The Amazing Spider-Man review

Ta-Daaa!!

With Spider-Man getting a reboot with the new movie, there is of course an inevitable move tie-in game. But here's the thing, it doesn't suck. Beenox has had a while to develop this and although it doesn't come away with a full cartridge of webbing, it serves to impress both gamers and fans.

For starters, the game is a mixed bag graphically. Character models are a bit off for everyone but Spider-Man and the quality of the texture isn't fantastic. This is a bit of a contrast to Shattered Dimensions, which makes me a little sad, but in the end, it's merely annoying. The city of New York is absolutely amazing graphically though, with it feeling like a living, breathing city more than any other Spider-Man game. Swinging through the sky is also great. The camera is pulled close to Spider-Man giving you a huge sense of vertigo as he dives off tall buildings and swings himself away with his trademark web. Amazing. As for the story telling, well it's decent. The story is well written and does some pretty shocking things for the narrative, but I have an issue with the way it's told. Every cutscene is just one continuous shot. I don't know why, but I absolutely hate it when games do this. All I want to do when this storytelling technique is used is move around and get back to the game. Still, it's forgivable. The loading times are actually pretty obnoxious though...

The gameplay is a pretty big mix. Most time will be spent swinging around in Manhatten as the web slinger, running up buildings and collecting comic book pages. Swinging is the most fun thing to do in the game, no question. You always feel like Spider-Man when traversing Manhatten, and thanks to the new "Web-Rush" feature, you can slow down time and point Spider-Man towards a direction and land with precession, something you always saw him do in the movies and TV shows but could never do in a game until now. Manhatten is littered with little comic book pages to collect, which I swear to god is more addictive than gambling (not that I do such a thing outside Super Mario 64 <ahem>) And best of all, they unlock actual comics.

Don't look behind you...

When fighting as Spider-Man, you will notice...the fact that they completely took the Batman fighting system and used it in their game. It works for Spider-Man and is actually harder to get the higher combos than it is Batman, but the combat isn't as deep. The true fun from Batman lay in trying to get a perfect run without taking any damage and working out when to use what move and such. Spider-Man's fighting is simpler (not as deep) and while it is harder (you will die more) that's only because enemies do so much damage. It is still thrilling to see Spider-Man beat up thugs and you'll never tire of it. The stealth gameplay is what was really surprising. When faced with heavily armed foes, you'll sneak about the shadows using his acrobatic abilities and wall crawling to silently take out the guards. This is really fun and you'll feel like the web slinger himself as you sneak about, picking off enemies. The only time this feels clunky is when upside down on the ceiling. You can hardly control the way you look and are forced to use web retreat to return to a wall. What really makes the stealth fun is that these guys will search the walls for you with torches. This adds an element of stress as the enemies can actually find and beat you, forcing you to stay on your toes. (I was playing on hard the whole time)

The boss fights against the cross species are fun, but really easy compared to the rest of the game, while the boss battles in the open are amazing and some of the best bosses ever made in video games. You feel like a total swinging around as Spider-Man fighting giant flying robots. Ah, my childhood dreams realised!

The Amazing Spider-Man makes you feel like Spider-Man, but at the same time, some of the indoor levels leave a little to be desired and the side missions are a little repetitive and they aren't random like in Spider-Man 2. This means the game isn't perfect, but it's still fun, especially if you're a Spider-Man fan, and who isn't?