Not as amazing as advertised, but not outright terrible either.
Shattered Dimensions.
Edge of Time.
The Amazing Spider-Man.
And now The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
These are the games developed by Beenox since they became the go-to Spidey guys.
None of them were truly great games, but at least the first two they got to stretch their legs a little creatively and do things you hadn't seen in a Spider-Man game before what with them capitalizing on the Spider-Men of multiple Spider-Man continuities.
Then Spider-Man came back in movie form and so the games became tie-ins for that.
To Beenox's credit they didn't just re-tell the movies story in game form, but they still come off as creatively bankrupt in comparison to their first two titles. To its credit the first Amazing Spider-Man game brought back the open world and that's definitely a thing you want in a Spider-Man game, 'cos swinging around New York is some of the most fun you can have in these things. But that might be the only real positive, with the game being rather middling in every other respect.
And The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks to continue the trend of mediocrity.
Like the first game it doesn't re-tell the movies story, but takes influence from it in places and largely does its own thing. Nothing as interesting as you'd get in Shattered Dimensions or even Edge of Time. I feel like they might get a little wilder if not for the movie association but no helping that I suppose. They find ways to cram in villains to fight that don't appear in the movie and it's a good thing too because even with the extra villains the game isn't exactly lengthy.
Of course there's the usual assortment of collectibles, combat challenges and side missions but if you played the first game you've pretty much already seen this stuff because it largely hasn't changed.
You swing around the city and that's fun.
You engage in Arkham-esque combat and that's okay.
And sometimes there are stealth sections. And those are fine.
But there's nothing truly amazing about The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
If you missed the first one and can pick this up cheap I'd recommend giving it a whirl if it's been some time since you've experienced the joys of doing whatever a spider can, just know in this game those joys are few.
