Spider-Man 3 review

You know a game is bad when people stop what they're doing just to watch it suck. That's what reviewing Spider-Man 3 was like. Every few minutes something appalling would happen, something so annoying that passersby had to plant their feet and witness the horror. We're not saying Spider-Man 3 is the worst game of the year, or the worst on any individual system, but it's easily one of the most disappointing, rehashed experiences in a long while.

First of all, Spidey's playground has not been drastically improved. It's the same New York you slung webs through in 2004's Spider-Man 2, complete with Roosevelt Island and a near-perfectly recreated Manhattan. Seeing as everyone's familiar with NY already, there's no great incentive to swing around and explore. Some additions, like the extra bridges, just lead to a vast nothingness. Granted, there's only so much you can do with a real-life city, but in the last game swinging from one end to the other was refreshing, liberating, exciting, amazing and all the other words you'd associate with freely traversing the country's largest metropolitan area. The action was smooth and everything felt like a Spider-Man game should.

But that's not how it is in thePS3 version. The fresh-air feeling of web-slinging is gone, replaced by a chugging sensation that feels like the game is running on an obsolete PC. This city is choppy, often slowing to the point of jaw-dropping ludicrousness. You can't feel like Spider-Man if you're moving like maple syrup. And as we're about to explain, the reason for the slowdown is totally baffling.