Spider-Man: Friend of Foe? Review

So a few days ago I beat the collector in myself into submission and convinced myself to rent this game instead of buying it. Kudos, inner sense of right and wrong. Kudos.

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe? is a fluff game. I was worried as soon as I saw the tag-screen load up before the menu that said "Official Spider-Man 3 Merchandise" Ooph. I immediately red-flagged the game in my head and then pressed onward into 12 hours of mind-numbing button-mashing and story that'd make your brain explode if you didn't just gloss over it so that I could have something to contribute this week on the front page, haha.

Wanna hear the story? No? Too bad! Zomg Spider-fans! Little did we all know, but the meteor that fell to earth with the venom symbiote in Spider-Man 3 also had a bunch of small shards that broke off of it that spread all over the world with symbiote fragments in them! Somebody's using them paired with holograms to do.....stuff! Bad stuff! And whats worse, they're mind-controlling your foes to working for them!

Now go smash stuff for a long long time. Yup, that's about it. I dunno what you would expect from any story with Mysterio as the mastermind villain, but yeah, this games not about the plot, it's basically about running around with your favorite spidey-affiliates beating up the same 3 enemies over and over with different skins and slightly different attacks. It is fun to play with all the character, of which there are ahem:

Spider-Man, Silver Sable, Prowler, Black Cat, Dr. Octopus, Green Goblin, New Goblin, Venom, Sandman, The Lizard, Scorpion, Rhino, Iron Fist and Blade. Yeah I know, it sounds great, but that's where the perks end. The game feels like a much more fluid Ultimate Alliance when you start playing because the attacks you use are so stylish and super-keen, however, after playing for awhile you realize dying doesn't have any negative effect and it's incredibly easy to be cheap and just tank through the game, or incredibly boring to try and use your 5 basic attacks in some interesting way and take forever to get through the game. There's also a Vs mode, but as my friend and I found, it's basically just a competition to see who can be cheaper and not let the other player get a move off, which I'll admit, is fun in it's frustrating hilarity. The game is incredibly easy though overall. My friend and I found that we basically used this as something to keep our hands and subconsciouses semi-occupied while we talked about completely unrelated things. It's fun to unlock new characters and hope they'll be fun, but they're all boring and disappointing save for Venom and Doc Ock.

The graphics aren't very impressive, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to take place in a cartoon-version of the movie spidey-verse. I could imagine this being tied into the upcoming cartoon show, but it isn't. The gameplay consists of using basic melee moves and various grapple moves, consisting of: throw your enemy, slam your enemy on the ground, or jump in the air and THEN throw your enemy on the ground. All sidekicks have 1 or 2 special moves, but they're basically 3 things. Radial attack, Projectile attack, and 'Hit Really Hard' attack. Gah, I'm making this too complicated. IN CONCLUSION....

This game is really easy. Rent it if you have to play it, and then grab your kid or your little brother or someone who equates to that and then bust your way through a bunch of symbiote hologram hybrids and then bop old Mysterio on the fishbowl and save the day, just don't expect much variety. I give this game a C-, not as good as the Spider-Man 3 videogame, and that's not good either....

B.P.R.D. - Garden of Souls #1-5

Writer(s): Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art: Guy Davis

The story starts off with a flashback to London, 1859. There is a mummy’s unrolling at the focus of a socialite party, upon unwrapping though….well… the mummy is found to still be ALIVE. Flash forward to present day wherein Abe Sapien receives a delivery, a cigar case with the intials L.E.C. In past stories it has been hinted that Abe Sapien once was a man named Langdon Everett Caul, what’s more Caul also was at the “unrolling” party in 1859. As you progress through the issues bits of story slowly start coming together more and more, until Abe reaches an island where he hopes to have some questions answered. There is more but, I’d rather not ruin it for you.

So bottom line, is this worth taking the time to pick up? Maybe. The story starts off a bit rough, you have three or four different plotlines in the works which makes it hard, for a “newb” to BPRD, to understand what’s going on. The inside cover page breaking down each member of the BPRD and their current status helps a little but…yeah…this is not a book to just pick up lightly. By the third issue you get a little more of a understanding of what all is going on and more depth/insight into certain characters. What’s a tad disappointing throughout the whole story is, your never really given a clear concise background on what type of person Abe had been before his transformation, sure there are bits but, I just wanted more. The side-plot involving Liz Sherman didn’t seem to really connect to anything relative to this story. Captain Benjamin Daimio’s story while interesting seems a tad underused, and better utilized in a story focused more on his own past, then in a storyline that seemingly is about Abe Sapien’s past.

The artwork within these issues is great. Guy Davis draws some tight, sharp lines, helping to give each panel the hard grittiness that has become a staple in Mignola projects. Oh as a complete aside…Davis can draw some bad-assed ole' school robots (before it was all the cool “new-thing” in Bioshock)

Kudos go to Dave Stewart and his coloring of these issues as well.

So, in closing, though intriguing in story and in art, this story is intended for those already grooving on the BPRD mojo, all of you new to BPRD, read BPRD: The Dead first, then come back and read this sucker. B+