Spider-Man: Friend or Foe: Nintendo Wii

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Spider-Man: Friend or Foe: Nintendo Wii

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Spider-Man: Friend or Foe: Nintendo Wii

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levels, collectibles, and characters make this game a lot of fun for kids.

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe: Nintendo Wii

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also team up with other heroes along the way, including Spiderman regulars such as Prowler, Black Cat, and Silver Sable, as well as b-team favorites such as Iron Fist and Blade. A big part of what carries the humor in Friend or Foe is the quality of the voice work, which is consistently great.

The basic structure of the game isn't all that interesting by itself. You travel to some exotic locations, such as Tokyo, Transylvania, or Nepal, where you'll fight holographic phantoms before facing off with a brainwashed villain. The phantoms come in just a few different varieties, and though they get stronger over time and change appearance between locations, the same tactics seem to work pretty well from start to finish. Although the boss fights are presented differently, they all rely on the same basic strategy of throwing objects at the villains from afar. They can occasionally be a little time-consuming, but they're never particularly challenging.

There's really not much else to the game beyond the fighting. There's a little bit of exploration, in that there are DNA samples and secret arenas scattered throughout the game, but more often than not you'll just stumble over them in the course of playing the game. Spidey can double-jump and use his webbing to swing over small gaps, but platforming is minimal. When you do die, be it at the hands of an enemy or from falling off a platform, the only penalty is that you'll lose a couple of tech tokens, a type of in-game currency that falls out of defeated enemies and smashed objects. You use the tech tokens to upgrade the abilities of Spider-Man and friends.

It's pretty much all fighting, all the time, against the same handful of enemies, with no consequences for dying. The whole thing can be wrapped up in less than eight hours. So what makes the action in Friend or Foe interesting? A lot of it rests on the combat, which manages to be both accessible and somewhat dynamic. There's a single attack button that you can use to tap out some simple combos, but it's Spider-Man's web-based abilities that bring a lot of panache to the game. The webslinging abilities let him grab enemies from afar and launch them into one another, into the ground, or right off the edge of a platform.

You can earn additional web talents over time, including the ability to shoot projectiles and wrap enemies up, but your starting abilities seem to be the most useful. They're also the most visually interesting, though admittedly some of the actions look more exciting than they might otherwise be due to exaggerated physics that cause everyone to linger in the air before gravity pulls them back down. It's very easy to string these moves together, and even though it's not much of a challenge, fending off a dozen enemies at once with a constant flurry of attacks can be pretty satisfying.

It can be a real thrill to fight alongside some of Spider-Man's greatest villains as well, and you can switch back and forth on the fly between controlling Spidey and his sidekick. When controlled by the artificial intelligence, your sidekick can take care of itself pretty well. As awesome as it might sound to finally get to play as these villains, the sidekicks simply don't have as many abilities as Spidey, which makes them inherently less interesting. This ends up limiting the appeal of the game's two-player support, although it's consequently less disappointing that there's no online play.

The game uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck well so you'll be flicking the Wii Remote to simulate body slams, throws and nice in air moves. Spider-Man can sort through different webbing styles (and you get extra ones once you unlock the symbiotic Spidey suit). You can also swing enemies around to slam into other enemies by flicking your wrist. You can also do unique moves with each side kick that you earn.

The games graphics are pretty good. The voice overs are even better. The cartoon look and simply game play make for a younger audience. However no matter what is said it is still a well crafted game with a lot of appeal.