I wonder if Spider-Man: Friend or Foe actually knows what level or age of gamer it's aiming at. Certain parts can be frustratingly hard at points — such as the minigames — while other parts are insanely easy...

That is, once you get into the game. Before you can actually start the game, you have to go through seven screens of credits (Universal Pictures, Activision, Marvel, etc.) and wait about 30 seconds or so. It doesn't sound like long, but it can get right annoying.

When you first get into the game, there are two modes of play: free play and story mode. Free play is fairly useless until you get moving in story mode, in which you open up the levels you can play again and again; thus, you'll be getting right into story mode.

The story is fairly simple. Spider-Man is busy getting into a huge fight with Doc Ock, the Green Goblin, Sandman and Venom. A meteor or something comes down breaking into pieces: Sandman blows up, little critters attack and everyone but Spidey is teleported away.

It's actually a neat little movie, but after that, there are no more movies — just narrated still pictures. Still, the voice work is solid, and the graphics aren't bad for the DS.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward. It's in an isometric third-person format, which means you're typically looking down and a bit to the side at Spider-Man and whoever his ally is. The tops of buildings are on the top screen, and the street level on the bottom is a nice touch. The camera really does a pretty good job; there's almost no time when I was frustrated with it.

During most parts of the game, you'll be wandering the streets, tunnels, caves or whatever looking for the McGuffin for that section. It might be hostages or bombs or the like. In some points, you have to avoid certain areas that are guarded by turrets and destroy them from behind or wipe out their power supplies.

As you travel, you'll gather coins that you use in the web store to unlock things. These things include new game modes (boss battle mode, minigame mode, survival mode), upgrades to Spider-Man (including more health, more energy and a new move), plus additional characters for Free Play mode.

You'll also smash crates and trash cans to find additional things such as power-ups (double damage, invulnerable, unlimited energy), health vials, or energy vials.

From time to time, you'll be attacked by the enemies of that level. They start with robots, though at some points, you get sand creatures and eventually tougher robots. Your ally will fight along with you, though not always that effectively (or at all, if he gets confused and doesn't want to play), while you'll be confined into a small area to fight the bad guys. An interesting thing: the computer-controlled character doesn't take any damage while fighting bad guys, nor will he use his special powers — but he can take out enemies. So if you train the enemies onto your buddy, you can sometimes just sit back and let him ever-so-slowly kill them.

Or, if you're low on health, hit the right trigger to switch into his body and keep from dying. Not that it matters, because you don't really die — instead, you fall down for a few seconds and then get back up with about half health. Even if both of you are down at the same time, it doesn't matter. Thus: easy.

You also have energy. That controls how much you can use your powers, such as launching web shots or twirling around like a dervish. You gain energy by fighting people or finding vials — you also lose it slowly as you walk around. For the most part, it's not a big deal, though I found myself almost never using two of the four powers. The rest of the time, it was punch-punch-combo punch or kick-kick-combo kick for me.

As you go through the game, you'll also need to occasionally do minigames to open doors or shut down things. This is the point the game will suddenly get much harder, as some of the games can be quite difficult. You have to figure out how to rewire a circuit, crack a safe lock, pick a lock using tumblers or select the right numbers from a changing screen. It doesn't help that they start the minigames by hitting A repeatedly, while the games themselves require the stylus. It also doesn't help that the tumblers' one is broken and will often not give you any indication of where the tumbler should stop.

Fortunately, if you go back on Free Play, you avoid those minigames.

Finally, at the end of each level, you fight a boss. Each boss has a different style battle, and it's usually based around figuring out the "trick" to the boss fight to defeat him. Green Goblin, you knock off his board by using electricity. Sandman gets water dumped on him. Venom is sensitive to sound.

After defeating each enemy, they end up joining you to fight the mysterious antagonist behind all the meteor-related activities. The one exception to that is Blade — you never have to fight him, but he joins you at one part.

Free Play lets you go back and replay all those individual levels if you want. That lets you get more coins so you can continue unlocking things you may not have gotten yet.

Another bonus mode is survival mode in which you're in a large arena fighting wave after wave of increasingly powerful bad guys — until they reset back to weak guys. I found this mode rather inane, as it just kept going and going and going and going with no chance of me losing short of putting down the DS.

And in fact, I did just that. It took the weak bad guys nearly 2 minutes uncontested to defeat me.

Really what it comes down to is Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is a fun game to play through once. It has funny bits, and they tried to extend with alternate modes and such, but really, there's not a lot there.