Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

With great power comes great responsibility. Everyone has heard Uncle Ben's famous words of wisdom to Peter Parker, but Beenox tends to forget it every now and then. They haven't had a very impressive track record with the web-slinger, producing the mediocre Friend or Foe in 2007 and the lackluster Edge of Time in 2011. Although putting the Web Head back in a free roaming Manhattan places him higher than Edge of Time, a lack of variety keeps him from web-swinging over the bar that 2010's Shattered Dimensions raised.

The Amazing Spider-Man is loosely based on Columbia Pictures's 2012 movie, which is a reboot of the film franchise. The game's story takes place just after the events of the film, and begins with Peter and Gwen taking an unsanctioned tour through the labs of Oscorp. They learn of a cross-species virus that's being developed which turns humans into mutants with different animal traits, and a specimen breaks free and attacks Gwen. Suddenly, Peter Parker has to don his red and blue tights and try to save her and everyone else infected before the virus takes over.

Anticipation for The Amazing Spider-Man was high thanks in part to Beenox's decision to return Spider-Man to his natural habitat of swinging around New York City's Manhattan borough, something that hasn't happened since Shaba Games' 2008 title Web of Shadows. Beenox's Spider-Man games have kept the friendly neighborhood crime fighter either focused in narrow corridors or confined in closed quarters. Finally, Spider-Man fans can breathe fresh air as Spidey swings through it like only a Spider-Man can.

The Amazing Spider-Man has some very large shoes to fill, however, as many hopeful fans were expecting a return to the dynamic web-slinging mechanics of Treyarch's 2004 Spider-Man 2 game. Instead of left and right triggers to web-sling with the left and right arms, you now hold down the R2 button and Spider-Man will swing automatically until you let go. Even with the inclusion of the new Web Rush mechanic that zips you to anywhere your cursor desires, all the flashy tricks and aerial acrobatics are performed automatically. The dumbing down makes you feel like you're playing less of a game, but the actual feeling of web-swinging through New York City is portrayed very well. The only major problem is that you never see a web line connect to a building, which makes it seem like his lines are attaching to the sky, but its counter-balanced by the fact that the game never lets you swing over a building with no taller buildings near by.

The feeling of all this exhilarating freedom is short lived, however, once you realize that the story missions cram Spider-Man back into closed areas. These locales are nothing more than laboratories and sewers and the level design quickly begins to grow stale. Still, playing in these levels can be fun as you crawl along walls and ceilings, stalking your prey and descending down upon them like a certain caped crusader has done a couple times before. Of course, this a reference to the Batman Arkham games, and it's impossible to not reference them as developer Rocksteady's influence is smattered all over the game.

The combat for instance plays out just like the last two Batman games where it's one button to attack and one button to dodge. Spider-Man has the added bonus of performing a Web Retreat, which yanks him out of the middle of the fray and lets him catch his breath before diving back in. Unfortunately for him, he lacks the number of gadgets that Bruce Wayne carries with him, and thus the combat never becomes as deep or rewarding. Plus, the animations are fast and jerky, so the look of combat lacks the same level of fluidity. Even the bosses are beaten down in the same fashion as run of the mill thugs, making every encounter that isn't a city block sized robot feel quite generic. It's also rather easy and there is a similar leveling system to the Batman Arkham games, but it matters very little as you don't feel yourself getting stronger since you'll very rarely find yourself challenged.

Very early on in the game, you'll gain access to reporter Whitney Cheng's camera, and then you can go about taking pictures of enemies to unlock character profiles and concept art. You can also partake in side missions to investigate mysterious scenes to provide Ms. Cheng with photos for her news stories. Also, each level you play in has multiple opportunities to take photo shots of suspicious activities as well as look for audio evidence, yet another nod to Rocksteady's Batman games. Lastly, if you have a keen eye, you might even stumble across Spider-Man logos in the city and if you take a snapshot of them, you'll unlock new costumes. Oddly enough, however, most of those logos won't be visible unless you change your system's date to August and play while offline.

When Spider-Man comes back up for air, he can do all sorts of things in the city, but you soon realize that these side missions are nothing more than cut and paste events. If you aren't picking up infected citizens and delivering them to hospitals, you're picking up escaped mental patients and dropping them off at the police station. You can break up muggings, but they're always the same criminals. Police chases that you assist in always have you webbing up the windshields of the exact same car, even when you're doing three in one event. Bruce Campbell has a role in the game where he flies a blimp and gives challenges to Spider-Man, but these amount to nothing more than keeping the camera focused on him while he automatically pulls off tricks and continuously hits R1 to web zip to different flares for Race Challenges. After the seventh or eight side event, you're sick and tired of the deja vu.

Beenox has done such a great job in rendering Spider-Man's character that they seem to have forgotten to apply the same level of detail on just about every other character. Again, another nod to Rocksteady is seeing Spider-Man's suit tear after he's been in numerous scuffles, but after you see the exact same torn pattern four or five times, it loses its effect. Surely, more than just the right side of his back takes damage. The buildings of Manhattan are rendered quite nicely with shiny reflections on windows, but anyone who knows anything of New York architecture will clearly see that it's not an accurate rendition of the city. Even the Daily Bugle looks off. The buildings have such a generic build to them, it's almost as if the developers designed a city out of cheap buildings blocks and rendered them into the game. Still, the visual portrayal of Spider-Man web-slinging his way through town conveys a great sense of speed and freedom so the inaccuracies of Manhattan matters very little when you lose yourself to the motions.

The sound design for the most part is solid. Spidey's web shooters sound exactly as you'd expect with thwips being emitted every time you wrap your enemies up in cocoons and stick them to ceilings. Biffs, bams, baps and bonks are heard as Spider-Man tangles with his foes in combat. The sounds of wind rushing past Spider-Man as he falls towards the streets of NYC deliver that great sense of exhilaration that makes web-slinging across the city so fun. The only major problem with the sound design, however, is there is no Doppler effect when characters speak to you. You could be blocks away after dropping off a mental patient and the cop is still thanking you for your efforts as if she was right next to you. If you managed to score a pre-order bonus code to play as Stan Lee, you'll hear the citizens still refer to you as Spider-Man. The music is well-composed, but as with the missions, you'll begin to grow bored of it eventually.

It's easy to be swept up in the joys of swinging around the city, thanks in part to the great sense of speed and the tricks being pulled off in Web Rush mode. Thus, it's easy to overlook a great number of flaws The Amazing Spider-Man has. It doesn't have the variety of level design and bosses contained in Shattered Dimensions, but it also has a lot more room to play in comparison to Edge of Time. Its combat is fun but overly simplified, yet swinging from crime scene to crime scene is still just plain thrilling. It's hard to really hold any negative against the game for too long, but since the game does lack a firm amount of depth, it's also easy for those negatives to rear their heads again. Unfortunately, since there is so much Rocksteady influence in the game, it also keeps making you think how much better the game would have been had Rocksteady done it themselves. At the end of the day, however, The Amazing Spider-Man does a good enough job of making you enjoy the time you're having as everyone's favorite neighborhood Spider-Man.