Activision have historically made a decent old fist at capturing the essence of Stan Lee’s vision. We fondly remember the original Playstation effort, which to date remains one of the bestest superhero tie-ins ever released, with a super array of baddies, a nerd-tastic comic-collecting element and stellar voice acting. Since then, there hasn’t really been a truly awful Spidey game (unless one includes the handheld ones), and they have provided adequate 10-12 hour fare for fans, guaranteed, and of course squillions of sales.

We now arrive at the transition point to the next-gen machines, where hopefully the Spider Man franchise will step up a gear or two to satisfy the cravings of the games-playing public used to being satiated by supreme action fare like God Of War. Can the spandex-suited social outcast make the web-assisted leap into the glorious new HD age? Well, developers Treyarch have had a decent crack at it, and you can’t ask for more than that, Brian.

Let us say first of all that the third Spider Man movie tie-in doesn't really do anything new. It follows the same straightforward mission-based template as previous games, albeit with slightly more scope for exploration, and adds very little to the mix that will entice non-fans to part with their hard-earned. But what it does do is provide just about enough thrills and charm to draw you in for a few hours. Most of these thrills come from the superbly realised New York City and the fluid way you can web-sling your way around it. As we also saw in Crackdown, very few videogaming experiences can compare with flinging your avatar off the top of a huge skyscraper and traversing the landscape with the sort of ease on offer here. Graphically it is not the step up we hoped for, and there is not a massive amount of difference between the 360 and PS2 versions in this respect.

Gameplay is supposedly structured around the many missions and tasks that need to be completed in order to progress, but more often than not you will often find yourself leaping around, picking off bad guys that are up to no good using the x-ray vision-style “Spidey-sense” and levelling up your web-swinging abilities in accordance to the RPG-lite system therein. And here lies the problem: the actual main game isn’t anywhere near as enthralling as exploring the city by yourself. Whilst the bad guys, the emo-rawk black suit and the plot from the film are aesthetically well incorporated into the game, it is difficult to ascertain which missions you need to complete in order to progress the actual story, and this becomes very confusing. The nature of the missions, which usually involve beating on a bunch of generic goons followed by a boss – which may or may not have a bit of QTE thrown in – means gameplay becomes pretty boring, pretty quickly.

Combat is initially quite simplistic, however: once you begin levelling up and learning new abilities, Spider Man can access a fair arsenal of different attacks and abilities – punch, kick, throw, sticky web stuff – the gang is all here and it can be a hoot chaining them all together. A dodge function is nicely done – when an icon appears above an enemy you can dodge and then counter-attack using the bumpers and attack buttons – but you will often find yourself being ganged up upon by far too many enemies to use this effectively, leading to mucho button bashing and annoying deaths. The enemy AI is a real mixed bag, too. One minute you can have a proper scrap which relies on your reactions and combo skills – the next minute the CPU gets all Smash TV on your ass and you are totally outnumbered. Unfortunately, the camera also hinders your progress when having a dust-up and when exploring the game, as it can be very difficult to know which way you are facing and where you are going – particularly when indoors, when the framerate also goes to pieces to complement the shocking lens-work.

On the plus side the game is a breezy 10-hour job, with achievements to be found in token and side-mission form around Spidey’s world, and gameplay that isn’t too demanding or frustrating to warrant labelling this a bad game per se. It benefits from some winningly cheesy voice acting, which is always a bonus. And Bruce Campbell, who steals the third film with a terrific comic cameo, is on hand as narrator and puts in a great turn.

This isn’t a high-def interactive movie or a massive leap forward for all things Marvel – but it is a fun distraction and perfect for a casual or younger, superhero-mad gamer. For those expecting something more impressive from their game, Activision need to make sure that when Parker next dons the suit we are given a more challenging and in-depth experience to complement the blockbusting CGI movie.