Ahh Spiderman, you and I have gone on so many adventures together. From the comic books of my youth, to the AWESOME animated series in my teen years, to the three movies… well, the first two of the three anyway. Let’s not forget games. I’ve played every one of your games since the days of the PS1. The first Spiderman game on the PS1 was a triumph. It was a beautiful blend of comic book story telling, web slinging, and beat em up fights. Then came the game based on the first movie. It took all of the fine points of the PS1 classic, and polished the hell out of them. It was truly my favorite Spiderman game - until the second movie based game came out. Great efforts were made to make NYC as big and beautiful as possible.  There were a lot of places to go and things to do. Those were the halcyon days. Only a short time later came Ultimate Spiderman, which, while still fun, lacked the depth of combat, and the size and scale of the world found in it’s predecessor. Let’s not forget the third movie game, which felt even further dumbed down from Ultimate Spiderman. By the release of Friend or Foe, I lost the rose colored glasses I had viewed Spiderman games through before that point. That game was easily the worst Spiderman game I’ve ever played, and one of the worst over all. Still, I felt a sense of excitement when I first held the Web of Shadows disc in my hands. The missteps the series had taken couldn’t erase the truly wonderful memories of the finer games in the series.

So, with a heart full of hope, I put the disc into my Xbox 360, and prepared to embark on another adventure with my favorite super hero of all time.

Unfortunately shortly after embarking on that adventure, Spiderman spit in my face. During the first mission you have to fight back a bunch of thugs from in front of a hospital with the help of Luke Cage. Once all of the gang members had been defeated, the game prompted me to talk to Cage, who just stood there. For about five minutes, I punched, kicked, and jumped in his general direction, with no results. So I went for a walk. Clearly Cage wanted to be left alone, so I respected his wishes. I went for a swing around New York, admiring all of the buildings that looked the same, and marveling at how those buildings could just pop into the environment right in front of me. After a couple minutes of this, I went back to Luke Cage to see if he was ready to talk to me. After walking into him, he ran to a specific part of the street, and a yellow circle indicating I could now interact with him appeared. Guess he just needed some time to think things through.

That was the first of many glitches. During an epic mid air battle with The Vulture, he got stuck in a wall. This allowed me to just sit next to him on the wall, and pummel him until I had removed enough of his health to trigger the next cut scene. This sort of thing kept happening all the way through the game. I actually had to save, and reload my game three times during a simple escort mission. The idea was simple enough, meet up with a personnel transport, escort it where it’s going. Sure enough, the first transport I met up with promptly began running into the side of a building over and over again. It just kept hitting the building, backing up, and hitting it again. I tried wandering off for a bit, and coming back, but it didn’t help. After a quick save, and reload, the problem was fixed…. temporarily. The same thing happened two more times with different transports.

The glitches weren’t the only place this game lacked polish. The camera was unbelievably twitchy. When I ran across the roof of a particularly tall building, the camera would either point straight up at the sky, or straight down at Spiderman’s feet. This made it almost impossible to fight enemies on the effected rooftops. Add to this some incredibly loose controls, and you wind up with a recipe for frustration. When you swing into a wall at high speeds, and attempt to transition from a swing to a wall run, Spiderman will just run frantically and uncontrollably in whatever direction he feels like for a couple of seconds until he slows down. During this time the camera will most likely change directions at least six times, creating an unrivaled sense of nausea.

Game play glitches aside, the combat is adequate. You have two suits that you can switch between at any time: red, and black. Each comes with it’s own set of moves. The red suit focuses on lighter, faster attacks, while the black suit focuses on heavier, broader reaching attacks. The big “sell” for the combat system is the addition of aerial combat. Spiderman can shoot web at an enemy, and pull himself toward it in mid air. Unfortunately, this awesome concept is diminished by the precision required to pull off an attack once you get to the enemy you’re attacking. I’d say I only managed to pull off about half of my attempted mid air attacks throughout the course of the game. During normal ground combat, Spiderman controls fairly well - until you jump. Attempting to jump and attack an enemy will often result in Spidey flying over, and past the enemy you’re aiming for. Swinging toward them isn’t much better. You can kick an enemy in mid swing, but if you miss, you’ll have to either try and catch them on the back swing, or just drop down and fight them hand to hand. In short, don’t leave the ground if you don’t have to during a fight. Given the fluidity of the combat in previous titles in the series, I expected better of Web of Shadows.

The one thing the game does really right is the story. New York is over run by an invasion of symbiotes, and you have to stop them. In the beginning of the game, you get your own symbiote after a quick fight with Venom. This sets the stage for a “good vs evil” decision mechanic that seems to have little impact on the overall story. I will admit, it is sort of fun to make Spidey act like a jerk toward citizens, and rough up his enemies excessively. The whole thing feels like it could have been ripped straight from the pages of the comic. Activision even brought in some top notch voice talent for this one. Spiderman is voiced by Mike Vaughn, and Black Cat is voiced by the lovely and talented Tricia Helfer, better known as Cylon Six from Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately, the talented actors could only do so much with the stiff dialogue written for them. In game conversations seem choppy and thrown together. Cut scenes flow a bit more smoothly, but still seem a bit to stiff. The dialogue just doesn’t flow naturally.

If you can look past the flaws and enjoy the comic book story of this game, then go out and get it. Personally, despite my love for Spidey, playing this game felt like a chore, not a pleasure. With so many great games coming out this year, I find it hard to recommend this one to anyone but the most devout of Spiderman fans.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Cross Platform, Game Design, Microsoft, PS3, review, Sony, Spiderman, Xbox 360

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