We can admit that we’ve pretty much enjoyed a couple of the Spider-Man games so far, and this installment fits snugly into that Spidey-game mold. Swing around the city solving crimes as you find them. Have your disbelief-suspension molested by “mission activation” tokens, which progress the various storylines with cutscenes. Unlock more and more moves, and annoy more and more gangs. At worst, it’s an average string of scraps made bearable by the fact that you’re swinging around like a good guy. And to give Spider-Man 3 its due, the web-slinging feels good.

The missions are divided into fights, chases, defusing bombs, photography and swinging around with Mary Jane. It’s not really worth describing all the mission types separately, because they all involve the same thing. You follow waypoints (so many waypoints) and then either have a fight or defuse a bomb. Defusing a bomb is a strange metaphorical process - it’s a combination of DDR-style button-bashing and “rotating the thumb stick.” Sound fun? It is, a bit. For a while. Not quite so much after the umpteenth bomb tour.

Fighting is a process of building on your four basics - fast, strong, dodge and web - and your ever-growing bank of unlocked special moves. On mouse and keyboard, it’s the predictable, unmanageable, third-person whirligig that’ll have you puking out a forgotten sandwich, and this is also true of navigating the city. Once you set up your gamepad - and even that proved to be a shockingly difficult feat here - you’ll only be lurching forwards occasionally to enter camera mode.