for it, but it’s still a fun experience. They did add some God of War style button hits to pull off some cool Spidey moves, which is enjoyable. For me, the best parts of the game are when you unlock the Black Suit and get the extra powers. The moves you can do are much more fun. It’s well worth the effort to go through and unlock this feature. Also with the Collector’s Edition for PS3, you can unlock The Goblin as a playable character. While more fun than “original” Spider-Man, it’s not as fun as the Black Suit. Flying around on the glider is fun, and so are all of the Goblin’s weapons, but I prefer web swinging for my travel. For combat situations, I would call it a draw between having the Black Suit and being the Goblin, since you get all the Goblin’s fun toys to play with. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on to the camera. This could be the worst camera in any game ever created. When climbing up walls, it moved around you in the the most obnoxious ways. When trying to hang from a ledge, it’s the same way. The camera really shines for swinging around the city. You can tell the development team spent most of their efforts on that portion. I wish more effort was spent to get the rest of the camera situations right, because it really detracts from the gameplay. 3.5 of 5.

Lasting Appeal: There’s a lot too the game other than the main storyline. You can pull off a bunch of side missions and continue to explore the city. But in reality, once you’ve unlocked everything, there’s not much left to the game. After you beat the main story, you unlock the Black Suit for the entire game to use, which could give some more replay value to start over, but it isn’t that much. 2 of 5

Final Word: Most reviews have told people to shy away from this game. I’m not going to do that. I did have a lot of fun with Spider-Man 3. Barring the camera issues (which were huge issues), the game was pretty fun, albeit not much replay value. I’d say this is worth a rental.

Overall: 3 of 5

1 = Not worth the bandwidth.

2= Demo is enough, not worth your money.

3= Game is good, depending on the price, seriously consider picking it up.

4= Worth your money. Should provide some good times for quite awhile.

5= Buy the game. Lock your door. Pick up a case of beer. This could take all night.