On May 4th, Spider-Man 3 swung its way into theatres around the world. Along with it came the heavily anticipated game adaptation of the film for the Playstation 3. Did Treyarch and Activision finally deliver a worthy Spider Man game that will make fans of the series clamor to have it in their collection of games? PCN takes a look at how our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swings on a next generation platform.

Once you start the game, you are already immersed into the world of Spider-Man. You will find yourself fighting multiple pyromaniac goons within the confines of a burning infrastructure, posing as a tutorial for the fighting and moving mechanics. Not only that, previous fans of the Spider-Man series will notice a quaint but welcome similarity between Spider-Man 3 and its predecessor: Bruce Campbell’s voice gracing the narrators position once again. After you learn the new and improved fighting controls and save the people in the building, you take to the streets of New York City.

The foremost thing you will take away from your first glimpse of New York City on a next generation is amazement. Treyarch truly crafted a great adaptation of the Big Apple. Apart from that, Activision has come and and stated that Spider-Man 3 sports a land mass nearly twice as large as the one found in Spider-Man 2. Personally, the very first thing that came to mind when I saw New York City as I glanced down from atop a tall building was the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer. Although the New York-like Liberty we see in GTAIV is absolutely beautiful, Spider-Man 3 is not too far off from that visceral beauty. The buildings illuminate in the night while cars and people fill the streets in the day. This may just be the best looking adaptation of New York from now until GTAIV. City

Although the visceral serenity may be intriguing at a glance, the same can certainly not be said for the character models.

Simply put, everybody, with the exception of Spider-Man himself and a few other villains, looks bland. Even Peter Parker himself, in the very minimal occurrences that you play as him, looks very pale and not at all like his human counterpart.

Basically the characters in the game do not look the part on a next generation platform.

Even if the environments look great and the interior environments looks well crafted, nothing can atone for the terrible frame rate issues that Spider-Man 3 presents. It seems as though Activision has a curse as a publisher for titles on the PS3. Activision published Tony Hawks Project 8 and the slow downs in that were simply unbearable and even led to the realization that you actually cant play it on the Playstation 3.

It was simply too excessive to even enjoy the game. Spider-Man 3 is certainly an improvement over THP8, but it is most definitely nothing worth boasting about. Fortunately it is still playable.

The main story missions will run you about 15 to 20 hours, but if you include all of the bonus objectives and extras, that could take you up to 30 hours approximately if you are looking for that infamous 100% completion. There are 42 main missions with 10 separate and unique story lines to choose from, and while that may sound like a lot, some can be very short. For example, some of these short missions may have you beat up a few gang members, chase a helicopter, or even give your girl friend, Mary Jane, a little thrill ride around town. These missions could take you anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. However, some missions can be very daunting and tedious, for those of you who enjoy a challenge. The longest missions are when you have to fight a boss. A perfect example of this is your very first fight with Harry, also known as the new goblin in Spider-Man 3. The first part of the duel occurs atop his hover board. You have to keep punching him until he releases you from his grapple. Sounds easy? Absolutely. The only problem is that each time you punch him it deals almost no damage to him, so you will inevitably have to sit on his hover board, pressing buttons, until his health bar depletes to a certain point. This fight with Harry is nothing close to the grueling fight with Kingpin that took about an hour at best. Missions like this can truly be excessively frustrating. Its just very disappointing that there are so many of them.