My The Amazing Spider-Man Game Review
Everyone’s favorite webslinger is back in video game form and he has brought his open world hometown with him. That being something the last couple outing in Spider-Man games have let fall to the waist side. Having an open world back makes you realize just how much you miss the simple pleasure of just swinging around and site seeing. The Amazing Spider-Man also borrows some combat and gameplay material from the Batman Arkham series that really helps it, although it is a tiny bit subpar.
The main story of The Amazing Spider-Man game takes place some time after The Amazing Spider-Man movie in which the game is tied to. I have yet to see the movie so I am not exactly sure how the game ties to the events of the movie. The main plot to the game seems to have nothing to do with the movie, at least from what I have seen from trailers. This is the first time I have played a game that ties into a movie before seeing the movie, so it is kind of awkward and hard to describe. While doing some strange experiments at Oscorp (which I assume have to do with what made The Lizard) things turn bad when a viral outbreak happens and throughout the story slowly starts infecting the whole city. It is up to Spidey to clean things up while Alistair Smythe, a scientist for Oscorp wants to do things his way which involve using in infect and his robots to become the man in charge of things and take over the city. Spider-Man has to stop him and find a way to cure everyone of the infection.
Most of the main story missions take Spidey indoors, which is nice because it does break up the open world experience from time to time so it doesn’t get stagnant. When you are indoors the game play shifts directions, it is at this point that The Amazing Spider-Man really starts to feel like the Batman Arkham series. Usually you start up high off the ground, giving you the opportunity to stealthily take down enemies, much like Batman when he would jump around from gargoyle to gargoyle. The big difference here is Spidey can cling to anything and crawl all over the walls and ceiling, which kind of makes it more plausible. The combat is also much like what you find with Batman: , however in this case it is not quite as polished, but it does work. You get into fist fights with badies and while knocking them around, you have to dodge once in awhile which is prompted by some squiggly lines over Spider-Man’s head like when showing his spider-sense. This works well, but would be better with a button prompt seeing things can get hectic with four or five enemies bashing you all at once. However the fighting is pretty easy that it shouldn’t be too tough to get through even if you don’t dodge every punch coming at you. Even most of the boss fights in the game are pretty easy once you figure out exactly what you need to do, but none the less still very fun.
The only real problem with all the boss fights is that the character list of Spider-Man villains is pretty short in this game and worst of all the most notorious two are not even done right. See, the infection that is slowly taking over the city is some kind of “cross-species” virus and you come up against Rhino and Scorpion in the game, but in this they are just some guys that have been infected in one way or another with this virus. So you really arer not even fighting the real versions of these characters. Sure their characteristics, names and concept fit with this cross-species virus thing, but it feels like something is missing this way and is just not the same.
To get around inside is not exactly the same as when outside, but the mechanic is used in both. This is huge seeing it makes swinging around the city that much more fun and gives a little extra to the joy that Spider-Man 2 first gave us. Outside you can simply swing around or there is a way slowdown time and go into a first-person-view that will allow you to direct which way you would like to go and basically zip line yourself in that direction. When you do this yellow Spider-Man icons will light up in the environment so you can know exactly where you will land, which way you will face and what your stance will be. This is awfully useful in the enclosed areas of buildings and sewers.
The side missions are alright for the most part, but can be quite repetitive for the most part. They hold up if you sprinkle them in enough while also doing the main story. Some of them are as simple as taking sick people to quarantined areas or snatching up mental patients and bringing them to the police station. These are only fun because of the swinging around the city, which that goes for a lot of the side stuff in this game. Honestly if swinging around wasn’t so much fun and really gave you the feeling of being Spider-Man, most of the side stuff would be worthless.
The Amazing Spider-Man was a great surprise. It has been a very long time sense a Spider-Man game as had my interest. In fact Spider-Man 2 on the PS2 was the last really great Spider-Man game and most if not all the others that have followed it has been huge failures in one way or another. It feels like Beenox went back to the basics and built from there using some great ideas from other games to give life back to Spidey in the video game world and for me it was a complete success.
