Spider-Man. Most know him as “your friendly neighborhood” Spider-Man. A select few know him as Peter Parker. With the movie coming out next week, Beenox wants to show you the all-new, shiny Amazing Spider-Man.
It seems like every year we get a new Spider-Man game. People will argue that the series peaked with Spider-Man 2. As great as Spider-Man 2 was (and the overlooked Ultimate Spider-Man), I think that Beenox’s honorable efforts with Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time can’t be completely dismissed. So how did they do with The Amazing Spider-Man? Unfortunately, The Amazing Spider-Man is not Spider-Man 2, but it could be a step back towards returning Spider-Man to the fonder end of gamer’s memories.
As is well documented in video game history, any video game that comes out while tied to a movie’s promotion, usually ends up being pretty lackluster. Before you blame the developers for choosing to work on these titles, just remember that the developers hardly ever get to choose what project they get to work on. Combine this with the lack of time for development that most of these games have and they are usually doing the best that they can while swimming upstream.
The Amazing Spider-Man tries to skirt around spoilers by having the story take place after the events of the movie. Beenox gets away with it, until about an hour into the game. If you would like to avoid what I think is a major spoiler to the movie, put playing this game off until you go to the theaters. Speaking of the story, although it introduces classic villains such as Rhino, Vermin, Scorpion and of course, The Lizard, it ends up being pretty bland. Experiments gone wrong, city-wide infections, Gwen Stacy in trouble and only Spider-Man can save them all. Except for the Gwen Stacy part, you could almost picture this being Prototype.
In fact, the textures and the overall look of the Manhattan could be reused assets from Prototype. When you are outdoors taking a leisurely web-swinging stroll through the city, the sense of speed at first seems great. Once you do it for an hour or so you start to see just how slow Spider-Man is actually moving. Only when you get close to the streets does it feel like I am moving really fast. It could be due to the fact that the camera is pulled in really close to Spider-Man. I am not sure if the camera pulled further out would make the sense of speed any better. Regardless, like much of the game, it stops being impressive and the shortcomings start to show.
One highlight of the game is the combat system. What should be mandatory for all superhero video games is to look at what Rocksteady has done with the combat in Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. The fluid nature and ease of multitasking a group of enemies is how I think a superhero would fight, especially one with a Spider-Sense. Beenox nails it when it comes to the style of combat that Rocksteady is praised for with the Batman titles. Although more animations could have been done since Spider-Man repeats the same moves way too often, everything feels like it should for Spider-Man. It’s fluid and fun for the most part.
Yes, much like the Arkham games, the combat is a light mix of hitting ‘x’ to attack and ‘y’ to dodge with the combos automatically happening. When you start to take into consideration that there are objects in the environment that you can utilize, you will see just how fun the combat can be. The stealth attacks in The Amazing Spider-Man is pretty simple yet it makes you want the noir Spider-Man game with stealth mechanics the Beenox did in parts of Shattered Dimensions. Stealth is the best way to take out the one enemy I detest in the game, soldiers with assault rifles. Since you cannot dodge them without doing a web retreat, taking them out before engaging the weaponless enemies makes things easier on you.
I never like Spider-Man indoors so I was a little upset that a lot of the game takes place inside buildings or sewers. But not all of it. There is a boss fight sequence near the middle of The Amazing Spider-Man that really blew me away. Zipping through the city’s skyline while being chased by flying robots at dusk was exhilarating. To stop mid-swing in order to turn around and Web Rush (in slow-mo) and target the robot never got old. Web Rush, the new system for targeting areas or enemies and quickly zip-lining to them, is not just made for getting around the city faster, you know. For a game going back to the open world theme, Beenox should have had more of situations like this. Hell, they even open big with a nice boss fight as your first encounter.
If you are a person that needs to collect everything in a game, well The Amazing Spider-Man has a ton. 700 comic book pages are scattered throughout Manhattan and it seems like every ten seconds, I was running into one. The more you collect, the more comic books you can unlock to peruse in the extras menu option. Most of them pertain to material Beenox used for characters and settings in the game. You also can’t be Spider-Man without Peter Parker taking pictures. Finding Oscorp logos helps you to unlock new costumes for Spider-Man that you can wear during the game. I was okay with the default suit so I never felt the need to go hunting for those logos and the new skins don’t add anything to the gameplay.
Side-quests are back as well but felt unnecessary in order to complete the game. If you just want to breeze through the main story, you can. You won’t upgrade your abilities to the maximum but that’s alright. The upgrades you get for your abilities in the easy to use ‘OsPhone’ menus are enough to get you through on normal difficulty. After the game’s credits roll, you are thrown back into the game to clean up all of the petty crime and investigations that you didn’t do earlier so it is nice to be able to return to clean up Manhattan. Or you can be like me and just spend time swinging in the sunset, since the selection of what time of day you want is available before leaving your apartment. There’s nothing like swinging through the game’s bloom lighting effect.
Being an epilogue for the film helped the game avoid the major trappings for the most part. Repeat voice dialogue, a monotonous story and too much indoor scenarios reared its ugly head though and bogs down what could have been a fuller experience. With the open world back, fluid combat and some great set pieces, most of that can be overlooked. In the end, especially if you’re a Spidey fan, The Amazing Spider-Man is a fantastic time. Hmm. The Fantastic Spider-Man… has a nice ring to it. I’ll have to see what Stan Lee thinks…