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The most impressive portable Spider-Man game yet. Vicarious Visions’ Spider-Man games on the DS have consistently ranked amongst the portable’s best. With Spider-Man 3, the developer looks like it is going to continue that tradition.
Although the DS version is obviously different than any of the other versions, the game will still follow the movie’s plot and its villains—Sandman, Green Goblin, and Venom—are included as part of the main storyline but there are also many additional plot lines based on the comic book. We were able to play through a few levels of the DS version of Spider-Man 3 to try out some of the differences and enhancements.
Spider-Man 3 for Nintendo DS will be fairly familiar to anyone who has played a Vicarious Visions’ previous Spider-Man DS games. The actual levels still have you running, jumping and swinging primarily to the right as you fight enemies, explore the levels, evade fires and other obstacles, and rescue citizens. That said, there are some noticeable differences in place. For one, combat is completely handled by the touch screen. You simply tap on the screen in the direction you want to attack and Spider-Man will do so. Tap twice and he’ll throw webbing at the enemy. Tapping up and down will do things like picking up citizens and putting them down.
The scope of the game has also been increased. The game has a map system that shows several different neighborhoods within Manhattan and allows you to easily get to any of them. When you transport to a different area of the city, you can explore that neighborhood or jump into a mission found in that neighborhood. As you scroll around this 2D/3D environment combo, the camera will sometimes pull away showing you scope that was previously unheard of in a Nintendo DS game. It’s a pretty clever way of introducing non-linearity in a side-scrolling game and worked out well in our limited experience.
The other big difference is the introduction of the black suit. As with the other versions of the game, Spider-Man will become stronger, faster and more powerful when he is using the black suit. Like the other Vicarious Visions versions of the game, using the black suit will bring some repercussions although we weren’t fully able to try out this feature.
Overall, Spider-Man 3 looks like another top-notch entry in the DS line of Spider-Man games. We’re very excited to review the full version when it is released in early May. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Apr 5, 2007
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