The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Developer: Beenox
Price: $60
Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Wii-U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One
A PS4 copy of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was supplied to us
There’s a new Spider-Man movie out which means there’ll be a new game by Beenox to accompany it once again.
Despite accompanying the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie the game has almost nothing to do with it. It has Electro and Green Goblin from the film with their transformation into villains being kept the same, but those stories are barely told with both villains being relegated to rushed boss fights that come out of nowhere with no relation at all to the story. Seriously, you’re fighting Kingpin and then all of a sudden Spider-Man has to run over to fight Electro and the same happens with Goblin; the fights just come out of nowhere. In fact this has easily got to be one of the weakest stories I’ve ever seen in a Spider-Man game. It shares nothing with the film and instead just sort of half asses its way for half the story before it just shoves boss battle after boss battle at you for the other half. The game starts and finishes so many damn plot points it’s ridiculous.
Time to catch Uncle Ben’s killer oh wait that’s over. Never mind let’s go focus on this gang war over he- oh wait we just tied up that plot point. Well look over here it’s Electro from the movies let’s see what he’s up to… oh never mind we’re just going to have him disappear for the rest of the game before an out of place boss fight and sprinkle a few audiologs explaining what happened. Kingpin! He’s the big bad guy right? No wait it’s Green Goblin never mind. Nope wrong again it’s Carnage.
The story has absolutely no focus at all. I know lots of people claim they could write a better story than people who are paid to do this but I’m pretty goddamn certain I could write a better Spider-Man story than whoever the hell wrote this nonsensical mess.
If you’ve played any of Beenox’s previous Spider-Man games then you know what to expect from the combat. I’m really surprised that Beenox still haven’t understood why the combat in the Arkham series is praised so much because it’s just such a sad mediocre attempt at aping on that formula in this game. Now I wouldn’t say the combat is bad or broken, but there’s just nothing to it at all as you mindlessly mash the punch button while occasionally hitting the counter. Spider-Man feels really loose with there not being any sort of weight to his movements and there’s no variety in the combat itself to keep things interesting. Your only moves are punching, shooting webs, and pulling yourself to an enemy or vice versa.
A really dumb part of the combat is how no matter how far away you are from an enemy who is about to attack you they’ll still hit you. They could start up their attack animation, you move way out of their supposed range for the punch, and then they’ll sort of slide over to you thus hitting you. As someone who’s played a lot of the Arkham series it makes combat slightly annoying at times since I’m used to knowing whether I have to bother hitting the counter or not by judging how far an enemy is and their reach of attack. I think the best thing Beenox could do is to stop with the poor man’s Arkham combat and just rebuild the combat system from the ground up. They should look at games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta for how Spidey should fight. I want to do over the top moves, sick combos, and air juggle motherfuckers with my Spider-Man game.
Now the most important element to perfect in a Spider-Man game is the web swinging. Every Spidey fan knows this and will look past a forgettable plot and some iffy combat if you can give us the feeling of web swinging through New York City. Beenox have definitely improved the swinging but it’s still nowhere near as good as it was in Spider-Man 2 (the 2004 movie game). You’ll swing around the city by using both triggers to control the left and right arms on Spider-Man and it works really well; it’s easily the best swinging we’ve gotten in years. I forgot how good it felt to swing between buildings, using webs to slingshot you across a few blocks, and diving all the way to street level before quickly firing off a web before you become spider pancakes. The web rush mechanic is also back and while it’s still incredibly useful for getting to a specific spot without hassle (like a comic book) it can still act finicky at times.
Beenox still haven’t gone all the way with physical webs though and have instead opted for some slight trickery in the form of the illusion of physical webs. You see, as long as there’s some sort of structure to your sides then you can web swing from it but it never actually feels like you’re properly attached to it because you’re not. If you twist the camera around fast enough you’ll see the webs go at an angle towards the buildings but either clip right through them or don’t touch at all. This is even more noticeable whenever you’re in an open area with just trees since the game recognizes the trees as a structure to web swing from. I was even able to find a single row of trees on the edge of the island and swing perfectly fine in a straight line; these aren’t even building sized trees either with the webs clearly attaching to some invisible object above the trees. As long as you stick to the city streets there’s fun to be had swinging around, just don’t go near any parks unless you want your immersion broken. All sort of immersion is also thrown out when you’re in a mission outside the open world with Spider-Man able to straight up moon-swing everywhere. You’ll be in open areas with webs shooting straight up and it just looks super goofy.
Sometimes when you try hitting the web swing button in a spot where you clearly can’t swing (like way above buildings) Spidey will say “You actually need something to attach to” in a sort of snarky way. I can’t tell if Beenox is mocking us with this line knowing full well fans have been begging for web physics for years or just so unaware of the irony of the line.
Now besides swinging around for no reason there are also 300 comics for you to collect scattered all around the city. You’ll also be able to acquire new suits either by completing story missions, finishing Russian hideout side activities, or doing specific goals like finishing all the combat challenges. There’s basically every major suit and you can level with XP earned through combat, missions, or collectibles. Each suit has three different status effects like dealing out more damage, being harder to spot, or taking less damage from electricity and leveling a suit will increase these stats. It’s nothing major but it’s nice that it’s there.
Another element of the game is the hero and menace system. Throughout the city you’ll see various types of crimes you can stop like muggings, bombs, hostage situations, or fires. Doing these will fill up your hero meter and give your stats a nice boost while letting crime run rampant will lower your stats and cause a special task force to start hunting you down. There’s no sort of good or evil effect on the city though and the game is already easy enough that stats don’t matter too much. The only real noticeable effect of this is having that annoying as hell task force on your ass 24/7 if you let your menace meter dip too low.
After finishing the game all I wanted to do was swing around collecting comic books and have fun but all that fun disappeared almost instantly when my maxed out hero meter dropped hard within the first ten minutes of finishing the game. Suddenly I was a huge menace to the city after a chain of crimes expired and I had robots chasing me, soldiers putting up force fields to stop me from swinging, and this giant hornet mech boss I had to deal with. The problem with this system is that the meter drains way too quickly and the crime activities just aren’t fun at all. To make matters worse the game needs to load whenever you start and finish one of these crimes. It’s not a super long load but it’s just another thing to annoy you with an already annoying part of the game. It’s a huge pain having to deal with this stupid thing because it basically puts a giant roadblock whenever you’re just trying to have fun swinging around collecting comic books. Let me repeat that so it sticks, there’s a feature in a Spider-Man game that is continuously stopping you from freely swinging around for fun.
The Final Word
Beenox still hasn’t seemed to grasp what everyone wants from a Spider-Man game and I still can’t tell if it’s because of their rushed development time that’s the issue or the developers themselves. Fans of Spider-Man will still likely find some enjoyment here since the web swinging, while still nowhere near as good as past games, is definitely a step up from modern Spider-Man titles.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
