Spider-Man: Friend or Foe

On a routine night patrol of the city, Spider-Man is suddenly attacked by Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, and Venom. With the arrival and quick assistance of New Goblin, Spider-Man is able to incapacitate all of the villains. Shortly thereafter, Spider-Man and the others are attacked by symbiote-like creatures that have a striking similarity in appearance to Venom. After swiftly attacking and teleporting the villains and New Goblin away, Spider-Man is narrowly rescued by S.H.I.E.L.D. and brought aboard their Helicarrier in the sky. Once there, Spider-Man meets director Nick Fury who explains the appearance of the mysterious creatures. Known as P.H.A.N.T.O.M.s (Perpetual Holographic Avatar Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters), Fury explains these creatures are composed of a combination of holographic technology and shards of the meteor that brought Venom to earth originally (due to breaking off upon hitting earth's atmosphere). Reportedly, a mysterious villain has already obtained some of the shards and created the P.H.A.N.T.O.M.s as they attempt to collect the rest for their power. Spider-Man is then tasked to travel around the world and retrieve the unclaimed fragments before they fall into the wrong hands. He is first given Prowler and Silver Sable as allies to assist him (though Sable does not appear in the PS2 and PSP version of the game as a playable character option).

First being sent to Tokyo, Japan, Spider-Man encounters Black Cat who assists him in breaking into Doctor Octopus' secret lab. There, Spider-Man finds an amulet-controlled Octavious attempting to re-create his fusion reactor (from Spider-Man 2) in order to enhance and escalate the P.H.A.N.T.O.M.'s power. Defeating him in combat and breaking the mind control, Doc Ock gladly joins Spider-Man on his journey to find the culprit responsible for taking control of his mind. After heading towards the Toyko Oscorp building to retrieve the recently stolen shard, Spider-Man encounters and defeats Green Goblin while also freeing him of the mysterious amulet mind control. After turning over the meteor shard, Green Goblin agrees to join Spider-Man and is recruited to the team to help.

Spider-Man and his allies are then sent to Tangaroa Island. Director Fury informs Spider-Man that they initially sent their operative Iron Fist to the island, but lost contact with him. On the island, Spider-Man encounters a mind-controlled Scorpion and Rhino attempting to retrieve the meteor shard before joining the ranks upon being defeated and set free. Spider-Man also rescues Iron Fist just before he is placed under mind control by a local batch of P.H.A.N.T.O.M.s. Traveling next to Cairo, Egypt, Spider-Man encounters the Lizard (who is intelligent and friendly in this incarnation) studying ancient hieroglyphs and recruits him. Making his way to a local excavation site, Spider-Man encounters Sandman who has taken the meteor shard himself. After freeing Sandman from mind control as well, he joins Spider-Man.

Moving on to Transylvania, Spider-Man is informed that there is a mysterious assailant wiping out P.H.A.N.T.O.M. activity in the area while a mysteriously powerful symbiote is reported to be guarding the meteor shard. Upon arrival, Spider-Man runs into Blade the Vampire Hunter (whose in-game design is based off his appearance in the television series) who states he is hunting the powerful symbiote who Spider-Man then identifies as Venom and invites the hunter to join him. Upon finding Venom in the ruins of an ancient church, Spider-Man battles and frees him while retrieving the shard. Venom informs Spider-Man that he recalls a "man with a bubble for a head" before being placed under mind control. At Fury's insistence due to his useful information, and much to Spider-Man's displeasure, Venom is recruited.

After identifying the last meteor shard is located in Nepal, Fury and Spider-Man realize that someone is intentionally jamming their signal in the area. It is also revealed that P.H.A.N.T.O.M. power levels, though increasing throughout the game, are reaching an all-time high in the area. Once in Nepal, Spider-Man and his allies encounter and confront the master illusionist Mysterio who reveals himself to be the mastermind behind the plot to use the P.H.A.N.T.O.M.'s power to conquer the world. After taking two of the shards Spider-Man is carrying, he commands his P.H.A.N.T.O.M.s to take the final shard from Spider-Man in order to complete his plan. Attempting to engage the creatures in combat, Spider-Man is injured due to the P.H.A.N.T.O.M.'s quickly increasing power levels. Fury demands Spider-Man return to the Helicarrier and regroup. Denying the order due to lack of time, Spider-Man breaks open the last meteor shard to don the symbiote black suit in order to enhance his own abilities and chase Mysterio to his base of operations. After tracking him to a nearby temple, Spider-Man battles and defeats Mysterio and retrieves all the meteor shards. Upon returning to the Helicarrier and getting the black suit symbiote removed, Nick Fury congratulates Spider-Man on stopping the invasion. After sending him home, Fury begins to analyze the shards as he believes Mysterio was on to something. He decides to name the study "Project Carnage".[6] Once you have completed the main story, New Goblin is unlocked as a playable ally/sidekick.

Story alterations in PSP version

In the PlayStation Portable version of the game, Spider-Man travels to an undercity series of ruins and catacombs on a Mediterranean island instead of visiting Transylvania. There, he encounters Blade hunting Venom (just as in all other versions of the game) and battles Electro before recruiting him as an ally/sidekick. Afterwards, he battles Venom in the middle of a temple's ruins before retrieving the another shard and recruiting him. Additionally, if the player beats the game's main story in co-op mode, Carnage is unlocked as a playable character. Though Nick Fury names the project after the Carnage symbiote in the aftermath of the game (despite the version), the character himself does not appear in Friend or Foe outside of the PSP version.

Scorpion's encounter/recruiting on Tangaroa Island and Spider-Man's recruiting of The Lizard in Egypt are cut from this version. As previously mentioned, Prowler and Silver Sable are additionally cut from the PSP's roster of allies/sidekicks.

Functioning as a classic 3D linear-level beat 'em up, Spider-Man and his allies enter world levels via the Helicarrier main HUB. Out of the five locations explored, each world area has four levels of progression that have to be completed in order before returning to them again. Typically, Spider-Man encounters and recruits a new sidekick midway through the progression of a world location, as well as the end of it (with the final location of Nepal being the only exception), via meeting them or freeing them from mind control in a boss battle. Along the way, the player can also acquire tokens for upgrading combat abilities, power-ups that can temporarily enhance the player, and DNA Helix collectibles that unlock exclusive content such as character bios and additional bonus content. In addition, the player can also find secret rooms throughout the worlds that, once cleared of enemies, can be used as battle area settings in the 2-Player Versus mode.

All characters can be upgraded via a technology tree in their health bar, power levels, and combat abilities by using token collectibles gathered on missions. Spider-Man himself has the most extensive upgrades to his combat abilities, with three entirely separate interchangeable web modes that can be unlocked and utilized (web line, web shoot, web stun etc.). Each other character has one extra unlockable special move for themselves. All characters feature a unique Hero Strike attack with Spider-Man for wiping out entire waves of enemies at once (though the effect is always the same) that can be purchased in various quantities via the game's upgrade store. Besides the regular story campaign, all unlockable playable characters can battle each other in an exclusive 2-player Versus Mode in the main HUB area of the game.

Throughout the progression of Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, the player is able to unlock multiple characters to assist and join Spider-Man in his missions. These secondary characters are either controlled by the CPU, the player changing between the characters during the level, or a second player in multiplayer. Though each character has their own unique playstyle and move set (save for New Goblin who is a clone/echo character of Green Goblin), each ally/sidekick roughly falls into a light, medium, and heavy category in their movement speed, battle style, and portrayed strength. Each character also has an in-game bio accessible via the main computer in the HUB.

*Not in PSP version of the game.

Besides the main characters of the game, the P.H.A.N.T.O.M. enemies themselves take on different appearances and abilities throughout the game's world locations. They have four consistent base forms of a drone, normal infantry, medium infantry, and heavy infantry. Location to location, their nuanced abilities change when it comes to attacking and battling the player. As the game goes on, their appearance moves slowly from an initial technology-based presentation to a fully symbiote-based look.

The voice cast features a variety of actors for different respective characters, most notably James Arnold Taylor reprising his role as Spider-Man, Kat Cressida as the S.H.I.E.L.D. mainframe computer, Joe Alaskey as Doctor Octopus, Fred Tatasciore as Sandman/Scorpion/Carnage, Khary Payton as Blade, Quinton Flynn as Venom, Robin Atkin Downes as Mysterio, John DiMaggio reprises his role as Rhino, Jennifer Hale reprises her role as Silver Sable, and Josh Keaton reprises his role as Harry Osborn/New Goblin from the first two original film trilogy video games (he later went on to voice Spider-Man himself in a variety of shows and video games thereafter).

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe was originally announced via a promotional page on the back of the Spider-Man 3 video game instruction booklet. The teaser stated that the game would be "A new twist on the legend. A new take on the movies". The game's website shows a few screenshots of the game and the Green Goblin makes an appearance.[1] The game has a very different engine and style as compared to the previous official film tie-ins. It was developed by three different companies depending on the console. The Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 2 versions were created by Next Level Games. Beenox developed the Windows edition. Artificial Mind And Movement developed the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable versions of the game.[7][8]

Reception

Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (PS2) 63.64%[9] (Wii) 61.52%[10] (PSP) 60.80%[11] (X360) 60.35%[12] (PC) 59.62%[13] (DS) 55.04%[14] Metacritic (PS2) 62/100[15] (X360) 60/100[16] (Wii) 59/100[17] (PSP) 58/100[18] (PC) 57/100[19] (DS) 55/100[20] Review scores Publication Score Eurogamer 3/10[21] Game Informer 4.5/10[22] GamePro [23] GameRevolution (X360) C[24] (Wii) C−[25] GameSpot 7/10[26][27][28] GameSpy (X360 & Wii) [29] (DS) [30] GameTrailers 5.8/10[31] GameZone (PS2) 7.9/10[32] (DS) 7.5/10[33] (PC) 7.1/10[6] (PSP) 6.9/10[34] (Wii) 6.5/10[35] (X360) 6.4/10[36] IGN 4.9/10[37][38] OXM (US) 6/10[39]

GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 55.04% and 55 out of 100 for the DS version,[14][20] 59.62% and 57 out of 100 for the PC version,[13][19] 63.64% and 62 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version,[9][15] 60.80% and 58 out of 100 for the PSP version,[11][18] 60.35% and 60 out of 100 for the Xbox 360 version,[12][16] and 61.52% and 59 out of 100 for the Wii version.[10][17] IGN gave the game a score of 4.9 out of ten, complaining of how incredibly easy and repetitive the game is.[37][38]

• Spider-Man: Friend or Foe at MobyGames
• Spider-Man: Friend or Foe at GameFAQs
• Spider-Man: Friend or Foe at IMDb