Spider-Man 3

Spiders are the most useless living things on this planet. Really, who needs a creature with eight legs, more eyes than a parliamentary vote on ministerial pay rises, and the ability to spin webs? The world would be a better place without them.

Which is why I'm on a single-handed mission of arachnid destruction. I am wrathful fury with a rolled-up newspaper and am rightfully feared by the eight-legged insects. In short, I hate spiders.

What I don't hate is Spider-Man 3, the mobile phone game of the upcoming blockbuster movie. Recreating the action that'll soon be seen on the silver screen, it depicts the continuing – and possibly concluding – storyline of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.

Playing as Spidey himself, you're beset on all sides by foes and friends you thought you could trust. Starting with saving New York City's citizens from petty criminals, Spider-Man 3 finds you facing off against the Green Goblin, the Sandman and the alien symbiote Venom, all of whom want to see you flattened like the wall-crawlers that rashly make themselves seen in my house.

You're able to look after yourself, though, by employing the skills and strength that the radioactive spider bite endowed you with all those years ago. That means firing and swinging on your web, climbing up walls and hanging from ceilings, and more kick-ass moves than Jean Claude Van Damme.

It's all easy to pull off, too. Despite the range of moves and attacks at your disposal, you rarely feel overwhelmed with information. If you do forget what to press to execute a particularly useful combo, there's always another option that enables you to dispatch any bad guys with equal effectiveness.

It's the web-slinging element of Spider-Man 3 that's most enjoyable though, as you're free to swing and dangle as you wish. It's fluid, fun and fast, and makes navigating the levels – with multiple platforms and routes for you to find – a real joy.

The web-slinging also serves to lift the game above the pack of average sideways-scrolling action titles that already exist on mobile. Actually, it's the only thing that does; otherwise Spider-Man 3 would be largely forgettable. The visuals are functional but little else, the sound is agreeable and the storyline, while based on the movie plot, is bereft of detail or explanation as to why you're doing what you're doing.

The difficulty level is also patchy; you meet the Green Goblin on just the second level, when you're not even accustomed to the controls or aware of just what moves you've got in your bag. Even if you play it on Easy, you'll take a pummelling and require a restart or two. This unevenness permeates Spider Man 3; one level you might breeze through, only to swing into a brick wall in the very next.

This is partly due to the variation in what you need to do in each of the 14 levels. While mixing things up does serve to keep proceedings fresh and exciting, you do end up wishing that the challenge was more evenly pitched.

Even so, Spider-Man 3 manages to capture the films' acrobatic, rapid-fire sense of fun through the use of Spidey's web. Pretty much whatever you'll see on the big screen you can replicate in some manner on the small screen, and that's no mean feat.

It's also enough to keep you coming back to try those parts of the game you get stuck on. Use of the web becomes easier and more effective the more you use it, so that in the end you become a real expert and can work wonders with the sticky stuff.

Spider-Man 3 is not enjoyable enough to change my mind when it comes to the scuttlers in my woodpile, but then very little would. But thanks to its fluid, skill-based gameplay it comes close, and that's praise enough.