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NOTE: GAME PRIMARILY PLAYED ON PSP WITH CHECKS DONE ON THE PS2
Like the first and second Spider-Man films, there was big expectations for Spider-Man 3 the video game given the leap in quality from Spider-Man (2002) to 2004’s Spider-Man 2. Even though the at the time next generation version of Spider-Man 3 on PS3 and Xbox 360 was the one people were writing about and promoting mostly, there was still a lot of life left in Sony’s second console and the similarly powered Nintendo Wii was selling out like crazy. That year for example, God of War 2 was released and it showed just how great the PS2 still was, so while expectations were rightfully in check that Spider-Man 3 on consoles like the PS2 and the fairly new at the time Wii would not be as sharp-looking or feature rich as their next-gen cousins, there was every reason to suspect that it could still be a game very much worth playing given the quality of past games like Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man.
Unfortunately in the case of Spider-Man 3 on both the PS2 and Wii, it came nowhere even close to the quality of the games that came before it. However in a weird turn of events, the PSP game that was set to launch alongside the PS2 and Wii versions of Spider-Man 3 was given a few extra months of development time to launch with the home video release of the film in the fall of 2007. That time didn’t necessarily fix Spider-Man 3, but it did allow developer Vicarious Visions to make a much more stable version of that version of the game that when looked in the context of a handheld game, is actually not that bad.
The story of the PS2/PSP and Wii versions are unique to those three consoles, featuring sub-plots about exclusive villains like Morbius and Shriek yet still has Spider-Man tussling with New Goblin, Sandman, Venom and an alien costume. It feels the less Spider-Man 3-y of all the versions of the game based on the film, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Those coming in looking for a game that’s more in line with the movie may come away disappointed, but given the reaction to Spider-Man 3 those people were probably a minority. New Goblin is an early boss and then brushed aside and Sandman’s origin is told in a FMV montage narrated by Tobey Maguire in the opening. The plot specific to this game does a much better job of introducing the black suit than the film as you see a lot more of Tobey Maguire’s emotional escalation without the silliness from the film, in fact this is probably the best work from Maquire in these games, and when he seeks out Dr. Connors’ help about the suit, it harkens back to the alien costume trilogy of episodes from Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
The inclusion of Shriek, a character most people only know because of Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage, is kind of stroke of genius. In the film when Peter tries to get rid of the symbiote, he does so by using the sound from a church bell but the movie didn’t establish that loud noises are a weakness of the symbiote race. It’s something that comics fans know of course, but for audiences who mainly know Spider-Man from movies, his reasoning for removing the suit comes across as strange. By having Shriek, a villain who attacks with sound blasts, you give better understanding to a plot point in the film that may have left some confused. For those familiar with Venom and the alien costume, who didn’t like how either were handled in the film, this version of Spider-Man 3 does a good job of trying to fix that.