Ultimate Spider-Man preview

At a recent Activision press event, I had the chance to spend some time hands-on with Treyarch's upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man. Treyarch is the studio responsible for the previous two movie-based Spider-Man games, so the game is surely in capable hands. Unlike Spider-Man: The Movie and Spider-Man 2, however, this game really has nothing to do with Sam Raimi's well-received films--well, except for capitalizing on all the new Spidey fans they created. No, this game is based in just about every conceivable way on the Spider-Man of Marvel's current Ultimate line of comics, which starts fresh with various characters and retells their stories in a more modern context.

The first thing one notices about Ultimate Spider-Man is how it looks. Unlike so many games coming out these days, there is clearly a very specific artistic sentiment dictating the visuals, and it doesn't have much to do with "Uh, make it look realistic." The team has gone for a strongly comic book-like effect, but it's not cel-shaded. In most cases, the models do not use flat colors to imitate comics; rather, the effect comes from careful color design and heavy black outlines that look like inking. Overall it's a very successful approach and is a pleasure to watch. Nowhere is this more the case than in the game's well-constructed cutscenes. The writer and main artist of Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man series, fan favorite Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley respectively, worked with Treyarch on the story and artistic elements of the game, and it shows. I must admit I've never been huge on the writing and art style in mainstream superhero comics, but the goal here is clearly authenticity and that has surely been achieved. The cutscenes are designed to look like actual comic book pages in motion. They are a fantastic blend of animation and still-shots, with characters constrained to frames or breaking out of them fluidly depending on the situation, and the layout of the panels is constantly shifting. This type of thing has been done in both games and film before, but Treyarch's interpretation is one of the best I've seen, no doubt in some part thanks to the involvement of Bendis (who, I believe, often does the panel layouts in the comics he writes). There are a few instances when there isn't enough action on the screen to really justify all of the panels-within-panels and so forth, but that's an extremely minor point.

If you've played Treyarch's previous Spider-Man games (or even Neversoft's effort on PS1/N64/DC) you should already have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the actual gameplay. Basically, you play Spider-Man, swinging around New York City beating up bad guys and getting into battles with Marvel villains (for those who are interested in this sort of thing, an Activision rep was sure to inform me that this game contains more Marvel villains than any other Spider-Man video game--"Even more than [Spider-Man & Venom:] Maximum Carnage" for SNES and Genesis). The web-swinging mechanics are tight and forgiving--Treyarch seems to have taken the approach that even if the player has no idea what he's doing, the game should make him feel like he does. It's a good angle to take, since a game like this is going to appeal to such a broad spectrum of gamers. I had the chance to play some later levels in the game, however, and the difficulty definitely ramps up. There are also a series of time-trial "trick races" scattered throughout the game which have the player running through the city on a checkpoint-based route, trying to achieve the best time while perfecting the skills necessary to do so. For some reason, I was informed at least twice that these trials were designed by a man named Hans. That's what you do when you're Spider-Man, anyway. As you probably know, one of the biggest draws of Ultimate Spider-Man is that classic Spidey villain Venom is a playable character. He's not just an unlockable bonus or anything either--his missions make up about 50% of the game's story. Playing as Venom is a very different experience than playing as Spider-Man. The best comparison I can draw would be to playing The Hulk in Radical's recently-released

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. There's no web-slinging with Venom, he just jumps really, really far. Playing him gives you much more of a "drunk with power" effect than you get playing Spider-Man; he can toss cars around with ease, his jumps can reach the tops of buildings, and the ground shakes and cracks when he lands. Basically, he's solid. Except for the fact that he kind of just erodes over time. In addition to the obvious damage he takes from gunfire and whatever else his enemies can throw at him, Venom's health bar steadily declines over time and he must feed on humans to rejuvenate it. The result is that the sites of Venom's battles end up being a city block of car crashes and dessicated corpses. Even stronger than the sensation of switching from Spidey to Venom was the transition back again. It was startling how elegant and controlled Spider-Man's movement is, and how fragile his frame, compared to Venom's animal leaping and pounding. It's a well-executed juxtaposition that drives home the differences between the two characters. Overall, Ultimate Spider-Man is shaping up quite well. It feels much more comic-inspired than the previous Spider-Man games, from the visuals to the cutscenes to Spidey's trademark one-liners sprinkled liberally throughout. From what I played, it's hard to tell whether the game will suffer from the same downfall as its predecessors, which is that going around doing a bunch of missions comprised of beating people up eventually just gets kind of tiring, but Treyarch has certainly thrown a lot of new elements into the mix even if they haven't exactly reinvented it. Keep an eye on this one if you enjoyed the other games or if you just like Spider-Man. Or, you know, if you want to play as a big hulking purple beast thing. Ultimate Spider-Man on Nintendo DS

The DS version of Ultimate Spider-Man, developed by Vicarious Visions, is very similar to Spider-Man on the same system and by the same developer. That is, it's quite different from the console version. Ultimate Spider-Man takes the form of a sidescrolling beat-em-up. Though the player operates in a 2D environment (that is, you can only go left and right as opposed to into the foreground or background) the actual graphics are rendered in a very nice-looking 3D style similar to the one employed in the console game. The cutscenes take a more traditional comic book-like approach, feature more still panels than the constantly moving ones of Treyarch's game. Still, it looks very nice on the DS' bright screen(s), and the actual storyline is basically the same. However, since there is of course not the same free-roaming aspect as in the larger version, Vicarious Visions has outfitted the game with a somewhat branching structure, changing the missions and some events based on the player's decisions. I didn't play enough levels to really see the ramifications of this, but the branches apparently come at about three key points in the game. Venom as a playable character still comprises about 50% of the game, though he comes in a much different form than one might expect. Unlike Spider-Man, who is entirely controlled by using the d-pad and face buttons (with very occasional mini-game-like touch-screen

sequences ranging from creative to uninspired), Venom is controlled with the d-pad and the stylus. It seems odd, and it takes some getting used to, but the learning curve isn't so bad. Essentially, you use the stylus to direct Venom's tendrils (which, in a nice touch, actually grow in number over the course of the game) in order to ensnare your victims for feeding or simply to throw them around. It's good to be able to use the stylus to actually throw people around in a trajectory you are controlling directly. Vicarious Visions didn't put the touch screen to much use in the last game, but they must have really racked their brains to come up with this one. I suspect some will find it cumbersome but overall it came off as a clever addition to me. Playing the game as Spider-Man feels pretty much the same as it did the last time around, with Spidey able to web-swing at any time; even if there are no visible buildings overhead, his web will grab onto an unseen anchor somewhere above the screen. It's a bit of a stretch, but on a handheld system that obviously can't exploit the fairly vertical nature of Spider-Man some sort of conceit was necessary and this one doesn't come off as offensive. The difference between Venom and Spider-Man feels somewhat like it does on the console version of the game, though of course it is not as pronounced. Venom still leaps greater distances and is more brutal. The DS version includes a multiplayer component, something not present in the other versions of the game (for obvious reasons).

The wireless mode allows up to four-players to choose a character (either Peter Parker, Spider-Man, black-costumed Spider-Man, Venom, black-suited Venom, or Carnage) and basically just beat each other up. It's pretty basic and it's not going to sell the game, but it may as well be there. Frustratingly, though, there's no single-cart multiplayer option, which is strange because it seems almost like a default in most DS games. It really limits the number of people who are actually ever going to see the mode. The game is turning out well; like its big brother it doesn't really reinvent anything, but the developer has taken care to ensure that there are plenty of new elements. It looks like it might suffer from the same repetitive nature of its predecessor though, sometimes not allowing you to progress until you've killed every single enemy in a given location (always a frustrating design choice for me). However, Vicarious Visions seems to understand the difference between traditional console gaming and portable gaming, and while it's not a play-for-hours kind of game, it's fun to pick up and beat up (or absorb) some guys for a bit. Ultimate Spider-Man is due out for PS2, Xbox, GCN, DS, GBA, and PC.