Spider-man Friend of Foe is a simplistic, short, and boring mess. This review contains a Video review with game footage
http://www.gamespot.com/v/dnJnlDHw5b8LvTbd
This is the in-depth written review:
Spider-man Friend or Foe is a new brawler from Activison.
The game combines Spider-man and other Marvel owned characters in a short and easy beat 'em up.
The story of Spider-man Friend or Foe is dismal. You play as Spider-man who gets teleported to a government run aircraft carrier to do battle with hologram symbiote aliens called Phantoms. Five meteors have crashed to earth, each carrying some symbiotic goo. You will travel to these different places around the globe to collect the meteor shards and beat up anyone who gets in your way.
You won't have to worry about dieing, as there are no "lives". Having your life meter depleted to zero results in you being respawned with full health. Your penalty is that ten tokens, the games currency, will be removed from your current level's total.
There are five types of enemies to combat. Small enemies fly around and turn into grenades when you grab them. Medium enemies are in the most in quantity and are average fighters. Large enemies soak up and dish out more damage. There are also two different types of mini-bosses, each with their own attack strengths and weaknesses.
During the story missions you will fight, and unlock various marvel characters that will fight by your side. These sidekicks will help in battle by taking some of the heat off of you via attacking your mutual enemies. Sidekicks will also grab the larger Phantoms, so you can team up for a beat down. The AI for is usually does a decent job of fending off all comers. Since they use the same respawning death mechanic, they are a practically invincible force.
You will launch each mission from the central area of Nick Fury's giant flying air craft carrier. Here there are stations that you can examine which will allow you to upgrade you abilities. You can choose to upgrade your strength, stamina, health, and web skills. The web skills are broken into three different categories. "Web line" skills are used to grab and throw enemies. "Web shot" controls your web into bullet like balls and AOE web ball bombs. Lastly, the "web stun" skills affect how well you tie up enemies.
The level design is quite boring and repetitive. Each linear level is broken up into square rooms and rectangle hall ways. You will enter a room, the doors will lock in front of, and behind you, and you beat up bad guys. Once the baddies have all met their maker, the doors will open and you will proceed onto the next room. This process will repeat it's self over and over again until you reach the end of the level and you fight a mini-boss. After you kill the mini-boss you will be teleported back to the aircraft carrier, to repeat this all over again on the next level.
Pickupable items are scattered though out the areas you explore. You can use these items to throw at your foes for high damage. Most of them are normal crates and rocks, but a few will be special acid, flame, or freeze barrels. One of the two mini-boss types will be damaged via throwing items at its stomach. This is where the smaller phantoms come in. They can be grabbed and used as grenades.
There will be banter between Spider-man and his sidekick though out the levels you transverse. The voice acting is done supremely well, and the writing for said banter will make you chuckle plenty of times. Activison hired professional actors to voice the games characters and it shows.
There is no time during the entire game in which you are in New York City. Instead you will visit places like Nepal, Transylvania, and Egypt. What do these locations have to do with our Big Apple city swinging hero? Absolutly nothing. In-fact, there is practically no web swinging to be heard of. Rarely will you jump, and grab a hold of something, and swing around. Even in these rare cases you won't actually go anywhere, it's used as a jump kick move. Taking out the most recognizable ability of Spider-man makes this game not feel like a Spidy adventure. Instead it feels like a loosely tied together mess of an IP and relic game-play.
Another problem with Spider-man Friend or Foe is it's complexity, or lack there of. The main game is very easy, and there is now way to adjust the difficulty to a harder setting. You will bounce around from room to room, as an unbeatable killing machine. The Enemy AI is extremely predictable, which makes the plethora of encounters you will have tedious. The same set of three bad guys will spawn over and over again, with various pallet swaps, though out the entire game. The only quasi-intelligent foes you will face are the larger mini-bosses at each stages end. They will have different move sets biased on how close you are to them. Regardless, the AI puts up little fight as you bowl over them.
Once you complete the story mode you can fight another player in the Vs. mode. The Vs. mode is a standard 2 player fight, where you can choose one of the rooms you have unlocked during the story mode to scrap in. There are 14 different characters to choose from. Each character has the same moves, yet the moves have different names and animations. Having the same moves list means that fighting as Venom feels no different than fighting as Sandman. It's just another pallet swap.
Spider-man Friend of Foe is a simplistic, short, and boring mess. Stay away from this title unless you are a die hard Spidy fan with money to blow.