Ultimate Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, the latest game from Gameloft, throws us in the fast talking, web swinging, wall climbing booties of everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood web head. The iPhone action platformer has been getting a lot of buzz lately thanks to the recent release of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, and it looks to be a lot of fun. Find out if Spidey and Apple work well together after the break.

The places you in the role of the titular Spider-Man in his Ultimate universe incarnation as he hunts down villains who have escaped from the Triskelion. The game starts off with you saving a woman from a group of thugs (which also serves as your combat tutorial). Once you’ve finished rescuing her, she thanks you in typical Spidey fashion by calling you a freak. Perfect. Spider-Man is then approached by the cops who want your help stopping a villain who’s throwing cars around. From there, it unfolds in a typical superhero story fashion: you’ll punch, jump, and web your way through levels that are capped by boss encounters at the end. Though it has a simple enough control scheme, there are a few neat gameplay twists.

Jumping and punching are pretty self-explanatory. The web mechanic is a bit more complex. Under your health bar is a meter which indicates how much webbing you have left; this can slowly regenerate over time, but you can speed up the process by attacking your foes. Tapping the web meter will unleash a super combo that deals considerable damage, but it requires the meter be full and will completely drain the meter.

The game does have some variety in gameplay later, including Spidey’s signature wall climbing and web swinging through the city. Web swings are done by hitting jump when you in the middle of a jump. At times, you’ll see a green targeting reticule; this indicates that you can do a long swing to bridge a massive gap. Unfortunately, you can’t web swing freely, but are instead only allowed a single swing before you fall. Likewise, your wall climbing is limited as well, being restrained to certain situations and not allowing free climbing.

It wouldn’t be Spider-man without his Spider Sense. The game manifests this power in two ways. In normal combat, Spidey gets short yellow lightning bolts that signifies danger above head. When this happens you can tap a reaction button that lets you dodge and launch a counter attack. The other way your Spider Sense comes into play is in quick-time events in story scenes. In these, you just carry out the commands to avoid damage or give yourself a combat edge. Spider Sense is indispensable when it come to the many boss battles you’ll face. In fact, the game utilizes Fridge Brilliance in an amazing way. The third fight is versus the Rhino, who completely outclasses Spider-Man physically. If you go toe-to-toe with him, you will lose. It’s absurdly hard, even on easy… until you start playing like Spider-Man. When you think about how Spidey would fight a foe like Rhino (by outsmarting him), the solution becomes apparent. It’s odd, but this game is one of the few times I’ve most felt like Spider-Man.

One of my major complaints with the game was that the Spider Sense indicator was on the same side as the analogy stick by default. Fortunately, you can reconfigure the button layout in the options menu. This is a level of customization that should be mandatory for every iPhone game going forward.

This game also addressed one of my major complaints with so many adaptations of Spider-Man, especially the movies. Spider-Man has always used his wit to cause his foes to get too upset to fight him properly. I appreciate the effort that was put into making sure the friendly web swinger as punny as they could in the story scenes. In all honesty, I would have been completely thrilled hearing Spidey quip it up during the fights, but I’m certain that’s a platform limitation. As it stands, the only problem with the game is a few control issues. This is an iPhone game and as such, only has the implementation of touch controls for input. This game in particular would be a perfect PlayStation Mini; it feels like it was made for the PSP. Ultimate Spider-Man: Total Mayhem is a gorgeous, fun game and well worth the download price. It comes with my full recommendation.