Coming off the heels of their last foray into the world of comic book games, Treyarch is returning to the world of Spiderman with a bit of a twist. Ultimate Spiderman is an experiment in games and a chance that not many companies like to take with their games. With the game play and engine already nailed down from their previous release, Spiderman 2, the focus this time is based more on presentation and a different "universe" so to speak that the story is pulled from. Being that Ultimate Spiderman is a line of comics from Marvel that twists the original Spiderman storyline to a more modern and more hip style. Peter Parker is fifteen years old when he acquires his powers and his father was a scientist who was partners with Eddie Brock Sr. in developing a cure for cancer. If that is making you scratch your head in wonderment, there are many other things that aren’t quite the same from the regular Spiderman world. The Rhino is a large robot suit, electro doesn’t have his trademark yellow and green uniform, Nick Fury has become black, the Green Goblin is a cheap Hulk doppelganger and for some odd reason, it seems that just about everyone you run into knows that Peter Parker is Spiderman.

Being that this game is based on the Ultimate Spiderman comic, the graphic presentation and style of the game reflects that perfectly. The game is played in a cel-shaded cartoon form that just looks brilliant, while each cut scene is a quick moving, flashy, comic panel that drives the story. All the models look great and look exactly as if they were pulled directly from the pages of the comic. It hasn’t been done this convincing before and Treyarch definitely deserves a giant kudos for doing it as well as they did, but unfortunately those kudos don’t pass along to the gameplay. One of the worst things that was found in Spiderman 2 was the chase missions and there is no shortage of them here. If you are unfamiliar with them, you have a limited time and a meter where you need to constantly be a within a certain range of the person you are chasing. In Spiderman 2 it was awful but thankfully it didn’t happen too often. In Ultimate Spiderman, it seems that just about every story mission has the exact same pattern. You start off by chasing the boss through the city in two or so sections and then you will square off against him in two or three forms to finally bring him down. Through out the game you do get the chance to play as both Spiderman and Venom, although the missions for each are very similar, as are their controls, albeit Venom has a nifty locomotion jump that lets him jump a mile into the air instead of swinging from building to building like his twiggy counterpart, Spiderman.

Along with the storyline missions, there are also City Events, such as muggings, people falling from buildings, races where you need to move as quickly as you can from marker to marker to get the best time and combat tours, where you follow a path that leads you to groups of enemies, one after another. Being that these side missions are very repetitive and not all that exciting to start with, the fact that you need to have a certain number of them completed before the next mission in the storyline is unlocked was just not right. Having the game force you to make races and combat tours really just seemed like a tactic to make the short play time of the game stretch out a little more instead of adding more content. Not to say that there isn’t much content, because there is. There are plenty of hidden tokens, comic book pages, hint markers and more scattered across the very large New York map that will allow you to unlock goodies like extra costumes and comic covers from the menu and you are also free to explore the city to look for them when not in a storyline mission.

With the great graphical style that Ultimate Spiderman brings and the spectacular cutscenes, Ultimate Spiderman really is a feast for the eyes, although the PS2 version did have slow downs at times that the Xbox didn’t. Playing as Venom is a nice experience within a Spiderman game as well as the numerous cameos made by different characters that you either fight against or fight along side. The web swinging can be tricky at times, like when trying to get around large buildings, especially during the infuriating chase missions, but even with all that and the short game time, Ultimate Spiderman still comes out on top. The conversations and dialogue is smart and witty as you would expect from Spiderman and the action is spot on as well. If you weren’t a fan of the Spiderman 2 game or if seeing the legendary Spiderman storyline being twisted and warped makes you cringe, then take a deep breathe and take a chance on Ultimate Spiderman. If you are a fan of Spidey (and who isn’t) and have been dying to play as Venom in a game, then you will definitely want to pick this up.