Solid but for real Spider-man fans a slight let down.
What hurts this, somewhat free roaming GTA styled, game the most is its lack variety. All the side missions are repetitious and uninteresting and feel like a filler for the main story missions. The main story missions are the real meat of this surprisingly short game. They are pretty good and help move the story along but you’ll find most of them use the same formula: chase and fight. The camera sometimes is erratic, unstable and inconsistent. I understand that spider-man is a very agile character but the cameras in the prior 2 Spider-man games did a better job of keeping up.
The camera can make boss battles frustrating. Sometime the camera works like its supposed to, other times it does not. Venom has a lock-on feature but even that is worthless.
The combat controls have in, my opinion, have become over simplified. I know they did this so that casual gamers can just jump in and play but, a Spider-man lover like me may feel let down by Spider-man’s limited acrobatic fighting skill. Also when swinging around town the controls sometime don’t seem responsive enough, especially when it counts (like when on a long chase). Here's the skinny:
PROS: Pretty decent story. Good voice acting. Nice music. Nice comic book feel. Its Spider-man!
CONS: The racing side missions are just plain boring and the combat side mission aren’t too much better. This game is too short. Frustrating camera. very little variety. Too repetitive.
NEUTRAL: Call me an old fool but I hate the Marvel Ultimate series period.
The Final word: This game needs a good camera and a real lock-on feature. If Activision had gotten the GTA free roaming complexity and variety down along with the camera, then this would have been a great game. Spider-fans this is almost a buy. For all others just rent it.