Spider-Man: Friend or Foe Review

The Spider-Man franchise has legions of fans, (including me) and it is fairly obvious that Spider-Man is Marvel Comics' most notorious superhero. Everyone's favorite web-slinger is back in another Spider-Man game titled Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is a video game that is available for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PSP, PC, and Xbox 360. The storyline in the game is something about a meteor and monsters. In a nutshell, there is not much of a logical plot. But that is perfectly fine. The game is intended to be facetious and not solemn. All anyone needs to know about the storyline in Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is that Spider-Man is facing adversity, and he defers to his most nefarious enemies for assistance. Spider-Man will form an unlikely alliance with a bevy of characters such as Silver Sable, Goblin, Doctor Otto Octavius, Scorpion, and many others. The gameplay is all about fighting several opponents. The game does add some variety to the gameplay by sprinkling a boss every now and then.

For the most part, it is a prototypical game that lacks any originality. As redundant as this may seem, I still had a great time pummeling adversaries with Spider-Man. The combat system is intuitive and engrossing. There are the fundamental attacks and the extravagant web attacks that give the game some much needed style. Spider-Man can utilize his webs to swing an enemy from one side of an area to a completely different place. In addition, he can shoot his webs to swarm foes with webbing (leaving them immobile). As Spider-Man uses more web attacks, he earns more and more experience. Performing combination attacks are done without any trouble, and the controls are user-friendly. Clearing out a room without multiple opponents are straightforward. Players can have human controlled ally or an ally controlled by the artificial intelligence to follow Spider-Man. You can switch on the fly between Spider-Man and the other characters, but the other characters are not as agile as Spider-Man. Spider-Man is the only character in the game that has the dexterity to accomplish maneuvers in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, there is no Xbox Live support with the game. There is only a two player cooperative mode. The most disappointing aspect of the game is the web swinging; there is no web swinging across the enormous skyscrapers of New York City. Devoted Spider-Man admirers (such as myself) were somewhat perturbed by this.

I would have appreciated the game more if I could take in the scenery. Since the Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is for the six to thirteen age demographic, it is a rudimentary game with no challenge. An avid gamer can cruise through this game from start to finish without any difficulty. Now that I think about it, there is actually no real consequence for dying in this game. If you die, then you merely start over from the same place because of a token system (ala Lego Star Wars). Gamers will probably have a much more laborious time singing that absurd Spider-Man song, than they will have playing this game. How does that song go again? I think it is something like "Spiderman, Spiderman, Does whatever a spider can." Oh, the hell with the song. Whatever. I do not care about something as frivolous as the catchy Spider-Man tune. Honestly, I only know the first two lines. But I digress. The graphics in the game are nothing spectacular. Even for the Xbox 360 iteration, the visuals were not anything like Marvel Ultimate Alliance. There are also some minor platform jumping elements in the game, but they are few and far between. The audio in the game has its moments with adequate voice acting. The animations in the game are greatly exaggerated, but I thought that was done intentionally to accentuate the humor in Spider-Man. No one will find a particularly long and arduous game with Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. The game is approximately five hours long. I know; that is shorter than Heavenly Sword and Stranglehold. Overall, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is only for the immensely dedicated Spider-Man enthusiasts. Furthermore, casual gamers of Spider-Man might want to web swing away from this game and wait for Spider-Man 4 in 2009.