Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Activision 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: Offline 1-2
- Widescreen: Yes
- Dolby Digital 5.1: Yes
- Xbox Live content: No
- 60 Hz: Yes (only)
Before embarking on Spiderman: Friend Or Foe, I was expecting a bog-standardkick/punch game, and with the fact you can befriend those who were once enemies made me feel this was just acheap way to allow you to maximise the number of potential fights…
…And that’s basically what you’ll get, in this game which features Doc Ock, The Green Goblin, Venom and TheSandman (who Spidey calls “a walking pile of kitty litter”).
After a long explanation about “symbian goo”, the long and the short of it is that there’s a worldwide evilthreat kicking up a stink and they don’t carry rucksacks(!)
You can select any friend or foe to join you for each task – and you can press ‘Y’ during such a game to playas them instead for a while – and for those who want some company they can have a second play in co-op moderather than letting the Xbox do all the hard work.
Starting off in Tokyo, the game looks nice, especially as you fly around and use combo moves on the baddies,but it’s very simple to play – especially if you’re familiar with the Crash Bandicoot series, and the camera angles aren’tmoveable so you’re stuck with the way it appears which can cause problems sometimes.
Most of the time you’ll run round, then pick things up around the room and throw them at baddies, including otherbaddies! A good tip is to push the big baddies off the top of the building you’re on – if this is possible – sinceit’ll save you having to slap them six ways from Sunday as they’ll be dead in an instant. Progress further intothe game and you’ll get various rewards and can upgrade web abilities and unlock special attacks for yoursidekicks.
Aside from the camera problems, on view are fast-moving colourful graphics and excellent directional soundeffects in DD5.1 so it’ll be an audio/visual treat for the kids.
I was hoping to put some footage online of this game, but it’s 60Hz-only so I can’t, even though the box doesn’tmention this.
Overall, it’s fun for a couple of hours but unless you’re under 10 you’re not going to play this for too long, even thoughit is amusing to pick up one of the small baddies with your web and spin them round and round and round, like aWWE star, smashing them into the bigger enemies. If you are under 10, you’ll be playing crash/bang/wallop untilthe end of time…
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.