Everybody has a favourite superhero, regardless of how many comics they have read, movies they have seen or games they have played, there is always one that you just really love. Mine has always been Spider-Man. The thought of a man with all the abilities of super-spider?
Spiderman: Web of Shadows
Developer: Treyarch
Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (reviewed), PC
Xbox 360, PS3, PC: October 21st 2008
Xbox 360, PS3, PC: October 24th 2008
Who wouldn’t want that? Which is why I was near heartbroken when I played Spider-Man 3 and discovered that maybe Spider-Man was not as great as I had once thought. I decided to give Friend or Foe a miss, for hopefully apparent reasons, and was genuinely excited about Web of Shadows (all the while doing my best to ignore Treyarch’s involvement.) A game in which you can flit between the ‘good’ Red and Blue Spidey and the ‘evil’ symbiote dark one instantly was exciting enough but with those choices also came the much-used morality system.
The sad fact of the matter is that Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is disappointingly average. Sure swinging around Manhattan Island is still fun to do and Spidey’s swing animations look fantastic, but it’s been the same since Spider-Man 2 on the Playstation 2. It’s nothing new and it certainly cannot save the rest of the game from slipping into mediocrity yet again. The combat system is great fun for the first few hours, but after a while you have seen every move Spidey can pull off and even web-zipping onto enemies from mid-air gets tiresome after a while. Spider-Man is a pretty nimble guy and can sprint up vertical walls with seeming ease which can lead to some great looking moves when leaping off. Swinging around Manhattan Island is still great fun to do and to watch as Spidey’s body momentum will change accordingly to the direction you are swinging into yet, swinging around the city is somewhat rendered void about half way through the story anyway has a Venom-induced symbiote plague infects the entire city so any swinging around you dowill inevitably end in being constantly attacked by enemies. This is made even more annoying when after completion, the game sends you back to the menu rather than giving you a ‘back to normal’ city to roam around in which just adds another layer to the inevitable frustration this game will bring.
Web of Shadows’ story was another one of the main selling points for me heading into the game, it is completely original and seems somewhat out of touch with the Spider-Man canon, with Spidey donning the black suit without too much hesitation despite his previous troubles with it. The story comprises of Venom infecting the citizens of Manhattan and turning them into some strange symbiote beasts, and Spider-Man must track Venom down and defeat him, with a little help from his friends of course. Characters throughout the Spider-Man (and a few from outside it) universe make an appearance and give the story something to focus on outside of Spider-Man. Characters wonder in and out of the story at seemingly random intervals without any real reason other to show off the fact that it’s Wolverine. As cool as the characters could and should have been, none of them can be taken seriously due to some hideously bad voice acting coupled with some bizarre dialogue, the most gut-wrenchingly bad is that of Wolverine’s supposed MySpace page.
The Spider-Man universe has some pretty cool characters, and chances are you will end up fighting them at some point throughout their story, and you will also be fighting their symbiote forms (which are essentially just stronger, quicker fight.) The battles can be pretty intense…for the first 5-10 minutes that is. Bosses have too much health which diminishes so slowly that it is impossible to find these battle entertaining, especially when the only way to win these battles quickly are by using the same button mashing techniques that you will use throughout the entire game and it becomes increasingly frustrating during the latter battles in which the boss will call in it’s grunts to distract you and just elongates the fight.
The changing of the suits has been marketed to show of the game’s very shallow morality-based gameplay which more and more games are now starting to use, whereas the only real use of the different suits is to execute almost customised combinations which can include several costume changes in just a few seconds. As you would imagine, the Red and Blue suit makes Spidey slightly faster and more agile with web-based attacks while the Black suit makes him more powerful and instead of web-based moves, he grows a large, evil looking tendril from his arm which is used to drag enemies closer and sweep the surrounding area. The suit changes do change up the story a bit after each boss fight (and some major cut scenes) you will be asked to make a good or evil suit choice, which is strange since you can always fight in the dark suit but still end up taking the good morality path.
Web of Shadows utilizes a ‘lock-on’ mechanic that allows you to focus the camera on a specific location even whilst you leap around the screen or flinging around on a web. However, this can cause some pretty infuriating issues when up against any sort of object as the camera tends to be a little erratic as it tries to swing around to a half-decent view but just ends up getting stuck in some incredibly useless space in which you are forced to jump around blindly in order to regain your bearings. This can get increasingly anger-inducing when trying to fight a group of enemies when you cannot even see what it is that’s attacking you.
The graphics in Web of Shadows looks almost like a PS2 game, with poorly detailed characters and incredibly blocky buildings that are impeccably straight. There is a distinct lack of diverse enemies and fighting the same things over and over again will get repetitive quickly, especially when coupled with the button mashing fighting system that the game employs. Most of the moves look the same after a while and upon contact with an enemy a typical comic-book ‘slash’ effect that varies depending on the move, which could really have done with a ‘POW’ or ‘KA-SPLAT’ here and there just to try and rid of the monotony of gameplay.
The Final Word
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is a crotch-kickingly disappointing game that promises so much early on before slipping into mediocrity and becoming another bad Spider-Man game that could have been so much better. Almost everything entertaining will eventually become dull and uninteresting and you will be wondering whether or not this game was worth the money with so many other games currently being released.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
