Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is one of those rare titles where you question what the determining factor is in deciding what a good or bad game is. For example, is a game that has beautiful graphics and fun gameplay but is incredibly short worth the price of admission? Herein lies the conundrum in rating this game, because it does in fact offer fun gameplay, but many of its elements feel unfinished or short. Before I get into whether or not this game should be relegated to the annals of rentaldom, let us go over what is good about the game.
You have probably seen the advertisements for the game all over the television and online, and Friend or Foe does in fact deliver on its promise to let you play as either the Web-Head or one of his many movie adversaries – many of which are not seen in the trilogy of films from Sony Pictures including The Lizard, Green Goblin, Sand Man, Rhino, Black Cat, Iron Fist, Blade, Venom, Scorpion, Doctor Octopus and many more.
The story goes that someone with a fascination for mind control technology is taking control of Spidey's most dangerous adversaries, so S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top officer Nick Fury and Spider-Man go on the prowl to defeat them and see who or what is creating this powerful army to cause havoc. The story is purely academic, but it leads into some wonderful game moments as you free each bad guy and convince them to join you. This little adventure will lead you to some strange places as well like Transylvania, and some familiar areas taken from the comics and the movies.
Once you have someone to team up with you can either let a second player join you for some cooperative play or you can go it alone and let the AI take the reigns. While the AI is okay, your best bet is to find someone to play along with so that you can engage in some team work. Team work is pretty important in the game - the more team attacks you pull off the more tech points you get from defeated enemies. Tech points are used to "buy" skills, so it's mighty important that you collect as much as you can.
Friend or Foe is almost like every other game I have played in this sub genre (Justice League Heroes, Batman, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, etc.), though Spider-Man's skills are vastly superior to what you usually have available for a single character. One of the biggest problems with the system is that the secondary characters don't get to developer their skills as much as Spiderman does. Spider-Man has multiple levels of skills that can be developed to make him do everything from shocking opponents with webbing to shooting projectiles. Meanwhile, characters like Blade only get to special moves during the entire game. There are some stats that you can spend your tech points on but these are really minimal in the grand scheme of things. This part of the game really is a shame because there is so much potential wasted in the character development side of things.
Even though you can't develop the likes of Venom to the level of Spider-Man in this game, it is still a lot of fun to play him and the countless other characters as sidekicks. What has been provided is solid and the character design looks great. Fans of Spidey will really appreciate the interaction between the characters as they go through levels collecting tech points, picking up simple power-ups (invincibility, health, double damage, etc.) and beating lots and lots of bad guys.
