Spider-Man 3 is actually the fourth Spider-Man game from development studio, Treyarch (two movie- and two stand-alone Spidey games date), and this here Spider-Man 3 game comes out swinging. The thing is, however, while it looks and plays adequately well overall, the game just kind of swings there, back and forth…doing not much in the way of anything new.

In fact, you won't get far into this action-heavy draw-out of Spider-Man 3 movie plot before you realize that there are some notable steps backward this time around: The visuals on the PS3 version are a bit sharper than the 360 version, but in terms of "next-gen" graphics, it's something of a let-down on both counts (not to be confused with the Wii version of Spider-Man 3, which was handled by the developers at Vicarious Visions, also responsible for the PS2 version -- follow?). The animations are great, but the models for things ranging from vehicles to major characters are either muddy and repetitive, or downright unnatural and creepy-looking (it's what you want for the bad guys…but not what you want for MJ). What the PS3 slightly wins over the 360 in terms of crispness, it automatically loses in terms of a chunkier frame rate, so both camps have something to brag about. Or, not.

Of course, the thing every player and movie-goer wants in a Spidey 3 game -- almost as much as one of those winning scrape-off Spidey game-pieces at Burger King, almost -- is the black Spider-Man suit. Sadly, it takes a woefully long time to actually get to the damned thing. In fact, the entire game seems to be an exercise in iffy pacing. Thankfully, there's nothing wrong with the animation, which is basically flawless -- Spider-Man moves around with that same balletic, almost anime-inspired fluidity seen in the film; you gotta give that much to Treyarch, they really nailed the motion (and they left out the film's musical numbers, thank a merciful God).

Like the Spidey games before it, Spider-Man 3 scores high in the pure fun of web-slinging across a virtual New York City, all the cool midair flips and spins intact as you swoop from building to building. The sense of speed and aerial freedom is just brilliant.

Alas, something does come along to plop a few pumpkin-bombs on that parade, namely the overly-spastic camera, which too often freaks and judders like Kramer barging into Seinfeld's apartment. The camera is the key flaw eclipsing all others that makes it all fall decidedly short of greatness, and its sins become downright egregious during combat, where foes will regularly jink out of frame at the worst possible moments (AI contributing to the camera's cause here, you could say); and if this sounds like a barrel of diarrhetic monkeys by itself, just wait until you hit this same problem during the boss battles. Hoo boy).

Spider-Man 3 takes some cues from recent games like God of War II and throws button-pattern cinematic sequences into the mix, where players have to tap out the proper sequence of controls as events unfold onscreen. By themselves, these elements are a nice addition; the problem is that you don't know when you're about to enter one; one second you're deep in combat mode, and suddenly you find yourself having to re-gear and be a button-patterning madman. If you blow it, you can just start over again but still, something in the way of warning would be nice.

Too, though it feels very cool and right to engage Spider-Man's artificially-slowed combat—effectively, 'bullet-time'—to auto-dodge coming attacks, when you start to realize that it's a continual necessity for some of the bosses, that ballet of slowed-down violence feels more like a chore than a super-power. It's another example of how many otherwise eclipsed points at which Spider-Man 3 falls frustratingly short of greatness. And speaking of frustration, the game occasionally gets brutally hard in uneven chunks you won't see coming.

Hardcore Spidey fans will still find things to enjoy here, but this newest incarnation of the franchise frankly gets as much wrong as it does right.