Spider-Man: Friend of Foe (PS2)

[Riosan]

Recently, I rented a little game called Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. I had heard about this game around E3 time, but I hadn't read or seen any trailers about it, so I didn't know anything about this game other than it had Spidey in it. As I was thinking of popping the game in my PS2, I remembered some of the great recent Spider-Man games that have come out. Specifically, Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man. The former is one of my favorite GCN games, as well as my favorite movie game ever. The latter wasn't based directly on the movies, but rather the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.

But this review isn't on them. So I started playing the game, and I was actually pleasantly surprised. And this is where the review begins.

STORY: 7/10.

Even though the game states on the box, and even on one of the title screens that it's "Official Movie Merchandise", this combined with the story makes me scratch my head. When the story begins, Spidey is relaxing in NYC when he's interrupted by none other than the Green Goblin. Ok, that's fine. Nothing contradictory about that. And then, Doc Ock shows up. Now you see where I'm going with this. And then, just to push my point further, Venom, The Sandman, and even Harry as the New Goblin show up. I'm not making this up.

Anyway, when they were fighting, they get ambushed by these mysterious creatures in white. And then, the villains, and Harry, get disintegrated, or teleported somewhere or some crap like that. Anyway, Spider-Man then gets lifted up into this flying thing. As he enters the Helicarrier, as it's called, he is talked to by the director of S.H.I.E.L.D, an anti-terrorist group.

Apparently, a meteor flew by earth, and that's how Venom and the white creatures, or PHANTOMs, came to be. A few shards of the meteor flew past earth and crash landed in Cairo, Tokyo, Napal, and blah blah blah blah. You get the idea. Spider-Man has to go collect them.



GAMEPLAY: 6/10.

This is where it counts, right? The core of the game. Well, this is also where Spider-Man falls flat on his Spider-face. You remember where I said that Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man were better? Well, they were. Those games were sort of mission-based, but you could still roam the city freely. In this game, you're given a linear area to run around in and beat people up. And that's it. Wait a minute, that's it? Well, not if you want to go into detail. There are these things.that you can collect that give you power-ups, increase your health, the usual stuff. Unfortunately, you've seen this all before.

To add insult to injury, the game is extremely repetitive. Not only is all you do just run through the basic same guided levels, the small areas all look the same. And even in the first section, you can see how this game gets extremely repetitive. You go through the same areas, fight the same enemies, get ambushed by those same enemies, beat the same enemies to get through the same locked doors, and jump over the same easy ledges.

Another thing that bugs me about this game and why it can't be great is the fixed camera. If there's one thing I hate in my games, it's a fixed camera. Heck, even Spider-Man 3 didn't have a fixed camera.

GRAPHICS: 8/10.



Admittedly, the graphics aren't bad. The fight scenes look fairly pretty and the game doesn't lag. Not much I can really complain about here. Sure, it's no Halo 3, but it still looks good. You can tell what everything is, and not a lot looks the same.

Unfortunately, there's more of this recurring repetition, even in the ground. Even in the first section of the first level, two of the backgrounds look like someone copied the background from a screenshot of some other better game and added little differences.

SOUND: 8/10.

Another thing that kind of makes me wonder is how they can think it's official movie merchandise, but not have some of the official voices. Even Spidey is voiced differently, I think. Unfortunately, even the sound effects have their problems. I wasn't even done with the first 2 sections, and I was already sick of the web sound.

CONCLUSION AND IMPRESSIONS:

You might remember this other game that came out a few ydears ago. It was called X-Men Legends. Yeah, this game is an almost exact clone of that game. While FoF is fun, it's just too monotonous for me to enjoy. While it does have two player, it's still the same thing and there isn't much here that can't be found in Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man.

But is it a bad game? No, the repetition just weighs it down too much. If I had to say anything, rent it to see if you like it.

Average Score:  7.25/10
Review Score:  7/10.

Ignore, Rent, Buy: Rent, and if you like it, buy it when it's cheaper.

[Macawmoses]

Just a brief reply for the moment. Next time run it through spell check, or at least scan over it once more. I briefly skimmed the review ( which is decent....ill add to this later) and noticed some easy mistakes/typos. No biggie just watch for em!