starts easy, gets harder. underappreciated.
User Rating: 8.5 | Spider-Man: Friend or Foe PSP
you will no doubt have heard from other reviewers that this game is too easy. in fairness, it does start off very easy and you'll thrash your way through it at first. however soon enough it does get harder, once you get through Tokyo to Tangaroa Island. however this is still quite easy and remains somewhat easy all the way through to the end. well, I say the end, and it is the end of the story, but not the end of the game. see, once you complete the game the first time (which took me just under 6 hours), you unlock elite mode. and don't underestimate it as I did. this is not like MUA 2's Normal mode, where there is only a teensy rise in hardness. this is a significant rise. the enemies get a lot more health, and therefore become harder to beat. on just the second part of the first level, which normally I would storm through, I had to repeat TWICE, so much has the difficulty increased I dread to think what the Nepal levels will be like, or the Venom boss fight. speaking of boss fights, none of these are particularly challenging in that you will die a lot, but some will take you a while. well, I say some, I mean the Venom one. why? BECAUSE THE RUDDY BUGGER'S DEFENCE ATTACK LETS HIM REGAIN HEALTH, THAT'S WHY! sorry about that, but it does get VERY annoying. but it's still very fun, just like all the boss battles, especially the somewhat daft Mysterio fight where......nah, I won't spoil the weirdness. and even once you complete Elite mode (which I haven't done yet, I only played through the first level of it on the morning of writing this) there's still the mini-games, which are good fun but nothing spectacular. sorry, that sounded too negative. oh, and don't feel that there's no point in doing the elite mode. it unlocks extras, two of which are characters (although I don't know for sure if Elite mode unlocks those). also playing one of the mini-games unlocks an extra. but these are pretty expensive, the two I've unlocked cost 4500 tokens each.
but on to the big quirk of the game: the fact that you can play as Spidey's most famous enemies. all of these are great but none are perfect, not even my personal favourite Venom, thanks to his health sucking attack (yes, that's the one I was yelling about earlier in my review). other favourites of mine are Sandman, Doc Ock and Electro, but all the others are great, there's no bad character in there (although some are worse or better than others).
Finally, I would say that in my personal opinion this is better than the Wii version (which I played at a friend's house), but it all depends on whether you like Electro and Carnage or not, and don't care about the Silver Sable. however, if you couldn't care less about the two PSP exclusives, go for the Wii version, it's got more characters and more moves (but the PSP superpowers are top-notch and make up for this).
