What happened here? For three consecutive releases Treyarch has been giving us the pieces to the ultimate Spider-Man game. The first two titles being based on the first two movies, the first bringing superior indoor levels and the second excelling at exterior play, and Ultimate Spider-Man combining pieces of both but still not quite getting there. This should have been Treyarch’s opus magnum – the end-all, be-all Spider-Man experience. Instead, Spidey’s latest outing is just a retread of the previous movie tie-in release, except heavy on the bloom effect and almost equally so on the flaws.

Spider-Man 3 Collector’s Edition is essentially Spider-Man 2, except this version is a Collector’s Edition release that gives PS3 owners some throwaway webisode featurettes and interviews with the cast and crew of the movie; a lenticular card - images that animate when viewed when tilted - showing scenes from the movie; and the ability to play as the New (Green) Goblin.  I don’t think too many collectors will be scrambling for this though.

The game takes the same open-ended approach as its predecessors, with the main story being punctuated by random events, but this time there is less of an emphasis on stopping the same handful of thugs or rescuing the same city worker; instead, crimes are less frequent, though still not terribly varied, and the focus is on the missions that progress the story. Random crime still goes on, with dangerlevels indicated by color on the main map, and when something happens the waypoint shifts from the path set on the main map to the nearby activity. Since the crimes aren’t very time intensive, having to shift focus isn’t too big of a deal. Once the situation has been handled, you can proceed to your objective or, as is always possible, select a new mission via the main map and get to heading towards the new waypoint. If you don’t want to jump back into the action just yet, you can use the map to target one of the activities – detonating bombs (involving minor puzzles and timed sequences), skydiving, and timed fighting – and then get back to the story after you’ve earned a new gold (or bronze or silver) medal.

The map is incredibly handy, with the shoulder buttons hopping around between points of interest and a side menu acting as a filter between missions, activities, and, as mentioned, dangerous spots around the city. The story is less focused than in the previous titles, with missions having several sections per and each consisting of separate stories that only loosely connect. The game isn’t as open-ended as it seems, because, despite the fact that you can jump around between several missions, there is still a system in place that requires some missions to be complete before others are unlocked. This isn’t a bad method, though the lack of focus on a central story can be offsetting at first, it just takes some time to get used to.

Unfortunately, the game asks you to get used to a lot. Namely technical and design flaws. The missions are often poorly laid out with timed portions mixing with nasty quick timer events – the portions from Shenmue and God of War that require you to press the on-screen button before an unseen counter expires – to form a sort of Voltron of pain. There are several checkpoints that will spare your sanity, but there are often times when especially tedious portions – pretty much every boss battle – require constant repeating due to the game either not being entirely clear as to what is necessary or an enemy’s overpowered attack routine needing to be memorized. The quick timer events are also erratic, with some instances giving some leeway and others requiring near precise timing; the latter often being during involved boss battles, with failure requiring you to sit through a cutscene, loading, and then refight the last bit leading up to the event. The timed missions are often brought down by sloppy controls – great for webslinging around the city but horrible for anything indoors or requiring precision – and a fussy camera.

Let’s say that you can put up with missions that sway from boring to frustrating, fun every so often, because you just love webslinging and the way Spider-Man slowly evolves over time, learning new moves and receiving upgrades as missions are completed and crime dealt with. Hey, I like an evolving superhero as well, and who doesn’t love swinging around the city? And, yeah, a few of the missions, even those with quick timer events, really come together to form the kind of experience that you want to play through. That gung-ho attitude can only last for so long though in the face of the numerous problems that plague the game.

If Treyarch is going to make another Spider-Man game, then I submit that they be forbidden to do indoor levels. They have shown in Spider-Man 2 and now in 3 that they are incapable of doing them correctly and are willing to ignore what was learned in the original. The camera has a very hard time handling limited viewing areas, often zooming up on doors or actually showing clips of the city on the other side of a wall, so what was done to address this? Missions are thrown into sewer and subway tunnels, the tightest possible spaces. The result is that you will often see Spider-Man’s back, forearms, a pipe, the back of a lizard’s head, or the screen will just jerk back and forth until Spidey is moved – thanks to ragdoll physics, the flailing around that results from being hit certainly doesn’t help. Crawling on walls, inside or out, will result in similar reactions from the camera. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and consistency would be grand considering a little of the latter can do much to undo the positives of the former.

Beyond design problems, there are technical problems as well. A shoddy camera isn’t particularly new to games, though never not a pain, but what’s surprising is just how sloppy Spider-Man 3 is in so many other ways. The framerate drops all the time, which is a serious detriment here considering a good portion of the game is watching Spidey elegantly websling throughout the city – nothing like his fluid, acrobatic movements sk-sk-skipping. Then there is the pop-up and flickering, which is especially prominent at night whenever entire floors of buildings have their lights go off (disappear) and on (reappear); or whenever a quarter of a skyscraper goes from having nothing to being completely detailed in half a second. It’s not uncommon for the lethargic denizens – no one seems surprised to see Spider-Man swinging neither around them nor at the giant robots or explosions – to just disappear. The city, for all the large buildings and lighting effects, comes across as this monolithic, lifeless, concrete giant without any of the vibrancy that comes with city life,  only showing any signs of activity whenever a glitch occurs..

There are numerous other problems, a few of which I jotted down during my time as they occurred: Spider-Man appeared in a cutscene where he wasn’t supposed to be, floating in a straight line across the screen, stuck in his swing animation; clips of other cutscenes appearing during fadeaways and quick cuts in other cutscenes; Lizardman was stuck on screen, then a new one appeared from the corner, causing the other to disappear; voices become muffled and are drowned out by background noise; enemies gets stuck running into corners; and I even had the game freeze up on me about twenty minutes into a fight with Kingpin. Other problems that are less technical but equally noticeable are the handful of sayings that are constantly repeated and that weird plastic look that humans have in games lately – Parker and the gang can look downright scary.

Oh, and when you first boot the game you have to let the extras install onto your hard drive, which takes about 5 minutes.

Whew.

So is any of the game good? Well, like I said, some of the game is good, because portions of its predecessors were good. Webslinging is just as exhilarating as it has always been, the introduction of Sandman and Venom are fun, and some of the quick timer events actually compliment the levels and bring a great cinematic quality to encounters. The voice-overs are delivered with a thud, and Tobey Maguire as bad Spider-Man (black costume) is about as frightening as a wet kitten, but there is a lack of Kirsten Dunst’s shrilling. The New Goblin portion is, unfortunately, just a series of races and a short appearance towards the end of the game, but the sixaxis controller is surprisingly enjoyable as a way to control the glider (tilt the controller to move). The black costume, and the rage meter it brings along, are also welcomed additions, offering a means to dispose of so many numerous and surprisingly strong thugs. Plus the costume just looks cool.

Overall: 4.5/10