While I have an affection for handheld spider-man games, Ultimate Spider-Man on GBA is shockingly bad- It feels like they blatantly missed the clearly simple gameplay loop.
On paper, all a Spider-Man GBA game needs is to do a few short things: Bad guys to beat up, short swing sections, and using your powers to climb through buildings to complete missions and find stuff. It's really basic, but that's not an inherit bad thing. Spider-Man 3 was basically this game but good. The biggest problem is the horrible combat. Enemies take 2-3 hits before falling to the ground, and you have to wait for them to get back up. 90% OF ENEMIES NEED TO GET BACK UP. Once they get up you have 1 second to hit them, before they hit you. And enemies can hit projectiles to go through other enemies, but not you. So prepare for lots of unfair hits. Also, the Molotov throwing enemies are ridiculous in how they have a huge blast area and I still haven't figured out how to get near them guaranteed without getting hit.
Playing as Venom is slightly better. He's a bit stronger, and has a better stun move. His feeding mechanic adds some strategy, figuring out how much of the enemy you should hurt. But overall, he's not that much different compared to Spider-Man.
Graphics are probably the best part of the game. The opening company logos and brief video at the start is charmingly "gameboy-esque", and the visuals are really nice reflection of Ultimate's art direction on consoles. Bright and colourful, but not overkill. Venom's running animation is distractingly goofy, but all else looks good.
Overall, it's a terrible mix of being too simple so you don't have much ways to fight, but it's too hard to enjoy mind-numbingly in short bursts. It also costs around $20 to get a physical cart, which is way too much for this game.
On paper, all a Spider-Man GBA game needs is to do a few short things: Bad guys to beat up, short swing sections, and using your powers to climb through buildings to complete missions and find stuff. It's really basic, but that's not an inherit bad thing. Spider-Man 3 was basically this game but good. The biggest problem is the horrible combat. Enemies take 2-3 hits before falling to the ground, and you have to wait for them to get back up. 90% OF ENEMIES NEED TO GET BACK UP. Once they get up you have 1 second to hit them, before they hit you. And enemies can hit projectiles to go through other enemies, but not you. So prepare for lots of unfair hits. Also, the Molotov throwing enemies are ridiculous in how they have a huge blast area and I still haven't figured out how to get near them guaranteed without getting hit.
Playing as Venom is slightly better. He's a bit stronger, and has a better stun move. His feeding mechanic adds some strategy, figuring out how much of the enemy you should hurt. But overall, he's not that much different compared to Spider-Man.
Graphics are probably the best part of the game. The opening company logos and brief video at the start is charmingly "gameboy-esque", and the visuals are really nice reflection of Ultimate's art direction on consoles. Bright and colourful, but not overkill. Venom's running animation is distractingly goofy, but all else looks good.
Overall, it's a terrible mix of being too simple so you don't have much ways to fight, but it's too hard to enjoy mind-numbingly in short bursts. It also costs around $20 to get a physical cart, which is way too much for this game.