Spider-Man 3 [X360]

Here's one of video games greatest "I did not just see that" moments: Jocular hero Spider-Man has just seemingly used his patented Web-shooters to form two ball-shaped projectiles, and then shot them directly at the villainous Sandman's testicles. And to properly answer the question, yes, it is possible to hurt a man made of sand particles in that particular fashion.

"Above the city, below the streets, beyond what you know," the trailer for Spider-Man 3 the video game proclaims. Developer Treyarch and publisher Activision had come to a seedy bar in San Francisco's famed Tenderloin district to unveil the game, the first offering in the Spider-Man series to make it onto next-generation platforms.

The game puts the popular web-slinger in a gorgeous electronic Manhattan, complete with flashing neon signs in its Times Square, and more than 20 miles of subways and sewers. Its plot is based largely on the events of the upcoming Spider-Man 3 film, but Treyarch's executive producer Chris Archer is quick to suggest the game far exceeds the scope of the movie. Players here will be able to crawl, leap, soar, and swing across New York City; perform missions; move from indoor environments to outdoor ones with nary a pause for load screens; and battle such noted superpowered Spider-foes as the Scorpion, Venom, Green Goblin, and the aforementioned Sandman.

Treyarch plans to expand the game by adding three new street gangs for Spider-Man to battle. Each gang has its own turf, and invading it will give rise to equal parts combat and levity; at one point, our hero's meeting with an elderly Asian man in the Order of the Dragon's Tail's territory is disrupted by ninja. Ninja who shoot missiles. "In no other game do you have missile-shooting ninjas," Archer says.

This time around, players will get to play as Spider-Man in his all-new black symbiote costume (first seen in Marvel Comics' Secret Wars #8) as well as his traditional red-and-blue outfit. Spider-Man's civilian identity Peter Parker is also playable here; an extended mid-air sequence had him, shakily atop a rocket-powered glider, battling his friend turned neophyte Green Goblin Harry Osborne.

Spider-Man 3 offers an all-new combat system, with a host of melee, combination, and web-attacks, Archer says. These new attacks include a move where Spider-Man uses his webs as rubber bands, yanking distant foes toward him for quick strikes and then catching them again on the rebound like a human yo-yo.