Spider-Man Unlimited Review

There’s no shortage of endless runners on the App Store. Good endless runners, though? Now, there’s a trickier thing to find. Spider-Man Unlimited is one of those rare delights, made all the rarer by the fact it uses a popular license and still manages to be enjoyable.

It’s a narrative led running game, which means it’s split into two parts. There’s the Endless mode that lives up to its name, but there’s also the more structured story mode that offers up some reason to run. Divided up into issues, issue 1 involves you tackling the Green Goblin while issue 2 pits you against the Vulture - with future issues coming soon.

Running is a matter of the usual swipes of left, right, up, or down. It sounds fairly formulaic but Spider-Man Unlimited mixes things up by changing the landscape frequently. Sometimes, you’ll be slinging webs in order to leap through the sky. Other times, you’ll be free-falling, dodging whatever’s coming at you. They’re subtle changes but enough to make you feel like you’re progressing rather than just doing the same thing over and over again. Boss battles also pop-up, frequently requiring you to fling projectiles at them to knock them down.

A leveling-up system further adds to the variety, with the need to reach specific targets before unlocking new levels. This is where diving into the Endless mode proves useful in grinding out some experience, as well as completing side missions in Story mode. Furthermore, you can fuse together newly gained Spider-Man cards to help you along.

It’s varied stuff and certainly pretty fun, but Spider-Man Unlimited does run into some issues. There’s an energy system that slows down your progress if you die too many times and run out of lives. It doesn’t kick in until Level 10, so there’s a fair hour or so of gameplay here before it becomes an issue, but it’s worth bearing in mind as each life does take 10 minutes to restore.

More significantly, Spider-Man Unlimited has some issues in recognizing your swipes, often at pivotal moments. In particular, when swiping up to attack an enemy I found it wasn’t 100% accurate. Something that soon turns a bit frustrating.

Despite that though, Spider-Man Unlimited is a surprisingly well-made endless runner. Such structure goes some way to encouraging you to play just a bit longer and hopefully an update will come along soon to tweak those control issues.