Spider-Man: Friend or Foe [DS]

It can be hard for a portable to compete with consoles -- especially when we're talking about one title that is being plastered across just about every platform out there. Will the portable be watered down? Will it be handed to some haphazard development company? Will they give it a lame touch-screen control scheme?

So far, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe seems to be dodging those pitfalls and craving out its own path.

While Next Level Games is handling Spidey's escapades on the home consoles, Artificial Mind and Movement is tackling the DS romp and unleashing some side-scroller inspired 3D action on Nintendo's two screens.

Now, that's not to say this is a product completely separate from the other Spider-Man interpretations making their way to store shelves this fall. The DS version of Friend or Foe starts off with a storyline that reflects the one in console versions where Mysterio has set his fishbowl-wearing head on creating a hologram/symbiote crew to take over the world. To complete this dastardly deed, he kidnaps the most powerful supervillains, gets control of their minds and unleashes them to find symbiote-containing meteor fragments around the world. Spider-Man gets the-heads up on this plan from SHIELD and starts globetrotting to wake up his rouges.

The bad guys brawl with Spidey, webhead breaks Mysterio's bond, and the foes become friends and join the quest. You'll take Spidey and seven sidekicks -- folks such as Black Cat, Blade and most of the villains from the movies -- to places such as Paris and Tokyo to wail on these "Phantoms" and other assorted bad guys.

Each of your missions begin with a bit of conversational story delivered by the voices of your two characters -- you'll control Spidey and a pal throughout each level -- while their heads appear on the top screen and their text appears on the bottom. Basically, it's a Codec conversation from Metal Gear.

During our time with Friend or Foe, we took Spidey and the Black Cat on an NYC mission to save some hostages. We started on the top screen-depicted rooftops, and jumped down to the bottom screen to begin wailing on phantoms and collecting Spider Tokens, which give you currency to purchase upgrades and unlockables.