The last few Spider Man games really haven't been able to capture the magic of the classic Spidey titles.
Spider Man and Spider Man: Enter Electro were the first must-play games of the 3D era, thanks to some varied, rewarding combat mechanics.
Spider Man 2 on the PS2, GameCube and Xbox stepped things up too, considered one of the best licensed titles of its generation. The game introduced random crime encounters to the fray, giving gamers a ton of replayability while also playing into the crime-fighting nature of Spider Man.
Amazing Spider Man and Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions, while not bad, haven't managed to capture the spirit of earlier, standard-setting games.
Nevertheless, The Amazing Spider Man 2 was released to coincide with the movie's launch.
Well... is it a cash-in?
At first glance, The Amazing Spider Man 2 looks like an early Xbox 360 title, with drab, unpolished visuals. The city is very brown and grey, which wouldn't be a problem if it actually had a sense of style or polish to it...
But alas, what we have here is an ocean that's essentially a moving floor, major popup and foliage that looks like something from 2004. Animations are pretty middling too, although the swinging animations look nifty, as Spidey flips and dives through the air.
On the sound side of things, The Amazing Spider Man 2 fares a bit better, with the voice actors doing a decent job of it all.
Spider Man regularly throws his trademark quips out there, but I did find Parker's constant mission reminders to be very annoying after half-an-hour of playing. There are only so many times I can listen to reminders about getting to some arbitrary location...
The dialogue gets old when fighting enemies too, with the same Parker quips quickly wearing thin.
Gameplay is king, right?
But production values aren't the most important part of a game - if that were the case, thenEarth Defence Force wouldn't be one of my favourite franchises.
So how does Spider Man fare in terms of gameplay then?
Well, for the most part, it's nothing you haven't seen before that hasn't been done better. But it's still fun anyway.
Combat is ripped straight from the Batman games, but doesn't feel quite as rewarding or brutal as Batman: Arkham City or Sleeping Dogs.
Sure, you can fire off web blasts and toss objects at enemies, but it all feels weak and tired at the beginning. Where are the silly web gloves from old games? How about the ability to tie people up in ridiculous ways ala the grappling hook from Just Cause 2?
Things improve a lot when you get a few upgrades though, such as a shotgun-style effect for web blasts and freeze webs. The game's counter system works well too - as you wait for enemies to turn red before hitting the counter button to... well... counter attacks.
When fighting hoodlums, you can get by fine if you mash the strike button, pull guns out of enemy hands and occasionally hit the counter key. But in a neat touch, there are quite a few other enemy types too, such as super-fast assassin-types and hulking brutes.
These new enemy types offer a welcome change from the norm, for example, using the web blast to stun the brute or web shots to slow the fast enemies down.
One of the best parts about the game has to be the traversal system though, with left and right triggers corresponding to left and right arms for web swinging.
It all works well and allows you to build a good rhythm, except when the game erroneously determines that there's nothing for your web to attach to. This occurrence happens quite often, but as you're falling, the mechanic sort of "wakes up" and allows you to swing again. Weird, but at least you don't take fall damage.
But the game has another cool traversal mechanic, which sees you holding a button to slow down time, the game then highlighting areas you can seamlessly move to. These areas could be rooftops, cranes, helicopters or towers - but you can use it in conjunction with swinging to facilitate faster movement.
The game also allows you to seamlessly run up and along walls, and when combined with the other mechanics, really makes for enjoyable free-roaming.
Does it deliver bang for buck?
The game unfolds against the backdrop of a gang war brewing between two factions - the city, Spider Man and vigilantes caught in the middle. Par for the course then...
You'll be spending a lot of your time doing the story missions, ranging from the usual "beat everyone up and destroy a few objects" stuff to the "tail those bad guys and then beat them up" fare.
Stealth missions make a turn here as well, but the execution is spotty - with a stealth meter rising when you get spotted. Fill the meter up (which takes a few seconds), and your mission is over. Fortunately, it's not an instafail and you don't do these missions too often, but it's something I could do without.
Once you've completed the story missions, which can be done in two or three long sittings, you still have random missions to deal with.
These quests vary from the mundane (save people from a fire, dispatch wannabe burglars) to the more unusual (rescue a guy surrounded by arcs of electricity, save a hostage from a moving car).
These missions aren't mindblowing but they're a good way to pass the time and can be fun to tackle as well. But some of these, like the fire scenarios, can be more tedious than anything else. While others, like the car chases, are essentially quick-time events.
Ignoring these quests results in your "Hero Or Menace" morality meter dropping.
Let your meter to fall into "Menace" and NPCs will pour scorn on you, private security forces will attack you and the media will have bad coverage. But keep doing good things and the opposite will pretty much come into effect.
Once you've grown tired of the randomised quests, there are also other activities, such as helping out police under fire and infiltrating hideouts. Other than that, the search for collectables and the ability to replay story missions are the only other ways to eke more life out of the game.
Buried underneath all the mediocrity are a few neat features that I hope will find a way to future Spider Man games, such as the great web-swinging mechanics.
But as it is now, The Amazing Spider Man 2 is merely bland - give this a rental for the gamerscore/trophies.
Score: 6 out of 10
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