Graphics: Spider-Man: Friend or Foe looks like a crisp, clean Saturday morning cartoon. The animation is fluid, and it’s fun to watch your favorite heroes and villains rumble together on the screen. The animators clearly spent a great deal of time developing robust character models, as the action is never clunky, even when the players are executing complex combo moves.

The cut scenes are also very impressive. Not only are they visually rich and smooth, they don’t look like they were rendered separately to tell the story. Instead, they feel more like zoomed-in views of the characters. The designers went the extra mile to add detail to things like Spider-Man’s suit, as you can see the raised webbing on his costume and the textures of the material underneath. Little things like this go a long way toward making a game a pleasure to behold.

Interface: The menu items are easy to follow because there aren’t many options or modes. During the game, the screen contains very little information. While this allows you to focus on the action, it makes it hard to remember what power-ups you have in your inventory. For example, while moving through a stage, Spider-Man and his ally will pick up crystals, such as ones that can restore their health. A player can hold three of these at a time, and the only way to see how many you have left is to pause the game. Most of the time, Fury instructs players via an intercom rather than displaying them on the screen.

Gameplay: Spider-Man: Friend or Foe seems to have been made for lovers of old arcade side scrollers like X-Men, TMNT and The Simpsons. It’s all about your beloved characters from the Spider-Man universe moving from one side of the screen to the other while battling a seemingly endless supply of bad guys. There are three basic movements — attack, jump and grab — and it doesn’t take long to learn the different combinations of these moves. For example, one of the more entertaining attacks Spidey dishes out involves pulling in a baddie via his web shooter, hurling him around like a ball and chain, and then throwing the enemy completely off the stage.

Different players will vary in their enjoyment of the simple objective of roughing up Phantoms. For people who grew up playing these kinds of games and are now in the mood for something with more depth, Spider-Man’s novelty will wear off quickly. Younger or less experienced gamers will find more replay value in the title than others. Another aspect which adds to the game’s repetitive nature is that in the story mode, the first player must always be Spider-Man, while the second player can be any of the unlocked characters. It’s a shame these unique heroes and villains aren’t universally playable.

Multiplayer: The most enjoyable aspect of Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is sitting down with a buddy and tag-teaming the story mode. The game allows for players to work together to perform special attacks, such as one character holding a Phantom in submission while the other attacks, or tossing enemies to one another like a game of catch.

In addition to playing through the storyline with your friends, you can also play a simple versus mode. The stages for this mode are unlocked by discovering them during normal gameplay, and participants can play as any of the characters they’ve unlocked up to that point. Versus mode feels tacked on, though, as the characters are grossly mismatched. For example, Black Cat is nimble, fast and has a grappling hook, giving her the ability to lasso an opponent from across the stage and then pound on them incessantly. When you pit her against Rhino, which is like controlling a giant bag of cement, the result is hardly fair. Most combatants also seem to have one or two moves which can instantly defeat their opponents in a matter of seconds, like Spider-Man’s aforementioned throw-enemy-into-oblivion maneuver.

Sound FX: Even though Spider-Man: Friend or Foe doesn’t use the actors that appeared in the movies, the voiceover work is very well done. The dialogue is lighthearted, clever and humorous. An ongoing joke throughout the game is the hardened Fury fighting with his computer, which has a dry sense humor. The writers clearly put some thought into the comic book style script, which even has Spider-Man making sarcastic quips as he fights his enemies.

Music: The soundtrack consists of a new score composed just for the game. The music has the same feel as the Danny Elfman soundtrack used for the movies, but is still unique enough to distinguish itself. Alas, there’s just one piece of music in the entire game, and it plays during every battle sequences to heighten the action, making it repetitive. When they aren’t fighting off Phantoms or an end boss, players will be left with silence, which doesn’t do the cool environments or locations any justice.

Intelligence: Since there are literally thousands of nearly identical enemy drones to defeat, it doesn’t come as a surprise that they barely share a brain between them. The Phantoms are slow-moving and even slower-witted, so they rarely pose much of a challenge. Likewise, the bosses attack in a repetitive pattern, regardless of what the players do, so their defeat requires more wearing them down than outsmarting.

Difficulty: Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is incredibly easy, and there are no options to make the game harder. While this will be a turn off to experienced players, the game is aimed at younger players. There are no lives to lose, so dying costs a few coins and combo levels. What’s more, the gameplay is almost perfectly linear, offering only a few secrets to be discovered off the main track. The story mode contains a hearty 20 levels, but even inexperienced players should breeze right through to the end.

Overall: Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is a simple beat-em-up game for kids. There’s something nostalgic about its style that makes it inviting and fun to play. While I recommend this game for younger audiences who love Spider-Man or comic books in general, the older crowd might require something meatier to hold their interest. For them, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe will be good for a brief rental, but not much more.