Ultimate Spider-Man arrived in 2005 with two playable leads and one city to share. Treyarch developed the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox versions. Beenox handled the PC port of that build. Activision published. The game is an action-adventure hack and slash with an open-world Manhattan and Queens, played in third person, single player only.
Peter Parker and Eddie Brock Share the Disc
The hook is not the web-slinging. It is the split. Players control Spider-Man and Venom, and the two characters move nothing alike. Spider-Man is the agile half. Venom is the hulking one, bound to the symbiote, always hungry, always hunted. Their storylines run separate and then cross.
That structure is rare for a 2005 licensed game. Most superhero tie-ins of the era handed you one hero and a corridor. Ultimate Spider-Man hands you two and a borough.
The story picks up three months after the Venom arc in the comics. Peter Parker has gone back to normal life and forgotten Eddie, who is alive and feeding on people in a nearby park. Eddie fights Wolverine over a motorbike Venom threw through a bar. Spider-Man fights the R.H.I.N.O. and gets his first warning that Eddie is back when his Spider-Sense overloads.
Trask Industries and the Parents
The conspiracy is the spine. Peter digs into Trask Industries and its ties to the creation of the Venom symbiote, and to the deaths of his own parents. Venom’s half is survival: Bolivar Trask wants him recaptured and the suit’s power harnessed.
The game makes the two threads collide. Silver Sable and her Wild Pack attack Venom, who escapes. Venom is later captured and held in an energy cage, where Trask and Adrian Toomes talk him into testing the suit. His first test is Electro in Times Square, over a knocked-out Spider-Man. S.H.I.E.L.D. interferes. Venom escapes, then returns to Trask and tells Silver Sable that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
A Latverian mercenary called Beetle frees the Green Goblin and hunts Venom for a sample of the suit. Spider-Man beats the Goblin. Venom beats Beetle.
A Comic Book That Moves
The visual style borrows from the comic’s creators, and it shows. This is not a game trying to look like a film. It is trying to look like a page, and the open world is the best argument for it. Manhattan and Queens are fictitious, but they are yours to cross between missions.
The Limited Edition for the PlayStation 2 adds a making-of documentary and an interview with Stan Lee. That is a decent package for the price, though it is not the reason to buy.
| Version | Developer | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Console | Treyarch | PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox |
| PC port | Beenox | Windows |
| Handheld | Vicarious Visions | Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance |
| Mobile | Mforma | Mobile phones |
The handheld versions are drastically different from the console build. Vicarious Visions made them. Mforma made and published the mobile version. If you are buying Ultimate Spider-Man in 2005, know which one you are getting.
Where the Two Heroes Diverge
Venom is the better half. His hunger gives every encounter a clock, and his size changes how you read a street. Spider-Man’s sections are looser, more familiar, closer to what Treyarch already built in Spider-Man 2.
The open world is the throughline. It is also the part most likely to feel thin once the novelty of crossing Queens wears off. Two movesets do not double the content. They double the ways you can get bored of the same rooftops.
The crossover is what earns the design. When the storylines meet, the game stops being two games stapled together and starts being one about a friendship that went wrong. Eddie and Peter knew each other. Their parents knew each other. Trask knew them too. That is the thread worth pulling.
The Verdict on Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate Spider-Man is a licensed game that respects its source and its players. It gives you two heroes who feel genuinely different, a city to cross, and a conspiracy that ties Peter’s past to the suit on Eddie’s back. The handheld split is a trap for careless buyers, and the open world runs out of ideas before the story does.
But the ambition holds. Treyarch built something that looks like the comic and plays like a game, and the Venom sections are the reason to keep going. Beenox’s PC port carries the same build, so PC players get the real thing rather than a stripped-down cousin.
For a 2005 superhero tie-in, that is close to a best case. The score reflects a game with a strong hook, a real story, and a second act that occasionally forgets which of its two leads is more fun.
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