Spider 2 Fighting: Friend or Foe

"Do you think this ruins the fun, with us always winning?" the animated Webcrawler asked no one in particular as we stared at the screen in glazed-over boredom.

Spidey would battle a horde of mysterious baddies with the help of his sworn Marvel-universe enemies. But what begins as an interesting premise turns out to be the most ordinary of gaming experiences, and Spider Friend or Foe very early on proves itself to be its own worst enemy.

At the beginning of the game, Spidey is drafted by Col. Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D and brought aboard a "helicarrier" for a quick mission briefing. Someone, it turns out, is using symbiote-soaked meteorite shards to control the minds of supervillains, who are, in turn, wreaking all manner of havoc. It'll be Spider's job to defeat them, recruit them, and fight along side them to find the mastermind.

There are three types of basic enemies: small, medium and large. Throughout the game, they behave basically the same, with small differences as the levels progress. From level-to-level, their look changes to match the environment, but - for the most part - they don't seem to get much smarter, aggressive or powerful. And there's no difficulty setting, so you're stuck with the level of challenge the game offers, which is shockingly little.

Even the structure of each level is exactly the same. It works like this: Go to a location. Your path forward is blocked. Enemies spawn. Kill them. Your way becomes clear. Move forward. Cross a bridge. Your path forward is blocked. And on and on and on.

You're also asked to collect "secrets" throughout the game to unlock multiplayer arenas, but we found most of them simply by walking where the game told us to. But even walking/jumping around in the game can be a challenge due to the fact that there is no camera control and your character sometimes disappears behind blind walls or walks through textures. With so many millions of bridges to cross, it can be a problem.