Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 for PlayStation Portable is a 2007 single-player action-adventure adaptation of the Spider-Man 3 film. Activision published the handheld release, developed by Vicarious Visions, in North America on October 16, 2007. It arrived months after the initial console and computer editions, and belongs to the separate Vicarious Visions branch shared most closely with the PlayStation 2 version rather than Treyarch’s PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game.

Set about a year after Spider-Man 2, the story follows Peter Parker as he balances his relationship with Mary Jane, Harry Osborn’s vendetta as the New Goblin, and a city beset by supervillains. A symbiote from a fallen meteor bonds with Peter, creating the black suit and amplifying both his abilities and his aggression. Film antagonists Sandman and Venom drive the central conflict, while the PSP narrative also makes room for comic-book foes and storylines involving the Lizard, Kraven the Hunter, Morbius, Shriek, and the H-Bombers.

The game presents a 3D Manhattan for Spider-Man to cross between story objectives. Web-swinging, wall-crawling, and street-level traversal provide the route through its districts, while missions send him into set-piece confrontations, rescues, chases, and investigations. Rather than being a sequence of 2D stages, it is built around roaming a city hub and choosing work away from the main plot.

Combat centers on punches, kicks, web attacks, dodges, combos, and finishers. Players can switch between the red-and-blue suit and the black suit after the latter becomes available, using a brief button-prompt sequence. The symbiote grants a more powerful fighting style, but keeping it on too long is dangerous: its corruption meter can end the game during the campaign, and removing it imposes a cooldown before it can be used again.

Progress earns hero points that buy Spider-Man’s conventional combat and movement upgrades. The city also supplies optional work, including races, combat tours, and radio-dispatched calls that may be accepted or declined. Those calls can involve responding to crimes such as muggings or making deliveries, giving the player things to do between campaign missions and a reason to revisit the map.

The PSP port includes Conquest Mode, an extra timed challenge mode not found in the PlayStation 2 release. In it, Spider-Man roams the city completing tasks such as combat tours, civilian protection, and item deliveries before the clock expires; the result is scored and can be replayed for a better total. This handheld version should not be confused with the Game Boy Advance’s level-based side-scrolling game or the Nintendo DS’s touch-screen-led 2.5D design, and it differs from the more expansive Treyarch-developed PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions in missions, systems, and presentation.