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"Flying through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying…" web?!? While not the first game to include the free-roaming web-slinging antics of our friendly neighborhood Homo Arachnidia, Ultimate Spiderman is definitely the first to get back to basics. Forget the fancy actions that Peter Parker learned over the years like creating shields, Ultimate Spiderman focuses on the original uses found for Spiderman’s web powers such as basic web slinging, cocooning evil-doers, and web-hopping. While many will find the lack of extremely creative uses for this power to be a detriment to the game, I find it allows for easier gameplay and forces the player to think like the young Peter Parker, "Think fast and act fast."

The storyline missions in Ultimate Spiderman are nothing short of wonderful. Chasing villains through or above the streets of New York, saving innocent bystanders along the path of destruction, and eventually finding a weakness and exploiting it. This is what classic comic books were all about. Unfortunately the citywide missions are just as repetitive and unimaginative as the storyline missions are wonderful. How many people a day honestly find themselves hanging desperately out the window of a building? How many street gangs use laser weapons and flame throwers regularly? While I understand that this is a comic book universe and things like laser weapons and cybernetic gang members happen, do they have to happen so often that they are commonplace? The only saving grace for the city missions are the races. Ranging from the simple to the nearly impossible, the races kept me learning new techniques for movement that the regular gameplay would never have inspired.

One aspect which deserves it's own description is the playing of Venom. Never before have I found more reason to desire a truely destroyable environment. Venom's ability to wreak wanton destruction throughout the city, while enjoyable with Ultimate Spiderman's current level of environment interactivity, could have been many times more enjoyable if thrown vehicles caused actual damage to buildings. Besides this shortcoming, the playing of the Venom character was very enjoyable and the use of his powers was quite viscerally satisfying.

Moving comic book panels and the awesome cel-shading make Ultimate Spiderman feel like you are creating a comic book "choose-your-own adventure" style. Unfortunately those same great aspects cause a dramatic drop in framerate in the PS2 version. On a few occasions this caused a dramatic loss of playability during combat and races. Besides the occasional framerate drops I found the graphics spectacular. I feel it will be a long time before another comic-style game lives up to Ultimate Spiderman.

The audio of the game, while better than most comic-style video games, was still nothing to write home about. Explosions sound the same no matter the cause and firearms seem to only vary in rate of fire. The saving grace when it comes to audio is the voiceovers: while none of the voice actors are well known, the dialogue is expertly fashioned, probably due to the fact that it was all written by none other than Ultimate Spiderman story creator Brian Michael Bendis.

Having Ultimate Spiderman creators Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley heading the creation team for the game definitely paid off. The storyline, while deviated from the original, is fluid and exceptionally action packed. Some characters are modified such as Rhino being a nerd in a robotic suit and Green Goblin being an actual monster, yet all of the changes fit within the outlandish comic book universe. The only area in which the character involvement is lacking is the complete exclusion of Peter Parker’s egomaniacal boss, Mr. Jameson. I, personally, felt that Mr. Jameson’s quips about Spiderman would have balanced the humor in the dialogue to perfection.

Overall I feel Ultimate Spiderman well worth purchasing for fans of the comics, comic-style games, or free-roaming adventure games. While definitely not the "Ultimate" comic-style video game, Ultimate Spiderman is more than one step in the right direction has been made and this may be the begining of a better era in comic-based video games.