I’ve been playing Spider-Man Friend or Foe for a few days now and I figured I’d post a few quick thoughts about it. It is not quite a button masher, but it is pretty close. The only thing stopping it from being a button masher is that there are some cool combos that work only on specific enemies. The story is new and unique to the game. You’re play as Spider-Man who is fighting waves of holographic based enemies. There are 20 missions in the game and after ever couple missions you unlock a new friend or foe (hence the name) who fights along side you. You can only have one sidekick at a time, but by the end there are 14 different ones to choose from including Green Goblin, Rhino, Doc Oc, Venom, Blade, and Silver Sable. Because you have a sidekick the whole game you can play the full game in 2 player co-op. Co-op is on the local system only and not over Live, which is a shame. I did have a friend over who played a few levels with me and we had a blast. There are some fun co-op based moves that the co-op AI does not do very often that a real person can do all the time. Even though AI for your sidekick has a tendency to not attack when enemies are to far away it doesn’t really turn out to be that bad because the enemy AI tends to just keep walking towards you until it is close enough to hit you. So, just stand near your sidekick and he’ll do his share of fighting. The sidekicks are not quite as useful as Spider-Man though because they only have two special attacks and Spidey has like six, but they still do their share of fighting.

The graphics are cartoony but I like them because it is almost like playing through a cartoon or comic. The voice acting in the game is decent. Nick Fury, who should be a playable character but is not, sounds a little off, but the computer voice on the helicarrier is spot on. The only thing about the voices that bugs me is that if you play with the same sidekick for a while you end up hearing them say the same things a lot. For a level or two I did not notice any repeating comments, but after about 4 levels I started to hear the same one liners and come backs until I switched sidekicks.

Overall I’d recommend renting Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. It is not very long and since you can’t play over Live once you beat it once or twice it will probably loose its appeal. It does have a 2 player verses mode you can play locally as well, but even that will not keep this in my 360 much past the time I finish getting the last achievement. The game is fun and if you like simple fighting games the this one is fun one since Spidey has some fun special moves. Also, the achievements are pretty easy. You can get 11 out or 112 of them in one play through if you are careful to find everything in each level.