Let’s clear the air and get something strait before we get into it. Spider Man: Friend or Foe is a kids game. The plot is paper thin, the environments are overly animated and comical, the dialog between the characters is dreadful, and the continuation system is so forgiving that I found it almost impossible to lose. It’s blatant lack of things that hardcore gamers love screams that it was clearly designed for younger players.
With everything that I normally look for in game missing, this game accomplished one thing that all the other Spider Man games have yet to nail down that made me love it. That one thing is the art of “web slinging”.
I honestly don’t know why it took game makers so long to get this right. For the first time ever playing a Spider Man game, I felt like I had full control over Spidey’s web slinging and spinning powers. I had a moment of glee the first time I jumped into the air shot webbing down on my enemy, picked him up, slammed him back down into the ground only to land on top of him. Not to mention covering bad guys with web goo to the point they couldn’t move any more so I could use them as punching bags. And most enjoyable of all, was shooting webbing at an ememy, grabbing him and spinning him around into the other bad guys on the screen. What fun!
Oh sure, there is more to the game then web slinging, there are these crystals of some sort that are doing some bad things, I think…um… oh yeah, you can fight along side your mortal enemies, but they don’t have Spider Man’s powers so I didn’t do that much,… um… and I think there was a reference to the long-lost Spider Man villain Carnage… that was kind of cool. Meh.
After the 6 or so hours of play it took me to complete the game, I couldn’t have cared less about the story or the other characters, but I do remember thinking, “Man, that was fun”, and that’s what games are supposed to be about.
For Spider Man fan boys, I’ll give it a resounding: 7.5/10. Non Spider Man fans, you’re warned to stay away: 2/10.
