If you’re looking towards Spider-Man: Friend or Foe to fill the hole after you’ve completed Ultimate Alliance, don’t. While the games look similar (they are the same genre and share the Marvel universe, after all) they’re completely different.
The biggest difference? Friend or Foe is obviously aimed at a younger crowd, and the game’s difficulty reflects that. Where games like Ultimate Alliance aren’t really that hard to begin with, Friend or Foe manages to drop the difficulty even more. You’ll rarely die as you one-button attack your way through each level, and there’s no real backtracking puzzle-solving elements to go through.
That being said, the game isn’t bad by any means. The story in Friend or Foe is a fairly novel one. Basically, Spider-Man and some of his rogue gallery get teleported away, and it turns out there are some bad guys with symbiote cores behind it, so obviously Spidey will team up with his former enemies to battle the common foe.
This teaming up is what makes the game worthwhile for the non-youthful gamers out there. Friend or Foe is generic, beat ’em up gameplay at its finest, but the two-player capabilities save it from being an otherwise pointless game for any semi-experienced gamer.
With one player acting as Spider-Man, the other can select from all sorts of other characters to partner up with the webslinger. From villains in films to ones most people won’t recognize at all, there’s a nice variety of people to choose from. Adding to the variety is the ability to upgrade your characters (and Spider-Man’s web attacks) using tokens collected by killing phantoms (the bad guys) and smashing boxes.
Once again, though, the simple combat really looms as a shadow over the game. Even with completely different characters, it always boils down to hitting melee a few times, maybe grabbing a guy or two, and if you feel like it using your special attack. Unlike similar titles where you have a plethora of skills to utilize and upgrade, Friend or Foe really limits your options.
Not only are the attacks limited, but the levels are, too. No matter where you are it always results in you fighting phantoms, beating phantoms, and opening a door or lowering/raising a bridge. Sometimes, you won’t even remember what level you’re on at any given time until you reset to the SHIELD carrier and have to re-enter the area.
Like many subpar titles, though, this one is inexplicably more fun when playing with other people. I don’t know if it’s the fact you can laugh at the game and have fun together, or if it’s some sort of hidden feature that just emits pleasure-inducing waves from the 360, but with a friend Friend or Foe becomes a game worthy of possible purchase for the right gamers.
As for the differences in the versions, they’re pretty much non-existent. On the Wii you get tacked on things like shaking the nunchuck and flicking the remote to alter throws as opposed to face buttons, but that’s pretty much it.
If you’ve got a younger or new gamer at home, Friend or Foe is a good game to enjoy with them. The hop-in hop-out co-op gameplay and easy difficulty make this a winner for those not used to gaming in general. For those who have played similar games – or any games, for that matter – though, Friend or Foe is just too easy, and offers too little in terms of features and replay.
