Spider-Man - Friend or Foe

The hook here is a reversal. Instead of fighting through a rogues' gallery, Spider-Man spends much of the game recruiting it. Mysterio's fake-out and a scheme involving scattered meteor fragments set the plot moving, and Nick Fury's request that Peter Parker round up allies sets the structure. Beat a villain, and sooner or later he is standing beside you.

That gives the game its one real idea. At any point you have a partner, and each partner changes how a fight plays. Some hit hard and slow, some are quick, and a few have ranged tricks that Spider-Man lacks. Pairing up also unlocks cooperative moves, and a second player can drop in to control the partner. In a stretch of the PS2 library crowded with movie tie-ins that played alone and badly, a drop-in co-op brawler with a recognisable cast was a sensible pitch.

The rest is simpler than the premise. Levels are mostly linear corridors and arenas, the combat is a light and heavy attack with web moves layered on top, and enemies arrive in repeating waves of robots and thugs. Spider-Man's web-swinging city from the earlier open-world games is gone. That will disappoint anyone expecting a sequel to those, and it reflects a smaller, cheaper production aimed at a younger audience. Bruce Campbell's voice work as the narrator is a bright spot, with the right tone of self-aware chatter.

Played now, it is repetitive and the difficulty is gentle. The fights blur together after an hour, and the camera and targeting are not always on your side. Yet the partner system keeps it from feeling inert, and swapping to see how a different villain changes the same encounter is worth doing. It works best with a friend on the couch, where the repetition matters less than the company.

It is a modest game, but a modest game with a better premise than most licensed brawlers, and the sight of Spider-Man trading quips with a former enemy while they clear a room together is still its most memorable image.