Spiderman: Web of Shadows

[Chardok]

"Making your game not take itself too seriously is a good way to keep players from judging it too harshly." - Stark

I quoted the above because it applies here. Lately, there have been an absolute glut of games shoved onto your local store's shelves - most of which are the gaming equivalent of oversexed teenagers thumping their chest about how awesome they are in bed, when in reality, they don't know their proverbial booty from a hole in the ground. (TFU - I'm looking directly at you and your hairlip brother Frac Ture)

Then you get games like Saints Row II, which you would think is a serious "Yeah mutha fuckah I be a gangsta" game, but, you play it...and you realize that the logo for your "gang" is a purple leprechaun in a driver's cap, the gangs you go to war against are a bunch of Kill Bill-style katana weilding otakus, some pothead rastafarians who worship a voo-doo god....thing, and a bunch of rednecks; also, one of the missions involves you spraying poo on everything in sight.

Also, your character can be, (as mine was) a short-short wearing, purple half-shirt sporting british guy with corporate-standard hair and a tattoo of a buddah on his left shoulder - and he carries a samurai sword. EVERYWHERE.

Point? Saints Row takes itself about as seriously as "The Daily Show" and that makes it fun.

Enter Spiderman: Web of Shadows. This title entered the fray with relatively little fanfare, at least as far as I can tell. It does not bill itself as anything revolutionary. All the trailers for it that I've seen have basically been "Yeah, we're making a Spider-Man game. It's going to be a Spider Man game. with punching. and webs. And Venom. And you can be good or evil because of the symbiote. Also it's Spider Man." So I did a little checking online and saw that it was releasing for all the next-gens, which is never a good sign. Needless to say, I went into this with very low expectations, and guess what? I was pleasantly surprised. the controls are, at first, pretty clunky, but once you get the hang of them, I found myself really enjoying just flitting through New York on my webby-webs. The animations for Spider-Man himself are actually very fluid; very well-done, all things considered.

There is a learning curve when it comes to combat, however, which is annoying. The buttons you press to do one combo are the exact same for a more-powerful combo. The difference? It depends on which MILLISECOND you push the button on. There are 300-style pauses and slowdowns during combat/combos that make this SLIGHTLY easier, but it's still insanely and needlessly complicated, expecially considering it is ONE BUTTON.

Or maybe I just suck.

The Graphics are nothing to write home about, in fact, they're not so great period - especially the cars which are horrible blocky things that just....yeah, they're bad. the semi-destructible environments and buildings add a pretty neat dynamic to the game, as falling debris can actually hurt people, causing you to waste time hauling them to the hospital because apparently there are no ambulances in New York.

I don't know much about the good/evil dynamic because I always pick the "Good" option and, since I have the choice to either use the black suit (Which is more brutish in it's moveset, and includes the ability to pick up and throw cars at enemies) or the red suit (which uses a more acrobatic moveset) I choose to use and upgrade only the red suit because it's SPIDER MAN not VENOM MAN. But here again, it's either boy scout good or stupid evil, as far as I can tell but it doesn't TRY to be any more than that (unlike, say, Mass Effect). This is rationalized by saying that the symbiote inclines spidey toward his more base instincts which seems right, I mean, it IS, after all an evil alien life form.

Voice acting - God, could they have made Spidey into more of a whining bitchy teenager? (hint: no.) he progresses from Corey Feldman smart-assiness to That guy from Liar Liar in his whininess. His internal monologue seems fine, it's only when he opens his stupid, whiny mouth that I want to slap the bejeezus out him. I've gotten to the point where I will simply turn my headphones down during cutscenes and just read the subtitles.

Missions - there's loads of stuff to do, and, thanks to the combat system (which, while needlessly ciomplicated is still still quite alot of fun to watch, at least, and offers alot of variety) even the repetitive "Kill X enemies" missions are fun - the only annoying part is actually the LACK of enemies - sometimes you will wait several minutes in between enemy spawns. which is annoying as all hell when you are on an optional mission to kill 150 bad guys and you're on #48/150, and oftentimes, the groups that spawn are 2, maybe 3 enemies so they can take forever. There's also optional missions to rescue injured civilians; which would be cool except the civilians don't just appear, they have to be hurt while you're around. solution? HURT CIVILIANS YOURSELF. That's right, kick over a car, find a civilians walking by a building and punch the shit out of the facade to make debris fall on them. and, since they're now hurt, you can take them to the hospital, thus progressing your mission counter! Other New Yorkers see no problem with this, because, hey, you're Spider Man, there must've been a good reason you punched a building and smashed a guy with a 2-ton block of concrete.

Co-op/multiplayer - lol whut? None of the above, thank you. (And by thank you, I mean fuck you)

Overall, 7.0/10 for fun, if a bit repetitive gameplay, subpar but passable graphics, and horrible sound (excepting music). It's a rental unless you're a hardcore Spider Man fan, in which case, you can definitely wait for the price to come down before buying it. It's nothing "spectacular" (See what I did there?) or "amazing" (Oops, I did it again.) but it's a fun romp that doesn't take itself too seriously.

In closing, I want to pose a question: Why don't we have more games like "The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction"? That game was at least 31 different flavors of fun and there have been no superhero games to come out that comes close to it - period. Even graphically, it's superior to some of these next-gen titles we're slogging through and gameplay-wise it's leagues above all others before or since. UD should've been the Starting point for these next-gen titles, I should not be pining for it.

[SylasGaunt]

Enter Spiderman: Web of Shadows. This title entered the fray with relatively little fanfare, at least as far as I can tell. It does not bill itself as anything revolutionary. All the trailers for it that I've seen have basically been "Yeah, we're making a Spider-Man game. It's going to be a Spider Man game. with punching. and webs. And Venom. And you can be good or evil because of the symbiote. Also it's Spider Man." So I did a little checking online and saw that it was releasing for all the next-gens, which is never a good sign. Needless to say, I went into this with very low expectations, and guess what? I was pleasantly surprised. the controls are, at first, pretty clunky, but once you get the hang of them, I found myself really enjoying just flitting through New York on my webby-webs. The animations for Spider-Man himself are actually very fluid; very well-done, all things considered.

There is a learning curve when it comes to combat, however, which is annoying. The buttons you press to do one combo are the exact same for a more-powerful combo. The difference? It depends on which MILLISECOND you push the button on. There are 300-style pauses and slowdowns during combat/combos that make this SLIGHTLY easier, but it's still insanely and needlessly complicated, expecially considering it is ONE BUTTON.

Or maybe I just suck.

I have to say, this is the first Spider-Man game where both the web-swinging and combat really feel like spiderman. In the others it was either the web-swinging (spidey 2) or not at all. Going from ground to air to wall in combat is damn spiffy, though yeah some of the timing stuff for differing combos can be a bit trickier than it should be.

Voice acting - God, could they have made Spidey into more of a whining bitchy teenager? (hint: no.) he progresses from Corey Feldman smart-assiness to That guy from Liar Liar in his whininess. His internal monologue seems fine, it's only when he opens his stupid, whiny mouth that I want to slap the bejeezus out him. I've gotten to the point where I will simply turn my headphones down during cutscenes and just read the subtitles.

I almost stabbed out my eardrums at the opening cut-scene. Later I realized he seems okay so I figure I'm okay as long as he's not worried about Mary Jane which goes back to nails on a blackboard turf.

[Vendetta]

In closing, I want to pose a question: Why don't we have more games like "The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction"? That game was at least 31 different flavors of fun and there have been no superhero games to come out that comes close to it - period. Even graphically, it's superior to some of these next-gen titles we're slogging through and gameplay-wise it's leagues above all others before or since. UD should've been the Starting point for these next-gen titles, I should not be pining for it.

Because they keep delaying Prototype.