10 Criminally Underrated Comic Book Video Games You Must Play

2. Ultimate Spider-Man

Activision

Ultimate Spider-Man is one of those games I look back on and just... wonder how it even exists?

Games based on specific Spider-Man comics had been a thing before, sure - but the years running up to 2005 had seen Activision and studio Treyarch pivot to movie tie-ins, with 2002 and 2004's Spider-Man games both being adapted from the Sam Raimi Spidey films. There was no indication the studio would look to the comics for inspiration, let alone one as specific as Ultimate Spider-Man.

The Ultimate Universe may be consigned to the back-issue bin nowadays, but it was everything at the turn of the century, with Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley leading the charge on a new take on everyone's favourite wall-crawler.

Next to the original Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita comics, Ultimate Spider-Man is the web-slinger's best run. It was one of Marvel's biggest sellers, reaching the zenith of its popularity arguably around the same time Treyarch decided to adapt the series to the gaming medium, and is something every Spidey fan should read, given the chance.

But is Ultimate Spider-Man (the game) underrated? Yes. Not by a long shot, but it is. The game has long been overshadowed by its hugely influential predecessor - Spider-Man 2 - but just because a game was influential doesn't mean it's superior. Ultimate Spidey is an improvement over the 2004 game and for plenty of reasons, not least because it adapts the art of the comic perfectly, but also because it gave players access to Manhattan AND Queens.

2018's Spider-Man game is still the wall-crawler's best, but Ultimate Spider-Man deserves the silver medal.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.