With great power, comes great responsibility. Normally taking responsibility means being blamed for a groups behaviour because “You’re the responsible one” or looking after your mates prize goldfish while he is on holiday. As riveting as aforementioned responsibilities sound, you now have a new one. As Spiderman, it is your responsibility to pummel every wrongdoer you see, and have fun while you do it. Ultimate Spiderman – Total Mayhem is an astonishing game, a game with a level of polish and expert design you don’t usually find on the iDevices. The combat is mighty satisfying, making it an almost arcade-like treasure. This is one game your don’t want to miss.
If you have ever played any Spiderman games on ye-old PS1, then you will roughly know what to expect. You won’t find a large free roaming city, or any sort of free roaming areas actually, but tightly scripted, highly fun levels that take you through a large number of insanely detailed environments. In a nutshell, each of the games 12 mission play as follows. You have to work your way through the level, climbing walls and jumping in platform sections, shooting webs and swinging through the air and organising encounters between your fists and various areas of the crooks anatomy, in other words, beating the crap out of them. Those are the 3 main things you will be doing in Spiderman Total Mayhem, and they all work well, but by far, the main drawcard is the combat. I would hazard a guess at saying there is anywhere between 15 – 25 different combo attacks, ranging from the simple fist meets face, to the more inventive web rodeo, which you can probably guess, is equally hilarious as it is effective.
The graphics are quite possibly Gamelofts best effort yet. Spiderman himself looks fantastic, with hundreds of animations, making his movement smooth and joy to look at. It’s nowhere near as comprehensive and fluid as say, Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series, but for a game on a mobile device, it is very impressive. On my Ipod Touch 2G, there is a small amount of pop-up to be found on outside levels, but not enough to hinder the experience. The menus are bright and colourful, once again transporting you to that comic book world. Without ruining plot spoilers, the last level has an amazing looking web slinging section at night, where you swing through the skyscrapers of NYC. As it’s night, there are a numebr of bright lights and neon signs, and I can honestly say, it looks astounding.
The Cut Scenes in the game are rendered using the in-game graphics, and they are written well. Not laugh out loud material but not embarrassingly sub-par, like it was copied off a public toilet door. The voice acting is also of the same quality better than the usual effort, but wont win any Oscars.
Overall, Ultimate Spiderman – Total Mayhem is a game that definitely belongs on your iDevice. If you are a fan of console beat-em-up style games, you will find a lot to like here. The Graphics are brilliant, the gameplay is tight and the voice acting won’t make you cringe with embarrassment. The app store has been waiting a long time for a must have action game. Now it has one.
9/10
Tap Planet 