Although the gameplay is nothing new, it works ok, and the graphics and story take it above this flaw.
The story is written by comic writer Brian Micheal Bendis, and is intriguing in it's setups. The cutscenes do a great job of telling the story, moving and swaying with the motions of the characters. What surprised me most is that almost all the levels I played in the Game Cube version of USM were still found here, and some additional ones were also present. The voice acting is great, even humorous on occasion, and seems to embody exactly what the characters should be like, at least from the Ultimate Spidey comic.
The gameplay is the average button mashing fare, with mild exception to levels where you play as Venom. It's really just button mashing, but with the touch screen. Tap far to use snare, tap near to use arms, and double tap to fire a tendril. Not the best that the touch screen system could be used for, but it gave a good set-up to the DS version of Spider Man 3.
USM's graphics are the star of the show. The characters are detailed, and designed in the manner of the Ultimate Spidey comic book. They show the DS's capability to mimic the Nintendo 64's graphics in a 2-D situation, and it works well. The environments are also superb. Even though this is standard left to right fare, the environments also move, showing more of the area than normal to a game like this.
All in all, Ultimate Spidey is a great game, although shown up by Spider Man 3, and is still worth checking out, provided you don't have one of the X-Box or Playstation versions.