Ultimate Spider-Man Updated Impressions

By , GameSpotPosted Jun 24, 2005 9:00 am PT

Activision swings by to give us an updated look at its comic book-based action game starring everyone's favorite webslinger.

Swing Into Action

Spidey's back to his old self in Treyarch's upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man.

At E3 last month, we got our first look at Ultimate Spider-Man, the upcoming webslinging action game from Activision and longtime Spidey developer Treyarch. With games based on both of the Spider-Man films under its belt, the dev team has set about creating a new game based on Marvel's classic hero that will retain the best aspects of the past titles, as well as add new mechanical and stylistic elements to make it a fresh experience. Between an impressive graphical makeover and some new gameplay additions that are sure to please the hardcore fan base, it looks like Treyarch is well on its way.

We recently got a look at some new sections of Ultimate Spider-Man, which is naturally based on the comic book of the same name. Like all of Marvel's Ultimate series, Ultimate Spider-Man reimagines the classic superhero with a bit more contemporary appeal. For instance, the Ultimate Peter Parker is a Web designer, not a newspaper photographer, and he's now back to his roots as a hapless high school student. This is sort of a restart for the series, in other words. The game will pick up after the comic's Venom storyline, which was a wildly successful venture for Marvel. In fact, the superpopular supervillain will even make a significant playable appearance in the game.

Treyarch is going to great lengths to re-create the look of Ultimate Spider-Man as accurately as possible in its game, even going so far as to coin several ostentatious buzz phrases to describe the various graphical components in play. Our favorite is "3D comic inking technology," which is based on the standard cel-shading technique, but it uses color saturation and a greater degree of shadowing to make the characters look as if they were actually drawn and inked by a comic artist. "Variable line weighting" will give the black outlines of each character different thicknesses depending on its orientation, adding to the stylish look of the game.

Furthering the authentic comic book feel, Ultimate Spider-Man will make use of "motion graphics panels," which are essentially comic book-style panels of varying size that convey both storyline and gameplay elements. The cutscenes that we saw using the moving panels were done with a lot of panache, and they pulled off such stylish tricks as showing characters from different angles in multiple panels and zooming onto the screen to fit into empty spaces (you need to see this in motion to appreciate it). Motion graphics panels will show up during gameplay, too. For example, you'll often see an important cue, such as a boss's weak point, pop up on the side of the screen in a comic-style panel that fits the game's aesthetic, and it looks neat to boot. By the way, we're using these jargonlike phrases with tongue placed firmly in cheek, as the game's visuals really do look quite striking when you see them in motion.

You'll get to play as both Spider-Man and his nefarious archrival, Venom, in the new game.

While playing as Spider-Man, the combat emphasizes Peter Parker's incredible strength rather than making him look like some kind of martial art master. Your most viable tactics will involve quickly switching between attacks from one enemy to the next, so as to keep even large groups off balance. In fact, an accolade system will even reward such a fighting style--the more variety you pull off, the more the game will congratulate you and accordingly enhance your attacks.

Playing as Venom will be more than a bit different, as you'd imagine. For instance, there's that whole thing where the Venom suit is constantly sucking at host Eddie Brock's life force, which in practical terms means you'll always be losing health a little bit at a time. Luckily, you can grab any innocent bystanders you see and absorb them into your suit, which will give you a little health back. Venom's attacks are much burlier than Spidey's, and he focuses more on stronger melee and less on jumping around a lot. The accolade system is absent here, but in its place you get to use Venom's tentacles to their full destructive potential, which has to be at least as good.

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1 Comments

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jakeboudville
Posted Aug 30, 2006 6:17 am PT

pretty interesting...
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