The Marvel franchise has been very popular with the console for many, many years and the Xbox 360 is no different. We have already had Spider-man 3 and Marvel ultimate alliance as top sellers for the Marvel universe, and now we have Spider-man friend or foe. I don’t know whether it’s just me or that Spider-man has taken over the Marvel universe, well, at least through games anyway. I am a big ‘Spidey’ fan, I liked all the movies and I watched the cartoon series as a kid but there is only so much sarcastic, clichéd, Peter Parker humour I can take, and this happens to be the worst game for it.

The basic plot of the game is that the meteor which carried the Venom symbiote to earth has broken up into shards and have scattered across the earth. Funnily enough, you have to take a visit to all these places and bring the shards back before an evil mysterious villain. The villain has harnessed these globes to make symbiote monsters called ‘Phantoms’ and aims to take over the world with them. The game starts with you, Spider-man, fighting your arch enemies (Doc Oc, Venom, Green Goblin & the sand man) until you’re all attacked by the phantoms making all your arch nemesis' disappear.

Gameplay:

Before we go into any more details, what you must understand is that this game was definitely aimed at the younger teenager, the 7+ game rating does give that away but in some cases 7+ games are suitable for the younger adult, but here, I really don’t think you’re going to enjoy this as much unless you’re a huge Marvel fan.

Having played most of the Spider-man games and many Rpgs I can’t help but compare the game to those, as it tries to derive a mixture of many styles. Firstly, the main feature it boasts is the fact you can team up with your enemies, now if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past two years you would know that this has already been done at least twice; Marvel ultimate alliance comes to mind here. The thing is what it tries to include really doesn’t match most, if not any, of the features which previous games already have; yes there are large amount of well known characters which can join your team, but the creators really haven’t developed anything more from there, as they all feel way too similar to control. All have their separate powers and abilities, and you can upgrade them to however you see fit, but this really doesn’t alter how the game is played as it’s just a random mash of buttons to make the best combo.

The game sets it self out to be a mixture between a linear RPG, similar to Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance, and an action platformer. You have the ability to upgrade your characters from picking up ‘golden orbs’ which you take from killing enemies, you can also unlock content by picking up ‘DNA samples’, but because it follows a fairly linear platforming sequence your not really going to be missing anything and there isn’t that much to work towards. After missions you appear in the command HG, which is a flying fortress, and you can spend these points to upgrade your characters statistics, add new abilities or buy extra power-ups. However, this is all well and good but it really seems pointless as all it does is increase your curiosity on what other moves you can do, the extra health, damage or power orbs really don’t seem necessary as the game progresses. After each level it becomes more of a chore to add these things rather than something to look forward to. To be honest, not adding these upgrades may make the game a lot more enjoyable as it becomes more challenging.

On a lighter note, the game play itself can be quite enjoyable as some of the moves and animations are quite well implemented, even this though gets repetitive as mashing that ‘X’ and ‘B’ button extensively seems to get the job done. As mentioned before, this game was aimed at the younger audience which makes some of these downfalls understandable, but what is not understandable is the fact it was released for the Xbox 360. This game would have been very much better off sticking to the Wii and being put onto the other last gen consoles, as it would have hit its main target audience.

Graphics:

The idea of the cartoony, almost cell shaded, graphics definitely suite the Marvel universe, here you can tell the designers have tried to implement the same structure, but didn’t quite get there. Now I know this game was also put onto the PS2, but even for a PS2 this game looks very much outdated. The extreme bland textures not only exist in the background and surroundings, but the characters themselves look like they’ve been molded out of plastic, and that really isn’t exaggerated. There is no artistic value in this game; every level might as well look grey and even Spider-man is only just about acceptable and he’s only two colours. The lack of polygons also shows here, again, unsatisfactory even for the PS2.

There is only one plus I can add about the graphics and this is that they would be appealing to a 7+ year old who likes bright and bold colours, it’s as simple as that.

Sound:

The sound is everything you would expect from a Marvel game. The music suits each setting, the effects match the context and even the voice acting is pretty much spot on. All the characters sound pretty much like the originals, or at least are familiar to their original characters, and the witty jokes from the computer and Spider-man can be quite funny. The only real bad thing I can say about the sound is that Spider-man does over-do the clichéd, sarcastic remarks just a little, some are awfully annoying and others just bearable. Other than that, the sound is one of the high points of Spider-man Friend or Foe, which is quite a rarity in any game.

Longevity:

The game's story won’t take too long to complete for the general more-than casual gamer, about 6-7 hours if your aim was to complete the game, but the longevity doesn’t shine within its story but spans throughout the extra content. There are quite a bit of extra achievements to be gained here, some general and can be achieved really quite easily, others you need to work for which really adds to the replay value. There is also the option to play co-op on the same screen with a friend, which makes the game that ‘tad’ bit more interesting, although, also a ‘tad’ bit easier, never the less it does make it better. Of course the RPG elements add to the value, being able upgrade your character with abilities, stats and choosing your sidekicks add a slight stretch to the length. I personally don’t see this as enough to make me play through the game again as the repetitive game style and linear platformer fashion make it tedious, but others may want to work for those quite hefty achievements lurking around.

Overall:

All in all, if put into one word this game is bland. It’s bland for the lack of unique features, it’s bland for its graphics, and it’s fairly bland for its game play. But this is because it’s on a next gen console when it shouldn’t be, and as I’m reviewing it for a next gen console, I’m reviewing it as a next gen console game and it really doesn’t bring anything within the ‘next-gen’ criteria, as it’s just about acceptable as a current gen console game. It’s not that this game is bad, as there aren’t any game play faults or any major bugs; it’s just the fact that there isn’t much to it. While it boasts about sidekicks and being able to play as the ‘enemy’, we have already seen it before and portrayed in a much improved manner. So, unless you’re a huge Marvel fan or looking for an easy Christmas present, I suggest you look else where.