An Exhausting Co-Op Brawler
Co-op brawlers are one of my favorite game genres; Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Vendetta—these games are timeless classics in my opinion. But any fan of brawlers knows that these games are known to suffer from repetition and formulaic design—while short, these games often recycle the same enemies and gameplay elements from level to level until you can’t wait to finish the game. This idea is exactly my biggest complaint with Spider-Man Friend Or Foe; as a brawler fan I’m used to a certain amount of repetition, but this Spider-Man title suffers from far too much of it. The lack of variety was literally exhausting around the halfway point of the game, which is about four or five hours in.
The formulaic design doesn’t help either; there are five levels with four stages. Each stage is eerily similar to the other stages, and the difference between stages of different levels is little more than the background, and the appearance of the enemies (which, for every stage, change costume to fit in better). Each level also includes the unlocking of another one or two allies; in some cases you just have to trigger a cutscene and an ally will join, but most times you have to defeat a boss character and then they will be selectable for play, although its worth noting that only the second player can change character—player one can only play as Spider-Man. Speaking of cutscenes, there are far too many. Nearly every room you step in triggers a five second cutscene whereby these ‘PHANTOM’ robotic enemies, which are all that you fight throughout the entire game except for the Foes (who then become Friends), teleport in. The purpose of all of these cutscenes is beyond me; it just cuts into the flow of the game and forces the player to pause unnecessarily.
The Bright Spots
Those are my biggest complaints about the game; now for what I like about it. First off, I love the fact that it’s co-op, and the fact that by game’s end, you can unlock another ten people to fight along with, including the likes of Doc Ock, Iron Fist, Blade, Scorpion, and my friend’s favorite, Venom. Each character is able to upgrade a few different abilities, primarily their hit points and the amount of damage they dish out. Each character also has a special move that they can perform in battle. Spider-Man on the other hand can improve health and toughness stats, but he also has three tiers of web abilities to upgrade, including a grabbing technique, a web shot technique, and a third ability which entangles enemies, temporarily restricting their movement. By game’s end, I had upgraded all of these abilities, but not so much for their practical, in battle use as much as I just wanted a few more Achievement points (75 actually). Anyway, you can upgrade your character by bashing everything in the game world that can break, and by defeating enemies; doing this releases golden tokens that your player absorbs. These tokens are also used when you die; unless you are in a boss fight, if you die you can respawn in immediately with the cost of only ten or fifteen tokens—which you will never be short of considering a single enemy drops at least five in my experience, and you earn more tokens as your combo meter reaches level 2, 3, and 4.
During the course of each mission, if you find the ‘secret’ key and unlock the ‘hidden’ door, you can enter a fairly large room. If you clear the room, which is as easy as the rest of the game, you can then play this arena in two player versus mode. None of these arenas are particularly compelling, just as the levels they are contained in aren’t, and my friend and I discovered this versus mode was not very interesting for long, but it’s nice to see it added; furthermore, and more importantly perhaps, I can see where the younger gamers could enjoy this far more than me. Of course, that statement goes for the entire game, as younger gamers won’t get as tired by the formulaic and repetitious design as quickly as I did.
Sights And Sounds
Spider-Man Friend Or Foe has a crisp, vibrantly colored cartoon look to it. While not very detailed, the game world and characters are smooth and fluid; I experienced very few drops in framerate. The difference in the five locales Spider-Man travels help bring out the strength of this game engine, which lies in ability to display vibrant colors and maintain smooth framerates and animations. So while not technically powerful, nor very well detailed in both environment and character appearance, Friend Or Foe is still a fine looking game.
I wasn’t quite as impressed with the sounds of the game. I thought the voice-acting was pretty good, and the dialogue, especially in the SHIELD Heli-carrier cutscenes, was actually quite funny (as it intended to be). On the other hand, during battle, I thought there was a little too much speaking by Spider-Man and his counterpart; not as much as some of the last gen Ninja Turtle titles, but still, a bit much. Effects were fine; nothing spectacular, but nothing that irked me either.