So this is weird, but at this point, I have to talk about the Ultimate Spider-Man PS2 game. Bendis wrote it, did a bunch on it. He worked on it with a guy called Brian Reed, who parlayed it into many years writing comics. Spider-Man video games had a long history of varying quality. After the universally beloved Spider-Man 2 game, based on the movie, a terrible Spider-Man 3 game crapped out onto the market had the franchise on the back foot. USM, released between the 2, was more like Spider-Man 2 than Spider-Man 3, but with its own unique flavor, challenges, successes and failures. It tried to mimic Bagley’s art style, which is very cool, if not always very successful. But most crucially, Bendis insists to this day (I saw him mention it in the comments of an instagram post only months ago as I type this) that it’s in-continuity, even tho that… seems kind of impossible. But if it is, we need to account for it. I own this game, played this game back when it came out… I do not want to play it again now. Also I’m not sure my PS2 even works. But lucky for me, someone on youtube is bound to have played through it, so I can just go look at that. The game’s big hook was you played as both Spider-Man and Venom, so it’s a sequel to the Venom storyline.
The game opens with some recap material, which is all the game engine recreating/animating scenes from the comic, which is pretty cool. It shows you Peter getting bit, then swinging around, then quickly recaps the Venom storyline…
…including making the player fight Venom as Peter to learn the controls.
So Venom is electrocuted, as we saw in the comics, and then it’s 3 months later, and we’re into the new story. Peter is begging MJ for his suit back, but it’s got a hole in it, and she’s not done sewing it up. So he heads home to get his webshooters (so the player can learn more about the controls). It must be said, Bendis made much of being involved in voice casting, and Peter has this really nasal, annoying voice that kind of sucks. When he gets home and gets his webs, he’s just in time to hear a news bulletin about the Shocker out doing his thing. So he swings by and gets the suit from MJ, and then heads to embarrass Shocker for the 3rd time, I think?
Then he stops a trio of British skinheads from mugging someone… in New York? Then he says he needs to get home, and then a mission tells him to go to school, and then he runs into the Human Torch instead of doing either of those things.
Johnny challenges Spider-Man to a race, which is just an excuse to teach you more mechanics. Then Spider-Man goes… somewhere? And the game switches to following Venom. We first return to the flashback, where we see Adrian Toomes watching the shootout, telling someone on the phone he saw “the suit.” Then Eddie narrates, saying he doesn’t know what happened, how long it’s been, or how he’s still alive, as Venom seems to consume a jogger in the park. Then the game teaches you how to play Venom a little, followed by an in-jokey reference to a much-hated aspect of the Spider-Man 2 game that has Venom feeding on a child?!?!?!, then fighting more random guys on roofs before beating up a motorcycle gang and going into their bar. you’ll never guess who’s inside. Really.
So Venom beats up Wolverine, because Bendis just loves jobbing him out.
Having watched Venom successfully beat Logan unconscious, we check back in with Spider-Man. I guess the next day? As he goes to school. MJ hears on the news that Rhino is on the loose.
The news mentions how Iron Man subdued him back in USM 28, and MJ convinces Peter to go stop him.
“Hey, you! Is that a rhinoceros horn or are you just happy… to.. see… I am so scared I can’t even finish my lame joke.”
So Ultimate Spidey fights the Rhino for the first time, and eventually defeats him by tearing open and wrecking the controls in his back.
Our guy notices the Rhino suit was made by Trask Industries, and is trying to remember why that name sounds familiar. It sounds familiar to the comics nerd because Bolivar Trask created the sentinels in X-Men. As he leaves the scene, he has a terrible headache that almost makes him fall over, and decides he should take a few days off from Spider-Man-ing. While he’s doing that, Eddie Brock just happens to walk by down on the street.
And Eddie is being pursued by…
…Ultimate Silver Sable, making her debut here, in this game. Which is going to be a major problem with it being canon, but that’s jumping ahead. She and her Wild Pack watch Eddie turn into Venom, and then he has to fight the Wild Pack. After a long and repetitive night of killing mercenaries and throwing Humvees, Venom escapes, and Sable… just watches him go, despite him killing and eating, like, her entire staff. The next day, Peter & MJ are at a museum, where Peter’s headache is back with a vengeance…
Outside, Eddie is nearby, and senses Peter through the suit, leading to their rematch. But Peter’s headache is so bad he can’t concentrate (This kid’s nasal voice yelling “My head!” over and over isn’t much fun).
…but eventually he gets the upper hand, throwing Venom off the roof and landing on his head.
But Venom rebounds, and is about to kill our man when Sable shows up again.
The Wild Pack suddenly takes out Venom with ease like he didn’t kill 30 of them last night, and Sable loads him into a space-y plane and leaves Spider-Man with no answers. So, he’s got little else to do but return to his normal life, which means going home and explaining the suit to MJ.
He takes a sample of his own blood, and finds something weird going on in there: Weird little black things attacking his cells. Meanwhile, Eddie wakes up in the custody of Bolivar Trask and Adrian Toomes, who says he did graduate work with Eddie & Peter’s dads.
Trask convinces Eddie to do as he says, saying if he resists, they’ll just let the suit consume him and find another host. First, they want to test the suit in a more controlled environment, so they’ve hired Electro to fight Venom with the Wild Pack.
While they’re dancing, Peter is at the Daily Bugle doing his job, when Electro flies right by his window.
Thus, Spider-Man shows up, doing material about Electro fighting another hero on the side…
But Electro easily dispatches him, because the next boss fight is Venom vs. Electro. Electro absorbs all the electricity from various Times Square billboards and becomes supercharged (And blue, like in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie). So empowered, Electro is more interested in killing Spider-Man than Venom, but you’re playing as Venom, so he wins the fight, tho exactly how doesn’t make much sense. Then Nick Fury shows up with the whole helicarrier to zap Venom with a fancy gun.
SHIELD agents literally dogpile Venom, but that doesn’t do much to stop him. Venom bolts, and Fury checks on Spider-Man.
Spider-Man berates him for not keeping Electro in prison, and for sending that Silver lady after him, but he runs off in a huff before Fury can say she’s not his. Meanwhile, or later, or something, on a boat off the coast, SHIELD agents are attacked and killed by a supervillain…
…who finds Green Goblin floating in a bubble there…
…which Fury and Sharon Carter investigate.
Sharon asks if they should alert “the Parker kid,” but Fury says if they do their job right, he’ll never have to know. SHIELD is, after all, famous for doing their job right. Then, later, Ultimate Beetle flies past Spider-Man, who’s just hanging out, and he gives chase.
Beetle blows up some infrastructure to make Spider-Man stop and save people, then they have a chase fight across the city, but Beetle escapes. A very Bagley design, this Beetle. It’s cool that Bags was clearly involved and heavily referenced in the game’s art style. Spider-Man is reduced to asking people on the street if they saw where he went, and is pointed to the Latverian Embassy. Having hit a dead end, he goes home. So we go check in on Eddie, who is being examined by Adrian Toomes.
Eddie says being around Spider-Man makes him feel like the suit is under control. Thus, Toomes and Trask immediately figure out Spider-Man is Richard Parker’s son. That poor kid’s secret identity. So, then, Eddie is setup to be used as bait for Peter, but he goes rogue, and has to fight Sable.
But she doesn’t manage to contain him, obviously, and after fighting still more armies of goons and humvees, and even a couple helicopters and Sable’s high tech flying machine, Venom escapes. Sabel says they may have lost Eddie Brock, but they’ve still got Peter Parker.
Not an especially secret identity! Speaking of Peter, he’s on the phone with MJ…
who’s told him about a website called superheroconspiracies.com, which actually seems to explain that Latveria is creating cyber-villains who’re stealing tech from various tech firms. But before they can talk too much about it, Nick Fury calls.
They meet on the roof of the Bugle, where Fury tells him he has to back off “the Latverian thing.” Peter throws a typical fit and storms off, and then Fury reveals to Sharon that tricking Peter into invading the Latverian Embassy was his plan all along. So, Spider-Man goes to the embassy, and guess who comes barreling out of it?
Now, a repeat encounter with Osborn should be a major event, but this is a Spider-Man Vs. Venom game, so not only is this treated as just another boss fight, Spider-Man’s reaction to seeing his worst enemy again is just saying “Oh, great.” I get not wanting to bog the player down with exposition since they likely don’t read comics, but maybe just don’t use Osborn at all? Spider-Man chases the Green Goblin through the city in one of the game’s interminable chase sequences, and then Norman also pulls the old “endanger civilians” move, then gets the drop on him so they can fight.
Then Sharon and SHIELD show up to clean up the mess.
And that’s that. No typical Osborn psychodrama, no Peter worrying, the end. Shoulda left that out. Meanwhile, Venom is located by the Beetle, who wants a sample of the suit, leading to the game’s 2nd Beetle chase sequence and then a fight between the two.
Unsurprisingly, Venom wins. And now the game’s almost over, so it’s time wrap things up. Peter is now walking down the street when Sable somehow hits him with a tranquilizer dart despite his, you know, danger sense, and kicks him into the waiting arms of one of her goons.
Our man wakes up in a car, where Silver tranqs him again. He bolts, but she hits him 2 more times, and threatens to go after his loved ones if he doesn’t get back in the car. This leads to an out of costume fight in the middle of one of New York’s many bridges, which is comically empty due to the constraints of the PS2. Then, after Sable tranqs our man 3 more times (1 dart knocked him out initially, and now she’s shot him at least 6 more times and it’s not even slowed him down), Venom shows up.
Rather inexplicably, Venom knocks out Sable and runs off with her rather than killing Spider-Man, leading this guy to ask Peter if he’s just gonna let him do that…
…absolutely no secret identity. Then Peter finally gets into costume and gives chase. Then they fight in the street awhile, a battle which Peter wins.
After which, he immediately passes out due to the tranquilizers that didn’t stop him from leaping around miles and miles of Manhattan, fighting 50 Wild Pack members and slugging it out with Venom. Kind of silly! Then Sable wakes up and takes everyone prisoner. Eddie wakes up in a high tech prison, hearing Peter screaming in the distance.
He tries to get free, and the door opens, and in walks…
….Peter, who has been turned into Carnage. Somehow. So now it’s a symbiote fight.
That fight is interrupted by a flashback to Toomes questioning Peter about the suit.
Toomes says it’s amazing that Peter survived any encounter with Venom since he wore the suit. He says the microscopic particles of it still in Peter’s bloodstream want to join with the Venom suit. He injects him with… something… while complimenting Richard Parker’s work, and then…
And then we’re back into the present, as Venom is winning the symbiote battle. He absorbs Peter’s symbiote off of him, and now has total control of his suit.
The newly whole Venom heads off to kill Trask, but Peter somehow gets to him first.
Trask produces a file with “everything you could ever want to know about your parents,” but of course Venom smashes through the window. Trask escapes up onto the roof to try to get away in a helicopter. Silver Sable shows up just to tell Peter Trask doesn’t know how to fly it, and then leaves, which is weird. Then Venom gets up there (Again, no idea what took him so long), causes an explosion, and it’s time for the big, final Spidey vs. Venom battle for the life of Trask. I don’t fully get why he’s so desperate to kill Trask. Trask didn’t hurt him or anything, and even facilitated him getting control over his condition. But, I guess they wanted something more than “Venom hates Spider-Man” to motivate the last fight in the game? I dunno. Our guy wins.
Peter gets the file about his parents, and him reading it is intercut with the video of his dad from the original Venom story. Peter reads that 3 people survived the crash, including his mother, but she died in the hospital. Fury shows up to say he did good, and to his credit, Peter says Eddie needs to see what’s in those files.
But Fury says Eddie is gone, and they don’t know where he is. Cut to “miles off shore,” where Eddie has snuck into the prison Trask is being held in, upset that Trask only got “3 years in a golf course prison” for all he did. He turns into Venom, revealing a slight change of appearance…
…and is implied to kill Trask, but it’s comics, who knows? Meanwhile, back in the city, Peter & MJ are sitting on the roof of their abandoned warehouse hideout…
MJ asks if he wants to talk about it. He says he wouldn’t know where to begin. Peter says Eddie is out there, and he doesn’t know if he’s scare of him, or for him. But MJ says Eddie’s not here, and she is, and they share a quite moment together.
And that’s the ballgame. A choppy story due to the needs of a video game, but one that feels very at home in the USM canon. Stuff like Osborn showing up and Peter becoming Carnage don’t quite work, but they, too, are due to the needs of a video game. It’s no wonder B wanted it to be canon. But the next time we see Silver Sable or Venom, well… it’ll be hard to line things up.
As a totally pointless aside, there was something of particular interest to me in this game. See, back on the Bendis Board, most of us had fake names. It was the pre-Facebook internet, fake names were the norm. How I miss the days when people didn’t want all their business on the internet. Anyway, like most people, I had an assumed name, which I had used on many forums, and it was “TheKraken.” Terribly original, I know, but in my case, taken from a Clutch song I was listening to when signing up for a forum once. Anyway, Bendis liked me enough to make me one of the posters he immortalized in a comic, but he did so using my fake name, not my real name. So it was than an “Agent Kraken” appeared in the back half of his Ultimate X-Men run. Cool, but hard to claim. But then, this game comes out, and someone on the board posts to let me know I’m in it. Sort of.
That blurry photo is taken from my own TV back in 2005, before you kids and your fancy flatscreens. I got a whole aquarium named after me in this game. Comics are a small market. A really successful one doesn’t sell 250,000 copies. A video game is seen by millions of people. And thus, millions of people wondered why you’d call a place “The Kraken Institute.” But I knew why. Pretty weird, huh?