There's something intrinsically fascinating about superheroes.  Whether it's the power to fly or the ability to strike fear in the hearts of evil, almost everyone has contemplated what superpower they'd want the most and what they'd do with it.

With characters that have such amazing abilities, you'd think that videogames are the perfect venue to be able to live out your dreams of doing impossible feats and saving the world at the same time.  The only problem is that games have fallen short in delivering a complete superhero experience, making the idea of a comic book video game somewhat of an ugly genre.  Sure there are some diamonds in the rough but these games are nothing but coal.

Spiderman 3
What is it about Spiderman that hasn't been said already.  The subject of countless comics, a handful of movies and some (monumentally bad) videogames, Spiderman's seen his fair share of love from both popular culture as well as nerd culture.

It was only until the release of the Spiderman movies directed by Sam Raimi that really brought some acceptable games featuring your friendly neighborhood web-slinger.  With the ability to explore the streets of an almost accurate representation of New York City, the controls were graceful and the fighting mechanic was fluid, which was just what to expect from a superhero who relied on acrobatics to fight the evils of the Big Apple.

All looked good for the world of Mr. Parker.  Then came Spiderman 3.  Sure the game sold and the movie was the biggest entertainment release which ended up netting about $150 million in its opening weekend, but the backlash from fans was harsh.  Whether it was the misuse of Spidey's antithesis Venom or the horiffic writing (dance scene?!), fans of the comics had some gripes.  The game was no different.

While Spiderman 2's game was fun to play, Spiderman 3 was not.  Sure you could still swing around the city, which still proved to be the best part of the game, but the fight mechanic took a nose dive.  What used to be fun combinations and seemingly flawless motions was replaced with clunky animations.

With Spiderman 3 being the first next-gen serving of Spiderman, the graphics were expected to be great.  While the environments were nice looking, the character models looked just plain bad.  Main characters had jaggies on them and they stuck out against the background.

Then there's the cutscenes.  Spiderman 3 employed the use of the "Quick Time Event", something that games like Shenmue and Resident Evil 4 did pretty well.  In order to make the game have a more cinematic feeling, some games make the player stay on their toes and press the corresponding button that appears on screen within a certain amount of time.  While it was fun in an RE4 type of game where the actions were over the top, it was a little hard for it to adapt well for Spiderman 3, if only for the simple fact that the player wanted to be able to DO what was going on screen.  It's not too over the top when you're playing as a superhero.  Not to mention that these cutscenes were breaking the flow of the game.

Sure the series wasn't perfect in both its movie iterations and the games that followed, but Spiderman 3's apparent lack of inspiration was what hurt it the most.  It brought nothing new to the game and honestly, made the previous title released three years prior that much better.