Ultimate Spider-Man

Screenshots

Notes

It's a pretty fun action platformer. More emphasis on the action, lots of fights and saving helpless civilians.

Gameplay generally good, controls and hitboxes can make it a little clunky at times. You have infinite web so lots of freedom to swing around and web people up. There's a combo meter that lets you do special attacks. When you play as Venom the game kind of wants you to use touch controls but the touch controls are bad, but necessary for some actions. So I ended up playing a weird hybrid style. Venom is just worse in general and the second half of the game leans far too heavily on him.

Nice graphics, obviously going for an exagerrated comic book style and succeeding pretty well.

Weirdly bad sound. I even wondered if it was an emulator bug, not sure. But combat hits and stuff seem to be lacking sound effects which makes it feel really limp.

Ignored the story completely as it is told through kind of slow animating comic panels that skip completely if you press any buttons at all. So I accidentally skipped the first few and then just gave up. You seem to be playing as Spider Man and Venom. Most levels have a new Spider Man villain to chase down and fight. Each level seemed to be doing something a bit unique which is good.

There's a weird difficulty spike with on boss battle as Venom half way through the game. Your health is always depleting as Venom, the boss is very agressive and kills you fast, and random enemies spawn in to mess you up. You should be able to eat the enemies to regain health but if you try the boss destroys you. Felt broken and/or wildly imablanced, ended up cheating to finish it. Update: I thought this was a one-off but the last 1/2-1/3 of the game has a lot of bits like this and is very unbalanced.

There's one level where you play as Spider Man and Venom, switching back and forth as you progress. Spider Man has to save a guy who won't leave without his sculptures... then you switch to Venom and you can eat the guy and smash the sculptures. Peak gameplay.

Overall, Ultimate Spider Man should have been decent but misses the mark a bit. I didn't hate playing it and it didn't go on too long, but it has some rough edges and really dodgy balance which stop it short of being good.