Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is an exercise in monotony.
Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was having a perfectly normal day, swinging from building to building, stopping the occasional bad guy, and doing all the sorts of things that a man bitten by a radioactive spider does. All of a sudden, his perfectly normal day becomes strangely bizarre as mysterious enemies known as phantoms appear, along with a few of Spider-Man's most nefarious enemies. Suddenly, everyone is whisked away to the Hellacarrier, the mobile base of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury advises them that there's a new force that's become a danger to everyone. Now, everyone needs to fight together, or everyone will lose.
Spider-Man: Friend or Foe isn't like the previous free roaming open-ended city Spider-Man games. Rather, it's a more traditional arcade style beat 'em up. There are five locales that you'll visit from Japan to Nepal. Each locale is divided up into four segments, and they're all accessed at the game's hub, the Hellacarrier. Each segment is structured the same. You'll enter an area, and then gates will be closed ahead and behind you, trapping you. Enemies will appear, and you'll whale away on them with your combos, special moves and and thrown objects until they're all defeated. The gates open up, you press on, and you encounter more enemies, and the doors close yet again ad nauseum.
The levels aren't that big, and although there are "hidden" collectibles, they're usually in plain sight, so there's not much incentive for exploration. The enemies are just about the same in each world. You have small phantoms, which are your basic grunts that fling projectiles at you. You've got medium phantoms, which are tougher and really need to be tripped up to be given a good beating. Lastly, you've got your large phantoms which are generally a pain, because they carry big shields and require being hit by thrown objects from a distance to be taken down effectively. In every locale, these same tiers of phantoms exist. They are only different by appearance, nothing more than a quick swap of a skin. Once you experience all the enemies in the first world, there is nothing new to encounter.
It's rather a big disppointment, because soon afterwards, the combat becomes a bore. There are a few moves that Spider-Man and his allies have in their arsenal, and Spider-Man does have a couple of extra abilities that he can unlock, but you'll most likely find out that Spider-Man and his web lines are all you really need to play the game, because the other characters and their abilities don't get the job done as effectively. The game does have a combo meter that fills up as you pummel your enemies, and each time you fill up the meter, it ranks up. It also fills up faster the more varied you are with your techniques. Once you rank up, you'll get more tech tokens from the phantoms you defeat.
Tech tokens are a necessity in the game. These are mostly gathered by defeating phantoms and destorying objects. They are also awarded to you for defeating bosses and finding DNA helixes (which unlock goodies such as artwork) and arenas (which are used in two-player versus mode). You can use tech tokens to increase your characters' vital stats, such as health and strength, as well as by upgrading Spider-Man's web abilities. What is a shame istthat all of your allies - friend and foe alike - don't have their own abilties that you can upgrade.
There are also power ups in the game. You have orange power ups, which grant you an attack bonus and green power ups, which grant you invulnerability for a short period of time. You'll also find blue power ups that when used execute a tag team special move called a Hero Strike that obliterates every enemy and smashable object on the screen. You can also use your tech tokens when you're at the Hellacarrier to buy health power ups for use later.
Graphics wise, there is nothing in this game that says "Xbox 360". Sure, there are nice colors and smooth textures befitting a cartoon-like artstyle with very nice animation, but other than that, it's just dull. The game looks its worst when it goes to a cutscene. For instance, Nick Fury's character is modeled with such a low polygon count that you'd almost swear that this game ported over from the PSP. There's really no excuse for the game looking as bad as it does considering other Spider-Man titles look considerably better, even on older systems.
Audibly, it fares better. The sound effects aren't anything special to write about, just your basic "wham bap pow". The voice acting, though, is what saves the game in this department. It really sounds like a game built out of a Spider-Man TV cartoon show. The music also has that comicy appeal to it that you'd expect from a comic-based video game geared towards younger audiences.
And that pretty much wraps up Spider-Man: Friend or Foe in a nutshell: a Spider-Man game geared towards the younger crowd. The game barely has any difficulty. You don't even die. If you get beat down, or fall off the edge, you're respawned and docked a few tech points, and you just keep going. You don't restart the level or anything. Even the boss battles pose little to no threat and most go down very quickly. Although it's evident it's meant for younger gamers to play, a difficulty option would have been appreciated for the rest of us.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of this title is the lack of online co-op. This would have been the perfect monotonous mindless beat 'em up game to suffer through with a friend, but as it stands, the only co-op is local. If you have no one to play with, you can always hit the Y button to switch to your ally at any time. Still, the lack of online in this game is rather disgraceful, especially since there is a versus mode.
Spider-Man: Friend or Foe isn't all bad. If you play it in short bursts, you might get a little fun out of beating wave after wave of the same cut and paste enemies, but if you plan on playing it for more than an hour or two, it could induce a headache. If you're expecting an interesting story, you're also going to be disappointed, as the story's about as fleshed out as a skeleton stashed in the corner of a science room. Even though there is an impressive roster of 14 characters, you probably won't even bother with them unless you have a friend over who wants to play as Spider-Man. There's just something sad about Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, because it's so shallow yet could have been much more.